Time For Football Clubs To Stop Using Doublespeak

In 1949 when George Orwell wrote his epic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, he painted a forboding picture of a world where Big Brother monitored all of our activity and doublespeak (or as Orwell coined it, newspeak) disguised the true meaning of our language.

When Orwell wrote that classic book, I’m sure he didn’t have football on his mind. In fact, Eric Arthur Blair was hardly a fan of football. But if he was still alive, he would have definitely been interested in the amount of propaganda that is spilled out by football clubs week-in week-out.

If a player or manager gets in trouble on or off the pitch, expect to see the club’s propaganda machine fabricating a quote and providing it to news organizations such as Sky Sports who display every word despite how cliched the quote is.

The reality is that many football players aren’t that literate. Plus the quotes that the clubs create for them all start to sound the same after a while, using the same dried-up cliches and fake sincerity.

What I’d like, for once, is to hear and read real statements from football managers and players. Words that are from the heart instead of from the pen of a publicist. I want to hear words that will make me stop what I’m doing. I want to hear people within football say something interesting and not resort to the usual crap. “It was a team performance.” “We’re just taking each game as it comes.” The list goes on and on.