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John, you are professional broadcaster and journalist, and you are also very keen on football. When did that interest start? As a small boy, and I think you will find this is a common story all over the world, not just in England. My dad took me to a football match and I can remember being lifted over the turnstiles so in another words. I was so small that the man on the gate didn’t want me to pay, or my dad to pay. So I was lifted over the turnstiles and taken into the stand. So right from that point onwards, I was hooked. And you used to play and what position did you play? I was a winger, a right winger, I was on the right wing. But you see today all those expressions have now gone, you are either striker or a mid-fielder or a back fore. In those days, I was an outside right.
You mentioned memories of how the game used to be played and you’ve talked about how the game is played today. What are the differences? Amateur footballer, I don’t think that has changed all that much, the professional game clearly has changed. And that’s what I’m concerned today. In another words, the game that I used to see as a school boy when take over the turnstiles and sitting in the stands. That’s changed enormously. In those days, of course, players weren’t paid much money. We didn’t pay very much money to go into the game. But now, of course, players, as we all know are, paid enormous fees. And to get into the ground. You have to pay a lot of money. And for example, a programme today at any English league football match will probably cost you about 1.5 pounds. 1.5 pounds would given you a center stand seat in those early days when I was a school boy. So things have changed and it’s largely in the professional games a financial change, I would say. Clubs buy and sell players and on the strength of the players they buy and sell they either become a better club or indeed they get worse? Do you agree with the way money dictates how good a club can be? No, I don’t. I don’t like the way that money dictates football today. What I object to are the really big clubs. And this is not only confined to England, but its throughout Europe of course where very simply. . Because we are simple a very, very rich man, and fellow directors purl money into the club and say to the manager now go out to buy whoever you like. Now that to me is not what is all about. Sadly, it’s the way that football, that top football is going today. So the rich clubs are getting richer. And the poor clubs, not only are getting poorer, but many of them having to go out of the game altogether.
Does all of this effect the game as a spectator sport, how it looks? Do you think that’s changed at all? Yes. I do again, because, today particularly in what we now call the premier league, that was the first division, by and large the important thing now is to stay in that division and to survive effectively at any cost literally at any cost. That means that you’ve got to win. And to me it maybe perhaps be an old-fashioned view. But sport is not about necessarily winning, but it’s competing and if you lose occasionally, that’s something that you must accommodate. Today, winning is crucial. Winning by one goal is all at matters. And so much of the flare and creativity has gone because there is so much a stake and that has definitely affected the game for the worse. |