I’ve already burbled at length about the malevolent potential of the G-14 group, so I’ll say no more. However, it’s good to see that both the media and members of the football community are speaking out against the organisation. Earlier this week, Everton’s chief executive Keith Wyness criticised the greed and self-interest of G-14, while Niall Quinn used his Guardian column today to make some excellent points.
I decided to spread this across two entries, to keep them to a more manageable size…
According to an entry on the G-14 site yesterday, the Guardian’s claims are all fiction. Fair enough, but the illustrious pressure group *is* campaigning for more matches in the Champions League competition. Given their belief that it should be the clubs (not an overall ruling body) who wield the power in football, the evidence does seem to point to a gradual strengthening of the Champions League at the expense of national competitions.
Incidentally, although four more new members were allowed to join in 2002, G-14 is now a closed shop. In the previous entry I alluded to the dynamism of multi-level football systems, and sure enough, this has had an effect on G-14, even with in its six-year existence. Here’s the full list of members…
Ajax (Netherlands)
Arsenal (England) 10
Barcelona (Spain) 6
Bayer Leverkusen (Germany)
Bayern Munich (Germany) 7
Borussia Dortmund (Germany)
Inter Milan (Italy) 9
Juventus (Italy) 4
Liverpool (England) 8
Lyon (France) 15
Manchester United (England) 2
Marseille (France)
AC Milan (Italy) 3
Paris St Germain (France)
Porto (Portugal)
PSV Eindhoven (Netherlands)
Real Madrid (Spain) 1
Valencia (Spain) 19
The numbers refer to the teams’ positions in the top twenty richest clubs in Europe. Highlighted in purple are the teams who, based on their current league position, will play in the Champions League next season. Of the remaining teams, some will play in the UEFA Cup or pre-season Champions League qualifying round, while others are out of the running for European football.
While there’s obviously still quite a bit of success in that list, it’s interesting to see how G-14 represents a snapshot of European football at the turn of the Millennium. Borussia Dortmund and Bayer Leverkusen have returned to mid-table anonymity, as have PSG. A few of the biggest clubs in the list are still competing for European places, but are seriously underperforming.
And then what about the clubs notable by their absence? The most obvious one is Chelsea… currently the 5th richest team in Europe, almost certain to retain the Premiership title and backed by the seemingly bottomless fortune of Roman Abramovich, 24th richest man in the world. Even on a lower level, there are plenty of legitimate claims for inclusion in G-14… Roma and Newcastle are the 11th and 12th richest clubs in Europe, while Hamburg SV, AZ67 Alkmaar and Bordeaux are all riding high in their respective leagues. Flashes in the pan? Maybe, but that’s precisely what Bayer Leverkusen and Borussia Dortmund were.
The bottom line is that having an exclusive selection of the world’s biggest clubs taking the future of the game into their own hands, for their own gain, is horribly wrong. That the dynamism of European football has already rendered the selection partly obsolete makes it all the more ridiculous.
Oh yes, now you mention it, I *do* have a blog! Sorry for the lack of action, but I seem to have been constantly busy for a couple of weeks. Anyway…
I struggled to suppress a little shudder the other day, reading that the G14 group is once again trying to meddle in European football. In case you weren’t aware, G14 is a kind of “Carlyle Group of football”, a self-appointed committee of Europe’s most prestigious clubs (eighteen of them… the four 2002 additions didn’t justify a name change).
Until now, G14 has functioned mostly as a pressure group, but a new policy document “G14 Vision Europe” outlines the group’s intention to take control of the Champions League from UEFA. The aim is to ensure continued success for all 18 clubs in an elite European competition. Within this utopian walled garden, the noble heroes could live their privileged lives, unfettered by such troublesome obstacles as…
- Having an off day and being knocked out by a plucky underdog
The Champions League, with its initial league stage, was developed by UEFA in the early 1990s in response to complaints from top clubs who found the pure knock-out format of the original European Cup competition far too risky.
