You won't believe this, but centralization and inequality and globalization in the world economy have their counterpart in the football world!

And by some odd miracle the same people hating on the former are now out hating on the latter...

The football franchises of FIFA and UEFA are now giant companies: players are entertainers, the game is a circus, and the businessmen are there to pocket the money.

I can't believe it, Branko is a genius.

He is right that the UCL final on Saturday was kind of boring (until the nerve-drama that was the penalty shoot-out, #1499349)

Players, whose physical prowess, conditioning, and endurance are extraordinary, looked more like creatures from an AI-generated computer game than footballers of the past. There was no Omar Sivori who refused to wear shin-guards, no disheveled, cocaine-driven Maradona, no Garrincha half-asleep at the right-wing, no pot-belly Ferenc Puskas who could not run 100 meters and yet would score hundreds of goals, no fifth Beatle, no crazy individual.

There were accordingly no unexpected passes, no incredible dribbling, no solo actions, no bizarre moves. But there was lots of tactical prevarication, with players lined up as Roman legionnaires executing a difficult maneuver before entering the battle, and performing their narrowly-circumscribed duties at perfection.

Again, boring complaints about the game itself echo chess these days... Buhu, the quirky past for which I'm nostalgic is gone! Alas, you adapt and change some stuff and enjoy the thrills of that version.

This is kind of ridiculous a thing to be upset about, old men yelling at clouds etc. Every age complained about some shitty thing. Yes, there was something unique and special and honorable and interesting about local clubs featuring local dudes playing for said clubs their entire lives. But alas, the world is bigger and we allow trades and clubs with more money (=able to raise/attact more money, even to the point of listing teams on stock markets) will outbid talent from clubs with less money. Dislike it all you want, it just is; I dunno, man. #1434507

keeping in step, with neoliberal commodification, it has become so brazenly and openly commercialized that some of its original features that made football stand out among sports have been lost. A sport that has historically been grounded (and not only in England, the cradle of football, but in all countries where it has spread in the twentieth century) in the local and the class (bourgeoisie vs workers; mixed heritage vs. White; right-wingers vs. left-wingers) has now become a deracinated sport.

In typical woke (which Milanovic blissfully isn't) and Marxist tendencies of making up nonsense words, I had to look up "deracinated" = to remove or separate from a native environment or culture

So football isn't native, organic, or natural enough for you?So football isn't native, organic, or natural enough for you?

I mean, it emerged in a late nineteenth-century English working class environment that is equally gone so I dunno what you're expecting?

To add to this lack of genius and plethora of tactics, the winning team is largely an artificial creation, implanted in one of the largest capitals of Europe—not known for its love of the game—by foreign money.

Yes, correct. And when I was a little kid decades ago playing football and following this world more closely, Chelsea was all the rage, having recently been purchased-together by some Russian oligarch. Bu-hu, not nice.

Also, where's Chelsea now? (Bonus quiz, judging by that club's League standings over time, when did Roman take over Chelsea and install Mourinho there to unleash the club's modern success?)

...what comes around, goes around...

From a sport to a circusFrom a sport to a circus

The spectacle –for it is indeed now a spectacle—has acquired characteristics of a circus, very much in sight in this year’s final. Calling out the players’ name with an exaggerated accentuation, setting fireworks, bringing in enormous screens (like in the new Bernabeu in Madrid), announcing the entrance of players into the arena as if they were gladiators, reminded me of what American football has become.

Aaah, yes. America is trash (also: Fuck the Boomers! RUG THE SPAMMERS!!).

Have you seen the Olympics recently...? Knock me over with a feather.