Marketing Osmosis.

The game of football must surely be one of the marketing industry’s greatest successes. In a relatively short time it has moved from being a humble ‘working man’s’ game in England, to a world wide business played by men, and now women too, in every part of the world and at the same time become a multi-billion pound industry. How did it happen? It couldn’t have been planned, well not all of it anyway. Certainly the latter stages, the modern stadiums, the merchandising of soccer related items, the incredible salaries of the players and the International Leagues and competitions. All that is the result of recent, highly sophisticated marketing strategies and the injection of vast sums of money from a variety of sources. But those who wrote the Laws of the Game in 1863 and the founders of The Football League in 1888 could never have imagined the game would grow to become such an important world-wide pastime and business. Or perhaps they did!

The images seen on television, of children in Africa playing the game with bare feet and clearly loving everything about the game, mirrors the attitude of boys and girls everywhere. As they play the game the circumstances of their lives fade away and the daily struggle just to exist is replaced by a dream of playing the game at high level and achieving the fame and fortune once only possible by becoming a film star. There is even more to the game than that. To discover you have the ability to control a ball, to run with it, to be able to dribble it past opponents, to pass it accurately over long distances across the field, to blast it past the opposing goalkeeper, this is a discovery that is in itself a magical thing. Nothing to do with fame or fortune, it is a special talent inherent in you, one that will impart joy every time you touch a ball no matter what your age or with whom you are playing. The organic growth of the game has been and still is phenomenal and will continue to be a powerful force for peace and goodwill wherever it is played.

Like every other boy of my age I played the game. My school was noted for it’s sporting achievements and I was proud when selected to play for the school team. Having left school, I joined a local club that played on Hackney Marshes. Several of the players made it into professional football and a couple realised their dream and played for England. It was in those days a simple game, every team lined up for the kick off in the same formation, five forwards, three half-backs two full backs and a goalkeeper, subs hadn’t been invented then. The ball was made of leather, had a leather thong lace and needed to be kept well coated with a waterproofing, waxy sort of polish called Dubbin. If it wasn’t kept well coated it absorbed the rain and began to resemble a cannon ball. When you headed it in that condition it nearly knocked you silly. Our boots too were made of thick leather. They had a long tongue inside, high ankle covers, a toecap that was absolutely solid, like a miner’s toecap, and a strap across the instep, the studs on the bottom were leather too and fixed to the boot by banging them in with a hammer. The laces were very long and went round and under the instep, then round the ankle and back to tie in the front. No danger of a damaged metatarsal in those boots. The rest of the kit was much the same as now except that it was made from cotton and the shorts often looked more like short longs than long shorts, but that changed from time to time. Arguing or even talking to the referee was absolutely forbidden and frowned on by everyone. His rule was law whether he had made the right decision or not.

When we weren’t playing we went to support our chosen team. Mine was and still is Arsenal, if they were away we went to watch Leyton Orient. I watched with several others of my generation as they dismantled the old Highbury Stadium. It wasn’t a pleasant sight and having exchanged the sort of memories and anecdotes that arise in that situation we made our way to the Emirates just around the corner. It is a beautiful stadium but has some way to go yet to recreate the old atmosphere, but I’m sure it will.

So where does the game go from here? There seems to have been a natural progression from F.A Cup to European and other continental cups, and of course The World Cup. The same has happened with the league system, all that’s missing now is a European League and that seems a future certainty, then what? A World League? It all seems a long way from the game I played but it still has the power to fascinate and entertain. I hope it always does and that the game itself doesn’t get lost in all the marketing and financial activity.