Modern Football is Boring

Modern soccer is not even mildly interesting. Soccer used to be a game of skill, now it's just technically tuned athletes controlling a ball, flicking a pass, firing a goal. So what. No storylines, no narratives, no invention ~ just a bunch of focus on the technical individual and their tattoos. Soccer is just another symptom of a world obsessed by control. They call it the Beautiful Game. You may as well call computer code beautiful while you're at it. The players increasingly resemble their avatars in the gaming world. Attack attack attack.

Soccer as a game of skill requires a slow pace. The game was naturally slower when the goalkeeper was allowed to pick up the ball from a pass from his or her own defender. When they disallowed that practice, the goalkeeper was no longer a goalkeeper but an outfield player obliged to use their feet to make passes. This created the tactics of pressing and never laying off the ball. Skill which had played a part in soccer at moments of turn, dribble, aerial power and long shots now became rapid fire technique at speed. Think of it as short blasts of dopamine surges. The old game, the actual beautiful game, was a long form filled with reflection, poetic in narrative, tragic and comic, memory passed down the generations. Now it's just the vulgar celebrants of winning and the obsession with icon which is not greatness.

And from this ending of football as narrative came the inevitable controlling creep of more rules, rules designed to protect the private property of the game's corporate investors; foremost in their portfolios being the players. The referee is no longer the arbiter of play but the protector of the private assets of the investors and when the referee's eyes fail to catch the moment, cameras will do the work and create the perfect picture of control and redress. No longer does grievance play a part in soccer's myth. No longer do fans say we were robbed. Grievance is met with sanction. Players who protest are expelled. Soccer is Big Brother in action, just another form of corporate delight.

Soccer's origins were local. Small towns and villages going at it on mud fields with hacks and struggle. Games of mighty importance defined memory. Now, few can even recall games, they come and go, swept away by the next fix. No myths are derived from the people; soccer is given to you by investors' media defining how you should think about their assets. They tell you how to behave. They require you to sit down. They ban you when you screw up. Modern football is the perfect game for the times. May it bore us all to death.

Right...when's the next match?