I’ll be frank, without meaning to sound condescending, but so much of our post just highlights to me the gulf between new fans to be the sport, and those of us that grew up with it. Every generation has great individual sporting moments, but you’ve started following a sport in its peak corruption years. You’ve been raised on formula, and you love it. But if you’d ever tasted the sweet milky nectar straight from yo mommas teat, you’d realise it was a poor substitute.
Thinking the unthinkable - not interested in football any more...
- Thread starter simonhch
- Start date
Traffic. Honestly. Used to get back for motd. Now i am lucky if i'm back for midnight.
Except, I WANT to still love football. I want the escapism. Something completely irrational to get giddy and silly and passionate over. But modern club football just doesn’t do it for me in its current iteration. The fact I’ve replaced it with playing at an amateur level, shows I’ve not lost my love for the sport. It didn’t need to be this way. I was never going to be able to maintain my dedication to it with all the family and professional commitments I now have; but it didn’t need to end like this.
While football has been about money for a long time, it's not nostalgia to observe how the sport is evolving and growing. You can easily see all the stages in 130 years or so.
It's valid to say to that it's become too sanitized, commercial and cynical.
Italy in the 90s is perhaps a precursor to now. It was backed by millionaires, the top players went there and the blend of money and artistry during this golden age in Italy might never be seen again.
It's valid to say to that it's become too sanitized, commercial and cynical.
Italy in the 90s is perhaps a precursor to now. It was backed by millionaires, the top players went there and the blend of money and artistry during this golden age in Italy might never be seen again.
At the risk of sounding like your therapist - you cannot over-analyse "something completely irrational to get giddy and silly and passionate over"... I feel your pain... Stop thinking... Drink more
I think big clubs now look at using marketing to attract a new type of fan. Whilst United obviously want their fans to feel attached to the club, they want to appeal to the youth of today who, outside of your local kids supporting local teams, will tend to support/follow 3 or 4 sides. I see kids around here in PSG shirts, Juve, Milan etc. They care about how good players are on FIFA and follow accordingly. Players are a bigger pull than the clubs.
I’m at an age where the way I supported a club is not really how kids in their teens and 20s may follow teams.
I agree with everything the OP says and, since moving away from Manchester I’ve began to watch my local team in the Scottish Championship. It’s like supporting a club again (without my love for United) except the football is poor on the whole. Atmosphere, support, pie and chips etc all good stuff and a million miles away from the glamour of the PL which I too can’t stand anymore.
I’m at an age where the way I supported a club is not really how kids in their teens and 20s may follow teams.
I agree with everything the OP says and, since moving away from Manchester I’ve began to watch my local team in the Scottish Championship. It’s like supporting a club again (without my love for United) except the football is poor on the whole. Atmosphere, support, pie and chips etc all good stuff and a million miles away from the glamour of the PL which I too can’t stand anymore.
Sugar daddies aren't a new thing, many clubs in Europe are/were companies' club or been owned by billionaires since almost ever the most iconic being obviously Juventus with the Agnelli or Milan with Berlusconi. I don't really understand why some people are only realizing that now, people are somehow discovering it when it's the football that they have known since their birth.
I dunno I mean personally I have never been a huge football fan anyway.
I support and watch Manchester United a lot and even get excited in the build up to games, even these days! But any other teams on and I won't watch.
Won't be tuning in to the UCL Final as I don't care, not sure who is in any of the playoff finals as I don't care and I don't ever watch international football.
I support and watch Manchester United a lot and even get excited in the build up to games, even these days! But any other teams on and I won't watch.
Won't be tuning in to the UCL Final as I don't care, not sure who is in any of the playoff finals as I don't care and I don't ever watch international football.
I'm feeling like a nomad in the football forums these days as, I too, have lost a lot of the spark I had for the modern game and how things are, and will continue to be, going into the 2020's. I have tried to determine whether that's because of the state of our club, from top to bottom, being a dislikable throng of un-relatable players, football and conduct, but I am starting to wonder if that's merely coincidence, as I'm not getting that much buzz from teams and players outside of our club, either.
