Blatter resigns.

[teamsaint]

... ah, indoctrination starts so early.

Why on earth do you think your children have any interest in Southampton Football Club?

not sure I understand your point, or the sub text, Vinny.

But...some might call choice of team a preference, based on locality, ( which it was for me, since my father is a portsmouth man) rather than indoctrination. Ask EdgeleyRob about this, for clarification......

[vinteuil]

... I think I just don't have the gene or meme that wd lead me to be the 'supporter' of any particular football or other club. I don't get where it comes from.

In your case, I presume it is bicoz you like the Southampton team that your children, wishing to be like their father, think they are supporters of Southampton football club. To me, that is (unconscious, inadvertent) indoctrination...

[teamsaint]

... I think I just don't have the gene or meme that wd lead me to be the 'supporter' of any particular football or other club. I don't get where it comes from.

In your case, I presume it is bicoz you like the Southampton team that your children, wishing to be like their father, think they are supporters of Southampton football club. To me, that is (unconscious, inadvertent) indoctrination...

well its an interesting question, where certain social contexts become indoctrination, or where a dividing line might be.

My Kids may have followed my example, and wanted to be like me , ( god help them !!) but in fact Southampton has always been their nearest league football team, and we lived in Southampton for their early years. It would be interesting to know why others choose to follow a team, and reasons for a specific association, but for myself, I always loved football, and the moment I discovered my city had a team, it was a no brainer, even though the old man was from the wrong end of Hampshire !!

The desire to associate with a team is rather odd, given that it offers an added layer of lack of control to our lives, when in general we tend to seek control.

[aeolium]

... I think I just don't have the gene or meme that wd lead me to be the 'supporter' of any particular football or other club. I don't get where it comes from.

In your case, I presume it is bicoz you like the Southampton team that your children, wishing to be like their father, think they are supporters of Southampton football club. To me, that is (unconscious, inadvertent) indoctrination...

So why is that any different from children having an interest in reading poetry or listening to classical music, which they have picked up from their parents?

I've never really understood the hostility towards football, or indeed games in general, even though they are the source of mostly innocent enjoyment for people of all ages in a tough world - and have been for millennia. Homo ludens is one of the better representations of mankind as far as I am concerned, if one thinks of the many other areas of life which are just as compromised. To a certain extent the hostility to football is class driven - football long having been a game played by and watched mostly by the working class. There's also an element of intellectual snobbery, ball games not being considered as worthwhile as "proper" cultural activities, even though great skill and stamina may be required. And there is also the puritan dislike of the frivolous, the same sort of animosity that is directed at pop music, light music, comedy, comic literature rather than classic.

When all's said and done, it is a game, and games give a hell of a lot of pleasure to people. Whenever I see the same old spiel about bread and circuses trotted out, I think - what should these people be doing instead, attending Marxist discussion groups?

[Beef Oven!]

"Football is not just a matter of life and death: it's much more important than that'' - Bill Shankly

[Sir Velo]

When all's said and done, it is a game, and games give a hell of a lot of pleasure to people.

Didn't John Reid say the same about smoking being some people's only pleasure?

Some times you just have to protect people from themselves.

I'm all for people participating in sports, but to spend one's few precious years on this planet watching a bunch of overpaid, poseurs who, frankly, don't give a toss about their fans, seems a tragic waste of time.

[Flosshilde]

So why is that any different from children having an interest in reading poetry or listening to classical music, which they have picked up from their parents?

If you need to ask, you probably wouldn't understand the answer. Liking football isn't just 'picked up from parents', it's encouraged & reinforced by the constant reporting of it outside the 'sports pages', the presence of it in shops, the marketing - football strips for babies, for example. It's a constant presence, unlike poetry or classical music which has to be sought out. It's the same as the socialisation of girls to play with dolls, wear pink, think of being nurses rather than doctors, or of boys to be into soldiers & guns.

[eighthobstruction]

If you need to ask, you probably wouldn't understand the answer. Liking football isn't just 'picked up from parents', it's encouraged & reinforced by the constant reporting of it outside the 'sports pages', the presence of it in shops, the marketing - football strips for babies, for example. It's a constant presence, unlike poetry or classical music which has to be sought out. It's the same as the socialisation of girls to play with dolls, wear pink, think of being nurses rather than doctors, or of boys to be into soldiers & guns.

