I have a wedding to go to. It's not mine and it's not for another two months, but it does mean I have to buy a suit. Me and suits are not on speaking terms. They're uncomfortable, they never fit and I'd much rather go everywhere in a T-shirt and jeans, but I'm told that's quite bad form for a wedding, so I get to go and spend an appalling amount of money so I can stand around looking like a gibbon that's been forced into formal wear against it's considerable will. I can't even leer at the bridesmaids because all of them, every single one, are in long-term relationships with professional body-builders. The only saving grace will be an open bar and a DJ set that I helped organize, so by about 9 o'clock I expect to be cavorting drunkenly around the room to the strains of The Peter Gunn Theme. I'll probably also be sick on myself, but that's less an ambition and more a depressing expectation - you can say what you like about the Irish, but their weddings always, without fail, produce a gushing torrent of whisky you could use to crush riots.
Anyway, now the best wishes to the happy couple are out of the way, we can talk about how football has gone utterly bonkers. Sheikh Al von Sourpuss at Man City has opened talks with AC Milan over signing Kaka for £100m and then paying him £500,000 a week before bonuses. It's a daft amount of money when you consider it's only 30 years since the first million-pound transfer, and now we're looking at a bloke from Brazil - alright, granted, he's quite good at football - potentially earning enough money to buy two Trevor Francises a month for the next four years. It's enough to make you sick, especially if, like me, you're a big fat swollen failure with all the sporting prowess of a block of Stilton. I'd be on £500,000 a week, too, if I'd had the good fortune to be born in a slum and without two left feet and the pace, touch and close control of an asthmatic hamster.
£26m a year in wages. We can deduce from this that the Credit Crunch is obviously not hitting the Middle East quite as hard as it's hitting Ruislip.
It does bring back to the fore the whole argument about football descending into a game not of twenty-two blokes in pitched battle, but two billionaires swatting each other with chequebooks. Everyone went mental about Chelsea buying the title, but you could buy their record signing Michael Essien four times over with the sort of money Man City are looking to splash out on a single player. In fact, put Essien, Didier Drogba, Joe Cole and Michael Ballack together and they still didn't cost Chelsea £100m. Kaka's proposed weekly wages would probably buy Chelsea's opponents in tonight's cup game, stadium and all. It's getting daft. City are going to tear the Championship apart next season, that's for sure, especially if Q.P.R. continue to cock up and get themselves relegated, and promptly take League One by storm as Lakshimi Mittal brings Leo Messi in for £500m and £1m a week two days before the league opener against Scunthorpe.
In amongst all of this, however, and highlighted by Chelsea's FA Cup replay opponents tonight, are clubs with a soul. I've stood at the old Clock End at Highbury, I've stood at the Kop end at Anfield amidst 12,000 screaming Scousers, and I once spent a year living within shouting distance of Old Trafford, but I've also been to Roots Hall to watch Southend United, Chelsea's less illustrious opponents, slog it out for League One mediocrity, and once had a long conversation with a man who could tell you every player to turn out for Tranmere Rovers since Jackie Wright was in charge. I've even seen games down in the Isthmian League First Division, and wherever you go and no matter how low down the football pyramid, there'll still be half a dozen blokes daft enough to spend 90 minutes cheering their team on and following them around to whatever concrete hellhole or recreation ground they're off to next. Give them £100m and they'd mess their trousers.
It's tremendously difficult to describe the allure of lower league football - which, in this day and age of about 60% of the population's support extending about as far as 'whoever's winning', is everything below the Premiership - to someone from Wickford who for some reason is wearing a Manchester United top. It's very difficult to explain it to anyone, really. We're all spoilt on football, with everyone from Arsenal and Man United to Barcelona and Real Madrid on the telly every weekend. I took a friend to a local match a few weeks ago and she spent the entire game pointing and laughing at the home wingers' perceived inability to do fourteen stepovers and a backflip in a bid to get past their man. That's just expected now and anything less is boring and blasé. League football is just something you get or you don't, and there's just not enough people getting it anymore. Chelsea, Man United and their ilk chug along happily with their billionaire owners ready to wipe out their millions of pounds of debt at a moments' notice by flogging another boatload of shirts to the Chinese, meanwhile dwindling attendances leave lower league sides chomping their fingernails at the idea of having to buy more mustard for the burger van.
I know the allure and the glamour is all with the Premiership clubs, and that Adam Proudlock swapping Darlington for Grimsby for eight pounds forty and a packet of onion rings isn't nearly as exciting as Arsenal's £20m pursuit of Andrei Arshavin, but your local teams need support too, and they're just around the corner. I was going through the hoarded mass of paper that I keep in my jacket pockets yesterday and came across a ticket stub for my local Football League side, just around the corner - the players might not do quite as many stepovers and the stadium roof may sag frighteningly and be made of corrugated iron, but it's close to two hours of excitement for a little over a tenner, and when you clap the players off at the end, you actually think they might feel something for the club when they clap back.