I do think, however, that when your club let you down, you look at things in a different way - never in my life have I lost faith in my club or been apathetic towards it during an off-season, and I've followed us in worse times than this as far as results and the table go. There's a feeling of real disconnect that trickles from the top down - like we are the foie gras, just being steadily fattened up and readied for the kill (eventual sale) by owners and powers that be who couldn't care less that an institution is being deconstructed by their actions. Whether players are good or bad, the bottom line for me, is that they give their utmost out there... our lot don't, which makes it very difficult to get behind them, and after while, makes the whole procession soulless.
It would be easy for other fans to look at your post, or mine, and consider it sour grapes of supporters who can't handle losing or their team being usurped from their domestic perch, but the only real envy I have of City and Liverpool right now is how much their players give for the manager and the cause - it's almost alien to see a United team have the same collective desire and appetite game in and game out, and from that aspect, it is appalling that the most driven squad in the land during the Fergie era has become this bunch of charlatans who have no regard for the badge or their own litany of shambolic, uncaring performances.
As an institution, your club represents you; it's not by coincidence most pick, or indeed, stick with a club. United should represent fire, passion and daring - a club who you cannot count out because they have the pride and doggedness to give anyone a game, akin to what we were in the 80's actually. No matter how good a player, that underlying identifier should always be there and in turn, that spark and belief puts a fire in the collective support. Without it - and I feel very few players here have it - well, you're just another team aren't you? Not a United one - the same way we used to say he looks like a United player, but don't anymore because we aren't a United squad upholding this one key value that should run through us come thick or thin.
re. corruption; you can't say it's a new thing: Havelange, Blatter, Platini and hundreds more have shown us that this has been a corrupt sport for decades, the difference is, all pretense and under the table subterfuge has now been done away with, and we see, blatantly, the way the oil clubs and any other obscenely rich conglomerates can buy their way in and shit on decades/centuries of 'proper' conduct and organic development. This situation will only worsen, and we're well on the way to the Premier League, as a whole, being a plaything and an arena for these financial deviants to do whatever they want with it. The time to gripe about it isn't now, however, it was when Abramovich and people like him first entered football and were allowed to change its landscape forever. Great at the time for Chelsea, and the short-termism of making the league and United stronger (we directly benefitted from the competition to the tune of a European Cup, no less) but in the mid and long-term, it paved the way to what we see now. City put their feet under the table because they could as the avenue was there for them - it's a joke people only complain about that now, when the fruits of that 'labour' are making a mockery of everything the game should stand for.
The above paragraph, bothers me far less than the state of my own club, tbh. I'm feeling disconnected from football because of what we are; my disinterest stems from there more than anything else, which I'll wholeheartedly admit to. If we were run as we should be, with players who represented our values, I'd be OK living in the bubble of what we then were, but without it, there is no trickle effect really; no curiosity to see how other teams are doing and how it then relates to us. I simply hate the fact so many more teams try harder than us to get results, so watching other sides probably sours me even more to the players we have here. I'd also add to that that unless we gut the squad, I can't see much changing next season as I'm more inclined to believe whoever comes here will be consumed by what we are than turn the club around on the pitch. I've never thought a United squad would be better off with more than 70% of its inhabitants gone until now. You could even take that up to 80% and it'd ring true. It's a very surreal spot to be in as a supporter for decades who has seen the club change in unimaginable ways during my viewership.
I'm hoping the summer time out changes my opinion and perspective somewhat, but I've felt like this for a while now, hence my non-activity in the transfer forum and the United one in general; unless the topic is about gutting the club (not just the squad) and getting rid of the rot, I find my interest wanes in the topic after a few posts because all roads lead back to what is intrinsically, fundamentally and institutionally wrong and these surface level discussions/fixes don't address it. Rather than spread or perpetuate the feeling of evermore foreboding misery and rot, I simply avoid but with no other avenue to take my interest. In the past, it was always a turn to our academy and placing hope there, but I don't do that anymore, either, which is very un-United of me.
