LLook at a photograph of the crowd at the 1923 FA Cup Final and almost everyone is wearing a cap. Fast forward a quarter of a century and a rough estimate would be that just under half the crowd at the 1948 finale is similarly dressed. Flash forward another 25 years to 1973 and although Sunderland manager Bob Stokoe topped off his tracksuit-and-mac look with a trilby, hardly anyone in the Wembley stands has their heads covered.
In the unlikely event that anyone in the first Wembley Cup final thought of the matter, it is doubtful that they would have believed that bareheading would become the norm. And yet, over the course of half a century, men stopped wearing hats. Things change, often unexpectedly, and aspects of life that we take for granted can disappear, almost unnoticed.
Football today, as David Goldblatt argues in The Age of Football, is the most universal cultural mode that has ever existed, eagerly consumed around the world. It is everywhere, a badge of identity, a tool of dictators, our universal entertainment. But could there be a future where that supremacy fades?
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Real Madrid president Florentino Pérez keeps telling us that football is losing ground among young people but, given that his claim comes amid his defense of a European Super League and his reluctance to publish any data to prove his claim It’s hard to know how much credit it deserves.
What is clear is that across the pyramid more people now watch football in the UK than ever before, that TV rights deals have never been higher and that even if FIFA’s claim that 3,572 millions of people watched the last World Cup final is obvious nonsense. , it was the kind of number that could only be bettered by a presidential assassination, a worldwide benefit concert, or a human walking on Mars. But nothing lasts forever, and as we approach a World Cup so morally questionable that some refuse to look, it’s worth asking what it would take for soccer to lose its dominant position.
Most cultural modes vanish due to technology. Music hall and theater gave way to radio and movies, which gave way to television, which may now be in the process of giving way to streaming platforms. Newspapers tremble before the internet. Even the hat dwindled with mass car ownership, as people spent less time outdoors.
However, technology, in general, has only improved the control of soccer in global culture. First the radio and then the TV have broadcast it throughout the nations and then throughout the world. The expansion has not been without its consequences: the fear until the 1990s was that the broadcasting of matches would reduce attendance at stadiums. As absurd as it may seem in the context of the modern Premier League, it has proven suitable in many other countries where the preference is to watch the big European leagues on TV rather than attend the games.
Barely bareheaded to be seen as Billy the police white horse helps hold off the crowd that spills onto the pitch at the 1923 FA Cup Final. Photography: Hulton Getty
Social networks have ensured that the conversation about football continues, the banality, offense or illusion of much of the speech less relevant than its volume. Perhaps Perez is right and the younger generation is too distracted by TikTok and Fortnite to bother watching Real Madrid beat Real Mallorca or Elche, but, without seeing the evidence of it, it doesn’t feel that way.
But sometimes freaks just lose popularity. Speaking about Elon Musk’s troubled takeover of Twitter, tech strategist Gareth Edwards outlined his “thermocline of confidence” theory. A thermocline is the narrow transition layer in a body of water between the surface, where waves keep the temperature relatively warm, and the much cooler water below. It is where the temperature drops suddenly.
Edwards’s theory is that a social media company, for example, can keep going, making money, enduring small increases in cost or decreases in service until suddenly a critical mass of frustration is reached and users abandon the platform, after which it is almost impossible to restore trust, especially since users have migrated elsewhere. “The greater the role that emotional commitment plays in the product,” she explains, “the greater the risk of a catastrophic loss of trust.”
Hats, which had been essential for keeping warm, became largely decorative, and thus their symbolic significance became more apparent, particularly to a generation whose wartime service had resented them for the status they afforded. they conferred It becomes a lot easier to reject those rank displays when your head isn’t cool and a lot of other people are rejecting them too.
Could something similar happen with football? Consider this World Cup. There is disgust at the corruption of FIFA, at the feeling of greed, at the perception that the game is being used as propaganda.
If the football is poor (and due to fatigue and lack of preparation time it is a clear possibility) and the experience on the ground – the expense, the absence of games on local television, the lack of recreational options in a crowded city visitors, intrusive policing – no fun, could that dampen enthusiasm for tournaments? Could the lack of atmosphere, the monotony on and off the pitch, reduce television audiences and therefore broadcast revenue?
A Welsh fan wearing a bucket hat with badges. Photograph: Matthew Ashton/AMA/Getty Images
Perhaps, although it seems a long way. But then, if the Conmebol nations are, as has been suggested, admitted to the UEFA Nations League in 2024, there would be a clear alternative to the World Cup, a space to migrate to.
In club play, the case that the three from the European Super League have brought against Uefa under competition law represents a potential risk. If Uefa’s position is found to be a monopoly, could there be a multi-jurisdictional split similar to boxing? Then there would not only be spaces for fans to migrate, but a dilution of the product, and as dubious as the way in which the modern Champions League distributes wealth and enriches the already rich, the product itself is in its later stages. it is undeniably of exceptional quality.
Any threat to soccer feels unlikely, but that’s the nature of thermoclines: when the temperature drops, it drops abruptly. The current hegemony should not be taken for granted. Soccer is still extraordinarily popular, but this World Cup may put it to the test. And no cultural mode can afford to ignore the fact that men sometimes stop wearing hats.
Source: news.google.com