Buy that United shirt if you want, or hang that mini John Terry in your car window. Far be it for me to tell you who you should or shouldn't support, but for 90% or more of you, those clubs aren't going to be your local team.
Find out who is and go and watch them. It might be worth it.
Anyway, now the best wishes to the happy couple are out of the way, we can talk about how football has gone utterly bonkers. Sheikh Al von Sourpuss at Man City has opened talks with AC Milan over signing Kaka for £100m and then paying him £500,000 a week before bonuses. It's a daft amount of money when you consider it's only 30 years since the first million-pound transfer, and now we're looking at a bloke from Brazil - alright, granted, he's quite good at football - potentially earning enough money to buy two Trevor Francises a month for the next four years. It's enough to make you sick, especially if, like me, you're a big fat swollen failure with all the sporting prowess of a block of Stilton. I'd be on £500,000 a week, too, if I'd had the good fortune to be born in a slum and without two left feet and the pace, touch and close control of an asthmatic hamster.
£26m a year in wages. We can deduce from this that the Credit Crunch is obviously not hitting the Middle East quite as hard as it's hitting Ruislip.
It does bring back to the fore the whole argument about football descending into a game not of twenty-two blokes in pitched battle, but two billionaires swatting each other with chequebooks. Everyone went mental about Chelsea buying the title, but you could buy their record signing Michael Essien four times over with the sort of money Man City are looking to splash out on a single player. In fact, put Essien, Didier Drogba, Joe Cole and Michael Ballack together and they still didn't cost Chelsea £100m. Kaka's proposed weekly wages would probably buy Chelsea's opponents in tonight's cup game, stadium and all. It's getting daft. City are going to tear the Championship apart next season, that's for sure, especially if Q.P.R. continue to cock up and get themselves relegated, and promptly take League One by storm as Lakshimi Mittal brings Leo Messi in for £500m and £1m a week two days before the league opener against Scunthorpe.
In amongst all of this, however, and highlighted by Chelsea's FA Cup replay opponents tonight, are clubs with a soul. I've stood at the old Clock End at Highbury, I've stood at the Kop end at Anfield amidst 12,000 screaming Scousers, and I once spent a year living within shouting distance of Old Trafford, but I've also been to Roots Hall to watch Southend United, Chelsea's less illustrious opponents, slog it out for League One mediocrity, and once had a long conversation with a man who could tell you every player to turn out for Tranmere Rovers since Jackie Wright was in charge. I've even seen games down in the Isthmian League First Division, and wherever you go and no matter how low down the football pyramid, there'll still be half a dozen blokes daft enough to spend 90 minutes cheering their team on and following them around to whatever concrete hellhole or recreation ground they're off to next. Give them £100m and they'd mess their trousers.
It's tremendously difficult to describe the allure of lower league football - which, in this day and age of about 60% of the population's support extending about as far as 'whoever's winning', is everything below the Premiership - to someone from Wickford who for some reason is wearing a Manchester United top. It's very difficult to explain it to anyone, really. We're all spoilt on football, with everyone from Arsenal and Man United to Barcelona and Real Madrid on the telly every weekend. I took a friend to a local match a few weeks ago and she spent the entire game pointing and laughing at the home wingers' perceived inability to do fourteen stepovers and a backflip in a bid to get past their man. That's just expected now and anything less is boring and blasé. League football is just something you get or you don't, and there's just not enough people getting it anymore. Chelsea, Man United and their ilk chug along happily with their billionaire owners ready to wipe out their millions of pounds of debt at a moments' notice by flogging another boatload of shirts to the Chinese, meanwhile dwindling attendances leave lower league sides chomping their fingernails at the idea of having to buy more mustard for the burger van.
I know the allure and the glamour is all with the Premiership clubs, and that Adam Proudlock swapping Darlington for Grimsby for eight pounds forty and a packet of onion rings isn't nearly as exciting as Arsenal's £20m pursuit of Andrei Arshavin, but your local teams need support too, and they're just around the corner. I was going through the hoarded mass of paper that I keep in my jacket pockets yesterday and came across a ticket stub for my local Football League side, just around the corner - the players might not do quite as many stepovers and the stadium roof may sag frighteningly and be made of corrugated iron, but it's close to two hours of excitement for a little over a tenner, and when you clap the players off at the end, you actually think they might feel something for the club when they clap back.
Buy that United shirt if you want, or hang that mini John Terry in your car window. Far be it for me to tell you who you should or shouldn't support, but for 90% or more of you, those clubs aren't going to be your local team.
Find out who is and go and watch them. It might be worth it.
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