Her Britannic Majesty’s former Ambassador to Aden is reported to have once remarked to the then Home Secretary George Brown that the enduring global legacy of the British Empire would be football and the instruction f*** off!
It appears that His Excellency was right on both counts.
This week a prominent teacher laid into professional sportsmen on the basis that, in an age where just about every remotely significant sports event is televised, their behaviour is setting an appalling example to the children.
It’s difficult to disagree with him. He cited rugby players who stamp on opponents when they think they can get away with it, cricketers who refuse to walk when they know full well they are out, and footballers….
Well, footballers come into a category of their own when it comes to conduct unbecoming and each week the English Premier League provides a perfect example of how Britain has influenced the world.
Although Sepp Blatter has concluded that China was the birthplace of football, the rest of us tend to go along with the notion that it was the Brits what done it. The presence of teams called Arsenal and Everton in various South American leagues shows the British influence and many Italian clubs have British antecedence.
That said, its interesting to note that the British role in the development of soccer is more marked outside those countries which were mainstays of the Empire.
The Premier League has attracted stars from every continent. In fact, it would come as no surprise if, when the first Martian arrives on earth, he’s met by Sam Allardyce waving a contract for a season’s loan.
But the point is this. Whether players are from Leicester or La Paz, Derby or Dortmund, Manchester or Melbourne, their ability to adopt British phraseology is truly remarkable. Within hours of leaving the airport they are all fluent, not just in f*** off! but a range of other useful terms and phrases, some of which are derivatives of the original - often making reference to mothers or the anatomy – while others concentrate on the potential for self satisfaction.
How do we know all this? Because we see it on television and you don’t need a degree in advanced lip reading to realise how much referees and opponents have to put up with.
But while the Ambassador was right about footy and the F-word he omitted one other British gift to the world.
Tomorrow England play the West Indies in the final of the ICC Champions Trophy, a sort of World Cup lite of one-day cricket.
The competition has been typical of international championships in developing sports. The imbalance between the major Test playing nations and the rest is so pronounced that many of the early games were no-contests and the ICC cannot have been surprised that ticket sales were poor, and that the British media tended to snooze its way through the opening rounds.
But in the quarter-finals things started to get interesting. They paired India and Pakistan in a renewal of one of world sport’s great sporting rivalries, a rivalry made more intense by the fact that, on a more serious level, the countries seem to have spent most of the last 20 years on the brink of lobbing seriously life-threatening weapons at each other.
When India plays Pakistan cricket changes character by shedding the last vestiges of its British roots. Sub continental cricket takes you about as far as it is possible to get from village greens, polite applause, cucumber sandwiches and old men snoozing their way through County Championship games at those lovely grounds like Canterbury and Worcester. I should point out that this last reference is to spectators rather than players.
In India cricket is the national passion, loved and obsessed over in the same way that fans in Europe love and obsess over their football teams. Consequently, the leading players are superstars whose status and comparative earning power equals that of many of the stars of soccer and big league US sports.
There’s evidence of this fascination in the battle that is currently underway for the rights to televise the Indian cricket team’s home games in the coming years. The competition has been so fierce that it’s ended up in the courts and no matter who wins the Indian cricket board is a sure-fire winner.
The bid currently on the table is in excess of $300million, which may not be big bananas compared to, say, the NFL’s broadcast deal, but it is a huge increase on what has been paid before. Critically, it is a reflection of the importance of sport in selling new TV opportunities to the Indian public that, despite huge poverty that remains in the country, is beginning to benefit from the country’s newly vibrant economy.
While India has some way to go before it begins to generate the same kind of excitement as China among the commercial community, it is, at the very least, a tiger in the making.
It will be interesting to see the extent to which sport is deployed in the marketing battles as brands from around the world home in on India to make sure of their share of this new wealth. While cricket will surely take the lions’ share, this would seem to be an opportune time to be building interest in other sports to create marketing opportunities beyond the crease.
This weekend also sees the first Formula One Grand Prix to be staged in China. The circuit in Shanghai looks simply breathtaking and the leading drivers say they’re thrilled with the circuit.
It’s a shame, therefore, that Formula One itself appears more than ever beset with internal difficulties.
Having pulled Jaguar from F1 at the end of this season, parent company Ford has decided not to continue to support the Cosworth company which supplies engines at discounted rates to teams including Minardi and Jordan. Both of these teams are already experiencing financial difficulties and the fear is that the Cosworth issue could be the last straw.
F1 now faces the prospect of starting next season with fewer teams, and with many of those still in the competition unhappy about the way that revenues generated from television and marketing are shared out. Even the head of Ferrari has made noises questioning their willingness to continue in the long-term unless the teams get a bigger slice of the pie.
This, naturally, raises the spectre of a breakaway series led by the major manufacturers, a threat which has hung over the sport for so long there is a danger that it will cease to be taken seriously. Yet it remains a credible and important position, even if only for the purposes of sabre rattling and exerting some kind of control. In fact, it is in many ways like the relationship the G14 soccer clubs have with UEFA.
Whatever. It is a matter for some sadness that, on a weekend when F1 should be celebrating its new stage in China and looking to a bright future, it remains beset by standard issue difficulties.