- Silly international competitions such as the World Cup
G-14 are currently in dispute with FIFA over the lack of compensation paid to clubs whose players are injured in international matches.
- Having to give a portion of their money to teams in lower leagues
The whole G-14 philosophy is just a refinement of the thought processes that led to the foundation of the English Premiership. Take control of the money supply, the TV rights, even the choice of opposition. Then build a big wall around your little paradise garden, keeping the money in and the upstarts out.
As you may be able to tell, this all makes me very angry. UEFA’s communications director William Gaillard described it as “Apartheid: it would be the end of the European model of football”, and I totally agree. Restrict the vertical movement to/from the top level of any sport and the result is a series of glorified exhibition matches. The vibrancy of the Champions League and the various Premiership equivalents is created not only by the eye-candy skill of the best teams, but also by the constant threat of new blood replacing old, the spectacle of an underdog team playing “out of its skin” against the complacent Old Guard.
This relationship works at every level, right down to amateur Sunday leagues… remove the chance (no matter how slim) of promotion, and the whole system dies. While lower league teams do owe a certain debt of gratitude to the Champions League superstars for the money they attract to the game, the big clubs simply could not exist without the enormous coaching and scouting network offered by the lower leagues, not to mention the overall competitive potential of multi-level sport. There’s a good reason why the FA Cup is so revered worldwide… it’s a rare opportunity to see every team having an equal chance of playing every other team (despite recent adjustments in favour of the Premiership clubs).
Oh well. I’ve never had an awful lot of faith in the bumbling PR mess that seems to engulf UEFA most of the time, but I just hope they can fight this.
[FYI: The Guardian seem to have covered this better than most news outlets (slightly ironic, given the grotesquely unbalanced pro-Premiership coverage in their sports section!) so here's a link to several articles]
New Labour’s biggest domestic sleazefest seems to be cooling down slightly, but I’m sure it’ll all get stirred up again once new evidence is found. I know it’s irrational, but I feel much more of an urge for harsh justice than I ever did with any of the Tory sleaze scandals back in the nineties. I dunno, maybe it’s because this government has turned out to be so disappointing after all the promise, whereas I became numbed to the grotesque lack of principles displayed by the Thatcher/Major lot.
The complexities of the Jowell/Mills case are threatening (conveniently) to obscure the real issues, but let’s not forget the central questions. Was the money from Berlusconi? Was it a bribe or a gift? If the latter, why wasn’t it declared legitimately? How can Tessa Jowell claim not to know that a *joint* mortgage had been settled in full?
Just to prove that there’s humour to be found in every situation, here’s an excerpt from a large article in Saturday’s Guardian, describing the background of erstwhile Mills associate Marcello Dell’Utri…
“His trial was dominated by evidence from one of the most senior dons ever to turn prosecution witness: Antonino Giuffre, known as Manuzza, The Hand, because one of his hands is immobilised through polio.”
Ever get the feeling that we’re all just figments of the imagination of Mario Puzo?
With complex, controversial issues such as the Muhammed cartoon affair, there’s a temptation to avoid voicing an opinion at all. Whichever side of the argument you take, you’ll inevitably find yourself in the company of some unsavoury bedfellows. However, that’s life. There is no black or white. Here’s my shade of grey…
Freedom of speech is not absolute. It requires responsibility and sensitivity to the context. You wouldn’t stand up at a friend’s funeral and shout “I’ve been shagging his wife!”, for example. With that in mind, one of my mixed feelings was sympathy for normal, unassuming Muslims whose deeply cherished faith was being ridiculed for the sake of a newspaper trying to prove a point. No religion should be above criticism, satirical or otherwise, but the boundaries between fair criticism and downright offence are different for each social grouping. In this case, we’re dealing with a religion which is sensitive about *any* sort of pictorial representation, so extra care is required. As it turns out, the cartoons aren’t much good. As satire, they’re nothing special, and as symbols of our fine Western civil rights, they’re pretty weak.