A final thing I'll add is my interest in other leagues is at an all-time low now because of how clubs at the top have been allowed to essentially destroy their leagues and make the season a formality you don't even need to tune into to know the final outcomes. Let's call the leagues right now for 19/20: PSG, Barcelona, Bayern, Juventus, City. Wow, congratulations all. This is why the Champions League becomes so important to sort these teams out and reinstate a reality that does not have them running roughshod over those with no means to compete. Leagues are bought all over Europe now, the Champions League has still kept its magic because no club has managed to do the same in it, much to their chagrin.
I do think, however, that when your club let you down, you look at things in a different way - never in my life have I lost faith in my club or been apathetic towards it during an off-season, and I've followed us in worse times than this as far as results and the table go. There's a feeling of real disconnect that trickles from the top down - like we are the foie gras, just being steadily fattened up and readied for the kill (eventual sale) by owners and powers that be who couldn't care less that an institution is being deconstructed by their actions. Whether players are good or bad, the bottom line for me, is that they give their utmost out there... our lot don't, which makes it very difficult to get behind them, and after while, makes the whole procession soulless.
It would be easy for other fans to look at your post, or mine, and consider it sour grapes of supporters who can't handle losing or their team being usurped from their domestic perch, but the only real envy I have of City and Liverpool right now is how much their players give for the manager and the cause - it's almost alien to see a United team have the same collective desire and appetite game in and game out, and from that aspect, it is appalling that the most driven squad in the land during the Fergie era has become this bunch of charlatans who have no regard for the badge or their own litany of shambolic, uncaring performances.
As an institution, your club represents you; it's not by coincidence most pick, or indeed, stick with a club. United should represent fire, passion and daring - a club who you cannot count out because they have the pride and doggedness to give anyone a game, akin to what we were in the 80's actually. No matter how good a player, that underlying identifier should always be there and in turn, that spark and belief puts a fire in the collective support. Without it - and I feel very few players here have it - well, you're just another team aren't you? Not a United one - the same way we used to say he looks like a United player, but don't anymore because we aren't a United squad upholding this one key value that should run through us come thick or thin.
re. corruption; you can't say it's a new thing: Havelange, Blatter, Platini and hundreds more have shown us that this has been a corrupt sport for decades, the difference is, all pretense and under the table subterfuge has now been done away with, and we see, blatantly, the way the oil clubs and any other obscenely rich conglomerates can buy their way in and shit on decades/centuries of 'proper' conduct and organic development. This situation will only worsen, and we're well on the way to the Premier League, as a whole, being a plaything and an arena for these financial deviants to do whatever they want with it. The time to gripe about it isn't now, however, it was when Abramovich and people like him first entered football and were allowed to change its landscape forever. Great at the time for Chelsea, and the short-termism of making the league and United stronger (we directly benefitted from the competition to the tune of a European Cup, no less) but in the mid and long-term, it paved the way to what we see now. City put their feet under the table because they could as the avenue was there for them - it's a joke people only complain about that now, when the fruits of that 'labour' are making a mockery of everything the game should stand for.
The above paragraph, bothers me far less than the state of my own club, tbh. I'm feeling disconnected from football because of what we are; my disinterest stems from there more than anything else, which I'll wholeheartedly admit to. If we were run as we should be, with players who represented our values, I'd be OK living in the bubble of what we then were, but without it, there is no trickle effect really; no curiosity to see how other teams are doing and how it then relates to us. I simply hate the fact so many more teams try harder than us to get results, so watching other sides probably sours me even more to the players we have here. I'd also add to that that unless we gut the squad, I can't see much changing next season as I'm more inclined to believe whoever comes here will be consumed by what we are than turn the club around on the pitch. I've never thought a United squad would be better off with more than 70% of its inhabitants gone until now. You could even take that up to 80% and it'd ring true. It's a very surreal spot to be in as a supporter for decades who has seen the club change in unimaginable ways during my viewership.
I'm hoping the summer time out changes my opinion and perspective somewhat, but I've felt like this for a while now, hence my non-activity in the transfer forum and the United one in general; unless the topic is about gutting the club (not just the squad) and getting rid of the rot, I find my interest wanes in the topic after a few posts because all roads lead back to what is intrinsically, fundamentally and institutionally wrong and these surface level discussions/fixes don't address it. Rather than spread or perpetuate the feeling of evermore foreboding misery and rot, I simply avoid but with no other avenue to take my interest. In the past, it was always a turn to our academy and placing hope there, but I don't do that anymore, either, which is very un-United of me.
