Liverpool

Insideworldfootball

Liverpool should be very careful that the club does not allow its handling of the Luis Suárez affair to get out of control. It is one thing playing the victim card as it has been on this issue. But situations like these acquire a momentum that makes what seems like a carefully planned journey to get sympathy turn into a train crash. Liverpool is perilously close to that and the events in the match against Oldham on Friday are a further warning of the consequences of the present Liverpool behaviour.

It is intriguing to consider who at Anfield has been driving the ‘Suárez is the victim’ bandwagon. It is hard to believe that it could be anybody other than Kenny Dalglish. I come to that conclusion because it is seems unlikely that the American owner, John Henry, who is used to operating in a very different sporting world, would have been tempted down this path if Dalglish had not taken the helm and set sail. In their American world, coaches do not go public on disputes with sports bodies in the way managers in Britain do every time they feel their team or players have been victimised.

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Insideworldfootball.biz

In the last few weeks, readers of the sports pages of British newspapers may have been forgiven for thinking we are facing another American revolution. Having given the distinct impression that they had joined a new order of sporting Trappist monks on crossing the pond, American owners of English clubs have suddenly become as voluble as teenagers let out of school. Or at least two very prominent owners have.

Yet what they have said shows that there is still a vast gulf between the old world and the new when it comes to sport. These American owners may own English clubs but they do not understand the particular culture of English football.

The American lack of openness in Britain has always been in stark contrast to their behaviour in their own country. There access to the media is on a scale unimaginable here or even in Europe. Reporters, even female ones, are allowed into the dressing rooms after a match. On the days leading up to the Super Bowl, players, officials and even the team owners readily make themselves available to the media. But in this country, American owners have been even more invisible than the British ones.

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Insideworldfootball

Karen Murphy’s victory in the European Court over showing live matches in her pub without paying Sky’s charges should not be overestimated. It will have consequences, particularly in the lower reaches of the game, but it should not be seen as televised football’s equivalent of the Bosman ruling. It is not.

Bosman has proved such a far-reaching, even revolutionary, judgement, that its effects are still being felt more than a decade and a half later. Belgian player Bosman could hardly have imagined the consequences when he sought to change clubs after his contract had expired.

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Insideworldfootball.biz

English football fans are be capable of much humour, no little inventiveness and a warmth and goodness that can be truly uplifting, but the capacity for some fans to be vile should not be underestimated. Events at some recent matches have once again demonstrated that.

So during their Carling Cup encounter, Manchester United fans were taunted by chants from Leeds fans about the Munich air crash and United fans, in turn, retaliated with chants of Istanbul, a city where Leeds fans were killed. Fans of other clubs have also indulged in such behaviour and in the past, clashes between Manchester United and Liverpool have seen extremely disgraceful references to Munich and the death of Bill Shankly.

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Insideworldfootball

The cult of the manager may have been developing since the 1960s, but football now faces a situation that not many could have imagined. This is the age of the manager as a celebrity, with his every action judged to be as important and worthy of highlight, at times even more so, than the players he manages.

This marks a fundamental change in the how the game is perceived. When Pelé described football as the beautiful game, he meant the show put on by the likes of him and his fellow players.

We now have the extraordinary spectacle of not one football event, but two simultaneous ones, where the off-field action surrounding managers, be it Jose Mourinho or Arsène Wenger, attracts as much attention, if not more, than Lionel Messi’s performance on the field.

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