The Problem With Sportsball

Added: 2026-05-06

[00:00:01]Hello everyone. If you spent much time in the online right, you'll no doubt have come across the term sports ball before. Normally used in the porative. I use it myself sometimes. And whenever I do, I'll get a few angry emails from people, which I do understand, saying, "Look, what's your problem with sport?"

[00:00:19]You know, I love sport and uh you know, myself too. I I grew up absolutely loving sport, and I still do like sport.

[00:00:27]But I thought it's time to make a video to settle once and for all what's meant by sports ball, why it's a problem in the modern world. But I have to make it clear from the top. I'm not anti- sport.

[00:00:40]I'm anti what it's become. And we're mainly going to explore this through the prism of football or soccer as our American friends say. But I think these uh these themes can be applied to different sports in America and other parts of the world. Although football is the dominant sport where you see this the most I would say. And the key thesis here is the problem with sports ball is it's seen our beloved sports move from lived organic culture to manage spectacle of globalism.

[00:01:12]And to be clear I love sport as I say I grew up around it. I'm from Leicester, big sporting city. You know, you have a cricket team, a rugby team, a football team, and many happy afternoons as a kid were spent in the double-decker at the old ground fil street, the crumbly stand, and even the uh cricket ground Grace Road from time to time. And one of the reasons it was special, yes, watching Life Sport number one, but when I look back, it was time for father son closeness. And those aware of my other videos will know I'm I'm quite eager to express the importance of the father-son relationship and the male world. And I'm not saying that football or sports offered an initiation in sorts, but it did at least introduce the young male into something of his society, something of what it meant to be a male. It be built values. It promoted values, you know, loyalty, toughness, camaraderie, uh fair play. Don't dive and be a wimp.

[00:02:11]Play to the whistle. These were lessons that you didn't just learn on the football pitch, either playing or watching, but you'd also take into your life. They were local. They were regional. They were national. You could even argue they were civilizational to an extent, although that's more questionable. They were certainly part of the culture of Britain that was imparted for father to son. And as I say, it was a time away from the female world where men could learn to be men, and I'm aware that that wasn't always perfect. There is a comedy to football um that's that's very appealing actually uh in the songs and so on. It can also get out of hand from time to time, especially in the 80s, a lot of aggression and violence. Now, I'm not defending that, but I am saying it always seemed to me that if you do think the world is a dangerous place and you need men who are capable of combat, uh it's always worth having men who have some sort of outlet to keep that alive in a sort of controlled manner, kept them sharp in some sense. Uh with that as well, there is something really to be said for the regional identity football had. I think that's going if I'm honest.

[00:03:24]But there was a time where there was a strong regional identity especially for the working classes who didn't really have much outlet anywhere else or much representation. So a given player could really represent you know their people their region and so on.

[00:03:39]And as well as this I think it's also important to say it structured our week um in the sense of you know you had the working week and then the weekend was leisure time. That's where you could find expression and fun. It all fit into one sort of broader cultural expression.

[00:03:56]But I don't think I'm the only person that's pointed out over the years that that football, I think like all sport, but especially football, has become increasingly commercialized and that has distorted the organic nature of the game. Profit motive dominates everything. Now they dress it up as in we still really care about the fans, but it's profit motive first. It's the TV companies, the advertisers that really dominate. We see this with the ticket prices. Fans are seen more as consumers these days. You hear about um the great stadiums, Anfield and Old Trafford and so on and they've lost a bit of atmosphere. I went to Anfield, god 5 10 years ago now and uh my friend had a free ticket and I thought I'd go along and I was shocked how many foreigners were there and you know famous Liverpool the Liverpool identity. Yeah, you see scousers, but not not that many. There were many people internationally, and that's all right. But the point was you could see the money had come into the game, and the average scouser from Tox death probably couldn't afford a ticket anymore.

[00:04:59]This has also been combined with the constant perma crisis cycle of football.

[00:05:05]I'm sure you've all seen Sky Sports, which sometime bleeds into Sky News. You have the transfer window slamming shut.

[00:05:12]All these sorts of phrases they come up with to create unnecessary drama. And football now is not located to the weekend to be a space to to go into if you like to almost be intoxicated by and come out of back into life. It's all the time. It's constantly on. There's constant analysis. If you look at the Sky Sports Football Channel, I don't know how many times they can do the best Premier League 11 from Holland or, you know, uh, the Ivory Coast. On and on it goes. Gary Neville just making endless content. Socialist Gary Neville, of course, while he's, uh, hawking for, um, gambling companies. And not to mention, gambling companies are absolutely everywhere. Uh, and they're appalling.

[00:05:54]They're basically thriving on people with an addictive problem and they're creating fake stakes all the time. How many throwins will there be?

[00:06:03]Artificial drama on everything. You can't even watch football without gambling adverts everywhere. Even the highlights are strewn uh with adverts.

