N OT SO long ago, every young boy who wanted to be a footballer believed that the secret of success was a glass of milk. A pint a day and you, too, could be Ian Rush was the ad man's message.
Judging by this season's deluge of marketing messages, the stars of tomorrow could become Sumo-sized couch potatoes with more spots than a Spot The Ball competition.
Yesterday, McDonald's announced a £1.75 million-per-season sponsorship deal covering the next four years which will make them the "Official Restaurant of the FA Premier League". David Platt, as ITV viewers may have seen, has also been signed up by McDonald's.
In a new television commercial, he is stranded at the roadside, hitches a lift with a non-League club chairman and is so desperate to eat the man's Big Mac that he agrees to play for his team.
Gary Lineker is about to start another season with Walkers Crisps following his successful debut there last year. According to marketing sources, Lineker is even more successful at selling crisps than he was at playing football. Britain now eats so many of the things that if you laid out the country's daily consumption of Walkers, the packets would stretch for more than 400 miles.
Lineker's new ad will appear for the first time next week. Asusual, the ponytails in loud suits are saying that the campaign is "top secret". In case anyone is remotely interested, I can reveal that the plot features a leather-clad Lineker in a 1967 Ford Mercury vainly chasing a Walkers van in the hope of stealing the winnings from their new "Dial-a-Prize" competition. Maybe Lineker should have picked up Platt instead and charged a fortune to drive him to the nearest McDonald's.
Walkers' grasp on the crisp championship is now so strong that their rivals are desperate to get in on the footballing act. American sport is a major battleground in the cola war. British football is now plunged into a crisp war.
Coming soon to a store near you: "FA Premier League Crisps". Yes, it's true. I have just tried what was left of a packet which came in the post.
KP Foods are so keen to match Lineker's success that they have done a deal with the FA to produce their crisps under the Premier League banner. They are normal KP crisps except that the packet has a ball on the front and football trivia on the back.
"The image of football, despite the sleaze, is very wholesome," says KP. "The Lineker campaign has been very successful but we are giving fans added interest on the packet."
The sum involved is undisclosed but must be substantial. Britain spends a staggering £1 billion on crisps every year and the crisp war could become bloody. Stand by for Endsleigh League Quaversand Vauxhall Conference Wotsits.For the moment, it is the junk food giants who are fighting for aslice of the soccer action but that may change. Football has never been glossier. Four Four Two magazine has elevated fanzine culture from the club shop to the hairdresser's salon and there isnow a rash of shiny
publications full of sex and soccer in between ads for aftershave and cars.
That is just on the men's side. Scan the newsagent's shelves and you will see the extraordinary sight of a football feature dominating the September edition of Cosmopolitan ahead of spreads on anorexia and "Love, lust and no regrets". "The closed male world of football fandom is being feminised," declares the author.
For better or worse, football enters a new season as a more desirable commercial product than ever before. We are probablymany years away from official FA Premier League Mascara. But given all these new bonds between football and fried food, there should certainly be a market for FA Premier League Acne Cream.
IF THEY can tear themselves away from the ads, it would be good if the Premier League would consider the latest proposals fom the major supporters' organisations.
Among other things, the National Federation of Supporters' Clubs have recommended the creation of singing areas in grounds to regenerate the atmosphere which left many stadiums when the Taylor Report banned standing up and forced fans to sit where their ticket told them to.
Thanks to the bottom fascists, many of the old terrace choirs have now dispersed. The report has spared us from a lot of the nastier chanting but it has also removed much of the buzz which is one of the major attractions of live football.What the federation want are decent-sized areas of unreserved seating behind the goals. "You can't expect 50 people to buy their tickets at exactly the same time to get adjacent seats,"
says NFSC chairman Tony Kershaw, pointing to the success of unreserved seating at his club, Leicester City. "We warned the club before the seats went in. They listened and it's worked very well."
Although the singing areas idea hit the headlines, Kershaw's overall aim is to "bring the fun back into football". And that also means targeting the players. "They all scowl and spit more than ever and the youngsters are following them," says Kershaw. "Why can't they smile a bit? I've discussed the spitting with Gordon Taylor [secretary of the Professional Footballers' Association]. He said spitting was a medical necessity but I'm still waiting to find out why." The Football Supporters' Association have some suggestions, too. They support unreserved seating but want to see less heavy-handedness.
"Why not have a part of the ground where people can wave flags without having them confiscated as a fire hazard or where fans can stand up without being threatened with eviction?" says chairman Tim Crabb
He praises Newcastle United whose fans produced a giant flag to spread over the stand on match days. Instead of banning it, the club paid to have the thing made fireproof.
In short, fans want to be among their own sort. Some are theatre-goers who want to watch in peace without someone leaping up, singing 'Ere we go and blocking their view with a banner. Others want a collective, emotional afternoon of lively devotion to their team. Putting both types in the same area means that no-one is happy. Supporters are already segregated according to their club and their income so why can't they be segregated according to their character?
