We Are the Champions!

Well actually, we aren't. That's a reference to Liverpool F.C., of which more below. We thought we were coasting home during the quiz last Monday night; we had solved some quite cunning riddles in the Connections round and done quite well in the History round. With our joker round to come on music, and Mush back in the side, we thought we couldn't fail, and yet we did. Luis's team, playing in the second half without him, as he had decided it was a lost cause and had gone aloft to the main bar to talk to some visiting friends, sailed comfortably home as we only managed 4 correct answers out of 10 in what should have been our most productive round. "What went wrong?" Luis asked me afterwards; I don't know; just one of those things I suppose. Certainly both Hugh and myself felt we knew the answer to question 7 of the music round, but could either of us pin it down? No chance, and it was much the same with quite a lot of the other questions, too.

I paid a return visit to the pub around midnight on Wednesday, after the Champions' League final. I had been keeping half an eye on the progress of the game as I toured some of Madrid's celebrated tapas bars with my old friend Annie, who is a travel writer. Once the shoot-out was over, she pleaded an early start on the morrow and left me to my own devices, which normally would have meant going home, but I thought it might be fun to have a final drink with a few of the guys down the pub, not all that far from where I was, who would have been watching Liverpool's win. As I have mentioned before, the Usual Suspects are well supported among the Brits here - you rarely meet anyone like myself, supporting Charlton, or Dave the barman, totally loyal to Bristol City. Our team mate Mush does support QPR, though, come to think of it, and we used to have a team member who supported West Brom. Mostly, however, and in my view very boringly, it is Manchester United, Arsenal and Liverpool (though not Everton) who attract the Brits and Irish in Madrid. I know a couple of Chelsea fans, too. And there was a small band of Leeds supporters, which included our team mate Antony; and while these guys are still around, I think, they are inevitably not so vociferous as when they felt themselves to be about to become Masters of the Universe, or whatever it is you get for winning the Champions' League. Though apparently you don't get the right to play in the thing again, unless you are the champion of your country; or come second; or third; or fourth in some cases. You do though, it seems, get to play in a couple of other non-tournaments, also, presumably, in the interests of world domination, but after that, nothing.

As my old friend Harry, visiting me with his wife Liz and their son Robin for a few days, (well he was a bit hurt when I said I wasn't going to mention them) said last evening, the problem with all this is that it is totally controlled by the TV companies who want to set up what they would regard as Big Games between what they regard as Big Clubs. They don't care who the domestic league champions are, as long as it is a Usual Suspect. The reason that the mini-league system is used is to prevent one night of poor form leading to one of the star turns being knocked out by the likes of Total Network Solutions, so that the final stages of the competition will almost certainly consist of games between teams that might attract even neutral TV audiences.

But this is the way disaster lies. Soon the TV companies will insist on taking over the running of the tournaments from the various footballing authorities, if they haven't in reality already done this. Then they will decide that the risk of, say, Wigan, or of course Charlton, finishing in the top four is not one they want to run, and they will decree that participation will be by invitation only, and that it will only involve English, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, German and French clubs. Oh, and maybe a handful of others from more obscure locations like Denmark (sorry Gitte!), but not Total Network Solutions, thank you very much. And then sooner or later someone will have to ask themselves what all this football is for.

When Aldershot Town, for example, talk about making a big push to get into League Two next season but one, are they really doing it in the hope that they will in a few years' time be representing Earth in the Pan-Galactic Gargleblaster Universal Trophy, having won the Champions' League and the other competitions which look as if they have been hastily invented to ride on the back of it? Well I don't think so, and if football is to be a really meaningful thing, then it will have to be regarded as something that is important at all levels, and not just something which greedy TV companies can skim the cream off the top of.

(I must present my students with that last sentence tomorrow; I will ask them if it is correct; they will take one, horrified, Hispanic, look at the adverb-particle near the end and the preposition at the end and declare it an abomination. But it is, of course, perfectly correct).

And before anyone tries to make out that it is the quality of the football at the top end of the market that matters, then let them have another look, now that the euphoria has died down a bit, at the last 30 minutes of normal play in that much-vaunted "greatest comeback of all time" last Wednesday; it looked more like the Conference, and the lower reaches of the Conference at that.

I never found out what the people joyfully celebrating Liverpool's win actually thought about any of this, as when I arrived at the pub, it was absolutely heaving, and the temperature inside was about 130 degrees; I stood it for about thirty seconds, greeted a couple of people I know slightly, realised that I couldn't even see the bar, let alone get to it, turned round and walked home in the heat of the night.