The ‘Unfriendly Games’ – The Commercialisation of Pre-season Friendlies

By All Blue Daze. No, no, I'm not talking about some uber-aggressive version of the Commonwealth Games just completed up in Glasgow. They were conducted with the traditional smile on their faces throughout. What I'm referring to is the pre-season fixtures that provide the overture to the new football season. Games that now comprise mini-tournaments and draw in television coverage. That wasn't always the way, though.

I’m old enough to remember the days when the country’s top clubs played a few games against local, lower league opposition, to allow their players to burn off a bit of the summer fat they had gained during their weeks in Blackpool, Skegness or, if they were really top drawer players, Torremolinos.

Attendances were small, but that was because no-one really cared about the result. If, as often was the case, the games were played at the smaller clubs’ ground, admission prices were reduced, or even free for juniors, giving younger wide-eyed children a rare chance to see top class stars in real-life. These were the days before wall-to-wall live television coverage of course, when ten minute snippets of games on Match of the Day were the staple diet of fans unable to afford the top-table football’s admission fees. Those were the days of the ‘pre-season friendly’.

What a change today. Gone is the need for players to be coaxed back into fitness, as is the demand for all year round football. World Cups, European Championships, Confederations Cups and even the Olympic Games are now open to professional players. There’s little need to sweat away a couple of months of inaction. Topping up the conditioning, getting to know new team-mates, new systems – and, just as likely, new managers – and off we go again.

For organisations that hastily complain about too much football being demanded of their players, flying half way around the world to compete in spurious tournaments, thrown together to sell sponsorship and television coverage is a bit rich. So why do they do it? If it was all about gaining fitness and squad assimilation that could easily be achieved at home with a couple of behind-closed-doors games. I guess, however, ‘rich’ is the operative word here.

Last Saturday, apparently in excess of 109,000 watched Manchester United play Real Madrid. This wasn’t the semi-final or final of the Champions League, this was a meaningless mini-tournament which will soon be forgotten. Two of the world’s biggest and richest clubs flew to the USA for a worthless competition, but why? The answer is simple. Money. They were guaranteed to draw crowds and the match was broadcast live in a number of countries across the world.

I’m not singling out United or Madrid. Manchester City were also in America and took on Greek champions, Olympiakos. The Greeks play in red and white stripes and red shorts. It’s hardly a colour-clash with City’s traditional sky blue shirts and white shorts, but Pellegrini’s team turned out in an all blue ensemble that had a shading to it likely to drive any pantone colour palette a little haywire. I’m not sure if it was City’s second or third kit, or even a special one for that tournament. Anything is possible.

There’s hardly any of the country’s top ten clubs that haven’t indulged in similar sorts of exercises over the past few summers. I guess and I appreciate that it makes sense to keep the businesses revenues topped-up. Friendlies however, they are not.

It’s easy to slip on a pair of rose-tinted glasses, but there was something a bit special about the pre-season round of fixtures when games such as Blyth Spartans v Newcastle United, Runcorn v Manchester United, Pelsall Villa v Aston Villa, were the sorts of games that reignited the passions of fans who could never hope to afford to see their heroes regularly in real-life.

Even the finest meals have a basic hors d’oeuvres course to whet the appetite for the main course. They’re the basic fare that prepares the palette. Television has a rapacious appetite for the finest fare, but having caviar each and every day makes it ordinary, not special.

When Manchester United face off against Real Madrid, or any other top European club, it should be an occasion. It just feels a little demeaning to waste mouth-watering games on spurious little tournaments that mean little or nothing to anybody other than financial directors.

Have pre-season fixtures lost their identity? Have clubs lost track of their real purpose?

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