That Lingering Coin-Toss

Already a news cycle away, the matter of Didier Drogba’s Carling Cup coin-toss at Stamford Bridge lingers.

Why?

Perhaps the it’s the sad fact that, eighteen years shy of the Taylor Report, objects are still thrown at opposing players in English football stadia. Or that Drogba, in a unique twist to a familiar story, risked criminal investigation by hurling the coin back.

Yet unfortunate as these points are, they don’t make this incident anything more than a curious aberration. However, viewed as the moment when ‘Modern Football,’ the global sporting behemoth inspired by the rabid financial optimism of the 1990s, first began to rupture, the Burnley coin-toss takes on deeper meaning.

Burnley FC is frequently cited as the once-mighty small town club that faded away once PFA pioneer Jimmy Hill successfully eliminated the salary-cap in 1961. The previous year, Burnley were League One champions, and that same year they were European Cup quarterfinalists. Fifteen years later, after they admirably maintained their top-flight status despite lacking financial heft, Burnley were forever relegated from League One.

Chelsea FC on the other hand represent the obsequious, professional wealth heralded by Tony Blair’s New Labour. CFC is certainly més que un club – they are a global football ‘brand’ fuelled by Russian oil money and located in the symbolic home of corporate Albion, West London. The image of a young, urban crowd transfixed by Blackberrys while a cavalcade of foreign players run riot at Stamford Bridge, is for many the quintessential picture of Modern Football – gentrified, passive, and mass-marketed to an emerging – and permanent – professional class.

That permanence, as we know from the recent collapse of Western financial markets, may be illusory. Yet the real economy is still awaiting the aftereffects of the downturn, and when they come, the Burnley’s of the world will feel them most. Burnley has already endured a decades-long decline in its manufacturing industries, spurred by the same globalist economic ethos that gave so much wealth to places like West London; it's not hard to guess what effect a nationwide recession will have.

Which brings us to the coin-toss at Stamford Bridge. The use of currency as weapon is a potent symbol for the source of Modern Football’s demise – lack of fan-driven revenue. Some argue that middle class football supporters will turn to the game for means of escape, yet it is hard to imagine paying forty quid for a game or a month of satellite television to ‘escape’ when you can’t afford groceries.

While Big Four clubs like Chelsea will weather the storm, smaller clubs will struggle to afford the talent necessary to remain competitive – Drogba returning the coin to Burnley’s stunned supporters provides an apt visual metaphor here. And while football is still a game of two sides (Burnley deserved their hard fought away win on penalties in the Carling Cup last week), as economic times get tougher, angry fans in empty stands may be the only ones left chucking hard currency at well-paid players.