Midnight Caller is where we grab people to talk about issues across general football which have caught our eye. It can be anything, from the rise of China to the threat of B-Teams in English football. It is simply finding someone who knows their stuff to talk with us about their knowledge and leave us all that little bit smarter about the game we obsess over.
Neil Atkinson and John Gibbons are joined at midnight by The Telegraph’s Jonathan Liew who has recently written an excellent piece about people becoming disproportionately angry at sport.
How can this be stopped? Is it preferable that it be stopped and why is this more heightened now than ever?
Wonderful & uplifting discussion – perfect example of why I listen to the Wrap first thing each morning. Glad I listened to this AFTER the overwhelming negativity of your most recent ‘Unwrapped’. Never ceases to amaze me how the people who are lucky enough to live within a stone’s throw of the team they love and support seem to take so little joy out of the actual game and the individual wins.
Good show guys with a profound subtext.
What was it that you kept hinting at but didn’t quite say aloud?
It was that such behaviours could have been, indeed were predicted 30 years ago: we are witnessing the type of behaviours that naturally occur when you transform people into consumers with rights, rather than citizens with obligations. The sense of rage and entitlement discusses stems from this very simple transformation: we are all customers, we have paid a lot of money, therefore we have rights. Isn’t the customer always right?
Similarly the creation of a rights-led consumer base is refracted and reflected in the media. Having been heavily involved in the construction of the beast, the mainstream media now has to feed the beast and of course is, as a consequence, devouring itself. It’s a vicious circle, and while it’s good to see those within the media challenge such behaviours; they are, sadly, complicit in the construction of said behaviours. A more sophisticated and accountable analysis is required, though I appreciate this isn’t necessarily an appropriate forum for that!
But it’s really good that you’re having this discussion and chapeau to you all for challenging the splenetic blame culture and promoting a collective culture.