Free Time? Are you sure...

I'm (gladly) reading The Ball is Round at the moment in an attempt to get a good handle on the history (at least the western history) of footy. The game we watch today on TV or in the stadium, saw the light of day in England, in the midst of the industrial revolution. This was partly the case because people now had, some for the first time, disposable income that could be used to buy a ball, or go see the local team play. The other important factor in this is that urban workers, which populated the soccer world in the UK, were also beginning to have more free time. So not only could they afford the game, but they had the time to enjoy it.

This made me think of Adorno's essay on free time, and the whole industries catering to free time. As Adorno saw it, free time was really nothing of the sort, but rather an extension of the already highly regulated work day, full of norms and standards. His example of the expectation people have of getting a sun tan when on vacation, and the fact that entire industries have now sprung up to manufacture the sun tan, be it holiday resorts, airlines, tanning studio's, or spray bottles. Soccer is not so different.

In the early days of the game people just played where ever they could, when they could, and with anything from tin cans, to rag balls, but very quickly, regulations set in. Place to play were created, stadiums were built, foot ware was designed, and so on. Now, what this means is, for anyone using their "free time" to pursue soccer (either as a fan or a player, or both), they now had to do so within the prevailing norms. So once people had certain expectations of what soccer meant, how it was performed, etc, they were no longer really 'free' in their participation. Thus free time became a regulated time, only now, instead of the boss looking over your shoulder, the whole nation was doing it.

As government and industrial regulation of this culture increased, so did the level of manipulation of free time. Once people were into soccer, once it became a part of their identity, and the national identity, they were much easier to manipulate. Well, without wanting to get into "Imagined Communities" here, lets just say, at this point, soccer also became a contributor to the instilling of nationalism into individual identities.