I am seeing some phoney 'analysis' of power within football. Local fans aren't the 'workers' in football. We are the consumers. We buy a product either at the gate, or through merchandise, or indirectly buying the televised product from a retailer, the media, who is in effect the distributor of the product. The owners of clubs are the capitalists, the players (and ground staff) are the workers as supervised/overseen/managed by football coaches.
It's very interesting therefore to see that the football workers have been excluded from a debate (and the government intervention) as to how the owners operate their leagues (trading cartels, if you like). Are oil workers represented when OPEC meet? (I don't know, but I would doubt it. Prove me wrong!)
In Feb 2020, Johnson said that he was against 'market segregation' in his approach to Covid. Why now is he in favour of government intervention in football? And if he believes now in bringing all parties together, why aren't players represented at the meeting?
As I've said, I distrust the phoney localism going on defending something that doesn't exist in the top flight anymore: the local link between players and fans. Premier League teams are made up of an international cadre of 'workers'. The great heroes of the team I support have had no more than a tiny handful of north London players over the last 20 years.
As someone has pointed out to me, if the issue is really 'let's support localism', then why isn't the government rushing in to support local libraries, post offices, pubs, high streets? So neither in the publicly owned sphere or the small business sphere is the government really in favour of 'the local'.
This is window-dressing.
