Are you thinking what we’re thinking?

If you watch the 2022 FIFA Men’s World Cup being played in Qatar now, you might be entertaining the notion that “something’s not quite right with football”.

Us too.

Despite pervasive superficial judgements, our feeling is not an acknowledgement of the corruption involved in the awarding of the competition to Qatar by FIFA. Nor is it alone, a feeling of extreme discomfort in trying to find joy in watching a sporting competition being played on the ultimate sacrifice by migrant workers who built these incredible stadia.

These things are wrong, uncomfortable and should be criticised. But we should have perhaps also have recognised other failings, like those in the previous Men’s World Cup in an expansionist Russia for example, or the Men’s European Championships in 2021 under the banner of growing populism across the continent, not least in our own increasingly isolationist England (where inhumane treatment of migrants is standard, modern slavery remains, and the recognition that all wealth in Britain is, at least, relational to 450 years of genocidal oppression, is largely ignored). The question of where tournaments are played interrelates with our societal histories. In short, whatever this feeling is, the problem is far more complex and nuanced than ‘Qatar’ or ‘FIFA’. It is, we contend, something more central to the game itself.

The ESL, shameless commercialisation, extreme inequality, endemic racism and homophobia in the game, deeply flawed governance, etc. the list goes on. The feeling that a global celebration that can bring many together from afar in a carnival of cultures, only does so by shamelessly exploiting people who come from such distances with the best intentions to build, watch, enjoy, live, and grow. We lie to ourselves by saying this is something new. This is not a Qatari, or a (solely) FIFA problem. This shit’s been going on for a while now.

And yet, the feeling that it doesn’t need to be this way persists; that when clergymen concerned with unemployment created sports clubs 150 years ago - the primitives of the football club giants we see now - they envisioned a more restorative spirit for the sport. These lost histories come alive once more in our imaginations to remind us that all is not lost, and much remains to celebrate. For example, football noticeably shifted in the wonderful examples from the revitalised women’s game. The energy building from successive (incredible) global women’s competitions, lifted by the feeling of a totally different sport, filled with positivity and connectivity, has buoyed football fandom, as Camp Nou and other stadia saw record numbers. Furthermore, the world of what we call ‘Impact Football’ (perhaps best known through the work of Common Goal organisations across the globe) whose constituents use football to transform futures for the communities they serve, has, for footballers and fans alike, inspired. And there’s more: the rejection which crushed the conceptually bankrupt European Super League hinted at a spirit at the heart of football that continues to resist. Instagram accounts such as Versus, which communicate the values in football’s soul, or that this men’s World Cup was the most successful for African and Asian teams, and research showing that younger citizens of the game demand it stands for more. It’s like we feel the green roots of renaissance for a truly ‘beautiful game’ are there, waiting to be nourished.

‘How’ to rebuild though, and how to grow a different football? This has always been the question for alternative visions of our sporting-industrial complex. In the past, this question has been impossible to answer without a boycott. When Kwame Nkrumah and other African leaders successfully argued for the boycott of a nominal ‘World’ Cup in 1966 (a competition with 1 Asian, 1 Central American, 4 South American, and 10 European teams), their protest was answered with just one guaranteed spot for CAF nations, between (at that time) 48 teams (now 54). Now, an alternative World Cup is played for regions and semi-autonomous states of national determination. But the marginalised organisation running this cup - CONIFA - struggles for meaningful engagement. Attempts at building alternatives, have not been successful. Yet.

If trying to change an organisation from within is hard, forming an alternative organisation within a predetermined super-structure is impossible, where the rules of the game still favour the incumbent (who mostly wrote them). Rebellion can be meaningful, and may ignite masses. But revolution in institutions, bureaucracies, civil arrangements, and political establishments, is slow, bloody, and often impossible.

Yet things do change; it’s the only thing in the social sciences that we can be sure of. And certain conditions tend to favour the chances of change sticking. Reviewing transformations, we can see that systemic change seems to work when:

1. dissatisfaction with incumbent systems of power combines with…

2. … challengers to the rules of the game, and…

3. … some form of credible alternative.

The arrival of Web3 technology creates prospects for new experiments in mass culture, and has drawn optimistic responses in some areas, suggesting that the hunt for ‘how’ to create a different football may be very much on. Web3, and the current explosion of use cases for blockchain technologies has transformed imaginations of what might be possible, promising a new substrate to improve coordination, solve problems transparently, fund public goods and democratise finance. From ownership and governance of capital, to transformation of aid, and even the creation of new digital nations, we now see a huge variety of potential applications.

However, as in the wider political economy, the application of these crypto-economic possibilities in sport has, so far, fallen way short of the democratic and pluralist potential of blockchains. From NFTs which recapitalise clubs, to speculative fantasy football options, and ambitious yet risky club ownership, we see the opportunistic, possibly extractive, but no mainstream discussion on the true potential. Web3’s reputation is left hanging by a thread, and we’re still grasping at what alternatives might have been.

