I don’t know what a nanobot is, but it’s a frightening and fantastic prospect. Another bizarre piece of futurology this week also focused on how technology and human culture will fuse in the coming years: the Orange Future of Football report for 2008 was released. We wondered last week if the Premier League will be playing games in space sometime soon, so it seems we can’t even speculate wildly enough to keep up with the changes to the global game.

Therefore, we should pay attention to what we can look forward to as football fans, according to Orange:

Holographic Viewing
Traditionalists will not like this suggestion. “‘We could have scenarios in the future where no one goes to watch sport live, preferring instead to watch it on television,’ Roy Jones, professor of sports technology at Loughborough University, told the report. They think that “We will watch TV in 3D in pubs, giant screens outside stadiums and eventually in the home, all without the need for funny coloured glasses”, and empty seats in stadia will be filled by “computer-generated characters…to create the impression of full stadiums.”

Stadium living
Yet the report then says stadiums won’t be empty at all; in fact, they’ll be closer to the people than ever. Think that clubs moving out of their traditional homes in city centres into barren suburbs is bad for the game’s connection to the community? Think again, says Orange’s report.

Fans will be able to live in and around football grounds as the ultimate display of loyalty, an honour previously reserved for groundsmen. As clubs move to the suburbs to find the space for bigger grounds, they will look to rejuvenate areas by creating villages complete with retail and residential areas. Residents would never have to leave these mini-communities and would be totally immersed in the club.

A suburban reconstruction of the football club as hub of community-life. Sponsored by Starbucks, presumably.

The interactive stadium
And the stadiums themselves will be transformed experiences. We’ll have mini-monitors to, er, watch the game on TV instead of on the pitch in front of us and to order food without getting up. But, in fact, we will want to get up, as the Report thinks stadium designers will want to encourage standing and singing to avoid the sedentary atmosphere developing at grounds these days — and they’ll do this by decreasing leg room or fitting “vibrating seats which are not very comfortable.”

Alternatively, clubs could just stop making people sit down all the bloody time and build safe standing areas, but that’s not very futuristic, is it?

The mobile stadium
In a further pseudo-retro move, we’ll be able to recreate the freedom standing at matches allowed — letting us choose our viewing angle — by watching at home on a virtual avatar-based representation of the match .

‘Players could be extracted as different coloured markers from camera footage,’ says Graham Fisher. ‘In
the future it is not impossible that what you’ll be seeing will be an avatar-based representation of the game rather than a video version. From that point of view, you could choose where you were sitting, choose your viewing angles, choose to be in your favourite stand as it used to be when you were allowed to stand.’

If you squint really hard next time you’re at a game, then, you might just be able to get a glimpse of the future.

Fan ownership
Continuing this nostalgic theme, the Report then reminds us fans have lost the connection of their club to the community, citing FC United of Manchester, Barcelona and MyFC as examples of interest in supporter ownership that it sees as growing in response to this. “We will see fans increasingly demand to be more involved in the ownership of their clubs or threaten to withdraw their support,” it says.

On that note, it’s interesting that much of this report about the future of technology focuses on recreating the increasingly lost appeal football had in the first place, the experience of standing, singing and supporting your community club as opposed to today’s disconnected, global television audience (this tension is something very well captured by Brian at the Run of Play recently). But is the solution really 3-D representations and computer sprites filling in for actual fans?

Some think that for English fans to complain now about the globalisation of football is laughable: that horse bolted long ago, they say. What kind of product did you think you were buying into already?

Many of those protesting the proposal — such as the anti-Glazer Fight For United grouping — aren’t that dense, though. They well know the Premier League was set-up for, and always has been, about grasping every last piece of gold. That’s what they’ve been fighting for years. But they do see this as the final nail in the coffin: “The proposals outlined by the Premier League to play competitive matches abroad mark the final notice that football has ceased to run for the benefit of its supporters, and now exists purely as a money generator for those already fabulously rich.”

The question is whether the 39th game might finally wake up the rest of the sheep (or perhaps lemming)-like fans to this reality.

The Premier League couldn’t have handed opponents of football’s growing disconnect from is roots a better symbolic target than this: The 39th Game, as a neatly-numbered metaphor for a step too far.

The Football Supporters’ Federation already have a petition you can sign (2665 signatures) and a Facebook group you can join in protest (with 853 members right now).

Some believe such action is pointless. Richard Williams, in the Guardian, notes that “all the fans’ protests and Parliamentary speeches in the world will not be enough to halt their project.”

That might not matter, though. The point is whether or not this could finally mobilise enough supporters to say: enough.

