Tradition, disruption and domestic competitions abroad –

‘Tradition’ is a notoriously ubiquitous and therefore often rather empty label in the world of football. The term is used relentlessly in the discourse surrounding the game to justify, condone and condemn all things deemed appropriate by the user. While finding any consensus on what such a Tradition (capitalizing the word feels appropriate because it is always a singular and ultimate category, often preceded by a solemn ‘the’) entails seems quite pointless, it is easier to reach broad agreement on anything beyond the boundaries of the Tradition. In a process marked by the homogenizing tendencies of neoliberalism, there is a consistent push towards an obsessive commercialization of the game and an almost complete gentrification of the socio-cultural space it used to occupy.

This process goes against the many cherished ideals that football as a tradition celebrates. Football has long been a product and a profitable one at that, but never before has it been necessary to remove the product from its immediate heterogeneous context to make it suitable for a global market. In this process, football, at least at the highest level, is losing the rustic charm and uniqueness it still had, and is becoming increasingly uniform. That marketable uniformity has become a hallmark of top-flight football at its most profitable and inevitably most soulless form, utterly unrecognizable in what was once, despite its imperfections, called the people’s game.

UEFA’s ‘reluctant’ acceptance of the proposal to organize ‘domestic’ league matches outside the country (more precisely, outside the continent) finally opens a Pandora’s box. The concept of a fair competition based on home and away matches has been the basis of the football league system. This decision puts an end to what was once one of the strictest non-negotiables in the game. That’s why it’s unnerving to hear La Liga president Javier Tebas emphatically claim that this seismic change has somehow been in keeping with the game’s tradition, rather than betraying it. Tebas has long been an unapologetic crusader when it comes to organizing domestic competitions internationally.

The lucrative markets of West Asia and the US offer a great opportunity to narrow the widening gap between the commercial juggernaut that is the Premier League and the rest. This divide is perpetuated and widened by the massive broadcasting deals that the Premier League has due to its reputation for selling the best product in the live football market. The Premier League’s global reach is a matter of envy and inspiration for the rest of the top five leagues, which are home to teams regarded as powerhouses in club football, but who are consistently and massively outspent (which is broadly equivalent to being outplayed, QED) by even mid-tier Premier League players.

In such an environment where commercialization enables inequality and that inequality becomes the justification for ever-increasing commercialization, Tebas’s claims about adherence to tradition do not sound like mere rhetorical flourish. It sounds rather ominous. What we see before our eyes is a reinterpretation of what football traditions are made of. Such reinterpretations have certainly happened before. Football is thought to uphold a wide range of different ideals throughout its fascinating historical trajectory. But never before has Tradition been defined by blatant disruption.

The sense of community that the game has prided itself on for more than a century and a half, something so inherent in the discourse surrounding the game, has lived a celebrated life. In the past, and not so long ago, most players from a top club came from the local catchment area. Today that seems like an otherworldly prospect. What still seems integral is the presence of local fans. Football clubs are entities that are fundamentally representative of local communities, but such a status seems incompatible with the globalizing trend at the top level of the sport.

Rising ticket prices, an emphasis on corporate hospitality offerings, a matchday experience tailored to the needs of tourists – all this points to the growing distance between the clubs operating at the highest level of the game and the people of the local communities who have sustained them and who in turn have been represented by them for so long. Organizing competitions on another continent feels like a natural and deeply unfortunate continuation of such a process of alienation. No wonder Tebas alluded to the logic of exports when justifying his claim that it would conform to tradition. It is essentially an economic logic, a logic that is even more ridiculous because it paradoxically claims to be a tool for mitigating the consequences of the system it actively maintains.

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