Politics and Personality in Sport: In the Commercial Era, Does Tradition Matter?

by Chris Woolfrey

In the last piece I wrote for Just Football I retold the story of Matthias Sindelar, the Austrian footballer who symbolised, in part, a nation’s defiance of their Nazi occupiers; an archetype of Austria’s considered and poetic passing game. Sindelar represented not only the Austrian football team but Austria’s intelligentsia and their consciousness expressed through sport.

And this kind of argument, that certain players can represent the central identity of a team, abounds: in the game’s relatively short history the idea that certain teams are tied to the personality of one player – that player in turn representing certain assumptions of character about his team – is something we hear all the time. We’ve had Pele’s Brazil and Maradona’s Argentina, the France of Zidane or Platini, and club teams like Gerrard’s Liverpool and Shearer’s Newcastle, Messi’s Barcelona, or Di Stefano’s Madrid.

And in these flashes of personality clubs, through professionals as well as fans, find traditions which govern later managerial appointments and signings, plus styles of play; clubs, as well as nations, come to expect a way of playing that is perceived as embodying in some way the community that allows for the existence of the team through financial and emotional support.

Take Spain’s top two clubs. Florentino Perez, who in two terms as Real Madrid club president (2000-2006 and 2009-present) perhaps best optimises the notion that as Spain’s royalist team – the clue is in the name, and the Spanish constitution protects their existence; theoretically they can never go bankrupt – the club represents the Spanish status quo, and the centre-right. His galacticos policy, in which he signed not only the world’s best players but also the most well known, is a pertinent symbol of the free market capitalist, putting faith in a system in which individualist competitiveness might give rise to increasing success, an increasing will to win and to outshine one’s team-mates as well as opponents.

Met in 2008 by Josep Guardiola’s Barcelona team, Spanish football’s oldest political rivalry went some way towards re-ignition, with the former midfielder constructing a team that proposes a collective passing game over individual talents – despite his side being arguably the most talented in the world – that echoed in football form the long tradition of socialist politics expounded in Catalonia.

Ostensibly, political foils here arise from more extreme political situations; just as the Sindelar story heightens mythic tensions because of the heightened nature of the situation, the rivalry between Barcelona and Madrid has its roots not only in the Spanish Civil War but in the dictatorship of Franco in general. After all, the stronger the defining forces in any given culture, the more strongly people need to define themselves as being either for or against it.

In that way, footballing tradition and identity takes on an acute meaning. But, and particularly in a commercial setting, can the same be said of less politically-minded histories? In England, too, so-called tradition has seen resurgence; Kenny Dalglish’s reappointment at Liverpool represents recourse to a certain myth of identity surrounding the Merseyside club. Pundits have drawn on Dalglish’s notable change in style, with Liverpool reportedly playing with more attacking panache than had been seen under his predecessor, Roy Hodgson, and so returning to “the Liverpool way”.

The feeling is that, regardless of any tangible success, the return of what owner John W. Henry called “the third of our three great managers” is also a return to a tradition, starting with Bill Shankly and ending with Dalglish via Bob Paisley, from which the board maybe departed with the appointments of Gerard Houllier, Rafael Benitez and Roy Hodgson.

To that extent Liverpool, perhaps, have put the cart before the horse: success at the club came through that style and tradition but that style and tradition will not dictate success, as is evident in Dalglish’s tweaking of formations and personnel; at the time of writing, Liverpool are one of the most in form teams in England but that hasn’t arisen simply from recourse to old styles but because of a hybrid blend of circumstance, history, innovation and pragmatism.

And yet it would seem that Liverpool fans, not to mention a number of journalists, have celebrated the appointment not so much because of what it could do for the side’s on-pitch success but because it realigns Liverpool with that tradition.

The Icon, the Myth: Can a Club Really Inherit a Culture?

How useful, then, are these myths of identity and iconography? And can they really harbour or even override that much-looked for success, so much more important in this hyper-commercial era of the Game?

Fans of course would generally argue for a sense of identity as being integral to their clubs. Newcastle United supporters have famously vowed never to let boring football sully the soil at St. James’ Park and plenty of managers have fallen foul of this orthodoxy. Since Keegan took the team to second in 1997 various managers, including league winning current-Liverpool-miracle-worker Dalglish, tried and failed to produce success as well as what fans perceived to be a style that aligned the club with its identity; fans wanted flowing, attacking football – and quick.

