European football clubs eagerly abandon centuries of history to pretend they like basketball
With billions of dollars on the line, traditional soccer teams are replacing their grass pitches with hardwood and teaching goalkeepers how to dribble.
As a lifelong fan of the beautiful game, I understood football to be about tradition, community and the immediate disposal of both when ten billion dollars appears on a table. The NBA has delayed its new European basketball league until 2028 while it evaluates enormous franchise bids from European football club owners. The guardians of sporting heritage have apparently searched their consciences and found a longstanding devotion to the pick and roll.
The figures have helped. They are now large enough to make a normal accounting spreadsheet look faintly inadequate. Top-tier football clubs across Europe are preparing, quietly, to become basketball franchises. You can already spot the early work. Last week, at a match, a groundskeeper was varnishing a muddy penalty area while another man fixed a glowing red shot clock above the manager’s dugout.
Money was the easy part. The tactics have caused some delay. For more than a century, footballers have been trained not to touch the ball with their hands. They are now learning that kicking it into the crowd is a foul, rather than an admirable clearance made under pressure. Timothy Clipboard, a tactical consultant at one major club, said his squad spent three hours looking at a basketball before one player attempted to headbutt it into a very small net.
“His squad spent three hours staring at a basketball before one tried to headbutt it.”
There is also the weather. Elite basketball in an outdoor football stadium during a European winter remains an unresolved administrative detail. Hardwood courts do not respond well to sleet and freezing rain. An anonymous stadium architect said teams are working on a vast transparent dome, to be lowered over a stadium by several helicopters. The prototype went into the North Sea.
The supporters have adapted with their usual restraint. Diehard groups are rehearsing hostile chants for basketball referees and learning how to wave large foam fingers with sufficient menace. Simon Scarf, a lifelong fan, said he would paint his face in team colours and complain loudly about travelling violations, provided the halftime meat pie remains lukewarm. There are standards.
The delay until 2028 gives everyone four years to rewrite founding charters, recast legendary strikers as point guards, and work out how exceptionally tall athletes will use changing rooms built for men of average height. Football can now be set aside for the highly lucrative game played in squeaky shoes. A full-court press on a freezing wet evening in northern England should clarify the project.