[00:06:12]And to my mind, I don't like it. Number one, cuz I think it's abusive to our people. And some people have that free market mentality of screw them, f them if they can't control themselves. I don't think it's that simple. Some people will always have problems and I think we need to help our people rather than try and bleed them dry and ruin their lives. A lot of people kill themselves on the back of their addiction problems as well. But my real beef with it is it exploits the male competitive instinct. It's a bit like usery. You know, there's something about it which is just unjust on a spiritual moral level. Males have a competitive instinct and football and other sports were brilliant because they allowed us to express that instinct in a healthy pro-social way. And yet it would sometimes bleed over and get a bit rough. And that's all right. That happens. But the point is with this gambling mentality is it exploits that competitive instinct and really renders it into something meaningless and abusive. Now that is gambling is a concentration of that but I'd say football does that on the whole these days in terms of how it's marketed of course because the money has come into the game and and and really money power is completely tied to globalism and globalism is part of the global liberal machine neoliberalism.

[00:07:26]It means that modern football, the values at the heart of it, which are being drowned by the day, are replaced by what you could call basically corporate/state approved liberal messaging. And we see this everywhere, the imported liberal signaling that most of the fans do not care about, but you are just hit over the head with again and again. Whether it's the gay stuff, whether it's BLM, it's the liberal ideology segueed in at all times. And again, this really bugs me because at the root of of sports, at the heart of football are good, solid, organic values. And these are what draw the fans in ultimately.

[00:08:08]It's what ties us to the game, to our clubs. But you can see what they're trying to do. They're trying to put over the top like a a layer of icing the modern would you call it woke ideology certainly liberal ideology and it seems to work with many people they seem to buy into it and what this means is the organic bottomup identity which stemmed from these clubs and gave us the great players who were sort of like pseudo artists in many sense you know Gaza and so on canar these sorts of figures no longer seem to represent something it's almost like the the the pressure is downwards from the outside to tell them who they ultimately are. And we see this in the game itself right now. It's it's crazy really. I know this is a bit of grand phrasing, but if we were to do a metaphysics of football strategy, we can see how the game itself has been degraded exactly on the same lines as our actual culture and civilization, especially in the West, especially in Britain where we've got mass managerialism.

[00:09:11]We see this in the actual game. A common complaint from some of the great players of of the 70s, 80s, and '9s is there's no artistry in the game anymore. It's all systems. And if you go and watch a game, you'll find this. I remember going to Chelsea years ago as well. Again, free ticket. I was in London. Friend had a free ticket. And I remember just watching thinking, well, these guys are skilled, but they're just knocking the ball in triangles all the time. It's so managed. And what that means is the individual brilliance is suppressed. You know, almost the team ethos is is suppressed.

[00:09:45]And we do have moments in football which are iconic. The one that always rings true with me is the Cantonar one where he scores that great goal. He chips it and he hits the post and goes in and he turns around like a French king. It's a wonderful moment even if you're not a United fan. But there's something about that which gets the heart of football.

[00:10:03]It's why Cantonar was larger than life in many ways. Cuz again, a a classic tradition of English football is don't show off. You know, do your bit for the team, but if you can wear pink boots and go and do something incredible, you will be seen as a hero. You have reached that next level. If you try and show off in your crap, people won't like you. But in that moment, Canelo became the king. It was something about it which was just epic again on a on a cultural uh iconic level. But that is is often played down in this day and age. You know, that the the great individual to express who he is. It's been replaced by what I call the pepification of football.

[00:10:43]Pardon me. Now, football fans will know what I mean by this. This is Pepgardiola who is this um Spanish guy or Catalonian as he would see it cuz he's from Barcelona who created this this style of football which is very tight passing very quick tight passing one touch and yeah look it works and it's very successful and in some senses when it was done with Barcelona and they had great players like Messi and Javi and and Iniesta it looked good but I remember even watching that great Barcelona team and thinking Bloody hell, how much longer of this game is there? Cuz it just had no excitement, you know. And one of the great things about English football, at least back then, was it was blood and thunder, you know, and and although Guardiola's style conquered England, I preferred the English style because it was full octane. It was aggressive. It was watchable. What we see now is hyper managerialism, control, standardization.

[00:11:44]The players are all standardized.

[00:11:45]They're all this dimminionative sort of little player who's knocking the ball around, you know, and the idea of a player with actual style and individuality is being bred out of the game. And as I say, that mirrors our society on the whole, you know, characters are not liked anymore. The system wants standardized normies.

[00:12:05]Whether it's music with Ed Sheeran and Harry Styles, whether it's the corporate life, you know, with the the maverick type figure, these aren't liked anymore because they're not dependable. They might be madly profitable, but they might also be a big risk. And basically, the finances don't like that. So, they want standardized man. And this again has become symbolic throughout our whole culture into our sport at the moment.

[00:12:31]To my mind, this makes modern football unwatchable. I just don't really watch it cuz it's just boring most of the time. Again, I'm doing something else.

[00:12:39]Not to mention the players themselves.

[00:12:42]They're overpaid. They're distant from the fans. And to be blunt, they're interchangeable. You know, the the idea of the one club man is completely gone.

