Once again, sorry for the lack of activity on this blog. I’m still looking to hire some full time writers so bare with me on this one. Secondly, apologies is this post has a rather sombre tone – it just feels as if, maybe especially towards the latter end of the year, that its not been a great year for football in general. Here are a few reasons for my current feelings towards the game;

1. Sepp Blatter. The president of FIFA has done very very little to improve his reputation during the previous 12 months. Many more allegations of corruption have been made, and with the 2018 world cup going to Russia ahead of England, and then the ludicrous idea of allowing Qatar to host the 2022 world cup, many believe bribery is rife in the FIFA set up. Recently Blatter stated that incidents of racism on the pitch should be forgotten by a simple handshake at the end of the match, incensing many people in the process.

2. Racism in Football. Following on from the above point, it appears that racism in football is still a well documented problem. It appeared to be more commonplace on foreign shores, with Italy and Spain notoriously bad, but when world famous professional footballers are accused of racism in the Premier League (Suarez and Terry), you tend to wonder what kind of example they are setting for the hundreds of millions that watch the game all over the world. The FA have come down hard on Suarez, giving him an 8 match ban for his incident with Patrice Evra, while Liverpool have failed to condemn their star striker, instead allowing their players to wear tshirts in support of the Uruguayan ahead of their game against Aston Villa a few days ago. Meanwhile, John Terry’s incident with Anton Ferdinand was reported to the police by a member of the public, and he is set to be charged for the alleged offence.

3. Gary Speed. The legendary footballer and former Wales manager sadly passed away a few weeks ago, causing huge shockwaves throughout the sporting world. Speed was a mainstay in the history of the Premier League, a top, model professional who looked after himself immacutely and was a hugely popular figure with fans and players. Speed committed suicide, hanging himself in the early hours of the morning, later found by his wife. No-one will know why this happened, but the obvious answer would be that he was suffering from depression. Since his death, the PFA has announced that a surprising amount of footballers have come forward to seek help regarding depression, and so the organisation has taken the step of passing out booklets on depression to many professional footballers. There has been some rumours that Gary Speed was gay, and that he was going to be outed in the national papers, which some people believe could be the reason behind his action. However, this is complete suggestion, and we may never know the truth behind it. Regardless of whether this is or isn’t the case, it is very obvious that homophobia is a very big part of the footballing world unfortunately.

4. Homophobia. Of the thousands of footballers in England’s top four divisions, not one of them have admitted that they are gay. There is a real issue within the game, as many gay footballers are afraid of coming out for fear of the abuse that they will receive. The first openly gay footballer, Justin Fashunu, committed suicide, allegedly as a result of the abuse received (as well as the criminal case he was being prosecuted for). Polls on football fans have suggested that fans of clubs would openly support a player if he was homosexual, but it appears that the clubs are more fearful for their players reputation and value. It has been mentioned that the commercial value of the player may be damaged as a result of his sexuality, perhaps one of the main reasons why clubs work hard to protect their players images. Max Clifford, the famous public relations guru for the celebrities, has announced before that top Premier League clubs have approached him with the notion of protecting the “straight” image of some of their footballers.
It surprises me that the FA works so hard to eradicate racism in football, whilst homophobia is allowed to continue as normal with nothing done to prevent it. However, this could be in part due to the clubs own unwillingness to co-operate with any anti-gay campaigns.

5. Manchester City. The football club are actually the first Premier League club to be a gay-friendly employer as recognised by pressure group Stonewall. However, my issue with the club (and not speaking as a follower of Manchester United), and with football in general (its definitely not just confined to one club), is that there is far too much financial influence from the owners of football clubs. Before being taken over, Manchester City were just an average, mid-table club. But now, due to one act off the pitch, they’re the richest club in the world and so at Christmas time they find themselves at the very top of the league for the first time in over 60 years. I’m very aware that this sounds like jealousy, and I realise too that Man United have their own financial backing too, but at the same time it feels like United have won their success and have earned it, attracting the top investors due to their performances on the pitch. Their success has built more success, whilst it seems that City’s success is due simply to Sheikh Mansour. I mean, he could have chosen to invest all of his money in Aston Villa. In this case, Villa would be top of the table now with some of the best players in the world. I don’t see why football should be such a random thing now, with success down to the pot-luck of getting an investor to choose your club over any other club. I think its great that some of the best players in the world are now playing in the Premier League ahead of La Liga, but it just seems that everything nowadays is based simply upon how much money you can pay someone.

I’d welcome any feedback and responses to the above article, if I’ve missed things out then let me know – what’s annoyed you football-wise in the past 12 months?