It's all in the game: Why lefties like football

Over at the New Statesman, Helen Lewis Hasteley has asked how a leftie committed to equality can like football. It is, after all, “a game where women are nothing more than baubles, gay people apparently don't exist, and where money is thrown about in a way that would make Gordon Gekko blush.” Not her cup of tea, it would seem.

Well, firstly, a leftie can enjoy football by ignoring the ludicrous and misguided arguments of Ms Lewis Hasteley. If she were to venture out to any given terrace on a Saturday afternoon, she might notice that there are plenty of women at the football, not because they are “wearing low cut tops or serving the drinks,” but because they enjoy it. Many play it professionally. To claim that these spectators and athletes are nothing more than baubles is absurd.

And yet one needn’t descend to a “my friend’s a woman and she likes football” argument to take issue with her scattergun polemic. Lewis Hasteley’s article is far too prescriptive about what a leftie should think. Why should someone’s commitment to equality be to the detriment of basic enjoyment and entertainment? Sport is sport. I will happily watch Barcelona dismantle Real Madrid without worrying about the dialectic.

Lewis Hasteley raises some important issues about modern football: homophobia is depressingly pervasive; the reckless and irresponsible spending of clubs (and their subsequent liquidation) is a worry. Both seriously need to be addressed. Unfortunately, Lewis Hasteley only alludes to these interesting topics, smothering them with inappropriate metaphors and hackneyed clichés. The money a club spends isn’t your money. Andy Carroll isn’t just “moderately good at kicking a bit of leather around.” Laughingly, she claims that footballers are like “omnipotent monarchs” from “the 1650s”—perhaps the only decade since 1066 that Britain hasn’t had a monarch, omnipotent or otherwise.

Some footballers have dubious sexual relations with women and get castigated on terraces and in the tabloids. Pundits make derogatory remarks about female officials and get sacked. Football is fun, and it is meritocratic. Anyone can enjoy it, anyone can play it, and anyone can be good at it. So pick up your remote. Buy your ticket. Forget “the modern world,” and enjoy the game.