Apparently I eat too many cheeseburgers.
The alarming discovery in 2021 that I’m missing an actual whole kidney necessitated repeated hospital appointments, a surprisingly but temporarily successful weight loss attempt and so many blood tests that I now hold the world record for the most ‘felt a prick’ jokes told in a year.
I lost my motivation as soon as it was confirmed that I wasn’t in immediate danger of kidney-related death. I do still have occasional blood tests, though, and apparently I eat too many cheeseburgers.
To me, football is cheeseburgers. The future can stick its pixels where the sun don’t shine – whether I can cut down on the foodstuff of the football gods or not.
Virtually Football
A year ago this February, Manchester City – the hero brand of the soft-power multinational consumer marketing company City Football Group – announced that they were building the first football stadium in the metaverse. Last May, AC Milan versus Fiorentina was broadcast in the metaverse, an experience that was, by all accounts, a load of old bollocks.
‘The metaverse’ is a problematic term for a number of reasons. For the sake of argument, we’ll agree here that City Football Group’s pixels are or will be located inside a virtual world courtesy of partner Sony, while the aforementioned Serie A fixture offered a digital experience and virtual merchandise accessed via a free NFT or non-fungible token.
When announcing Manchester City’s ‘metaverse’ stadium, marketing boss Nuria Tarre said that, “You’re part of the action in a different way through different angles and you can fill the stadium as much as you want because it’s unlimited. It’s completely virtual.
“But also you’re in control of what you want to be watching at that time. There’s not one broadcast point of view, you can look at it through any angle of the stadium.”
Such innovations are commercial enterprises, naturally. The unlimited nature of the pseudobowl is why businesses like City Football Group are interested in them. They’re an acknowledgement that English and European football continue to be blessed with global appeal and an attempt to capitalise upon it.
The connectedness of the world as we stumble drunkenly through the snoring twenties makes our clubs and leagues ever more accessible to remote fans. A stadium in a virtual world is one way to try to convince them they’re a part of the action, lest their fanaticism fade.
The distinction between different strata of support is manna from heaven for sociologists and social anthropologists, and for those of us of an internet bent it’s an impossible phenomenon to resist.
As supporters and fans of one of the world’s most popular and successful clubs, it is perhaps inevitable that Liverpool’s following is at the forefront of this most modern conflict.
In September 2021, Dean van Nguyen wrote a brilliant piece combing the fault lines between ‘extremely online’ Liverpool fans and the match-going Liverpudlian supporters they’ve taken to referring to as ‘Top Reds’ as an insult.
Far from being shy about his distance, the remote fanatic is standing his ground. It is becoming an identity in its own right, nakedly and unapologetically absent any social or cultural connection to or presence at the club that seemingly makes up the entirety of his self-image.
Liverpool are not unique here but they do have one thing not all big clubs have: an active and influential supporter activism that is, on occasion, willing to take a view that might be detrimental to the club’s short-term prospects on the pitch. To the extremely online fanatic, that just won’t do.
For all the debate around the recent war of words between them and the Spirit of Shankly supporters’ group – Top Reds by either definition, if you ask me – over the prospect of foreign state ownership and the independent football regulator, what stood out most to me was the sheer brass balls it must take to say with a straight face that one faction’s opinion is as important as the other’s.
Over the years I’ve met a number of foreign supporters of my club. Supporters, mind you, not loopy fanatics over-compensating for distance.
I’ve been to Aston Villa matches with Americans, a Slovenian, and many times a loveable and bonkers Norwegian whose dedication resulted in a move to England and the spaffing of his entire holiday entitlement on going to games, the silly sod. They’re supporters, all of whom have been literally welcomed with open arms.
But the thought that jumps to mind every time I see Liverpool or Manchester United fans abusing one another from thousands of miles away on Twitter, or Villa fans who’ve never been to Birmingham buying heavily into a local rivalry, is that they’re missing a significant piece of the puzzle.
Watching on television or streaming is part of the supporter experience. No doubt about it. But it’s only part, and it’s not equal to being there or at least having been there. That might be an unpopular view but there’s nothing anyone can say to persuade me otherwise.
All of which brings us back to the metaverse, or virtual stadia, or NFT access to digital experiences, or whatever.
This is the gap that City Football Group, Serie A and others are attempting to bridge in order to bring remote fanatics closer still to their clubs and empty their pockets in the process. There are just two problems with that. First, they already spend a ton of money on their fandom – it’s the (entirely fair) core of their claim to it. Second, a virtual experience as a fan access vehicle can never match being there. Ever.
Put simply and in words that will presumably earn me a death threat or two, it’s inauthentic and that matters. I’m not taking questions at this time.
‘Metaverse’ experiences aim to replicate some of the crucial parts of the real-world matchday. Audio is a simple enough fix, certainly, and the sights to go with it – the aspects and angles – are being developed in the name of the immersion that sets virtual worlds apart from streaming and TV.
Technological developments will eventually achieve spectacular results in that regard but it will always be a facsimile. Seeing is seeing and hearing is hearing, but the atmosphere is much more than sights and sounds.
Football is smell and touch and taste. It’s every tiny intangible that makes it what it is. Whether we realise it or not, it’s the very same stuff that makes it appealing to fans the world over in the first place and it cannot be faked.
The regular parking space and the walk back to it after a loss in the rain, stepping in and out of the gutter to overtake the dawdlers. The curious orange light that seems somehow unique to urban grounds in working class neighbourhoods. Hell, just the temperature.
What of community? What of face-to-face social interaction with other supporters over years and decades? What of the football club as a geographical anchor point in the civic and personal lives of the people who visit every other week as if it’s the most natural thing in the world?
These things do matter and they make going to games different from watching on television, whether you’re around the corner or around the planet.
That doesn’t make Top Reds superior but it does add weight to their opinions about Liverpool, just as the supporters who watch Villa every week have every right to tell me I’m talking shite now I don’t really go anymore.
Crucially, the combination of all these things – the unmistakable oxygen and muscle memory of matchday – means that it’s the match-going supporters who have the full picture. The fans who don’t or can’t attend can match them for passion and investment and dedication, but there’s more at play. It’s disingenuous to pretend otherwise.
No virtual stadium or immersive digital match experience will ever adequately replicate the fullness of the real thing. It simply isn’t possible in pixels. You can’t code mystery.
“In the eighties, particularly during their Cup-Winners’ Cup success in 1985, Everton had been a pioneer of a five-man midfield and Dyche, ripping up the 4-4-2 blueprint of his Burnley days, paid homage to that. He had always said that he cut his cloth according to the available resources at Turf Moor, that nobody should think the way his Burnley played was the only way he could play; few, presumably, realised he meant he had an even more rugged gear to turn to.”
After Everton’s win over Premier League leaders Arsenal, The Guardian’s Jonathan Wilson recalled the Toffees teams of the 1980s and suspects that their new manager, Sean Dyche, did much the same.
Salty beef extracts
Football’s failures have left Man Utd in an impossible position over Mason Greenwood (Football365)
Barcelona: Englishman Miles Barron revealed as club's first manager (BBC Sport)
A January like no other - the WSL transfer window that changed women's football (BBC Sport)
Harry Kane doesn’t need trophies at Tottenham to prove his greatness (The Guardian)
Football and the climate crisis: does the game really want to tackle it?(The Guardian)
Goal of the Week
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