Where there is no vision, the people perish…
Proverbs 29:18
Vision in General
I know that many of my readers will have no interest whatsoever in football, and I don’t blame any of you for this. I completely understand the apathy and/or contempt that many people have towards this sport. I need not go into the details, but suffice to say…I understand.
I do want to say a brief word about my club Tottenham Hotspur, however, and to think about some principles that one can learn from the situation there. The club suffered a disastrous, record-breaking loss at the weekend as they found themselves 5-0 down to Newcastle United by the 21 minute-mark. To put this in context, this is the second-worst start to a football game in the Premier League era…of all clubs who have played in this competition since it started in the early 1990s. The club is a disgrace and a laughing stock. Many fans are incandescent with anger. Others, like me, have ceased to care very much and are looking on with amusement and mild curiosity.
It’s hard to say exactly what has gone wrong, but what we’re looking at is unquestionably a case of institutional failure. Institutional failure happens due to many things I’m sure, but the main issue has always got to be vision. You simply can’t succeed unless it’s clear what you are trying to do. This goes for all areas of life, not least complex organisations with multiple moving parts.
To those who aren’t familiar with this world, it might sound strange to hear that an institution like a football club is confused about its vision. Isn’t football simply about trying to win as many football matches as possible? Well, of course, it should be. But things are not that simple, at least, not in this case.
About four years ago, Spurs moved into their new stadium, which is said to be one of the greatest modern stadiums in the world. This is now a major concert venue and it hosts many other sporting events, such as boxing and American Football matches. Beyonce has done several gigs there and Anthony Joshua has fought there.
On the football side of things, the chairman, Daniel Levy, has made a string of disastrous managerial appointments. He has hired world-renowned mangers like Jose Mourinho and Antonio Conte but not provided them with the players they ask for and signed others that they clearly didn’t want. This has soured relationship between chairman and manager and led to the managers failing and eventually being fired.
We have other bizarre situations like that of Harry Kane - heretofore a one-club man whose loyalty wavered once when he tried to force a move to Man City two years ago, but who is our record goal scorer and has the deserved reputation of being one of the top two or three strikers in the world. It is hard to overstate how reliant Spurs have been upon Harry Kane and how much damage it will do if he decides that he really has had enough this time and forces his way out once and for all either this Summer or next, when his contract is up and he can leave on a free transfer.
Anyway, all this is to say that, somewhere along the line, the vision has got lost…or has it? Many people suspect that Levy and the Tottenham board actually don’t really care about football very much and see the stadium as a massive cash-cow which can be milked for all it worth whilst the team stagnate but produce profitable enough results.
But even this would be a perplexing vision to my mind because the team cannot simply stagnate and continue to produce results. That is not how football works. This is an extremely competitive league and Tottenham’s rival clubs are now owned by nation states with almost unlimited financial resources. If the sporting vision is not crystal clear and the squad invested in constantly and intelligently then Spurs will not be able to compete and this will hit them hard financially. And there is no end to how bad this situation could get as relationships between fans and board worsen.
It’s all just so complicated. But life is often like that. Relationships with other people sometimes feel that way: that it should be so simple, but that, somewhere along the line, it just doesn’t make sense anymore. Family life can often feel confusing: what is the point of living in all of this chaos and noise and difficulty? What are we trying to achieve here? I feel a similar way about the Church of England at the moment: everyone outside of the organisation can see that, by any metric, that the Church is failing and, yet, the things that it needs to do to start succeeding are not the things that it is currently doing.
What should Spurs do? The first thing they should do is recover their vision. Where do they want to go? And that should be fairly straightforward really: they should want to win as many football matches as possible, qualify for the Champions League, compete to win the Premier League and other major trophies. They should also seek to play positive and entertaining football. And then what they should do is to get a head coach who will move them towards that goal by improving players and making the team play better. They will need to sign players who suit the preferred style of play of the head coach and (also important) who the head coach wants to work with.
The crazy thing is that any idiot can see this, but, within the institution itself, there must be a great deal of confusion. I’ve got no idea how this kind of thing happens, but it obviously does.
Ultimately, football is not the most important thing in life. Of course it’s not. And, as I said, for me it is an amusing pastime that I care about less and less as Spurs decline into a humorous irrelevance. But thinking about this causes me to ask a question to myself which concerns my own vision. It’s probably too big a question to answer here, but it’s certainly worth thinking about.
What am I trying to do: in my individual life, in my family life, in the Church, beyond the Church and elsewhere? I should probably write down some answers to those questions, particularly as we are soon to begin an exciting though challenging new chapter in a short period of time. One observation I will make, however, is this: money is a greatly deceptive force that can so easily obscure vision. This is something that applies to life in the Church and Christian ministry as much as anywhere else. Obviously it’s a different sphere to Premier League football but money is often still a huge issue. I face that issue as, in my new post, I will be responsible for raising my own income, less housing costs. In the church that I will be ministering to, I will be responsible for helping to raise more funds for its running costs and for the parish share. The raising of the latter is an important point for the financial security of the church going forward and will to a great extent determine its long-term future. Now, all of these things are very important, but I mustn’t lost sight of the reality that the money is always a means to an end. In my case, I suppose you would say that the end is to reach people with the message of Christ, to introduce people to him and to help them to follow after him. If I can do those things - and keep my eyes upon that goal, even when I am focussing upon the more mundane - then I will be maintaining a meaningful vision. As always, these things are easier said than done.
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