While we’re on the subject of the freedom of speech, the same guidelines have to apply to people protesting against perceived abuses of that freedom. If the various Muslim councils had calmly voiced their dissatisfaction with the behaviour of Jyllands-Posten, the whole thing would probably have turned out differently. Instead, we have Danish embassies burning in the Middle East and people killed in Afghanistan and Somalia. Here in London, the protest was smaller than certain newspapers probably wanted to suggest, but was notable for some of the laughably ironic banners held by protesters, such as “freedom of expression go to hell”. Right… so that’d include your freedom to stand in the street holding that banner, then? Many other banners would constitute incitement to violence and were all photographed, according to police on the scene, so look out for dawn raids in a town near you.
But what an over-reaction! The cartoons have now been printed in lots of other newspapers worldwide, but let’s not forget that the original furore erupted after they appeared in *one* newspaper with a circulation of 150,000, written in a minority European language. I’ve been having a browse around the Jyllands-Posten website; here’s an excerpt from a recent editorial (my translation)…
… Mr Prime Minister, now enough is enough. Now we’ll see if we can get the UN and NATO to help us in the war against the Muslims…
See? There’s something of the Daily Mail about that tone. Well, they probably don’t deserve that particular comparison… either way, the editor was shocked by the response and made an apology at the time. No big deal. If your religion doesn’t have the resilience to shake off little setbacks like that, what hope do you have?
But then, of course, all this worldwide hysteria wasn’t started by the regular Muslims, quietly going about their daily lives. After the cartoons had originally appeared last September (with only localised protests in Copenhagen) a group of ultra-conservative clerics set off for a little PR tour of the Middle East, armed with copies of the offending pictures. Oh, and just in case they couldn’t whip up the desired level of hysterical outrage, they decided to include a few extras in their press pack… some far nastier pictures totally unrelated to the original set, depicting Muhammed as a pig and a paedophile (more details in the Observer). Alhamedi suggests that this, in turn, was an attempt by the Saudi government to deflect attention away from the fact that rather a lot of people had been trampled to death during the Hajj.
Cynical stuff, and if the extremist Islamic factions want to create a worldwide climate of animosity towards Islam, they’re going the right way about it.
Incidentally, the original commission and publication of the offending cartoons was a reaction to the difficulty that author Kåre Bluitgen faced in soliciting artwork for his book “The Koran and the Life of the Prophet Muhammed”. Mindful of the Islamic law against idolatry, many artists were too fearful of the potential backlash to submit work. Anyway, the book is due to go on sale this month, so hang on to your hats…
There’s been quite a bit of upheaval in British politics over the past week. Tony Banks and Merlyn Rees both went off to the great division lobby in the sky, while Charles Kennedy learned that, in Britain, having a drink problem (or any other unsavoury personal issue) seems to be considered far worse than waging a disastrous, unjust war or eroding ancient civil rights.
However Tony Banks is ultimately remembered, one of his greatest strengths was his ability to cut through pomposity and chicanery with a choice quip. Yesterday’s Guardian featured a nice selection of funny, pointed and downright sarcastic quotations.
I’ve always liked Charles Kennedy, but it was clear that his personable, easy-going manner was eventually going to be his downfall, especially given his consumption of alcohol. Even before all the talk of alcoholism, he was perfectly open about liking a drink in his leisure time, which, while perfectly normal behaviour for the vast majority of British adults, is still considered justifiable grounds for the hypocritical middle class moralising that clouds so much political debate in this country.
Oh well, time for another victim to step into the thankless position of leading the LibDems. Menzies Campbell looks like the most likely candidate, and I imagine he’d be a lot more effective than any Bright Young Thing against the combined fake PR shimmer of Tony Blair and Tony Tory. However, I hope the party members are considering carefully the wisdom of having a leader whose name 98.7% of the population can’t actually pronounce ;-)
Speaking of which, this week also saw the unusual case of a senior military officer roundly criticising his political master. General Sir Michael Rose, former commander of the UN protection force in Bosnia, wrote an article in yesterday’s Guardian, as well as giving an interview on Radio 4 (mp3 kindly grabbed by DHM). I recommend clicking both links.
