Somehow this summer has already superseded those nostalgic, tear-stained days of 1990 and 1996. The weather is hotter, the manager is astonishingly even more saintly than Sir Bobby and the players have dramatically shaken off the media-trained dullards tag we’ve been fed for years to emerge as actual real people with humour and pathos and interest that go beyond accumulating Range Rovers and Rolexes. It might all be a dream, of course, or an anomaly in the matrix, but right now it has a rare and weird sense of present-tense nostalgia. Or even a genuine shift on football’s rusty axis.
Because what’s particularly interesting about this current love-in is the convergence of different factors that have got us here. And not only in the feel-good factor around England, but in how this 2018 World Cup represents a generational leap in how the tournament has been both covered and consumed. A host of new media players disrupting old patterns, themselves serving fans who don’t identify with a sofa full of middle-aged men in identical tight shirts arguing over penalty decisions. After all watching live matches is only a tiny part of how younger fans have been enjoying this tournament.
Sure, as far as England are concerned, Gareth Southgate takes a huge chunk of the credit for fundamentally changing our approach to pretty much everything and also reminding us that it is possible to have credentials like honesty and compassion in public figures. On the pitch, the sight of players with the proverbial ‘shackles off’ and who are comfortable not panicky in possession has in itself been a huge surprise. But when you consider England were being booed off the pitch against Iceland two years ago, it’s an even more astonishing turnaround.
Football media brand COPA 90 produced a video just one month ago called “England & The Media - Time To Change The Toxic Relationship?”
Featuring candid access to Raheem Sterling, Delle Alli and Kyle Walker amongst others it raised the question of whether the pressure and judgement so synonymous with media coverage of England for decades has contributed to the team’s poor performances and propensity to freeze on the biggest stage. It’s not the first time it’s been suggested of course, but it is the first time the players at the centre of it have been directly approached and so honest in their answers. Sterling himself describes his surprise at the targeting, how his Mum has nearly cracked under it and that he now prefers to watch TV than leave the house.
“They love the negativity, they love catching someone being wrong,” says David ‘Vuj’ Vujanic, a presenter at COPA 90, representative of a younger fanbase that doesn’t agree with players being attacked for the watch they are wearing or buying their mum a house. The response to Sterling’s gun tattoo prior to the tournament echoed back to the coverage around the Beckham effigy in The Sun. Gareth Southgate’s defence of his player suggested that a line needed to be drawn. Here was a modern manager that understood and looked after his players; and targeting them to become pantomime hate figures was no longer acceptable.
“Let’s try something different,” says Kyle Walker at the end of the film. “Let’s try a bit of positivity.”
Just four weeks later, with the entire nation evidently in some kind of dreamy love-in with its football team, it’s a video that’s starting to look more like part-conversation starter, part-premonition.
“The film felt like it was a part of something, an attitudinal shift, putting the elephant in the room and letting players be honest about it,” says James Kirkham, Head of COPA 90. “How refreshing that the FA let us make a film that just would never have been allowed in the last twenty years.”
An interesting example of the “old world” approach jarring with this more modern sensibility came during the group stages when England coach Steve Holland was captured by a photographer holding team selection notes, which were then published by the newspapers. The press defended its fourth estate credentials, understandably saying that it wasn’t their duty to cheerlead the England team, but the response on social media was strong, chastising the tabloid press as out of step and out of time.
Gareth Southgate himself questioned whether the media was trying to help England or not.
While Kyle Walker once more made the case for a different approach: “If you guys just try and keep it to yourself and don’t bring it out, because it’s not going to help us. All the world has seen that team now but you guys have to do your little bit.”
The players too are part of a demographic that increasingly bypasses traditional media coverage and have found their own, new ways to get their football fix. Channels that don’t feature commentators repeating clichés about Paul Pogba’s haircut before he’s even kicked a ball. No wonder digital behemoths like Facebook, Netflix and Amazon are entering the live rights arena.
“That’s where the audience is,” confirms Kirkham. “Fans are in control. They have decided what they want to watch and how.”
COPA 90, whose premise is a channel built entirely for supporters which turns the camera around 180 degrees and focuses it on them, use on-screen talent like Eli Mengem, Poet or Vuj. Presenters who actually represent their core audience of 16-30 year-olds. They cover football side by side with gaming, music and travel, serving a generation that is more likely to share clips of pre and post match action around the grounds, as likely to engage with a game on WhatsApp as a live stream and who bypass match reports for direct interaction with players on Instagram.
Their films have also championed the more socially conscious side of football including pieces on the Liberty Cup tournament for refugees and going to travel with the Syrian ultra fans. There is apparently a COPA 90 mention every 26 seconds online.
For this World Cup, COPA set up a pop-up, ‘The Clubhouse’, to the East of Central Moscow, in an area described as a combination of Hoxton and Kensington, if that makes sense. “It is intended to be how football really feels,” says Kirkham. “A chance to prove that international football is a passport to other cultures.”
The Clubhouse has shown every game live and hosted photography exhibitions and panels of Russian fan culture and fashion influences and pulled in an international and local crowd. In an office beside it, a team of 50 people have decamped from London to produce daily content daily across Copa’s various channels. A further 300 ambassadors provide fan content from around the world.
In the context of a World Cup in Russia of course, this positive interplay becomes particularly complex given the dictatorship that controls the country. COPA 90 and Five Live have been keen to put the emphasis on the people on the ground as distinct from the political system they live under.
Seeing them operate on the street in Moscow, the fan-centric, travelogue approach provides a clear contrast to the established TV studios planted behind St Peter’s church in Red Square. From watching Mark Pougatch and the boys on ITV, you’d be hard-pressed to know which country you were in, and very little reporting has been done from anywhere except the England hotel.
And you could say the effects of this content shift are starting to boomerang back on traditional media. As seen with the BBC showing clips from the Romelu Lukaku interview with The Players Tribune, the press taking a more positive approach to England from the start not just now they’re into the latter stages, both channels employing female pundits for the first time and their new obsession with showing fan footage at half-time, even if it tends to be dominated by Croydon BoxPark. COPA 90 are also now being quoted and their experts featured on media players like CNN, the BBC 5 Live and The Times.
BBC 5 Live deserve particular praise for producing some of the freshest coverage of any media throughout the tournament, and easily the stand-out podcast.
What’s perhaps been most surprising in these last few weeks is the changing perception of the players. From the dour looks, paranoid interviews and isolated air of the Steven Gerrard generation to a current squad that can show their personalities both through a more relaxed approach to access from The FA, but also directly on their own social channels.
“It allows them to show the positive side,” says Kirkham. “Like Jesse Lingard using the heart emoji to the fans on his Instagram after the Colombia game. The fans will decide who they like and who they don’t. Proximity is so close now they don’t have to let the tabloids tell them what or who to like.”
Everything works much better when you’re winning, of course, but who’s to say this shift in habits and attitudes hasn’t itself had an impact on the pitch too.
