The Malaysian Insider

NOV 28 — Arsenal: Highbury’s Marble Halls, the Clock End, Herbert Chapman and Cliff Bastin.

Chelsea: fashionable King’s Road, the Shed, Chopper Harris and Ossie Osgood.

Those clubs don’t exist anymore. In fact, you may well be wondering what on earth I’m talking about — which would give credibility to the point I am about to make.

Arsenal’s meeting with Chelsea in this weekend’s heavyweight Premier League blockbuster offers an illustration of just how much English football has changed in the last 20 years; in fact, you could go further and use the game as an example of how fundamentally the global cultural landscape has been redrawn during that period.

There was a time when football clubs represented their local communities in the truest sense. Teams consisted of local players who lived in the town and earned wages roughly comparable to people in ‘normal’ jobs. They walked or took public transport to the game, and drank pints of lager in the same pubs as fans after the game.

There was a time when fans walked through busy residential streets to reach the ground (‘stadium’ would be too grand a word), where they stood shoulder to shoulder on crowded terraces, stretching on tip toes and peering around pylons in the hope of catching a glimpse of the ball.

These were the days when Cliff Bastin was the hero for Arsenal fans standing in the Clock End; when manager Herbert Chapman brought silverware to decorate the plush Marble Halls inside Highbury.

And later, these were the days when Ron ‘Chopper’ Harris and Peter ‘Ossie’ Osgood strutted their cocky stuff at Stamford Bridge, delighting the locals in the Shed End before both fans and players assembled to celebrate or commiserate in the pubs along the King’s Road next to the ground.

Those days are long gone. Now, Arsenal’s and Chelsea’s multicultural and multimillionaire squads will assemble at a luxury five-star hotel in the leafy London suburbs on the morning of the game, leaving their customised sports cars in the heavily guarded private parking compound.

The hotel will be under strict instructions to ensure the area is kept ‘clean’ — under no circumstances will any supporters be allowed to mingle with the players as they fuel up on their specially prepared pasta and grilled chicken pre-match meal.

Later, the teams’ respective French and Italian managers will gather their thoughts as an armed police escort swiftly guides the bus to the sparkling new stadium — named after an Asian airline company and offering the finest corporate hospitality in the land.

The game will probably be decided by Ivorian Didier Drogba, German Michael Ballack, Spaniard Cesc Fabregas or Frenchman Samir Nasri (although Englishman Frank Lampard may intervene to add a misleading sheen of old-fashioned Englishness).

60,000 spectators inside the stadium will follow the action from the comfort of their uninterrupted-view seats, but in reality those fans are now largely irrelevant — their chief purpose is to add background colour and atmosphere for the global TV audience, which numbers several million and provides the occasion with its most important financial backing.

Yes, the game has changed; but is that a bad thing? There are plenty of traditionalists who lament the loss of the old-fashioned ways and mourn the passing of the genuine community spirit that was once fostered by football clubs, but I’m not one of them.

Times have changed and the fact is that English football is now a global phenomenon. The teams may be based in England and have English names, but they attract players, fans, media and sponsors from virtually every country on earth and therefore belong to the global marketplace.

A more appropriate name for the English Premier League would be The World League and there would be nothing wrong with that, even though the traditionalists would be aghast at such a proposition — it’s just a reflection of the world we now live in.

Since the Premier League was founded in 1992, the advent of satellite TV, mobile phones and the internet has irrevocably changed the way we consume culture, while the relaxation of migration and employment laws, especially within the European Union, has blurred national boundaries.

Distance has become irrelevant and we now all share the same marketplace in the new global village; local communities are gone, but they’ve been replaced by cyber communities who live through their social media.

If you watch the game in Malaysia, you’re just as valid a ‘fan’ as someone watching the game on TV in England; in fact, considering the broadcasting restrictions in the UK, it’s quite possible for supporters in Malaysia to see their team in action more regularly than those who actually live in their favourite club’s city.

Arsenal and Chelsea both have a rich tradition and a glittering past, but those traditions are now meaningless — however cold and heartless that may sound. When Arsenal moved to the Emirates Stadium and when Roman Abramovich took over at Chelsea, they effectively created brand new clubs — only the names remained the same.

If tradition and history mattered to the new global consumer, they wouldn’t support Arsenal or Chelsea; they’d support Preston North End, the first Football League champions, or Notts County, the world’s oldest football club. But in our new world, we don’t want tradition or history; we want excitement, speed, glamour – we want the now, not the then.

Maybe, in a way, it was better when players were local men who shared their post-match pint with fans in the local pub, rather than multimillionaire mercenaries who have no real link to their club.

Maybe it was better when local fans really were the lifeblood of their club, rather than television revenue. But the world isn’t local anymore, it’s global, so what’s the point in yearning for something that doesn’t exist?

Arsenal is now the Emirates Stadium, corporate hospitality, Arsene Wenger and Cesc Fabregas.

Chelsea is now Roman Abramovich, brand development, Carlo Ancelotti and Didier Drogba.

That’s just a product of the times, and these are the times of a global marketplace; the World League is upon us.

World League fixtures:

Saturday (11pm unless stated)

Aston Villa v Tottenham (1.30am, Sunday)

Blackburn v Stoke

Fulham v Bolton

Man City v Hull

Portsmouth v Man Utd

West Ham v Burnley

Wigan v Sunderland

Sunday

Arsenal v Chelsea (midnight, Monday)

Everton v Liverpool (9.30pm)

Wolverhampton v Birmingham (8pm)