A final thing I'll add is my interest in other leagues is at an all-time low now because of how clubs at the top have been allowed to essentially destroy their leagues and make the season a formality you don't even need to tune into to know the final outcomes. Let's call the leagues right now for 19/20: PSG, Barcelona, Bayern, Juventus, City. Wow, congratulations all. This is why the Champions League becomes so important to sort these teams out and reinstate a reality that does not have them running roughshod over those with no means to compete. Leagues are bought all over Europe now, the Champions League has still kept its magic because no club has managed to do the same in it, much to their chagrin.
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Weirdly this thought crossed my mind yesterday. Given Newcastle being bought by an Arab Sheikh, football just seems really futile.
Great post. If I didn’t live in the US now, I’d be following suit. And you are bang on about fans supporting players more than clubs now. The amount of young fans who follow Messi, rather than Barca; or Ronaldo rather than Real or Juve; is something to behold. It’s an approach that’s incomprehensible to us old fuddy duddies I suppose.
I think it does come down to the success of the team. That run of games up to and including Paris really was the most exhilarated I had felt as a United fan in many years and I had that giddy optimism that we'd get back to where we should be. The end of season slump was the dirtiest come down I have felt in a long time and had me feeling like being a football fan is a fool's errand. It doesn't help that City won a domestic treble and that Liverpool, Spurs, Chelsea and Arsenal are all contending for the European cups.
Without success to keep you invested then other priorities take over. I do think it will come good though. I have enough 40+ year old Liverpool fans acting like spoiled children to know that the feeling does come back.
Without success to keep you invested then other priorities take over. I do think it will come good though. I have enough 40+ year old Liverpool fans acting like spoiled children to know that the feeling does come back.
There is truth to all the points made in the thread so far. I think we have to acknowledge how rich it is for United fans, whose club were the front-runner of bringing big money into English football, to moan about disillusionment with the game now we're not top dogs any more. Certainly since the PL and arguably before that arguments have raged about the infiltration of the game by corporate interests, and for years we've all had to suspend our disbelief that football is only about blood, sweat and passion for your team. The Scousers and Berties I live and work amongst, who have managed to keep that switch flicked, are sure as hell enjoying football at the moment and coming up with complaints about football not being what it used to be will have them pissing themselves with laughter.
But since I moved out of a house with Sky and BT channels a few years ago I've found it harder to follow football, rugby league and cricket as much as I did before, and the combination of a relationship, a job, a mortgage etc. has only exacerbated that, coincidentally in a period in which United have declined. As valid as the criticisms about the direction of the game are (the Euro Super League will be a watershed moment for me) for me and most people I know by far the biggest change in our relationship to all sport has been in our own lives.
But since I moved out of a house with Sky and BT channels a few years ago I've found it harder to follow football, rugby league and cricket as much as I did before, and the combination of a relationship, a job, a mortgage etc. has only exacerbated that, coincidentally in a period in which United have declined. As valid as the criticisms about the direction of the game are (the Euro Super League will be a watershed moment for me) for me and most people I know by far the biggest change in our relationship to all sport has been in our own lives.
In that case, you did well. Plus if the match experience has gotten worse like you said, it's the best thing you could do.
As another poster said, yes football has always been about money, but it’s hard not to see the evolution the role of money has played; and how it’s gone from being a factor, to be the decisive element. As he said, Serie A in the 90s was a precursor to this. But there was a balance there, leading to a somewhat golden age of football. It’s increasingly becoming the case now that the only way to compete will be to become a sugar daddy club. Barcelona for example, have been borrowing money just to pay their wages.
@Fortitude: To add to your last paragraph, I think this is the first in history that the 5 biggest leagues in Europe have the same champions of the previous season. It's just so boring and those 5 teams will be huge favorite to win it again next season.
