The ship of Theseus is a thought experiment about whether something is the same when all of its component parts are changed.
Theseus, king of Athens, rescued the children of Athens from King Minos after slaying the minotaur. Each year, the Athenians celebrated, taking his ship on a pilgrimage. This practice continued for several hundred years, the ship’s timber constantly replaced as it rotted and decayed.
Obviously, as the tradition went on for so long, the ship was replaced in its entirety many times. No original parts of Theseus’ ship remained.
So was it still the same ship?
That’s my problem with football teams. Even the most loyal, club-grown legend will eventually move on (looking at you, Steven Gerrard), every player will leave and be replaced, every bright young spark will wither and die. There is no constant in a football club.
Really, they’re nothing more than corporations. Undying loyalty is formed for a name; for a brand; a team that changes in its entirety in a matter of years. Players change, managers change, grounds change, kits change. Even the LOGO isn’t sacred.
“Each club is made up of thirty over-manicured millionaires, constantly shifting and changing, loyalty scarcely even a consideration.”
Look, I’m well aware that I don’t get it; there’s some big sentimental feeling that I’m missing out on. All I know is, if a band changed its whole lineup and started playing new tunes, I wouldn’t owe them my loyalty, no matter how much I loved the original band.
I love international football. I can fully get behind England, the Olympic-like championship uniting nations under their eleven most overpaid and talented sportspeople; there’s some form of competition there. It MEANS something, y’know?
Plus, it’s the only time you can paint an England flag on your face without feeling like a racist.
There’s opportunity for national pride, a sense of everyone coming together, a feeling that we were the village that raised these lads. They’re ours.
Club football, on the other hand, has none of that. Each club is made up of thirty over-manicured millionaires, constantly shifting and changing, loyalty scarcely even a consideration. The competition at play is just about who has the richest owner, despite the Premier League’s constant battle to downplay this.
Look at Manchester City; when I was a wee nipper they were a mid-table, mid-range club, a milquetoast David among Goliaths.
Following a takeover by Abu Dhabi United Group in 2008, Man City slowly grew to an absolute titan, perhaps the most boringly successful club in football history. They buy the greatest players in the world; the greatest modern manager prowls their grounds; their lawyer costs five grand an hour. Of course they keep winning.
But are they still the same club? Do the fans of Man City gone by think these are their just desserts?
‘At last,’ they say, ‘we were bought by a huge sporting conglomerate! We can replace all of these shit local players we have, bring in some proper talent, line our cabinets with purchased silverware! We really deserve this.’
It’s not even particularly fun football; it’s over-optimised and algorithmic, the same set-pieces over and over. Haaland sits up front waiting to destroy some poor home-grown goalie with his God-touched boots. It’s less Pep’s artful total football of Barcelona, and more like career mode on FIFA with £100,000,000 starting cash.
“Why do you think they release three new kits each season? Why do you think they brand every single item they can, from slippers to RC cars to pin-badges?”
Club football is pointless; it’s a pissing contest. It’s all about whose pockets are deepest, hordes of die-hard fans just worshipping the CONCEPT of a team.
Often, it’s not even somewhere they’re from. It’s whoever their dad supported, a completely different set of players in the 80s, drunkards and coke-heads, no one even approaching the clinical, mechanical precision of the robots who take to the field now.
Whole organisations, billion-pound enterprises, are built around these concepts. They sell merch to millions of people worldwide; fans are nothing but customers to them. Why do you think they release three new kits each season? Why do you think they brand every single item they can, from slippers to RC cars to pin-badges? To everyone on the inside, these clubs are money-making enterprises, no matter how much people’s hearts bleed for them.
But I guess that’s the thing. There is one thing that doesn’t change for these clubs. The very people I’m berating. The guys you meet down the pub on a Sunday will be there come rain or shine. It doesn’t matter who plays for their team, who they get to design their kit, who the gaffer or the owner or the kit-boy is, it’s still their team. FANS are a constant.
My vitriol, I guess, comes from anger. Jealousy. I wish I had a team. I wish I cared enough to follow a random bunch of lads across the country, to make instant brothers-in-arms in every pub I attend…
But I don’t. So I’ll keep saying it’s stupid.
You’re all falling for the consumerist narrative peddled to you by rich billionaires and corporations. So next time you think about buying that ‘Official Mens West Ham United Aftershave – Great West Ham Gift for Dads’… think twice. Check if you still recognise your ship under all that shiny new wood. Is there anything left of what you fell in love with?
