ONE OF THESE THINGS IS NOT LIKE THE OTHERS (Pt. 1): Honest Sepp Blatter, Honest Abe Lincoln, and, erm, Honest William Wilberforce. Like a humanitarian fresco isn't it?
ONE OF THESE THINGS IS NOT LIKE THE OTHERS (part 2): Nat Turner (top), leader of slave revolt in Virginia; Frederick Douglass (left), escaped slave, leading abolitionist, all round hero and unsuccessful vice-presidential nominee; The Cron (right), chattel of Massah Fergs.
Calling it cheek would assume some kind of self-awareness. And if there's one thing both Sepp Blatter and Little Cristiano "the Cron" Cronaldo don't possess, it's this. Spectacularly so.
Sepp Blatter's comments last week that the conditions of player contracts were tantamount to 'modern slavery' were gratifyingly obtuse and also particularly revealing with regard to the more insane extremes of contemporary footballing culture. That the Cron endorsed them so readily only added to the farce, simultaneously confirming everything we knew already about him and further demonstrating the extent of the Great Footballing Fall of the past 10 years.
While the prospect of the Cron, Frank Lampard, Alex Hleb and Dimi Berbatov locking arms and belting out a round of 'Get Off the Track' is strangely tempting, hopefully the gobsmacked knee-jerk reactions of the press, Sir Bobby Charlton and pretty much everyone you happen to trip over in the street has seen that this one's had its legs hacked clean off.
The premise itself, of course, is absurd: a footballer's contract is negotiated and entered into freely, with many providing preposterously generous recompense (like, say, the Cron's 120, 000 GBP a week). Players are not, as Little Cron keeps whining, owned by their clubs at all. Their registration is. Slaves, one might recall were owned body and soul by their master. Noone sees Sir Alex Salex Lord Wrigley of Salford Ferguson taking the cat-o'-nine-tails to Little Cron when he finds him getting up to the manifold behaviours SASLWSF wouldn't approve of (as interesting as it would be to have SASLWSF bursting in on Little Cron and three of Lancashire's finest chippies with a whip ...). This certainly isn't what Honest Abe was on about when he railed against the 'moral, social and political evil' of slavery.
Slavery, as a concept within Western society (bearing in mind that slavery does still exist in some parts of the world. Which makes Blatter's and Little Cron's whining all the more insulting ...) is loaded with strong moral resonance. Few issues are cast in as absolute terms as slavery is. This is largely due to the ramifications of a slave system (human lives as chattel to be traded with no recourse to legal protection of rights) to some of the more cherished assumptions that underpin Western Democracy, such as individual autonomy and the safeguards that ensure that such autonomy is protected and able to be expressed. As Hegel understood, the roles of master and slave, and the concomitant violence and suffering that went along with them, are central to the concept of self-hood and the moral and ethical dimensions of that self. Overcoming this primal, brute struggle for control was to realise one's self and others more fully - acknowledging the suffering of the slave was to recognise it as a person, thus transcending the role of slave. Such recognition also necessitates the abrogation of the role of master - the two, more aware of themselves and each other as human beings thus ditch the whips and chains and elaborate a vaster moral and ethical universe. Then everyone dances around with flowers, sings inoffensive folk-songs, Francis Fukuyama says really stupid things about the End of History and aliens invade.
Hegel might have been simplifying a fair bit, but the master-slave narrative does highlight the values and assumptions implicit within the concept of slavery. That the crux of the matter is (growing) self-consciousness and recognition of the other is particularly revealing, particularly with respect to Blatman and the Cron's moronic outpourings. What the whole 'modern slaves' idiocy demonstrates is the profound lack of self-consciousness seemingly endemic among professional footballers. It takes a distinct, and in some ways admirable, ignorance of reality and of the basic assumptions and thought processes of others to say, and believe (and it's the fact Blatman and the Cron really believe it that's both galling and, well, brilliant) that a footballer earning 120, 000 GBP plus sponsor's endorsements, that travels Europe every other week (and other parts of the globe in the off-season), has bikini models lining up to commit all manner of heinous and wonderful things upon them, has hordes of people who shell out a goodly portion of their wages each week to watch them play or associate themselves with them via a replica kit or a daft Nike ear-ring, is a slave. But when you take a step back and survey the cult of stardom, media saturation and handling of young footballers from a young age is it any surprise?