[00:12:49]I don't blame workingclass lads for seeking as much money as they can, but it does mean that that basically players are interchangeable and they're just finding the next opportunity. And going back to the standardization point, they're all media trained as well. So you don't really get personalities anymore. They're told what to say in interviews. They're trained what to say.

[00:13:07]It's why you get, you know, the um the comedians who take them off cuz they all say the same thing. You know, when we're in the ascendancy, uh we got to try and get another goal and uh yeah, you know, the lads are doing well at the moment.

[00:13:18]It's not about me, it's about the team.

[00:13:20]All these cliches, they don't mean anything. It's devoid of personality.

[00:13:26]And we see this again in the stadiums themselves. You know, one of the great things about English football was the stadium, the hot dog van outside, the atmosphere, all this sort of stuff. Now it increasingly feels that the atmosphere is flattened. Safety isism replaces intensity.

[00:13:42]And I understand that to an extent they had to do something about football in the 80s. It was too violent. But it feels to me that they've sanitized it so much a lot of the raw energy is gone.

[00:13:54]you know, a lot of the life has been dragged out of of of the stadiums really. Again, I think a lot of that is simply just removing the working class who are tied to their clubs who were their clubs. And it's replaced by, you know, basically people who can afford it. Uh cuz the tickets are so expensive these days.

[00:14:12]And this speaks again to this idea of masculinity and and it, you know, I wouldn't even say sports were perfect, but they were a model.

[00:14:21]And while it would allow us to express competition and tribalism, you can see it's being channeled and funneled into safe monetized outlets alongside passive consumption. And that makes the fan a sort of adolescent figure. You know, when I hear people talk about football and the football stars these days, there's something adolescent about it. I kind of don't feel that way about the players of old. maybe because I was an adolescent when I was watching them. But I do feel there's something more about those those figures back in the day that we've lost. And then of course, you know, this endless false participation that people will make out that that matters, you know, fake leagues, betting, online debate, like you actually have a tie to these clubs when you don't. But ultimately, it all comes back to the key point that it's become a distortion of our real identity. Instead of sports being part of our identity, part of our national belonging, our cultural belonging, it's become something which replaces it. So our loyalty to Manchester United or Liverpool means that we overlook the actual issues of identity that are happening happening in our country.

[00:15:32]Sorry. This is where this meme comes from that goes around when any sport event happens. Boomers when their sports ball team loses and screaming their head off. Boomers when a black guy kills their child. I forgive you. And there's some sort of dark truth to that. You know, we seem to be so invested in our football clubs because that's what the system will allow. You know, go and scream into the void. But anything real, you know, we do not want you talking about that. We do not want you investing your true energies in the state of your nation, in the state of your people, in recognizing what's happening. We want you fighting with people who are basically just like you, but wear a different color shirt. go and give each other a bloody nose. You know, it's that is what people are getting at with sports ball. It's being used as a way to take people's eyes off what really matters.

[00:16:21]And I think this is being abused again by by multiple levels of the system.

[00:16:25]It's the owners themselves. But I do believe there's a political uh essence to it as well. And what we see is it becomes so ridiculous because you know local people will have that loyalty to their clubs. And I do sympathize you I know that people's fathers and grandfathers and their fathers supported these clubs and these people have passed on and in a sense you know our our father's identity is wrapped up in the club. I do sympathize with that. But we have to understand I'm not saying that loving your ancestors is wrong. I'm saying that that love is being used and abused to turn your focus onto something which doesn't serve you, which serves globalism, brands, foreign ownership, the ideology of the age, and weakens your real community, weakens your real connection with who and what you are, even on the transcendent level.

[00:17:15]And again, football does in many senses act as almost like a faximile for transcendent experience because there is something transcendent about it being part of the crowd melting into something bigger than yourself which is spiritual in its totality. But we do see that energy of of some guy who's basically I don't know from you know Burkina Faso who's here being being paid 250 grand a week has turned into some demigod and he's not. He's not, you know, the true transcendent may be able to speak through sport, but it's something greater than what sport is really offering. And when we turn away from that, again, it's almost like our true vitality, our true orientation as men, which serves us, serves our civilization, is being segueed into something which again bleeds you dry, takes your essence rather than gives it to you.

[00:18:08]So, I'm not trying to say that sports is meaningless or crap. I like sport. I still do click on sport although increasingly I can't watch football. The point is how it's being used to pacify us to extract your own resources what little you have and redirect your male energy your spiritual energy your cultural energy the real force of identity the organic nature of who and what you are away from where it should be served to your true interest into something which is passing and meaningless.

[00:18:41]In essence, it's another way modernity is ripping us apart. Doesn't mean sport is bad. It means how the powers that be are using it essentially to abuse us.

[00:18:51]So, I hope this clears it up and do let me know your thoughts down below in the comments. As always, if you are interested in spiritual brotherhood, do consider joining the substack sister channels and so on in the description and uh do subscribe to this channel if you're new. Take care friends. and speak again soon.