Via DHM, here’s an absolutely fascinating, well-argued and downright terrifying article by novelist Jane Smiley, outlining just what damage George Bush is doing to the US, and therefore to the world we all live in…
I’m always wary of discussions about the rights and wrongs of “multiculturalism” in the UK. I mean, what exactly is it? There seems to be an assumption among many conservative commentators that multiculturalism involves an oil-and-water attempt, in every British street, to mix Muslim fundamentalism with a cosy 1930s English home counties lifestyle. In reality, though, if any explosive situations do develop, they do so not because those caricatures are true but because each side believes them to be true of the *other* side only.
Most of us occupy the many shades of grey in between these two (and other) extremes, especially as notions of “culture” don’t always apply on a mass scale. I imagine my cultural view of the world differs no more from that of an earnest Muslim cleric in Leeds than it does from that of Richard Littlejohn. Any attempt to identify a unified “British” culture is going to be futile.
So imagine how I groaned when I heard that Norman Tebbit was criticising the supposedly adverse effect of Islamic culture upon the UK. Some of what he says is reasonable… divisive attitudes within a community are, like, really uncool, and we all should try to get along… m’kayyy? However, in Tebbit terms, “getting along” means submitting to a narrow set of conservative values, which many of us would find restrictive.
In the ePolitix.com interview, he goes on to say this…
Well, think about it… haven’t most of the major recent advances in science, art, literature and technology been in *secular* societies anyway? The dominance of the church upon these disciplines in the West effectively came to an end with the Renaissance (which, some would suggest, was itself inspired by the rediscovery of Aristotle by medieval Muslim scholars).
And, taking us back to my original point, Tebbit also says…
Yes. But not the culture of a former Conservative politician, nor the culture of a Muslim cleric. Culture is not absolute; it’s not even constant. It’s not something you acquire or create within yourself to suit the requirements of a community; it develops gradually, and differently for every person. Criticising multiculturalism is like criticising freedom of speech. One of the great things about living in a secular, democratic society where we have freedom of speech and enough money to enjoy leisure pursuits is that each of us can carve out our own little cultural niche. As soon as one person in a community begins to exercise these freedoms, you have a multicultural society, whether you like it or not.
Bob Geldof’s favourite heart-tugging BBC correspondent Michael Buerk reckons the balance of power in broadcasting has shifted too far. According to the former newsreader, “almost all the big jobs in broadcasting are held by women”. Really?
BBC Director General - Mark Thompson
BBC Chairman - Michael Grade
ITV Chairman - Sir Peter Burt
ITV Chief Executive - Charles Allen
Channel 4 Chief Executive - Andy Duncan
Sky TV Chief Executive - James Murdoch
BBC1 Controller - Peter Fincham
BBC2 Controller - Roly Keating
Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport - Tessa Jowell (YESSSS!)
Broadcasting Minister - Lord McIntosh
Ofcom Chairman - Lord Currie
And so on…
Even if Buerk’s statement (part of a new Channel Five programme) was made before the departure of former BBC1 Controller Lorraine Heggessey, he’s still way off the mark, and the choice of Tim Henman and David Beckham as examples of how “men are becoming more like women” is just bizarre. A doctor’s son from Oxford with an ability to keep a stiff upper lip in even the most emotionally fraught situations and a “working class lad made good” from Essex with a taste for lavishly expensive kitsch… see if you can find a common thread of acquired femininity there!