The Cron here gets the most flack as he actually came out and endorsed Blatman's comments, but he is hardly alone in his preternatural inability to comprehend the realities of the world around him. From the moment he was identified as a promising young kid, he's been gifted a distinction which, in a country like Portugal and, latterly, England, commands significant interest and admiration. Already we have a sense of entitlement that guards against any kind of meaningful self-awareness. Should a kid's talent be such that they explode into the public consciousness from a young age, and young Cron's gifts (extravagant, wonderful gifts) did propel him well and truly into the public consciousness, they are suddenly plunged into a world where that mark of distinction and entitlement are ramped up so many notches as to leave the bounds of reasonableness. People wear pictures of you on t-shirts (honestly, if YOU saw someone walking down the street wearing something with your mug on it, wouldn't you feel a bit weird?). People sing your name (the only time I ever had my name sung was in the most unpleasant fashions one can imagine). Football being football, people are so partisan that you can act like a grade-A plonker and yet they will defend you vociferously even though every shred of hard evidence attests to your pronounced detestability. Like those execs with those rather silly big words (synergise anyone?) say the club you play for must become, you are a weightless entity, a giant free-floating signifier, not bound or acted upon by context.
Because, let's face it, the other people needed to provide said context are wholly absent from your day to day life. All you've got are toadies, yes-men, a jumped-up trollope masquerading as a girlfriend and fans. So when your club's wage-rise doesn't meet your fantasy expectations you stop your car and feel sick. Or when your inflated idea of your own abilities finds validation in Sir Alex (who only wants you so the filth below him in the league table don't even have an outside chance of catching up) you sulk all season, bawl out your team-mates and probably go into the shed at half- and full-time and whimper 'Bu-bu-but I-I-I wa-wanna g-g-g-o to Uuuuuniiiiiiiiiiiiiiteeeeeed!' in the corner. Or when your fantastic Cronaldo Globetrotters Fantasy Football Spectacular move to Real Madrid hits a roadblock you say even more stupid things than usual. Like you're a slave. Because you are, as Robert Musil might have had it, a man without qualities; a man without content; you're an empty vessel and by god you're making a lot of noise.
Ultimately we can't be too harsh on the players. We kept throwing our money at the whole thing, even as our clubs were becoming the weightless multinational merch-peddlers they are now. We admired our folk-heroes so much we overstated their abilities, and marketers, PR agents and TV execs everywhere cottoned on, repackaged and resold them as pop-stars and superheroes stationed on a higher plane. Everyone believed the image so much, we went on and ensured that they did exist on another plane. And lo, they went off and became idiots. No, it's not our fault that these men are characterless buffoons as there's ample enough opportunity out there for someone, somewhere to instill some common-sense into a young footballer. But are we surprised?
Sepp Blatter on the other hand, has no business encouraging this sort of thing. As head of the game's governing body, his craven adherence to seeing football degenerate into a free-market circus (with players taking the place of CEOs) to flog off to the entertainment industry is deeply saddening and troubling. Some of the standards football, and outstanding footballers, have embodied over the years, such as grace, intelligence, professionalism and quiet dignity (think Pele, Bobby Charlton, Danny Blanchflower or more recently Paul Scholes) are being leeched from the game. As the brief review of Euro 2008 below shows, these qualities aren't extinct, as players like Xavi demonstrate. But those who make the decisions in the game are steering it away from those virtues, rooted in the soul of the game and the clubs which sustain it. It's the vapid Cronaldos who are being feted and promoted furiously, their every whim celebrated and honoured. And woebetide anyone who stands up for anything as anachronistic as honouring a contract, or showing commitment to a football club beyond how it might benefit your career and your burgeoning brand identity. Hell, if only we opened our eyes a bit we'd have known that the Charltons, Blanchflowers and Scholeses of the world were actually Uncle Tomming it big-time ...
Slowly but surely, everyone with an interest in the game is becoming a slave to such empty economic ideology, as though Little Cron, Lamps, Hhhhhhhhhkkkkkkkkkkkleb and the Dim one were reading us Who Moved My Cheese? for bedtime and we were imbibing it as we would a great game of football. And that is deeply depressing.
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