Fuck, me what nasty reading this thread makes. Real gritted teeth material. Post after post of high-profile bastardry of the highest order.

For me:
1. Premiership money
2. the increased seepage of non-champions into the Champions League
3. The hype
4. The sheer cuntery of it all

The sports journalism of 20 years ago wouldn't have been able to cope with that, and would have only concentrated on the blandest, footballing angle. At least now, our knowledge of how ownership works, and how football works, helps feed a healthy cynicism.

Well, how's about sports journalists - some qualities, most tabs) as possible candidates? Concentrating on perhaps the 20% of football that supposedly matters (Big Four and their managers, the CL, etc.) and looking with detached contempt/indifference at the rest, dealing with the rest of the Premiership clubs and all other leagues (and their probelms) with a range of lamely-expressed emotions ranging from patronising to pure hollow lip service, saving their partisan feelings for separate matters (Aren't Newcastle a wonderful club? That Harry Redknapp, he's a geezer and a half, ain't he? Ad nauseum)

They're just as palpable a threat to football as the entities described on here. Money, yep, chairmen, yep, Murdoch, yep, but there's also damage when press hacks narrow their scope to the exclusion of all else. Ol' Oscar said that there's nothing worse than not being talked about. The nation's sports hacks prove him correct.

hornby&
skinner&
baddiel

Skinner & Baddiel is maybe fair enough (though to say that they are bastards in the same league as Scudamore or Kenyon is pushing the envelope, I rather think), but Nick Hornby is a harsh selection.

i know ;)

You know what? This question should be set in the next issue of WSC. Or, draw up a longlist of a couple of dozen contenders and make it a poll. Then, when the results are in, get onto a news agency or whatever you do to make these polls into news stories - every other week there's a page on the BBC's site saying "Percy Thrower voted century's most hated gardener", or whatever. Nice publicity for WSC and it establishes its grassroots credentials.

In the WSC Readers Awards of 1993, Graham Kelly was voted "person who has done the most damage to football" for his role in the creation of the Premier League.

I know I might be re-inventing history here and it might be outside the decade central to the question, but the first time I can remember football being reported or commented on as anything other than a bankrupt embarrassment to the national identity was when the fanzines started to develop. There was a novelty angle to the reporting that football fans might, depite being violent, moronic, ne're do wells, be capable of writing at all and astonishment that they might possess a street wise, sophisticated sense of humour.

This realisation was undoubtedly at the heart of the growth in acceptability of football as a topic of dinner party conversation and it was only one small step from there to the full engagement of the media luvvies, chattering classes and their monied exploiters.

So there you have it, step forward WSC as the most damaging football entity. Oh, and not forgetting Michael Knighton.

QUOTE:
3) Whichever cunt started the idea that football was cool in the mid 1990s

I hate this deliberate downward mobility that people 'who were there when it was shit' have about football being popular among the general public again. That's one of the few god things to have come in the last decade - attendances in the lower leagues of English football are generally very good and one of the trickle down effects of the popularity of the Premier League has been increased enthusiasm for the game at nearly every level. The problems with the Premier League and those who run it have been done to death by everyone on here over the years, but to say that people liking football is a bad thing is fucking balls.

Now I know that whoever said Hornby and Baddiel and Skinner wasn't the same person as the one I quoted, but they betray the same snobbery. First of all Fantasy Football was the sort of programme football needed - a fanzine style production hosted by two genuinely passionate fans of two (at that time) deeply unfashionable clubs. Having books written about the game like Fever PItch isn't a bad thing, anymore than any book opening up a new subject to a wider audience is a bad thing. Intelligence isn't the sole preserve of the middle classes you know.

myself, i was only being facetious. a light-hearted question got a light-hearted answer. if i'd had the presence of mind i'd have sliped in hunter davies and all.

i have no opinion at all about hornby, didn't like fantasy football much, and think anyone who wants to be a football fan should be.

funnily enough, i don't remember "when it was shit" - i was 8 in 1990, so you can accuse me of romanticism, but certainly not snobbery.

