The returning face of football

The new-look Old Trafford, post-covid-19

Well, it only took a pandemic that has seen more than half the world’s population on lockdown to get us out of semi-retirement. We’ve gone 10 weeks without football in the UK and so, in time honoured fashion, here we are with our two-penneth when every horse bolted weeks ago and all that’s left are the donkeys*, some onions, and the stable door smacking us in the balls. Even the horses with underlying health conditions have finished isolating and bolted. EVEN THIS METAPHOR HAS BOLTED.

As the Bundesliga returned last weekend, it got us to thinking: once everything has been stripped away and you are left with just the football, just the actual game, how does that play out? It’s hard to be Pollyanna-ish when the UK daily death toll is still in the hundreds. That said, there has never been a time when escapism is more needed. If Premier League football does return as planned in June, it will be a bare bones version, the like of which we have never seen.

Project Restart could herald a short-lived brave new world where, once the whistle goes, football is suddenly, dramatically demystified. Without a crowd, hearing Troy Deeney tell Aymeric Laporte to “fuck off” or Jose Mourinho shout “can we not knock it?” at Harry Winks may be the great leveller that those of us in thrall to the professionals doing it much better than us have always secretly dreamed of. Will we be the only ones listening out for players shouting “mine” or “leave it” and seeing if the referee will punish it with an indirect free kick? Harry Arter shouting the latter at Nathaniel Chalobah to stop him from shooting in 2017 is shithousery we can all get behind.

It’s not a theory that in terms of ability, fitness and generally being elite athletes, people that get paid to play football are way better than us at playing football. But the sheer weight of constant analysis has built up such a level of mystique around tactical battles, set-piece routines, assists, xG, and so on and so forth, that we can’t possibly see how the gulf in class can be THAT significant without some kind of secret additional insight or input from somewhere. 

After all, for every Paul Ince writing ‘SHOOT’ on a notebook, or Sol Campbell prowling the touchline but only shouting ‘Squeeze’ at his Macclesfield players the entire game, and literally nothing else, there’s a Mourinho European Cup win with Inter Milan or a Jurgen Klopp cult of personality so compelling that The Guardian have basically written up a Zoom conversation they eavesdropped on. The packaging of the Premier League as an elite product is so complete that it’d be a genuinely lovely surprise to hear Kasper Schmeichel scream at his defenders to just "fucking get rid of it" as though he was down the park on a Sunday like the rest of us.

Either way, the new normal for football in this country will be quite the eye-opener for those very used to the unattainable and the unimaginable brilliance peddled by Sky and BT. If you needed any indication of the product being the be-all and end-all, consider that both are planning to offer watchers the option of recorded crowd noise when the football returns. It’s not been confirmed if you’ll be able to make out the specific abuse of your favourite players yet, and the consequent reinforcement of the clear and obvious bias of all major media outlets against your club.

Being slightly glib aside, there is of course good reason for the offer of crowd noise, and that is the power of the collective. Everyone likes to relate, after all. And everyone REALLY likes being part of a relatable group with something to agree on. The appreciative applause when a scrappy bit of play sees the ball played out to the full back in space (we wrote about this previously: ‘A return to civilisation’) has been replaced by the clapping en masse at 8pm on a Thursday. Maybe pots and pans will make an appearance in football grounds across the land once some semblance of normality resumes. After all, vuvuzelas were an actual thing once.

The demystification of football expands that collective to the side of the players and staff as well. They may have the abilities that are out of reach for the vast majority of us, but hearing that their in-game insights extend about as far as ours (were we to be able to catch our breath after a 25-metre sprint to say anything) makes you realise – they’re just like us, really. And that is a welcome perspective at a time when some people are genuinely, mystifyingly annoyed by some players not being keen on returning to training at clubs that are reporting confirmed cases, out of concern for themselves and their families.

We are all desperate for football to return and we know the security that the well-known structures of the game can provide. As we wrote back in 2011: “Attending football is a habit; a supporter’s behaviour inside the ground even more so, all part of the ritual. It’s a pre-programmed experience... being part of the groundswell of noise is quite cathartic, at any rate.” The clap for carers has, if anything, reinforced that. Let’s just hope that Sky and BT get the appreciative applause spot on when after a couple of tasty challenges in the centre circle and with tempers fraying, Harry Arter plays a simple 20-yard pass to Adam Smith on the right in a bit of space, and we can all relax.