Another good post, with another new perspective. I can relate.
On your last point, surely Champions League revenue (both direct TV revenue/prize money and the indirect commercial/sponsorship/marketing opportunities it provides) is a huge factor in why many leagues across Europe are currently non-competitive? PSG might be the only non-competitive league which has been distorted more by PSG's ownership than CL revenue?
You missed out the two most crucial and interrelated points of the O.P.
"- Financial doping of state sponsored clubs like City and PSG have made a mockery of generations of historical evolution, and supporter driven development.
- Regulation of the sport at almost every level is compromised by both corporate interests, as well as the afore mentioned state backed entities. There are no effective measures against the breaking of FFP rules."
This is why most people are pissed off with footie right now. Qatar and the UAE are spending unprecedented billions overpaying for our top footballers to promote their violently oppressive nation states.
Unless they are curtailed , banned from Europe and unearned titles stripped from both projects, until then football will continue to suffer.
Yes and no. If we spend 300m this summer, and then go on to mount a title challenge next season, would that excite you? Not me. It’s just an endless arms race of spending money.
As for Liverpool. They have a simply fantastic manager who is a throwback to managers of yesteryear. He’s all passion and lunacy. And he’s built a squad of close knit passionate individuals to reflect his own personality. Fair fecks. You have to admire it. But you feel he’s the exception to the rule. Eventually he’ll get outspent into oblivion too. I mean he did this season in the PL. and despite my admiration for his achievements, I can’t say I appreciate the football. Yes there are lots of goals, but it’s just high intensity pressing on steroids. Another sterile trend of the modern game.
I don’t necessarily disagree with much of the OP. But the timing of it, with United’s success at a low ebb, kind of nullifies it a bit.
Barca and Real have been so dominant because of their individual bargaining agreements in Spain. Though that has now gone collective finally, their share remains protected. That means that last season the team that finished 19th in the PL received more TV money that the team that finished 3rd in Spain.
You also need to put City in that category with PSG. CL revenue has been irrelevant to city’s on field success. All it’s done is slightly alter the amount they’ve had to cook off the books.
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Everything has to have a catalyst though. You need things to keep you going through tough times. And that is always your love for the game. If your love for the game has gone, what is left to sustain you? Your loyalty to the club? A club that doesn’t give two shits about its fans? Honestly, the only thing that’s kept me going this long is that it’s the only lasting connection I have to my late father.
Let’s also not forget that Qatar basically bought the World Cup.
The evolution is due to the PL and wide spreading of the idea that football is a business. It has nothing to do with sugar daddies because sugar daddy football, is the football that older folks are being nostalgic about. The shift in the 90s is toward business, not patrons. The issue with the business philosophy is that there is a point where the market is saturated, the PL did that by themselves in terms of TV deal which is why they are the only ones with mega deals and it's also true for other sponsorships like kits, companies don't need to pay everyone they just need to pay clubs that are in big countries and big cities, they don't need the rest to get visibility.
The issue with football as a business is that not every clubs have the same commercial potential and only a few are actually relevant to the companies willing to pay big money. While in the past patrons were susceptible to be in smaller clubs/cities/communities like for example Bayer with Leverkusen or Peugeot with Sochaux, because these cities were where their employees lived and it was a good way to support the local community.
Yes cos it's a frickin massive post about a guy being depressed about football.
So I’m not really sure what you are debating? I generally espousing my distaste for the money focused PL, while also pointing out that the simultaneous rise and increasing profile of mega rich owners has essentially destroyed the game.
This thread wont exist if we're bought by uae and going into cl final. Stop blaming it on money ruining the game
My 'thing' was always watching teams around Europe for the outstanding talents that emerge, but that's hard to do because the likes of Dembele, Sancho, De Jong, De Ligt and so forth basically get snapped up double-quick time, and once they've been bought, the interest in watching them perform, now for their new suitor, is not the same as it is when they're still on the open market. I find now that before a player can really get a head of steam underneath him, he's already purchased - someone like Hazard, for example, he did great things in France over 2-3 seasons, in modern parlance, that would be maybe 1? A half? before he would've been purchased and tied to his new club.
