Half time to be extended...?

Unfortunately for Mike Ashley, only the sponsors of his Newcastle United team got bailed out by the UK government

Looks like the boardroom cabal is at it again...

"In the week when the Allen Stanford scandal led to widespread accusations of cricket 'selling its soul for cash', football authorities have come under fire for plotting to extend the half-time interval in matches, apparently for commercial reasons."

What they're talking about is adding an additional five minutes to the current half time break, which is 15 minutes long. Doesn't sound like much, but all credit to the fans who see that slippery slope coming, and are at the very least reluctant to let this change happen.

I'm sure a lot of the fears come from comparisons with the bad examples that already exist- namely the fear that top level football will begin to resemble its US namesake, with ad breaks during substitutions and after goals. Remember what happened when ITV tried to sneak in a few ads into the Liverpool-Everton FA Cup match earlier this month (expecting a penalty shootout, no doubt)?

Yep, fans like me are obviously angry about these latest developments... but can anyone really have any illusions about football in this respect? When Man United run on to the pitch with the AIG logo emblazoned across their shirts, when Bolton play a home fixture at the Reebok Stadium, or Celtic gear up for the fourth round of the CIS Insurance cup, does anyone really think that that top-level football in the big commercial leagues like England hasn't already "sold its soul for cash" a long, long time ago?

Política

Publicizing this blog among folks I know almost always imbues a certain response: "Football and politics? How are they related?" The bigger question is, of course, the relationship between sports and politics. The sophomoric socialist in me is quite tempted to respond with platitudes: The personal is political!

I'm hoping the posts in this blog will prove our point, that sports aren’t just mindless entertainment. There’s so much more. There’s politics, economics, unity and racism; elements and contradictions of society apparent on a playing field.

On a related note, The Guardian has a great summarizing article about the politics of football and how, historically, they have tended to gravitate left-wing. It's extremely difficult to argue that point now, especially considering the billion dollar business of English football, but Barney raises some good points:

British football is ahead of the rest of the world here. Lyons [editor of When Saturday Comes, the UK's only independent national football magazine] believes that in other countries players are not only more openly political, but possibly also have a greater bond with their supporters. "You find in countries where the working classes tend to be more political, such as Argentina, where there is still a strong trade union movement, there tends to be more of a sense of communal identity," he says. "Society is perhaps based around older social patterns that no longer exist here, such as heavy industry. In among these, football is one of the forces that bind people together."

Check out the rest of the article. While I appreciate the sentiment, I'm really glad politics in football isn't limited to Thierry Henry sporting a Che Guevara shirt.