Has football become a game where winning matches or even trophies does not matter?

The agreement is that all around this has been a sound economic exchange. BBC Sport’s Chief Football writer Phil McNulty makes that point. Manchester United are poised to make a handsome profit of some £68 million. Real Madrid will begin to make a commercial campaign with the likes of Kaka and Ronaldo by selling as much merchandise as possible with the club brand. One even wonders if it really matters that Real Madrid wins any trophies. We can speculate that not winning any trophies would bring more attention and thus fame to the club than winning anything.

Cristiano Ronaldo.
[image by Paolo Camera,
some rights reserved]

Has football become a game where winning matches or even trophies does not matter? A quick glance over the Deloitte Football Money League (2009) suggests so. Take a look at the league and you will find teams that won no trophies such as Fenerbahçe, a newcomer. But, from the point of view of the two clubs, apparently a sound investment has been made. So Ronaldo, we are told, will prove his worth and will make lots of money for himself and his clubs. 

About the author

Engin F Isin is professor in politics and international studies and director of the Centre for Citizenship, Identities and Governance at the Open University.

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It often starts with an event or a phenomenon. It could be a mass killing, a spreading flu, increasing migrants, or decreasing credit. Before we understand its causes, its consequences are predicted with ferocious repetition. "We are facing an unprecedented enemy that is well organized". "It could cost billions to contain the pandemic". "Are we prepared to provide services demanded by migrants?" "With the collapsed economy we may be facing a depression not seen since 1929."

"It seems governments, businesses, nongovernmental and news organisations all have some vested interest in these disproportionate responses."

These predicted consequences become progressively disproportionate to actual consequences. The collective response becomes equally disproportionate. Armies invade countries with dodgy dossiers that look credible to some. Mass mobilisations are enlisted to contain pandemics that are not. Massive investments are made in border control and tracking methods. Trillions and billions are printed and pumped into markets with fancy names such as "quantitative easing".

It seems governments, businesses, nongovernmental and news organisations all have some vested interest in these disproportionate responses. A few academics, journalists, scientists, and activists warn against disproportionate responses and call for better understanding of causes rather than focusing on predictions of consequences. "There is no justification for war." "More people are killed on the road than by terrorist attacks." "Migrants contribute to the economy and we need them." These voices are drowned out, mostly by the argument that, had there not been dramatic responses, situations would have been worse - claims that are impossible to verify. Do you remember The Millennium bug?

"…after every cycle we have gone through, we realise that the responses we were led to believe to have been appropriate proved to be well beyond what was necessary."

What follows is more prophecies, prognostications, predictions, and various scenarios. Having determined the dramatic consequences to follow, explanations that fit those consequences are offered. In other words, in a strange but social twist of logic, consequences are made to explain causes. For lack of a better term, I can’t help but call these cycles of neurosis. In the twentieth century psychoanalysts called the disproportionate response to perceived dangers neurosis - a term that is no longer used in psychology to define any disorder. But it persists outside established science and many sociologists have used the term to define collective phenomena of anxiety, hysteria or unease.

I think it is apt to use the term "neurosis" and to name our response "neurotic" because the cycle that starts with a bang almost always ends with a whimper. It seems that, after every cycle we have gone through, we realise that the responses we were led to believe to have been appropriate proved to be well beyond what was necessary. Is Al Qaeda really the threat that it was presented to be? Are migrants really the threat that they were represented to be? Is there really an economic collapse to the extent that has been suggested? In a short time it has already been demonstrated that the most recent cycle - swine flu - may have been an over-reaction. The headlines already declare that swine flu did not spread as fast as predicted. The BBC News reported tests showing that the swine flu virus in Mexico may be less virulent than first feared, and asked "Did Mexico over-react on swine flu?" It is as though it was only Mexico that over-reacted.

Ten years ago the New Yorker cartoonist, Roz Chast, introduced "the neuro" as "the first official worldwide currency" in one of her cartoons. It may have been prescient. We really need to understand why it has become so. What are the reasons for the collective neurosis of our times?

Find Out More 

Isin, E.F. (2004) The Neurotic Citizen, Citizenship Studies, 8 (3), 217-235.

Horney, K. (1937) The Neurotic Personality of Our Time, New York, W.W. Norton.

Fromm, E. (1944) Individual and Social Origins of Neurosis, American Sociological Review, 9 (4), 380-384.

Roz Chast, The Back Page, “Introducing the Neuro - The First Official Worldwide Currency,” The New Yorker, April 26, 1999, p. 196.

