At what point will there be a mass exodus from ruined Big Football?

FIFA are talking about increasing the amount of VAR used in matches. How long are you prepared to put up with this for?

Well look at that. It’s now being reported that, rather than gathering all the equipment in the world that is used for it (and quite possibly those profoundly strange men in full referee kits who sit in front of the television screens) and firing the resulting pile into the Sun, FIFA are looking into the possibility of expanding VAR instead.

To a point, there’s almost a circular logic by which it makes sense. After all, if you’re going to render matches practically unwatchable—I mean, surely no-one even at FIFA can be unaware of this; the evidence is before their very eyes—then you might as well go the whole hog. Perhaps the FIFA executive committee and IFAB like the delays. Gives them the chance to count their money, or something.

But then again, how much sympathy do we deserve over this? (I’m using the word “we” with particular care here, in the sense of “as football supporters” or “as a society”, here.) Because let’s face it, it remains the case that VAR remains popular when it participates in giving decisions that we like. Spurs supporters probably thought it was the best thing in the world during their match against Liverpool, but might have had a very different opinion following Sunday’s match against Aston Villa, during which Matty Cash went for the bone but was deemed to have ‘barely touched him’.

So, if we’re all hypocrites (and yes, I acknowledge that it is fundamental to the nature of football supporters to be wildly inconsistent over just about any contentious subject), do we deserve better than the current situation? Perhaps, but perhaps that’s not the right question to be asking. Perhaps the question to be asking is why the game would continue with a policy that is actually degrading the game itself for the good of a degree of accuracy that it cannot even reach.

I love football. I love the rhythm, movement and timbre of the game itself, it’s extraordinary melange of the deeply complex and the incredibly simple. I love (most of) the cultures that have come to surround it. I love that it is at its essence a completely blank screen onto which we project our hopes and dreams, our prejudices and hatred, our love, devotion and loyalty, and that most of the time we never even realise how much of ourselves we’re giving away.

And seeing this absurd state of affairs strikes somewhere deep inside of me. I am not as deeply invested in the Premier League this season, and that is a conscious decision. There remain stories from that division which remain interesting or worthy of comment, but I’m barely watching entire matches, this season. I saw the Matty Cash ‘tackle’ on YouTube. And there is a part of me that is starting to wonder whether it’s worth just severing that remaining connection altogether.

Maybe I’m old fashioned, one of the ‘legacy supporters’ that they just don’t want hanging around any more, with their fusty ideas about this being a sport rather than a branch of the light entertainment industrial complex, and about how football clubs can be a critical component of their local communities rather than objects that can used for the laundering of reputations. Maybe the market research has returned that there are enough of those grinning goons the camera operators often seem to zone in on during World Cups to be able to jettison the rest of us. It’s difficult to say, because the one thing you can’t expect from FIFA is an honest response.

But here’s the thing. I don’t have to give up football at all. No need whatsoever. Because I’ve got a bolt hole, a place to get away from all this hubris, this toxic soup of witless ‘banter’, this overbearing arrogance (frequently from people who’ve done the sum total of fuck-all to warrant it), the absolute certainty of the halfwit and cloying over-sentimentalism. Because on a Saturday afternoon I’m at a match, and I’m watching it without a care in the world, rather than with the conspiracy theory-addled rage that so many other seem to prefer, these days.

And here’s the thing. It’s no secret club. This ain’t the Freemasons. You don’t need no secret handshake. It’s right there in front of you, hundreds of clubs at which none of this bullshit happens, at which the well hasn’t been poisoned by VAR and which can’t really poison social media either, really. There are certainly some profoundly strange men who attend matches (insert your own joke here), but ever was it thus. You should give it a go, some time.

Now, I’ve been writing about the shenanigans of non-league football clubs long enough to know better than to be persuaded by any suggestion that it’s somehow ‘purer’ than the Premier League. I don’t believe the Premier League to be ‘corrupt’. I do believe that there’s a possibility that some clubs have a greater influence over how it’s run than others, and that this can at times become disproportionate.

I’ve argued for a long time that if actual corruption were to take place in football in England, it would come far from the madding crowds, where few are paying that much attention. And I certainly recoil from the phrase “proper football”, which suggests that the game should be preserved in aspic, preferably at the point that the person making the utterance was ten years old.

But this isn’t really about that. This is about seeing all the complaints that I so regularly see from the supporters of Premier League clubs and thinking, “Glad I don’t have to put up with that.” I don’t have to pay hundreds and hundreds of pounds for a season ticket, and although kick-off times are occasionally moved, the vast majority of weekend fixtures take place at 3.00 on a Saturday afternoon.