It's a formality that takes away the desire to watch these players in their domestic leagues rather than the CL, where I'm then just watching to see what these players can do in among the big boys rather than against domestic opposition.
I used to also enjoy watching the top teams in each league go up against their challengers, but, as you've stated, the conclusion is before you... before the season kicks off... why would you bother? We get to see what they're really made of in the Champions League, at which point, all that glitters isn't actually gold, which does come as a huge surprise to the supporters of a lot of these clubs who know nothing but domestic trampling of their opposition only to realise it's a partial lie when the stark reality of the CL brings them down to earth and has them questioning their true level over the one they've bought domestically.
Domestic TV rights do more damage to the teams in these leagues than the CL does, no? These teams get a slice of pie that is so unfair that the competition is nulified right there and then, the CL money may compound it, but it's not the origin of the true, underlying problem.
The monoply put in place is an established one, too; we all know the drill for leagues around Europe: Bayern will cherry-pick from their entire league, likewise City, whilst Barcelona do it on a European scale and so too do PSG try to. It's not even that bad if all clubs were reset to zero per campaign, but the fact is, these sides simply stack on top of stack, so the gap between them and the rest widens and is impossible to bridge unless another sugar team comes in and meets them head to head in an arms race.
It's all very formulaic, systematic and proven, unfortunately, which is why all these leagues are settled before a ball has even been kicked for the new season.
Mate, if your attention span is too short to read the OP, then I suggest you find reading material more akin to your capabilities. Twitter perhaps.
I wasn't debating, I merely made the point that sugar daddies aren't the target because they are actually part of the long history of fooball, the target is newer and people are generally reluctant to aim at it because they labelled it as virtuous. Football is being "killed" by its commercialization.
Christ, stop projecting. Not all of us want mega rich, morally bankrupt ownership. Just read the Saudi takeover thread for evidence of that.
Of course they are, but the extent of the issue now is much graver than its ever been.
Chill, engage in other hobbies and you will not lose any love for football just because United are shite and City/PSG are spending truckloads of Arab money. The ones getting burnt out are often (generally) those who don't regard anything other than watching football as their main activity, though I am not implying OP is definitely doing this.
Yeah. Bottom line is you lost interest because we hit a purple patch right? Where things arent working you lost interest? You're keen to support us when we ruined epl with money back in the 90s? When we swept everything and everyone we want in england is ours?
And you post a hollier than thou thread claiming what's wrong with united and why you lost interest? And you claim people misunderstood you?
Aye, coming into threads like this to tell people they're wrong seems pointless. All we can do is discuss our differing perspectives on United and football honestly. To paraphrase that great 'United, Kids, Wife, in that order' banner I'd say for me it's more 'Being 30, United being wank and unlikable, Football shafting fans, in that order' in terms of why football means less to me than it did in my teens.
It would be a big mistake to think I am losing any sleep over this. This has been something that has been happening over time. And as has been pointed out, also a function of a changing priority in life. Yet, I still reached a tipping point where I just don’t care about club football anymore. There’s little left to suck me back in.
'new fans of the sport'... mate, football is the most popular sport on the planet. Most people alive today have 'grown up with it'. Your views on the sport are no more valid than anyone else's.
Not that I blame you for losing interest in football though, English football is changing and some people aren't going to like that. It's all good.
Fine. Just dont come back and find your passion again when we start winning
Well firstly I said I had lost interest in club football, not United. I stopped watching other neutral games a long time ago, and bit by bit, I’ve lost interest in watching United too. Because of what is happening to the game. If you want to make it as binary as being butt hurt because we are crap, then roll with that. I don’t really care. I’m certainly not upset about being misunderstood. I posted my thesis on the matter; it’s for people to take it or leave it as they wish. I know what I want from the game, and I don’t see any avenue to get that from modern football anymore. It’s only going to get worse.
It was a response to his thoughts on how the game has changed, but his only sampling size was the period that I’m complaining about. There’s also a deeper response to this that goes back to what we were discussing earlier regarding loosely connected global fans who often support multiple clubs, or just players. But I can’t be arsed to go into that.