Update: for those wondering why the FSF and thousands of fans are so angry about this, it’s also worth reading the FSF’s “reasons” page.

A rarer, but by no means surprising sight, is that of well-heeled teenage boys wearing the real stuff: soft, expensive-looking, logos embroidered in all the right places, and, sometimes, their own names on the back. I pass these ‘ANKUR 8 MANCHESTER UNITED’ jerseys, these ‘SHARMA 7 CHELSEA’ ones now and again, and am always startled into a double-take, which I suppose is part of their purpose.

These jerseys are intriguing symbols of globalisation. Premiership football is making deep inroads into the parts of India with the financial purchasing power to identify as a slice of of the target “Asian market” that has motivated so many of English football’s actions in recent seasons. (The situation is as bad as you fear, English fans: we really do believe that Rio Ferdinand is the world’s foremost defensive talent.) Like most converts of the EPL and Champions’ League era, we face the same dilemmas of identity and inclusiveness that fans face globally. What way is there to support a team that you don’t go to watch in person, whose stars look and speak nothing like you, a game in which your passionate involvement occurs from the very periphery of fandom?

The strong folk-roots and tribalist identities of local football support cannot export themselves intact. It was interesting to see Japanese fans recreate banners and chants straight out of the San Siro’s Curva Sud (as they did last December, for a Milan short on travelling support in Tokyo during the Club World Cup) –- but it’s rare for us to have that chance, or to impact team fandom in any personal way. Those of us who make up the Asian market, the prawn sandwich brigade, the leftie American soccerball addict circle, and other, lesser-known types — evoke, sometimes unreasonably, a certain amount of suspicion from within the tightly-knit circles of established local football fandoms. It’s true that these newish categories of fans have been formed or influenced heavily by the globalisation of the game, which has changed football so much in the last fifteen years. Money and power have never been as interchangeable as they are in the Premiership.

Does that mean, then, that the boys with the personalised shirts are trying to buy their place in fandom? It does indicate a certain egoism, some over-identification with a team or with a celebrity player. But more straightforwardly evident is the business acumen of companies like Nike, as well as the clubs, of course, who have anticipated this need, and anticipated it in the right markets — the young, the moneyed, those alienated from the geography and culture of the traditional fanbase. The void left by a lack of individual contact is filled in neatly by related things, in a way that will trouble both the liberal and the conservative ends of the football support spectrum.

This is in even starker evidence in an article written for The Times by Alyson Rudd (The Pink Cap Does Not Fit) about a month ago (found via Dipped in Tea), in which she takes on, with no small amount of disdain, football merchandise created for and marketed to women. Rudd’s anger is directed equally at the existence of accessories created for women, and at the women who actually buy them.

I support Liverpool and Liverpool are red. I do not support them because they are red. Are there women out there who have been pouting all these years, desperate to go to a game but refusing to do so on the ground that the club colours are all wrong? “Come on love, I’ve got a spare ticket, come to the match with me.” “What? And wear blue? I’m a lady. If they change their strip to pink, I’ll think about it.”

The undertones are conflicted. Rudd writes as a woman, which her article acknowledges is not status quo. Men, by default, do not require colour-coded affirmations of their gender or their choice of club when it comes to scarves, or beer mugs, or replicas of the ‘Liver Bird.’ She’s not one of those women, however, the ones who, in spite of having had the good taste to get with the programme and actually attend to football, fudge their chances at achieving real fan status by going with the wrong kinds of accessories for it.

The knee-jerk defensiveness, the need to distance oneself from a certain kind of fan, is a common enough response from minorities who fear being judged on the whole by the actions of a few. (It’s often in evidence when I meet beleaguered young Manchester United fans who are women, and feel pressed to insist that “it isn’t because of Cristiano Ronaldo” as soon as they declare their colours.) It’s harder to understand the self-righteousness, though.

So all I got for Christmas in an LFC sort of way was a club calendar, a beer glass and beer mats with lovely red insignias. Presumably there is a range of LFC champagne flutes with pink insignias out there somewhere.

Pink may have no place in the identity of a ‘red’ club, but do beer glasses and club calendars bespeak fan authenticity at all? Do replica jerseys, for that matter? Rudd is right to be alarmed at the gendering of football merchandise, and perhaps more so at the fact that there seems to be little self-awareness among the female fanbase that does pay money to buy these accessories. Since her piece is based entirely on casual observation, I’d like to counter it with more of the same, and propose that most women wearing feminized football accessories have been gifted them, either by men with ideas similar to Rudd’s about sex and colour preference, or people with no interest in football. But she fails to highlight the impersonality of the merchandise market, pink or red, on the whole.

