On Football, Localism and Pub Pianos

Turning away from some sentimental attachments is an act of hope and dignity.

When I was growing up in north east Wales, you were for Liverpool or Manchester United. At school, you would laboriously write their name in Tippex on your pencil case or (parents’ permitting or indifferent) on your school bag. There were the lesser options of Everton or Manchester City but I never heard class mates chanting their name in the playground. The only local club was Wrexham FC, which was regarded more with affection and regional loyalty than any degree of fervour. None of us had access to attend matches, being minors and not living nearby.

I supported Liverpool because I went there more often. I hardly knew anything of Manchester. Also, I was imprinted with the glory of LFC’s rampage through cups, championships and league in the late 1970s and early 1980s. So often were Liverpool FC’s Scottish players (Souness, Dalglish, Hansen) interviewed on the Saturday afternoon sports digest on television that in early childhood (before I moved to Wales) I conceived that Liverpool must be the where the English, Welsh and Scottish borders intersected. In my mind the fearsome and glorious post of Liverpool must have been some kind of Celtic Berlin, divided between the three nations.

I tuned in to radio commentary on football matches and one of my most enduring memories of 1998-2000 is being in the studio in the evening, painting as the FM radio signal swelled and sank like a mighty tanker riding colossal waves. Ginola and Berger would weave their magic, as I sat painting my canvas of a squatting nude or snowy landscape. The culmination of my time following them was the spectacular European Champions League victory in 2005.

When I moved to Berlin in 2007 I could no longer follow games, but my drifting away was a more fundamental shift. For a while I had been feeling more uneasy about the relationship between fans and clubs. When I followed LFC, a good number of its players were local to Merseyside. Aldridge, Fowler, McManaman, Carragher, Gerrard and almost all were British. I thought that the devotion of fans to their local club was not reciprocated. Increasingly, I saw the exploitative pricing of tickets and merchandise, timing matches for media coverage rather than regular attendees and (above all) the influx of foreign players as the operations of businesses that took loyalty for granted and offered nothing in return. It seemed perverse to see lifelong supporters screaming the names of players who had no attachment to place or club and could barely speak the language. The disparity between the bare-chested woad-bedaubed hordes, issuing blood-chilling war cries and millionaire mercenaries on the pitch, diving and faking injuries could hardly have been starker. It moved beyond the preposterous to the grotesque when stadiums changed their names and teams changed their colours. By the time Newcastle United fans were waving the Saudi flag (following the 2021 investment by the Saudi Arabia national wealth fund) my doubts were confirmed. It was demonstration enough of how blinded fans had become. I saw from a distance the anti-racism campaigns, acts of BLM solidarity and the push for equality for women’s football. It was clear how political creep was infiltrating this sphere of male activity, consecutively seeking openings, requesting entry, demanding recognition, ordering submission.

I had cause to reflect on this as news reports came last week of the Muslim call to prayer being played at stadiums in England and matches interrupted to allow Muslim players to break their fasts. Coming only weeks after a senior financier of Manchester United was excoriated for claiming his homeland was being colonised, the irony seemed lost on many. Indeed, it seems likely they did allow themselves to perceive the connection between the two episodes. The counter to multi-cultural internationalism and the division-dissolving solvent of international finance is localism. I imagine if I had still been invested in football, I would long previously have transferred my loyalty – or at least my support and attention, for one never forgoes childhood loyalties – to smaller clubs, more local ones. The smaller the club, the closer it is to its roots. Players are local because there is no budget for foreigners. At amateur level, there’s no money at all and one plays for loyalty, honour and personal satisfaction and supporters attend (doggedly, grudgingly, in a long-suffering manner) for similar reasons.

Yet it is difficult to adjust one’s standards. When you have spent years watching the world’s best players performing in your local(ish) stadium, it is hard to go down to the sports ground and watch amateurs hoofing the ball across crumpled turf in front of a crowd in the dozens. Localism requires effort, sacrifice even, but nothing changes (either in the world, in yourself or in your local community) unless you commit to action.

It reminds me of pub pianos. In the past there was a tradition of the upright piano in the saloon of the local public house, which was played by any gifted (or enthusiastic) local, with or without accompaniment. I have been visiting pubs for forty years and have never yet heard a piano played when it was not part of a planned musical performance, usually by a band. In most pubs the piano was long ago replaced by the jukebox. Now, ironically, it is the flat-screen television showing sports that blazes and thunders where the local pianist once sat.

When the pub pianist (and the church organist) was the closest one got to good musicianship, one enjoyed that standard of entertainment without criticism and without the opportunity to seek better. Likewise, when people played music at home before the advent of the gramophone and radio, you had little to measure them against. In days when we have access to a vast range of musicianship at the highest level, recorded in crystal clarity and available instantly, who has the patience for a drunk Johnny hammering out maudlin ballads on an untuned piano? It is undoubtedly a good thing – a luxury former generations would have wondered at – to have the best musicians in the world perform for us individually upon request.

But that is not the point, I suspect. The point of communal music making is sharing and contributing – or choosing not to – just as the point of local sports is seeing your mates play well or badly, overcome an obstacle or fall short. The point of making your own art or watching a friend or child make their own art is the activity, because that activity brings purpose and dignity to life. The results are meaningful to you. It is true that you can form a meaningful attachment to Turner’s Fighting Temeraire over a lifetime, just as you can love a picture your child makes you. Neither is superior, both having different levels of valence. Due to reproduction, one can love a picture more than any other even though one has never seen the original. In the same way we can love a dazzling goal or save in football, seen and re-seen on the television, but it means more if we have played in a match and seen something similar or if we have achieved the feat ourselves.

Localism, if it means anything at all, means forging a connection with something in our life in a way that is unmediated. Yes, true, that could be attending a game at Anfield and seeing an unexpected victory but imagine seeing a similar turn of events but it is with your friends and neighbours playing and watching and you saw it at the sports ground you grew up playing on. Your friends at the local group exhibition do not match Manet and Constable but they do not work any less hard or believe less. And they are your friends and they are not dead. You will have plenty of time to regret not visiting their studios or buying a trifling watercolour once they are gone, so forego that by putting in a little effort now, while they and you can appreciate that act.

In terms of absolute standards, you may be losing out but in other important ways you are gaining. Your presence at a local event is more important to the participants and to you than your direct (or more likely) indirect consumption of a mass event. Your money makes more of an impact locally. You have more of an influence on matters. You mean more. Localism is more than pitting yourself against outside interference in your culture and the dilution of your tribe and place; it creates meaning. Turning your back on the world when the world has already turned its back on you is an appropriate and dignified act of honest appreciation of your circumstances. And that has to mean something.