The football you love is not dead. It’s just somewhere else.
Am I being overly dramatic? Maybe. Let’s talk again in five years.
It’s a thin line.
Between emotional coverage of the sport and the artificial narrative inflation we are heading towards.
And the powers that be are treading it with the grace of Niklas Süle.
The Premier League announced “enhanced training sessions”. Bundesliga announced POV player footage. The Club World Cup introduced a totally unnecessary half-time show. Speaking of which: A bloated, overhyped Club World Cup that nobody asked for and by all accounts hardly anybody watched.
Symptoms, only. Annoying but potentially harmless on their own.
But in context, as part of a larger pattern?
Alarming.
What we are witnessing is the Americanization of football. And football is dying because of it.
In a quest to milk every last drop of entertainment and make it dramatic enough to get the most apathetic viewers interested, football’s leaders are turning it into a pathetic spectacle and leaving its real fans behind.
Lest we forget in between iShowSpeed and Donald Trump trespassing trophy ceremonies:
Football in itself is entertaining enough. Football in itself has enough drama, enough suspense, enough tragedy, enough emotion, enough blood, sweat and tears, enough of everything. Not every game, sure, but over an entire season? More than enough.
Last minute equalizers. Near-saves. Red cards. Unjustified penalties. Jaw-dropping Tifos. On-pitch passion. Celebrations. Tears. Fisticuffs.
The last thing Football needs is a script. This is no dig at Wrestling – but football isn’t Wrestling. It doesn’t need fake drama. We don’t need to engineer villains. There is absolutely no need to artificially inflate the emotions.
It’s all there. Organically.
We all saw what Netflix did to F1 with Drive to survive. Turned an interesting sport into Kardashians on Wheels. Just one false step away from becoming the WWE for horsepowers.
And football is headed that way, too.
Get ready for Temptation Island: Bundesliga. Real Roommates of Arsenal. Love on the Goal Line.
Am I being overly dramatic? Maybe. Let’s talk again in five years.
Sidenote: Could it be they’ve come to realize they’ve neutered the sport so much with VAR et al. that they have to reintroduce emotions? Just a thought. But that’s what happens when you sanitize something inherently emotional and gritty.
Here are some articles from the archives you might enjoy – continue reading below:
I perfectly understand the need to branch out and shake things up. I’ve been working in advertising for over two decades. I’m a creative and cultural strategist in my day job. Things change, businesses evolve, you have to find new audiences, viewer and fan behaviour changes, brands have to adapt. I know that.
But I sincerely believe that pandering exclusively to Gen Z, to American audiences, is not the right way. It might yield short-term results. But we’re losing the heart of football. We’re losing its core along the way.
And when you lose that core, you lose everything. I touched on that before: The very thing that people are trying to market was created by the people being driven out of football.
Don’t get me wrong: I think there’s potential in innovating coverage. There’s nothing wrong with embracing viewership beyond linear TV and the on-site live experience.
But it’s a thin line between “emotional recap video of your club’s last season” and “Drive to survive”, let alone “Wrestlemania: UCL”. And football is definitely heading in the wrong direction.
Is it already dead? Not quite yet. The football you loved is elsewhere. It’s in Germany’s 2. Bundesliga and 3. Liga, even Regionalliga (no VAR!). You’ll find it on the weekend at Lichtenberg 47 and Altona 93. You’ll find it in the Championship. On Sunday’s in non-league. Even in Sunday league. You’ll find it at the Women’s Euros and in the Women’s leagues.
You just have to look.
But the top tier of football? I’m getting more and more emotionally detached from it every day.
Of course, there’s also a reality to consider: Football fandom has evolved and is evolving. Unfortunately, the club-centric fan is a dying breed. Newer generations are drawn to individual players. But football culture has mainly been shaped by club football. Where does that leave us?
Well, I think, for starters, we have to look at how we got here. And what created this new type of fandom.
I have a feeling.
Stay tuned for next week’s newsletter.
Read Part Two here.
Due to life, this week’s newsletter was posted on a Thursday, instead of Friday. Back to the usual schedule next week!
Great article. Summarizes exactly I what I was talking with my friends about earlier this week. We were bickering over if it was “Americanization” or “Commercialization” or as somebody else commented “globalization” I think all three are valid.
I'm convinced that the essence, and above all, the success, of football lies in its ability to reproduce itself easily. In other words, as long as what 10 kids lost in a random town can play something similar to what they see on TV (an open space, two goals, and a ball), the magic is preserved. The further it strays from that, the greater the risk of losing it.