Get organized! (daily newspaper young world)

Professional football has become alienated from the fans, there is too much money involved, the influence of television is fatal, the football associations are corrupt. You don’t have to write for a Marxist newspaper to share this view, pretty much everyone shares it. Accordingly, there is already a lot of literature on this topic.

What to do?

Nevertheless, the book »Peace to the Curves, War to the Associations«, recently published by Papyrossa-Verlag, occupies a special position. Because author Raphael Molter goes beyond the criticism and asks what needs to be done to change the bad situation. He formulates his starting point as follows: »Many ultra groups and many active fans who are organized in a wide variety of fan alliances want to change football fundamentally, and they might have a majority of fans on their side. What is preventing them and how does big business football protect itself against such a radical change?”

Why isn’t this obvious question addressed more often? Seeming hopelessness is one reason, but other reasons are a lack of ideas and a lack of organization. This is exactly where Molter comes in. He calls on the critics of modern football to form a “social movement”. Chantal Mouffe’s “left-wing populism” serves as a theoretical blueprint, and the campaign “Expropriate German housing and co.” as a concrete example.

Molter is a Union Berlin supporter and makes no secret of it. His book oscillates between stadium anecdotes and theoretical considerations, interspersed with stories from a year abroad in Kuala Lumpur, reflections on Carl Schmitt, childhood memories and homage to Johannes Agnoli. It’s a back and forth, perhaps confusing at times, but stimulating at the same time. A lot is in the eye of the beholder.

The special character of Molter’s perspective on football includes his commitment to materialism. Moralizing would not help much, the problems of modern football could only be understood and the corresponding resistance built up on the basis of a proper materialistic analysis: »It takes processes to understand what you are trying to fight there at all. Because if you don’t understand what he or she is fighting, you’ve already lost.« Molter repeatedly emphasizes that there is a lack of »theoretical understanding« in the current fan movement and that “activism for activism’s sake” is therefore spreading.

Molter pays a lot of attention to the football fans known as ultras. For him, the Ultras, known for their passionate support, impressive stadium choreography and pyrotechnics, are “the key” to a different type of football. Molter’s penchant for this fan movement, combined with his materialistic commitment, leads to subheadings such as “Karl M. – Ultra”. But Molter does not idealize the followers, because “there are two things lacking in ultra groups”. These are “their unconscious demarcation strategies and the substantive and analytical imprecision in the fight against commercialization.”

That’s a long way

Molter’s book makes it clear that critics of the modern football industry fall into two camps. On the one hand there are the fans, for whom the football experience is part of their identity, who do not want to sacrifice themselves to forces who do not share this passion, but who are primarily concerned with the commercial exploitation of football. On the other hand, there are critics, let’s call them purists, who cultivate a noble sporting ideal that not only contradicts commercial exploitation, but also exaggerated competitiveness, lack of fairness, social injustice reflected in sport, etc. While purists like me experience football relatively unimportant, it is the focus for fans like Molter. He explains his enthusiasm for football as follows: »It is the burning passion that ensures that the whole stadium joins in the singing in no time at all. Coming together in the block that you really feel at home for a few hours every two weeks. And the feeling of a collective will. As if people came together in just over 90 minutes and only had one thing on their mind for that time: their club.«

I don’t know how left that is. But it doesn’t matter as far as the conclusions Molter draws in his book. I, too, am in the fight for football for self-organization, federalism, fan councils, “no involvement whatsoever in conciliatory or compromise-seeking talks with the associations” and a “fundamental oppositional movement”. In a Marxist daily newspaper, it is also easy to subscribe to Molter’s last principle, which is intended to pave the way to a better football world: “Capitalist conditions must be overcome, including in football!” If that’s not the closing word.