We can do better. For inspiration we can first look beyond the game, before second, looking deeper within it.

From the tech start-up sector, comes an approach to gamifying our imagination of the future. Marrying elements of Systems Thinking, The World Game, Solarpunk and Regen, among others, the concept of Game B (popularized by Jordan Hall), posits that because institutional change is so difficult, and we are running out of time (vs planetary/civilisational collapse), we should refocus on building inclusive systemic alternatives in parallel to our contemporary social organism. In other words: start-up a new society alongside this one. Challenge and role model ‘Game A’, with the alternative of ‘Game B’. And while we’re at it, creating this alternative could be a highly engaging and even playful activity.

But no one is seriously thinking that football could be reimagined using a thought experiment such as Game B, right? ‘Why football’ (vs some other instance of mass culture)? Moreover why would those serious about change in wider society, experiment with what is essentially ‘play’?

This is, secondly, where we look deeper into the hidden areas of the game itself, to its opportunity. Because, why not? Football is almost, if not already, a religion. It’s attractive, and draws global attention. It is one of the greatest meeting points for humanity on earth.

A deeper look at football reveals that:

• Football is the largest spectator activity in the world. It boasts at least 4 billion fans worldwide.

• Arguably, it is the world’s greatest religion. Its power as a connector is possibly unparalleled and could act as one of the great Schelling Points that was hiding in plain sight.

• Its importance beyond the playing field is unquestionable. To be clear, countries have gone to war over football on more than one occasion. All football is inherently political anyway.

• Football fandom is changing, with expectations from millennials and Gen Z fundamentally shifting the industry towards purpose.

• The interest in gamification within the sport of football, is already sky high.

• Despite its market capitalisation, its global reach, and its status as the global sport, there is still yet un-mined potential in the decision-making power of emerging market fans who have been historically at the peripheries of the game. We have a responsibility to offer routes to inclusion, to these communities.

• Finally, a little known but fantastic community of stakeholders exist within the game who are passionate and experienced about playing the sport of football for something else. These are the communities and organisations of Impact Football (Common Goal, for example), who embody the true spirit of humanity in the game, that Game A football seems to keep at arms length.

This final response speaks to the potential of a peripheralised yet crucial global family of practitioners with skin-in-the-game when it comes to the future of our sport.

Creating a decentralised and gamified Game B version of football will require that we start with plural communities. Therefore, we have begun to engage in a process of recruiting the football community into a kind of rebel college, where we can learn, create and shape the future of football collectively, in discourse with one another, with all possible futures on the table. We call this ‘Great’ Football University: Szn One. It's a place where we hope people outside of Web3, or disappointed by the mainstream football industry can communicate, belong, and co-learn. It’s an important stepping stone we feel, in preparing a nascent community for thought experiments, and we know that by taking our time to onboard a diverse Impact Football community to Web3, we can create a pipeline of diverse talent to help build a Game B football, and shape the wider technology.

This community, which comes together in a shared curiosity for what the alternative future for our sport could be, is one where power is distributed, where decisions and flows of funds are transparently recorded and accessible, and where coordination is the oil that turns the wheel.

The only recruitment criteria to be a member of Szn One is to (1) care about the future of Football, (2) to imagine that it could be different to the version we have now, and (3) to engage in a constructive and playful way about that future. Some may call this grouping ‘Regen Football’, or ‘good football’, and some may call it ‘Solarpunk Football’. Whatever its name finally becomes, we hope that it can offer alternative visions of the football we have now, however experimental.

We are not arrogant enough to suggest we should be the ones to create this new football world. But we hope to contribute to it, and begin the conversation. It will take a team. But we do believe this alternate version of the game is possible. We hope that the conceptual North-Star of Game B could combine now with the technology of Web3, to embolden, motivate, and ultimately, ignite this alternative, and we stand ready to do our small and humble part to create it.

Before we close, we want to acknowledge that there will be many who remain unconvinced. You may have serious reservations about the possibility for football to be any different than its current form, in some alternative digital scenario. That we would get what we have now, essentially. So humour us with a thought experiment of our own:

Imagine you are in charge of recreating football tomorrow. What would you change, and what would you keep the same?

Our guess is that many of you would change something. Maybe a rule, a practice, or an exclusion. Maybe you’d change who gets to make a decision, either way.

The things to change would differ wildly from individual to individual. So imagine an amalgamation of these differences now, in a plural vision of the game in an experimental world. In a Game B world, the opportunity to build that alternative vision of football is more than a dream: it’s a possibility.

Lucy Mills and Jacob Naish are practitioners (combined 40+ years) in the Impact Football and football industries, as creators, writers and builders in the space. They are also part of Szn One, which aims to create an eternal learning community within a new University of Great Football for young people working in the football industry, or trying to enter it.