There are no complicated loyalty points for much-coveted away match tickets, because most of the time there aren’t really tickets. If you’re a supporter and you want to go to an away match, you just… go to the away match. Admittance isn’t expensive, though you’re best advised to take some cash with you, as it can’t be 100% guaranteed that all clubs will have card machines at the turnstiles. You’re best advised to turn up 15 minutes before kick-off, in case there’s a bit of a queue.

Once you’re in, well, it’s up to you. Most clubs will have a bar, and drinking on the terraces is permitted in most competitions (not the FA competitions, though, although the extent to which that’s actually observed is… debatable). And those who only attend matches watched by 40,000 people may be surprised at how raucous a crowd of just a few hundred can be. There’s no VAR, of course. Quite a few clubs have 3g pitches these days, and you can either sit or stand and the vast majority of grounds.

And then there’s a football match. The ‘quality’ might not be as high, but a lot of players lower down the non-league game were trialists or youth players at bigger clubs who didn’t make the grade and the quality of football can be surprisingly excellent. Teams do tend to try and play on the ground these days, even on pitches which might not be best suited to it. A proportion of the supporters—often the noisiest—will watch from behind the goal that their team is attacking and then change ends at half-time. And yes, this usually takes place without incident.

I am certainly not here to view it all through rose tinted glasses. Trouble can occur, and stewards are often ill-equipped to deal with it when it does. Matches can be absolutely lousy. And it’s true to say that you don’t get the sense of occasion that you get at the biggest matches, that feeling that you’re at the epicentre of something that the world is watching. But that is also part of the appeal. If you support Manchester City, well done. You’ve won everything. Now what?

Because if non-league football offers anything more substantive than the Premier League, it’s that wealth of opportunity, of open vistas. Most divisions have play-offs, and teams playing at the sixth level of the non-league game are as far removed from the EFL as a club in the National League South is from the Premier League, so if your club were to go up through the divisions, you’d get that feeling of solid progress. The FA Cup still matters, and it starts at the very beginning of the season. There isn’t much European football, but you do have the FA Trophy or FA Vase, the non-league game’s two big cup finals, both of which are normally played at Wembley on the same day.

And that’s just the men. Add the women to the equation and you’ve got even more choice. The Women’s Super League doesn’t have VAR yet, but it will do in time. But women’s football again offers lower ticket prices and availability (for now), and supporters of Chelsea, Manchester City, Arsenal and Manchester United will get to see their teams win a lot of matches. Kick-off times can get a bit messy, but you can watch live on free-to-air television.

The point here is that you don’t have to put up with the way you’re being treated. Nobody is saying that you have to stop supporting your Premier League behemoths. Once that feeling is inside you it’s inside you, and many non-league supporters have a ‘bigger’ team, too. But non-league football offers plenty for people for whom the Premier League is just too much of an effort, or who’ve been priced out over the last thirty-odd years as clubs have exponentially increased season ticket prices.

No, it won’t be the club that you have supported since you were six. It’ll be something different. For me, there isn’t even really a non-league team that I support, in the sense of going regularly to their matches. I’ve been to 18 games so far this season, at 15 different grounds. I’ve seen two penalty shootouts. I haven’t seen a goalless draw in years (though I came close last Saturday). And sometimes I don’t even decide which match I’m even going to until the morning of the day it's being played.

I’m not here to tell you that you’re doing it wrong. Your money, your choice. I understand that severing that cord can be difficult, and I understand that you may have predetermined ideas about the “quality” of football to which you are committed. For all I know, perhaps you’re a masochist who enjoys throwing large sums of money at a business which demonstrably doesn’t give a shit about you and will jettison you as soon as a wealthier customer comes along, in which case, you do you, boo. I ain’t here to judge.

But what I am here to do is to tell you that there are alternatives. VAR doesn’t impede my life. The cost of live football isn’t restrictive to me, and I guarantee that I earn less than (most of) you. I can have a drink while watching it, and I don’t have to take out a mortgage and spend hours negotiating byzantine ticketing arrangements to be able to go to a match. If you want to keep doing what you’re doing, then that’s down to you.

You also surely already know that your feelings won’t be taken into account when they decide how much more VAR they’re going to inject into the game that you watch. Like I say, your money, your choice. If football supporters acted a bit more like the consumers they’re presumed to be by those who run football these days, perhaps we wouldn’t even be in this mess. It’s likely that the captive audience nature of football supporters that makes both governing bodies and clubs act this way in the first place. 

There are alternatives available, and if you strip away that loyalty, a loyalty that is so often taken advantage of, it’s pretty close to what you might actually want. It’s up to you whether you choose to explore it or not.