timlawrence.info

Ever since I've been a kid, I've been into football and I've been into music. The older I've got, the more difficult it's become to hold onto both obsessions. There just isn't the time to keep up with it all and a choice should be made in the interests of, well, everyone who comes into contact with me. That choice should clearly be music, which is more pleasurable than watching eleven blokes running around a field kicking a leather ball that has recently taken to swerving through the air unpredictably, and it's got greater significantly greater social potential, i.e. half the world (women) aren't effectivley excluded from the sport. What's more, football requires a loser, whereas music, which doesn't can liberate the world! But I can't get rid of the football bug, even when I try with all my might to not turn feverishly to the sports pages every morning. What will the commentators be saying?! What's the transfer gossip?! Who's injured?! How much more desperately materialistic can footballers become?! Even when I resolve to break free, football comes hurtling back like a... boomerang. Take tonight, for example. I came home and suggested to Enrica that we don't watch the World Cup while we eat supper. So what if the live game was Argentina vs. Holland, one of the most enticing contests so far? But Enrica, who has never previoulsy shown any interest in football, was having none of it. She's into this World Cup, and she was alarmed that we might miss a game. We watched the football.

My reckonin is that  football's fulfilling about five percent of the time. That potential shoots up if you read about it as some of the best journalists can be found in the sports pages, and football is nothing if politically intriguing. The potential dips down, but remains significantly higher than five percent, if you watch the highlights, but then you've got to avoid knowing the results, and the live tension disappears. It also remains well above five percent if you actualy go to a game, but who's got the time or the money? But with live games, I swear the fulfilment factor is stuck at around five percent, for obvious reasons. For one, players can't possibly live up the inflated hype that goes hand in hand with their inflated salaries ⎯ two million quid a year is becoming meagre pay in the Premiership ⎯ and the financial imbalances in the game mean that the sport is becoming more and more about the demeaning struggles of two or three (or in exceptional cases four) teams, at least in the wealthiest European leagues. If you support any team that doesn't qualify for the self-replicating bonanza of the European Champions League, it's just about survival ⎯ with an occasional flourish.

Last season provided one shining exception to this horrible but seemingly irreverisble rule: Barcelona. Here is a club that is owned by its fans rather than a couple of major investors, and which plays gloriously open, progressive, fluid, artistic football. I'm totally happy about Ronaldinho, one of Barcelona's key players, getting paid