Fan identities, as discussions over the past few weeks in various sections of the blogosphere have highlighted, are in an unprecedented state of flux. The presence of the pink and the personalised among the array of saleable football souvenirs may be damning evidence of the inadequacy of non-traditional fan bases when it comes to conventional football support. But prescriptive solutions that require them to conform to a certain set of rules to be counted as “real” fans are not really productive, either. I don’t understand Rudd’s exclusionary viewpoint because, pink or no, I would always be glad to see other people — other women in particular, given my gender — support the same club as I do, and it would be discomfiting for me to presume to tell them how it should be loved.

Consider that soccer fans have loyalties not only towards individual clubs but also to their national teams. So one question is what has the presence of foreign players in Europe done to the quality of the national teams. Following the disappointments of the English national team in recent games, some have suggested that the culprit is the dominance of foreign players in the Premier League and have recommended reintroducing quotas.

Or consider the quality of domestic leagues in Africa proper. The complaint that the exodus of players has hurt these leagues has been around since the 1970s. But I do not know of any serious evidence on this, and I would love to know.

In any case, it is likely that the globalization of the industry has (a) increased the quality of African national teams relative to European national teams; and (b) reduced the quality of domestic leagues in African leagues relative to club play in Europe. So how do we evaluate these outcomes in terms of what ultimately counts: the enjoyment of the fans?

Let’s consider that, after the jump.

I’m not sure why Rodrik picked Africa as his example, as South America would seem to be an easier situation to analyse. Leagues that have flourished in the past have been decimated by the constant drain of talent, which is starting at an earlier age than ever. There are more Brazilians in Europe’s Champions League than any other nationality. This is not good for the South American leagues, despite the cash they rake in from it.

Still, for Daniel Drezner (an academic blogger), this globalisation works out for fans — apparently presuming all consumption is more-or-less equal. Bear with us as he starts using annoying words like ‘utility’.

If we’re really thinking about the fans, then I think Rodrik is omitting a missing utility. Clearly, the migration has improved the quality of the play of European club teams. Furthermore, for most fans, the consumption of sports is a nonrival good — i.e., I don’t lose any utility from others watching or listening to a game.If African fans value high-quality play, then the decline in African domestic leagues can be offset by paying attention to the European leagues. This certainly happened with baseball, as the importation of players like Ichiro Suzuki, Hideki Matsui and Daisuke Matsuzaka have caused Japanese baseball fans to pay more attention to American baseball.

Admittedly, an improvement in the quality of a foreign sports league is not a perfect substitute for a domestic sports league. The globalization of consumption, however, suggests that the fans do not suffer as much from a decline in local sports leagues as Rodrik suggests.

Certainly, it’s wonderful that around the world, those of us who can afford to can tune into La Liga or the Premiership regularly, and watch the best players in the world. I’m grateful for that myself, living in a country with a relatively weak league. Fans do so globally to a remarkable degree, as we know, feeding the dominance of the top European leagues in world culture.

But admitting this kind of consumption is not a “perfect substitute” for a quality domestic league is absurd. For a start, unlike baseball (where we can see pretty much everything that matters at all times on the screen), soccer on television is a vastly inferior “product” (I’m going to stick with his sort of lingo) than soccer in person. Even in High Definition widescreen, just considering the game itself on the pitch, you’re missing out on so much in terms of understanding and enjoying the game. It’s like comparing watching a movie on a video ipod to an IMAX experience.

Secondly, Drezner ignores everything we talk about on this site surrounding supporter culture in domestic leagues. It would be a crying shame if all the passion we see everywhere but the Premiership died; the stadiums need to be full in leagues around the world for the sake of passionate local fans all around the world, and they won’t be if all the good players are in three or four European countries, with all the regular soccer fans sitting at home watching them on television.

Baseball is also a terrible comparison point, as there have never been dozens of good leagues in different countries in that sport: just Japan, as Drezner mentions, and they have only lost a relative handful of players to MLB. If Japan lost almost all their good players as soon as they were of age (or earlier), as is happening to many countries in soccer, their league would surely be in serious trouble too. I’m sure more Japanese baseball fans would then watch MLB, but would they really enjoy baseball more? (Incidentally, a comparison point more apt to the discussion of Africa and soccer would be the way MLB teams interact with Puerto Rico or the Dominican Republic, where much of the talent now comes from.)

There’s obviously a lot here I haven’t gotten into, including questions about the impact on national teams such as England and the disturbing exploitation of young African players by Europeans — surely it’s not only the fans that matter, as both Drezner and Rodrik seem to presume. Perhaps we can cover that in the future, but I’d love to hear your thoughts on all of this.