As far as I can see, our (frequently TV-driven) popular culture is currently going through a phase of being even more gender-divided than before. Next time you watch a sports programme on a commercial channel, make note of the advertising during the breaks… men driving cars, men drinking beer, men not wanting to go shopping, men eating pizza, men being protective towards women. Then do the same during the breaks in a soap opera… women cooking, women showering, women having fun and laughs (rather than telling bawdy jokes) in bars, women raising children. THERE IS NO CROSS-OVER! YOU HAVE YOUR ALLOTTED ROLE! STICK TO IT!
If men are becoming more like women because of how our TV is controlled from above, there is absolutely *no* evidence of this, as far as I can see, in the output of those TV channels. If anything, we’re seeing more and more instances of infantilism among both genders. Earn money, buy toys, have fun, buy more toys… if it all goes wrong and you can’t pay off your debts, find someone in the government to blame.
But anyway, on the subject of consumer goods, Michael Buerk goes on to add…
“Some people might argue that this is a case of the pendulum swinging over the woman’s side for a change, and eventually it will find a happy medium.”
Well, there are certainly far too many reality and self/home-improvement shows on TV, which may or may not be aimed primarily at women. But “products” or “cars”? Is he clumsily referring to the recent explosion in of consumer technology products, such as Apple’s iPod/iMac range, where form is allowed to coexist with function? Or the fact that there just aren’t so many gas-guzzling dependable old saloons on the roads any more? Is visual appearance solely a concern for women? Or is this something a lot deeper and personal; something Michael needs to work out by himself? Have a look at this comment…
Oh dear. Too much information, Michael. Don’t you think you should be sorting this out with Mrs Buerk?
So there we go… it’s all over.
It’s difficult to tell how many people are putting on brave faces, but judging by radio interviews this morning, all three parties are happy in their own ways. Labour have their third term while both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats have improved their standings in the House of Commons. And being pragmatic, I’m fairly satisfied with the outcome. Although a (recently rather disillusioned) Labour person, I was keen for the party’s majority to be substantially reduced; partly as a reminder to the Dear Leader of how atrociously he’s behaved over the whole Iraq thing, and partly just to restore an element of competition and debate to the Commons.
Of course, it would have been fun to see a Lib Dem government, but that was never really going to happen. They’ve made some gains, and although Wee Charlie is proclaiming a new era of three-party politics, closer inspection reveals a more mixed picture. Of 16 gains, 12 were in previously Labour-held seats, while their 5 losses were all in favour of the Tories. The overall share of the votes matches this pattern… the Lib Dems have done exceptionally well in Labour seats, where, in the aftermath of the Iraq and ID card debates, their “more left than Labour” stance has won them plenty of protest votes. But everywhere else, they’ve seen their vote significantly eroded by the Tories. They should not be complacent about this… if the Tories continue their revival, and if Gordon Brown eventually leads Labour, regaining the dissatisfied lefties, the Lib Dems could find themselves back in the doldrums again.
Complacency certainly seemed to be the problem here in Sutton and Cheam where a fairly unlikely Tory target has now slipped back to being a fairly dramatic marginal seat once again. Apart from a smattering of leaflets from all three major parties, I’ve seen no electioneering here whatsoever. A couple of Labour people wandered past yesterday, clearly on their way to somewhere else, and I saw a sole Conservative activist at the train station last night, although he seemed to be waiting for someone, rather than doing any actual campaigning!
One of the main talking points this time has been the potential security risk of postal voting. I’m just not keen on the idea of postal voting; even less so on the suggestion of SMS voting. If I’m going to trust the security of my vote to anyone, it’s not going to be the Post Office or the mobile phone networks!
Seriously, though, I think the scandals in the run-up to this election have provided enough ammunition for a reversal of postal voting facilities… when the mighty John Humphrys finds that someone else has fraudulently used his vote, you know things are bad. As far as I’m concerned, any form of remote or proxy voting should only be used in the most desperate circumstances. Polls suggest that young people would vote in greater numbers if it was easier to vote… well, tough luck. How much easier does it need to be than spending a couple of minutes down at your local polling station? If you can’t manage that little effort, I don’t want you playing a part in deciding my future, okay?
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