....mind you I'm rather glad poetry does not have that presence....imagine....ppwsh....

[Serial_Apologist]

Puritanism and frivolity make rather good bedfellows!

[aeolium]

Didn't John Reid say the same about smoking being some people's only pleasure?

Some times you just have to protect people from themselves.

I'm all for people participating in sports, but to spend one's few precious years on this planet watching a bunch of overpaid, poseurs who, frankly, don't give a toss about their fans, seems a tragic waste of time.

Yes, but how often do you see people, especially on this forum, asking to be protected from doing things that they like? They tend rather to want to stop other people doing things that they like (and the critics don't like). Everyone, it seems, knows how other people should be living their lives.

And actually, it's more than just about participating in sports, it's about community. Strange as it may seem to some here, there are actually communities of supporters in football, cricket etc - just as this forum represents and provides a community of interest. And in the case of local football or rugby clubs, for instance, there is the opportunity for physical communities in a society where many other sources of community have been weakened: the church, industrial community organisations e.g. in mining areas.

And smoking is not a valid analogy - smoking kills people, playing or watching sport hardly ever does.

[jean]

Football killed my house (see above, #35).

[teamsaint]

Football killed my house (see above, #35).

which is very sad.


Southampton FCs new stadium enabled hundreds of new houses to be built, and the new stadium was built on a disused brown field site.

[Serial_Apologist]

Yes, but how often do you see people, especially on this forum, asking to be protected from doing things that they like? They tend rather to want to stop other people doing things that they like (and the critics don't like). Everyone, it seems, knows how other people should be living their lives.

And advertising doesn't?

And actually, it's more than just about participating in sports, it's about community. Strange as it may seem to some here, there are actually communities of supporters in football, cricket etc - just as this forum represents and provides a community of interest. And in the case of local football or rugby clubs, for instance, there is the opportunity for physical communities in a society where many other sources of community have been weakened: the church, industrial community organisations e.g. in mining areas.

Sport was always there as a community of interest. The difference is that it was once genuinely locality-based in terms of who was in your team to be supported and by whom. For all that the working class communities supporting football were historically overlooked by the advertisers' miinstrations to the middle class, there was a material basis for that support in pride in locale. What changed and now is in desperate need of supersession - reclaiming the banner as TS puts it - was the corporatisation of sports' support structures and their consequent integration into a system of values that has always disregarded community, as jean's photo so well shows.

[aeolium]

And advertising doesn't?

Of course - advertising is there to make money for corporations. But the interest in football, and sport historically, long pre-dates mass media advertising: what about all those Greek vases and sculptures depicting athletic prowess? This idea that people are simply being brainwashed, which also crops up in discussions about popular music, always seems pretty patronising to me. It says: "I have been strong enough to avoid being brainwashed, but all the other poor weak-minded folk aren't". The possibility that these people actually like what they watch and listen to (and that advertising is following, not creating, that interest) is not entertained.

Sport was always there as a community of interest. The difference is that it was once genuinely locality-based in terms of who was in your team to be supported and by whom. For all that the working class communities supporting football were historically overlooked by the advertisers' miinstrations to the middle class, there was a material basis for that support in pride in locale. What changed and now is in desperate need of supersession - reclaiming the banner as TS puts it - was the corporatisation of sports' support structures and their consequent integration into a system of values that has always disregarded community, as jean's photo so well shows.

Yes, that's partly true. When my mother was a child in West Bromwich, those who played football for WBA had actually to be born in the district. But in a multicultural society surely that isn't appropriate. And it isn't true that modern globalised sport has totally destroyed the community ethic, even though money has badly corrupted sport at its higher levels. Look at the thousands of small clubs and their local support and junior clubs, sometimes kept going with the help of volunteers. It's not all a world of high finance and ownership by foreign billionaires. I think ts has mentioned elsewhere that the German model of football club ownership is far better than ours here.

[Flosshilde]

When my mother was a child in West Bromwich, those who played football for WBA had actually to be born in the district. But in a multicultural society surely that isn't appropriate.

Um - why not?

One of the major issues with football at the highest levels is that so many players are not from the UK, let alone the locality of the club, with a consequent deletrerious effect on the opportunities for young players.