Everything Connects

“What happens at the top of the game is connected with what happens right through the game.”

Martin Cloake

Everything connects. The last few weeks have been the most extraordinary weeks in football that I can remember, and the sense that a watershed moment has been reached is palpable.

For those of us who have argued for reform of the game we love for years, one of the greatest challenges has been overcoming rivalries and getting people to understand that what happens in one part of the game affects what happens elsewhere. There’s a knowingly world-weary, faux intellectualism that says everyone is too self-interested to work for the common good. It’s an attitude that seeks to remove confidence and ambition and serves only to bolster the status quo. But when we’ve seen more clearly than ever is that we stand or fall together.

When Fair Game first approached me I was wary, as a rep from a so-called Big Six club, of how any contribution would be seen. I’ve encountered some hostility at times from people who are unable to distinguish clubs from their supporters. But the attempt by the Six to break away has changed everything.

Let’s be clear. If the plans – hatched in secret by a group of owners and executives who denied they were doing what they were doing – to join the European Super League had gone ahead, it would have meant the end of football in this country as we know it. As Gary Neville said: “They tried to walk away and cause a closed-shop league that would have created a famine in this county for every other club.”

Opposition to this did not need much organising. It was there, in the DNA of the English game. We had said for years that what fans valued most about the game is this country was the pyramid system, the idea that it was possible to progress from the bottom to the top based on how good you are on the pitch. The view had been noted and then ignored. The expectation was that everyone would go along with the plans to break away because everyone had gone along with all the other distortions to that valued principle for so long.

But that didn’t happen. The intensity and focus of the response from fans sent the breakaway plans tumbling like a house of cards with 48 hours of their announcement. This was the line in the sand.

We now know beyond any doubt that, given the chance, a self-selected group of billionaire owners will sacrifice the wellbeing of the entire game for their own interests. Even the Premier League itself, so long a bulwark against reform as it attempted to consolidate power and resource within its own ranks, recognises now that the owners can’t be left to regulate themselves. There were 14 members of the 20-strong Premier League who the Six were prepared to consign to the wilderness, along with 72 other Football League clubs and scores of non-league clubs.

What happens at the top of the game is connected with what happens right through the game. This has now been recognised by the government, which is undertaking a fan-led review that promises to take the opportunity for genuine and lasting reform that has been fumbled before. The view that action must be taken to protect our game is now so widely held, it is no longer up for debate. Like a listed building, our game needs protection.

The devil, as always, is in the detail, and that’s where initiatives such as Fair Game come in. This is not just another manifesto or wish list. Fair Game has gone to the clubs themselves to work up and get backing for a series of measures that can make the game what we all want it to be at its heart – a sport.

The game has been a business ever since clubs needed to generate money to pay players, but it is – to coin a well-worn phrase – a business like no other. That has been underlined by the extraordinary events of the past two weeks, where the ties that bind us together have been revealed to be as strong as ever.

Fair Game is one of a number of initiatives that offers a better future, the difference is Fair Game is developing the practical ideas to deliver it.

Fair Game is holding a series of open discussions and panel debates over the next few weeks. They are an essential part of Fair Game’s process in developing real and long-lasting solutions to the problems facing football. You can register to take part in the sessions by visiting the events section of our website www.fairgameuk.org