QUOTE:
Intelligence isn't the sole preserve of the middle classes you know.

who are you referring to here?

I'm not sure why people think that the commercialisation of the 90's is any worse than it was before. Having recently read Eamon Dunphy's a strange kind of Glory I suspect that there is a lot of nostalgia and rose tinted glasses going on here, and that football was much worse and a lot more unfair 100 years ago, and considerably more exploitative and bent 40 years ago. It's also less dangerous and no more exploitative than it was 20 years ago. Yes it is more expensive now, but most people are a lot richer than they were 20 years ago.

Referring to Berlusconi, Moratti or Agnelli as local regional big men is staggeringly ignorant, even for you

In the sense that the medicis and the borgias were.

The_Liquidator wrote:

QUOTE:

QUOTE:
3) Whichever cunt started the idea that football was cool in the mid 1990s

Now I know that whoever said Hornby and Baddiel and Skinner wasn't the same person as the one I quoted, but they betray the same snobbery. First of all Fantasy Football was the sort of programme football needed - a fanzine style production hosted by two genuinely passionate fans of two (at that time) deeply unfashionable clubs. Having books written about the game like Fever PItch isn't a bad thing, anymore than any book opening up a new subject to a wider audience is a bad thing. Intelligence isn't the sole preserve of the middle classes you know.

I wasn't saying I was there in the bad old days and therefore I'm better, I wasn't there in the good old days. I only started to go to football regularly (more than 3 games a season) when I was about 15 (1992 ish).

I was referring to the process that some people I know seem to have gone through. In school some people never bothered with football but are now massive footy fans, in fact some of them even hated football. They seem to have become entranced by the hype of Sky et al. This trend becomes even more pronounced during tournaments.

For example someone who went to primary school with me didn't seem to that bothered about football, as we were in Wales he didn't seem that bothered about being English either, same thing in secondary school, then about 6 or 7 years after leaving school he suddenly discovers he's a massive England fan, and recently he's become a massive Liverpool fan too.

Maybe it's just people I know

I also hate the way football has become soooo important.

And I am the Life wrote:

QUOTE:
If you think that the premiership is the worst in this respect you should take a closer look at the ins and outs of La Liga and Serie A.

And might I just add: if South America, its federations, leagues and clubs had so much as a quarter of the amount of money and global visibility there is in the European game, but exactly the same protagonists as they do have, none of those three leagues would get a mention even if this thread ran to 100 pages.

Boca (as a club); Blanquiceleste (who are doing the biggest cock-up imaginable of running Racing, one of Argentina's Big Five); the Buenos Aires sporting security forces; River Plate's president José María Aguilar; River's and Boca's hooligan gangs... and I've only covered Buenos Aires, I've not even mentioned Gimnasia La Plata, Newell's Old Boys... or for that matter Julio Grondona, the bent-as-you-like head of the AFA and the man recently named by World Soccer as the fourth most influential figure in world football, despite not even beind head of his confederation.

And even if I'd exhaustively gone through all the nominees I'm familiar with, I'd only have covered Argentina. The smaller, less visible countries of the continent are many times worse.

As it is, of course, South America doesn't have the visibility or money of Europe, and as such there's surely only one winner of this poll: Mr. Joseph S. Blatter.

I am old enough to have been around in the shitty old football era.

It is all rose tinted glasses though ,yes
I prefered standing at matches, I remember when a live game on the TV was an event, not just another filler between adverts ; but I enjoyed when football entered other areas of the media, 'cos football was always a great interest to me, so it meant more people were talking about it,more places to read about it etc - great not just "Shoot" and souless match day programmes.

However, there is a bit of the old Townshend lyrics from ,I think ,"5:15" from "Quadrophenia"
- "Sadly estatic that your heroes are news" about this though, - get over it, life marches on.

As for this:
"I also hate the way football has become soooo important."

Football is far less important to me now than back in the shit days - it was more personal back then; but then music was better, young people respected their elders and you could buy three pints for less than a pound.

Still vote for The Premiership though as most damaging - mainly becasue of the lousy gaudy styleless trophy compared to the old one.