Sam Allardyce, perhaps, was the biggest victim; despite beginning his first season respectfully, and especially given the club’s continuing downward trend, his style – tied to the bullishness with which he had done so well at Bolton – never won over the crowd. Given that within 12 months they’d be relegated, his treatment was harsh. But his counter-attacking, defensive, long-ball football would never be in keeping with the “Newcastle style”, and Newcastle fans throughout were clear: it was the attacking brand they wanted. Success, though, was a different matter.

Success Reigns Supreme: Why Only Winners are privileged with Identity

Might the same be in store for Kenny Dalglish in his second term at Liverpool? Would Liverpool fans similarly take a lack of success over a return to the “Liverpool brand”?

One would assume that the answer is no; success, today, is too important. For fans, not to mention owners – whose operations more than ever require a business mind – the cost of a lack of success is too much to pay; indeed, if one looks to more effective tales of myth and heroism in the modern game it springs from unlikely escape acts, teams ground down and under fire, like Avram Grant’s Portsmouth team, and yet despite reaching the FA Cup final and showing, perhaps, that money didn’t rule the sport, Portsmouth still suffered a financial crisis from which they will perhaps never recover. It was a fairy-tale run, but it battered the club: now, the club barely exists.

No, commercial interests quell these myths of cultural identity. After all, while Guardiola’s Barcelona side might be reminiscent of a Catalonian socialist aesthetic, is it not true that club president Joan Laporta spends on a par with rivals Real Madrid? To be sure, Barcelona fans, nor the critics who lavish such praise on the current squad, would sing their praises if, in playing the way they did, they reached limited success; just as Wenger’s Arsenal, whose side perhaps most closely resembles that aesthetic, are accused of a naive ‘romanticism’ in the face of several silverware-less years.

Clearly, then, success is something to do with the algorithm: in Manchester United’s 1999 treble winning side, nobody would attribute symbolic status to David May (though that’s a shame: he was according to many reports an excellent presence in the dressing room) and equally nobody even thinks to discuss cultural identity in relation to mediocre teams. When did anybody last try to define the overarching character of the top leagues’ mid-table clubs?

How Letting the Commercial into Football Destroys and Makes Tradition: And Why We Should Worry

Indeed, it seems that the more the sport becomes a business the less true character – it’s often falsely attributed – is easy to find. A hypothesis, then: in extreme situations, footballers and football teams serve as foils for counter-cultural movements, regardless of success. While in an increasingly commercialised and less politically volatile climate, on-pitch success defines a kind of false character which apes what’s found in these extreme situations.

Dalglish is a perfect example here: it was his quality as a player and his success as a manager which defined the style of play that he propagates as legitimate. Jose Mourinho, whose Chelsea team always played relatively boring football, legitimised that identity through success, and anybody who followed it at the club could fall in with that tradition more easily than, say, Allardyce did with his slow start at Newcastle. Keegan elevated the club using a certain style, and while that style didn’t necessarily bring that success, it will now, for many years, be perceived as inspiring it.

Generally, though, the remit for these traditions is false: as Mourinho showed, it is results that matter, and business stability cries out for it. Perhaps that isn’t a bad thing. While it would seem that the commercial aspect of the game is forever alienating fans and players from these traditions, it would be reactionary to claim that clubs and fans defining themselves through on-pitch success – and it’s important to remember that “on-pitch” means “commercial” – was a bad thing.

After all, while it may seem sad to think that sport has little to do with politics or society, it’s a better outcome than a scenario in which extreme or tragic social and political climates give culture and sport a reason to entwine.

In light of that, to say that Sindelar’s story is in some respects romantic and exceptional but in more respects an undesirable thing is only to speak the truth. If our political and social climate does not allow such stories, however much that removes sport from the cultural arena, could only ever be positive.

Let’s be thankful, then, that Sindelar was able to defy the way that he did. Let’s also be thankful that Steven Gerrard, Lionel Messi, Kenny Dalglish, Alan Shearer et al., are not Matthias Sindelars.

Chris Woolfrey is a new contributor to Just Football. Find him on Twitter @chriswoolfrey

FC Barcelona, Kenny Dalglish, Liverpool, Newcastle United, Politics and Society, Real Madrid