If we could make a perfect football, would it look like real professional football? With game days almost around the clock, subscription championships, clubs in the hands of investors, with perfidious pressure to perform even from the e-youth? Many fans are dissatisfied with the state of their favorite sport, but very few have a vision of what a different kind of football could look like. In her book “Futopia”, Alina Schwermer has collected dozens of revolutionary concepts that could fundamentally change football. In an interview with ntv.de, the sports journalist talks about how to abolish the DFB and give children back the fun of the game – and she explains why a “Fridays for Football” is needed.
ntv.de: “A system that so many are dissatisfied with should actually be on its last legs,” you write in your book “Futopia”. What keeps the real professional football alive, even though so many fans are said to be fed up with subscription Bavaria and the World Cup in Qatar?
Schwermer sees football facing major challenges.
Alina Schwermer: I think the criticism is important, but it remains relatively superficial. Hardly anyone can imagine fundamental changes, there are no ideas or utopias. The 12 richest clubs in Europe take in more sponsorship money than all the other 700 top division clubs combined and the only answer is redistribution. But then we only treat the symptoms and don’t start at the levers. We don’t ask: why do we have a football that is financed by private sponsors and investors? You could do that in a completely different way. Why do we play in a repression system with constant fear of relegation, why do we reward victory instead of cooperation or creativity?
A second problem is the extreme resistance from within football, because not only the big ones but also the medium-sized players are profiteers and the small ones don’t want to annoy the big ones.
There were attempts at reform, see “financial fair play”, to rein in financial doping by sheikhs and other oligarchs. Wasn’t that successful?
Depends on what you were hoping for. The “financial fair play” had demonstrable effects – clubs make profits, bankruptcies are prevented. But people were expecting more even competition and it’s a sham in that aspect. Firstly, because UEFA and Co. have no interest in alienating investors. And secondly, because the starting conditions are extremely unequal even when fair play works, then economically strong locations benefit.
Alina Schwermer, born in 1991, is a freelance sports journalist for the taz, Jungle World and Deutsche Welle, among others. Her focus is on the intersections of sport, politics and society.
So with such superficial reforms, we keep reproducing the same outcome, and then instead of working on the levers, we try to change the outcome.
“Football is a school for the omnipotence of money,” you write – and not only call for better redistribution, but less money in the overall system. So football should be avoided. Who would want that?
Actually, 99 percent of Germans should want that, including the fans. If you look at how much money is spent in this system… BVB alone has spent 1.3 billion euros on transfers in the last ten years, which is sick. For comparison: In the women’s Champions League, they play pretty good football for moderate salaries. All the money is not necessary at all, it only flows because of the competitive situation for players and place in the table. And we all bear the costs, not only through TV subscriptions and entrance fees, but also through the corporations that invest the money in football sponsorship instead of in meaningful areas. Not to mention the costs of police operations, environmental costs and so on. Because, as usual, the profits are privatized and the costs are socialized, the clubs have no interest in change, so the movement must come from within society.
You don’t trust the associations either. “Fundamental changes only go against the associations – or over your dead body,” you write. How do you abolish the DFB?
First of all, one has to be aware that historically, associations are a relatively new construct, without it having worked very well. Of course, it is currently unrealistic for another association to exist permanently alongside the DFB, but temporary associations would be a good alternative. The DFB makes a lot of sense from really representing everyone. If you take that from him, you put pressure on him. Something like this has happened again and again over the past 100 years. The DFB and others have no interest in telling these stories – but without the struggle of individual women’s associations or associations of black players, the currently increasing equality in sport would be unthinkable. Something like that can be an effective means of pressure, similar to the Super League threats from the rich clubs: we set up an association, we make clear demands, if they are not met, we will not come back.
There is hope for women in football and since the last FIFA Congress that hope has had a name: Lise Klaveness. But they fear that women’s football could repeat the same mistakes as men. Why?
A few days ago I interviewed the captain of Carl Zeiss Jena, who have just been relegated from the women’s Bundesliga, which is incredibly unbalanced, even more so than the men. I asked whether it wouldn’t make sense to create a pool for the clubs that don’t have a men’s Bundesliga team behind them. Her answer was: Would be nice for us, but the big ones worked for it. And that from a team that has just been relegated without a chance! The problem is that the women and girls have also grown up in the current football and economic system and are very strongly influenced by it.
Because you address Lise Klaveness: Of course, the gender equality debate is changing as a result of the struggles, and because women see it differently. Very many are not yet millionaires and have not been part of this power structure for more than 100 years. They see the injustice a bit more clearly and critically. But many want to copy the men because it’s the fastest promise of visibility – and that’s more important to them than designing another model. Also: Expecting a “civilizing effect” from women is a bit naïve. A boss Donata Hopfen does not make the DFL a cooler place either.
Real change could not only start on a small scale, but also with the little ones – but in youth football, coaches and parents often passionately resist any attempt to take the pressure off. They point out variants: games without winners, or “Football 3”, where the rules for the actual game are first discussed together.
Children’s sport is increasingly permeated by performance, it actually works like adult sport and is organized by club groups. VW should never run a school, but VfL Wolfsburg should run a youth academy.
Why are we allowing this? Why doesn’t society get upset when profit-oriented football companies mercilessly sort out 8-year-olds because they are apparently no longer valuable human capital – and why does it bother some more when goals are not yet to be counted in the F youth?
Because we grew up in this system and it tears down the pillars of our mental structures. We explain the world to ourselves using terms and framing: What is radical, what is not radical? The system we’re in is actually totally radical when you think about it. But people find it radical when losers also get a trophy.
In table tennis, on the other hand, there are handicap tournaments, for example, where poorer players get a few points ahead. You suggest introducing a similar system in the DFB-Pokal, but of course that would be unthinkable, right?
Yes. Football is a much tougher field because it’s a national sport here and it’s been so overwhelmed by nationalism, masculinity and capitalism over the last hundred years.
If change cannot come from within, the fans remain as a possible motor, with whom the DFL has spoken about reforms within the “Taskforce Future Professional Football”. Was that really more than just a fig leaf?
There have already been achievements. On the one hand, that fans are taken seriously as contact persons, that hasn’t always been the case. Secondly, the “Our Football” alliance has formulated really concrete and comprehensive reform proposals for the first time – even if I think many of them are reformist and criticize them.
But the fundamental problem remains that the DFL has no interest whatsoever in having a real debate about the future of football. Basically, the task force is a hoax designed to mimic democracy that doesn’t exist at all.
Who else should fans turn to?
Much, much more alliances with political movements are needed. For the political left, football would be an extremely important field because it is very promising, because the frustration and the desire for fundamental change are very great and the clientele is very plural. It would be possible to have an incredibly broad impact, but what has not yet come together must come together – with demonstrations, stadium occupations, so really a political youth movement in football. You can’t orchestrate that from above, but you have to create awareness that we don’t have Fridays for Football – and that’s a total loss.
Christian Bartlau spoke to Alina Schwermer