The Influence of the national press

The Influence of the national press

The National press can have a large influence on football as they can be used by clubs regarding transfers and also they do their own investigations into some of the players and main figures in the sport.The Sun, The Daily Mirror and the Daily Mail are the most popular newspapers in the United Kingdom and all of these had a dedicated section for sports which always contains football stories.

One way that the national press influence football is that transfers can be affected by what is printed in newspapers. For example if a newspapers source says that a club will sell a player for a certain amount and they print it, another club may see this and make a bid for the player based on this information. Also, the newspapers tend to focus on the negatives in sport and can give a certain player or club a bad reputation. For example Luis Suarez, who is the premier leagues top goalscorer was accused on diving for a penalty in the recent game against Aston Villa. Many players try to con the referee like this but Luis Suarez was targeted in the Sunday newspapers because of his past actions. This could lead to him being targeted by supporters and other players.

Another way in which the national press influence football is because they run their own investigations into some of the issues in football to expose certain players. An example of this is when the Sun ran an investigation into match fixing which resulted in 6 arrests. Some of these such as Sam Sodje and DJ Campell are current professional football players so this has disrupted their teams training and progress. Another professional footballer arrested over this investigation, Cristian Montano was sacked by his club Oldham after the investigation. This shows how the national press can help football by identifying these sort of individuals.