Your Game 2007
One of the strongest themes in this blog and across the web is the power of money in sport these days - and in football in particular. This autumn the Premier League will start a new three-year rights deal that is worth billions overall, and tens of millions to each club. Meanwhile, some individual footballers have found unwelcome headlines by talking about “slap in the face” pay offers that were worth multiples each week of the annual national average wage. The gap between the sporting elite and the rest of the world is sometimes a real one.
But there's another side to the story. A few days ago in an unfashionable part of West London, the BBC and its partners - including the Football Foundation, the Premier League and Barclays - launched “Your Game 2007”: a bigger and better version of the project we ran last year.
Some star footballers turned out in their own time for this week's event, and more will join - with the support of their clubs - as we move around the country in the coming weeks. It is, in truth, just one of a number of ways that football and other sports give something back to their communities.
I don't exempt media executives like me from the criticism that we're sometimes not as in touch as we should be with grassroots sport. I'll admit that when "Your Game" was first pitched as an idea I liked it, but I had some questions about its importance in the scale of what we do. Those doubts were cast away on a breezy afternoon last April when I went to see the event in Leyton in East London.
The first five-a-side match was between some special needs kids and one of the most ethnically diverse teams conceivable, and what shone through was the enjoyment and passion, and the sense of how this mattered to them. Everyone who went to the events around England felt the same - and so much so that the sports minister helped arrange a reception at 11 Downing Street, hosted by Gordon Brown, for the teams that won through the competition.
What is so heartening about "Your Game" is that it shows a different Britain from the media stereotypes. Instead of being about knife crime, this is about the people trying to stop violence and to build hope for their communities. It's about some truly extraordinary individuals, often working with the most limited of resources, who don't accept that modern youth is about negative cliches but about human beings who need a chance in life. So on Monday I met a middle-aged African woman who's using the power of football to try to eliminate drug dependency in some communities, and we heard from a leader who's been harnessing this event to break down barriers between - almost literally - warring factions in the city where he lives.
As for challenging some racial and religious prejudices: look at what Zaynab and Kinse Ahmed achieved with their Liverpool Muslim Ladies team, and it's a great tribute to Everton FC for the way they helped them.
This is a reminder that sport is about fun and enjoyment, but that it also has a social purpose too. Football, in particular, has an ability to inspire both as the global game and as something that can be played by virtually everybody. It adds up to a common language for the “have-nots” as well as the “haves”. Bringing people together in this way is now something we see as a major purpose of the BBC, and I know that's shared by other people in sport too.
The opportunity here is enormous. Thousands of people will take part in “Your Game” this year, but we'd like those numbers to grow further. And with the next World Cup only three years away, the ability for these initiatives to be linked up and global is one we should seize. We've made a start, but the prize of making this even bigger is something in which we all have a stake.