About the author

Engin F Isin is professor in politics and international studies and director of the Centre for Citizenship, Identities and Governance at the Open University.

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What would have happened had we asked our Poet Laureate to govern rather than (or perhaps as well as) write poems during the credit crunch? I am reminded of another credit crunch about 2,500 years ago. This was in Athens around 594 BC — about 650 years before the Romans founded London as a civitas. Back in Athens we find a poet, Solon (638-558 BC), who, from a modest aristocratic descent, bursts into the scene of Athenian politics around 600 BC with a rousing poem about the war with Megara — another Greek city — over the island of Salamis. So rousing this poem was that Athenians apparently won the war.

Yet it turns out that the war was both an escape from and the cause of real troubles — all wars can make that claim. These troubles concerned the fact that many soldiers perished during the war were poor peasants who were not represented in the assembly (ecclesia), which was the exclusive domain aristocratic warrior-citizens. Many peasants were poor mostly because they cultivated the land as loans from aristocratic warriors.

The Pantheon, Athens.
[image © copyright Photos.com]

At this time Athens was governed as an oligarchy and aristocratic families held land indefinitely. While land was inalienable the right to use it could be mortgaged. Peasants could receive loans by sharing their rights to the product of the land. The peasant-debtor ‘agreed’ to cultivate the land as hektemor, or sixth-partner, surrendering five-sixths of the product to the aristocrat-creditor and retaining the rest. Such mortgaged land was physically marked by horoi, or mortgage stones as concrete symbols of mortgage slavery.

There had been ongoing struggles by peasants to free themselves from mortgage slavery but the situation was exacerbated by the war as many peasants fell into abject poverty and faced debt enslavement (sold as slaves). So there was really a credit crunch in the sense that peasants defaulted on their loans and were sold as slaves. The problem was to find peasants who would cultivate the land and generate income for aristocrats. (Going to war with credit never seems to work.)

Then Solon was elected archon, or governor, c. 594 BC. His first act was to free the land and destroy the horoi. His act, known as the seisachtheia, or ‘shaking-off of the burdens,’ cancelled all debts, freed the peasants and gave land to its cultivators. Solon’s second act was the ban on the mortgaging of land and mortgage slavery.

This was a bold act. Solon not only canceled all debt (which was not incurred as money) but he also abolished enslavement for debt, destroying the horoi. This act of destroying the horoi became a symbol of liberation. Solon’s reform was retrospective as well as prospective: he brought back people from overseas slavery who no longer spoke the Attic language.

More importantly, as Gregory Vlastos taught us long time ago, Solon’s act was much more than cancelling debts. Until then aristocrats had claimed the giving of justice as their exclusive prerogative. But Solon made justice -- or rather claiming justice -- an essential aspect of everyday rather than divine politics.

Could the government have not shaken off of all the mortgages owed by the poor? Could it not have abolished mortgage slavery? Instead, by part-nationalising banks, the government essentially mortgaged our future by bailing them out. So rather than shaking off of the burden of the poor our government actually doubled it. Perhaps we should rethink the remit of our Poet Laureate.

Solon’s Fragments 30, 31

“...Whereas I, before the people had attained to any of the things for the sake of which they had drawn my chariot, brought it to a standstill. A witness I have who will support this claim full well in the tribunal of Time --the mighty mother of the Olympian deities, black Earth, from whose bosom once I drew out the pillars everywhere implanted; and she who was formerly enslaved is now free. Many men I restored to Athens, their native divinely-founded, men who justly or unjustly had been sold abroad, and other who through pressure of need had gone into exile, and who through wanderings far and wide no longer spoke the Attic tongue. Those here at home who were reduced to shameful slavery, and trembled at the caprices of their masters, I made free. These things I wrought by main strength, fashioning that blend of force and justice that is law, and I went through to the close as I had promised.”

From p. 215 of The Work and Life of Solon: With a Translation of His Poems by Kathleen Freeman

Find Out More

‘Solon, the Horoi and the Hektemoroi’ by G.E.M. de Ste. Croix
in Athenian Democratic Origins and Other Essays, edited by David Harvey, Robert Parker and Peter Thonemann, published by Oxford University Press

The Work and Life of Solon: With a Translation of His Poems by Kathleen Freeman
published by The University of Wales Press

‘Solonian Justice’ by Gregory Vlastos
in Studies in Greek Philosophy, edited by Daniel W. Graham
published by Princeton University Press

About the author

Engin F Isin is professor in politics and international studies and director of the Centre for Citizenship, Identities and Governance at the Open University.

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