#AgainstModernFootball - fans who take pictures with iPads

Decades from now images of football in 2017 will be reminisced over just like how sepia-tinged pictures of the past are today. Nostalgia is linear, it never stops, with time passing over it like the conveyer belt of a production line. When the present one day becomes the past we will look back at ask one question – why were so many people taking pictures with iPads?

It’s an epidemic. Arsene Wenger took his seat in the stands for Saturday’s Premier League match between Arsenal and Chelsea, prompting derision and sarcastic jubilation from the home supporters around him. They took pictures, some of which were taken on iPads, blocking the face of Wenger.

There’s something about Stamford Bridge that makes fans whip out their iPads and snap away. It’s not so long since one supporter clutched an iPad as some sort of de facto sign. “Keep calm and keep Frank,” it read, urging Chelsea to extend Frank Lampard’s contract at the club. In the end they allowed the midfielder to leave, probably just to spite that one fan and his tablet computer banner.

Never should an iPad be used to take a picture. There is no situation that renders it acceptable. Yes, they are equipped with cameras, but they are in the same category as FM radio receives on mobile phones – technology has progressed past the point where they are necessary.

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If you have an iPad in your pocket you almost certainly have a mobile phone in there as well. That in itself counters any explanation for using an iPad to take pictures. Modern football has to contend with far greater strifes and problems, but not much else is as infuriatingly tedious and unnecessary as taking pictures at a ground with an iPad.

Fans who take photographs with iPads are the footballing equivalent of that one guy walking through Camden with a boombox perched on his should, except fans don’t tend to use their iPads with any hint of irony.

Football deserves better than to have its picture taken with an iPad. We live in an age of 4k televisions and online video streaming in HD. Social media allows us to stream our lives directly on to the internet, and yet some still find it acceptable to use a tablet, with its substandard camera and giant size that blocks the view of other supporters, to snap away.

Then there’s the strain such devices much put on the stadium’s wi-fi network. Reporters and journalists perpetually bemoan the strength of internet connections at football grounds, sometimes sending off their articles by carrier pigeon because it’s quicker that way. But the wi-fi at stadiums is probably so slow because there are so many fans on the network, hogging the bandwidth by streaming iPlayer or playing Fruit Ninja on their iPads.

Premier League clubs should host tutorials for supporters who even find themselves tempted to open the camera app on their tablets at a football ground. Manchester City are holding a so-called hackathon this weekend, blurring the lines between sport and technology. Perhaps they could do a quick seminar on the subject of taking pictures at games. This writer would very much appreciate that.

Education could be the key, but then again maybe certain fans are too stuck in their ways. Think about how many times you have shown your mother how to forward an email, or told her that the reason the volume on her phone is low is because she keeps pressing the volume buttons. Have you ever made a breakthrough in any of these instances? Some people are beyond helping.

And so we must all hope that clubs create a separate section for these fans to sit in – the family section, the singing section, the taking pictures with iPads section. It’s the only way forward. The installation of these sections must be prioritised ahead of any Safe Standing movement. Surely even those campaigning for the return of the terraces to British stadiums can see that.