Yes. Odd though that people only ever have that particular insight when it's football, don't they. I mean, nobody ever says it about the Festival, do they. Or Bowmore. And I've never heard of anybody mentioning it to the Amex people or the Lincoln Motor Company.
Indeed, mine own wife and daughters have found a delightful little cafe somewhere about, who, in their infinite sense of goodwill and generosity of spirit, will let you have an espresso for just €15. Yet your wise words there simply didn't seem to occur to anyone who was present.
As I say, very odd.
"Plenty of strikers can score goals," he said, gesturing to the famous old stands casting shadows around us.
"But a lot have found it difficult wearing the number 9 shirt for The Arsenal."
I have no problem with pricing the product at the market rate but this seems to me to be deliberately excluding the supporters of the competing clubs, which will surely prove counter-productive when the TV audience is disappointed by the lack of atmosphere on display, and ceases to cough quite so enthusastically for the product?
And holidn ithe final in a country which cannot guarantee the safety of one of our players because of his nationality is just mind-boggling.
Oh, that's all irrelevant nowadays, I'm afraid. The game has so many alternative revenue streams that no-one cares about the atmosphere at the ground. Even if they just fill the place up with global sportswear, hotel chain and airline marketing company junketeers on a sort of busman's holiday, that'll do.
Maybe the developments passed us by but the fact is that hardly anybody actually watches football matches on television anymore, yet interest in and information about, even involvement in said games has apparently never been higher.
You can sit down in front of your Panasonic TV in your Nike socks and follow it on Twitter at the same time and bet on the outcome on your iphone while checking for decent car insurance deals on your Sony laptop and sipping a Heineken or a Pepsi, paying for your pizza delivery with your Mastercard, watching a movie on Netflix. The fact is, you are contributing to Mesut Özil's wages whether you can actually be bothered to watch him aimlessly, pointlessly stroll about the pitch or not. Football is merely the honey pot that attracts all the money.
Last edited by redgunamo; 05-16-2019 at 08:52 AM.
"Plenty of strikers can score goals," he said, gesturing to the famous old stands casting shadows around us.
"But a lot have found it difficult wearing the number 9 shirt for The Arsenal."