It’s a strange thing, really. Grown men wearing colourful shorts, running around a patch of grass to chase a ball and exerting strenuous efforts to propel it between three white sticks.
Football… why do we bother?
At the moment, we’re not really bothering about football at all. The world has other priorities, and the frivolities of silly sports have been shoved firmly to the back of our minds, with doctors and nurses for once allowed to take centre stage ahead of false nines and inverted full-backs.
At the time of a global healthcare crisis which has killed hundreds of thousands and fundamentally altered the lives of billions, getting all worked up about football would seem rather childish.
But football will be back. Because the truth is, however inane and unimportant it may seem at times like these, for better or worse sport plays a central part in life.
And, as the world’s most popular sport by far, football, in particular, does more than nearly anything else on earth to capture the experience of being human.
Whoever you are and wherever you go, football fills one of the most-comprehensive chapters of our shared narrative. Jump into a taxi or walk into a bar anywhere in the world, mention the names Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, and the driver or waiter will reward you with an appropriate and – even if you don’t speak the same language – understandable response.
In a truly meaningful way, sport defines us. If you meet a stranger (something that may not happen for a while, considering circumstances) at a social function like a wedding or birthday party, the first things you will learn about your new acquaintance will invariably be their name, nationality and home town.
And after that, perhaps even before you get around to discussing professions or marital status, it never takes long to turn to the subject of which team they support.
“I’m John from London,” says our new fictional friend. “I’m an accountant, married with three kids, and I’m a Chelsea fan.”
Right there, you have all you need to know to encapsulate a whole life. And the ‘Chelsea fan’ part is integral…”Chelsea till I die”, he may well add, just for emphasis.
It means that much.
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It’s tempting to wonder whether the COVID-19 crisis will have the effect of knocking football (and other sports, but mainly football) off their lofty perches.
When the dust has settled, lockdowns have been lifted and something resembling normal life can return, maybe we will be reluctant to grant sport such a central place in our everyday lives. Is this the beginning of the end for sport’s stranglehold over popular culture?
Probably not. For a variety of reasons (shaping our collective and individual identities, entertainment, escapism, a safety valve for innate competitive instincts), sport is just too important for that.
Sure, we might be perfectly prepared to leave La Liga in the lurch and push the Premier League to the periphery during the present crisis, in the same way that not many of us are currently agitating to head to McDonald’s or go on a shopping spree at the nearest mall. We have collectively understood – with a remarkable lack of fuss – that these are not normal times and therefore normal activities cannot be pursued.
Before long, though – and there are already signs of this happening in many countries – the temporary restrictions will be lifted and people will be eager to get back to work, get back to school, get back to their favourite shops and restaurants… and get back to football.
Football, after all, has never really left the public debate, even during the height of the Coronavirus clampdown. The opening stages of the lockdown in the United Kingdom, for example, were dominated by the question of exactly when sporting events should be postponed, quickly morphing into a very public discussion about whether Premier League footballers should be expected to forego their salaries in order to support the health workers.
Similar stories have been doing the rounds all over the world, and it’s clear that sport cannot be kept out of the headlines even during a global lockdown when no games are actually taking place.
With the peak of the virus’s impact now thankfully passed, several societies are gradually starting to open up and consider exactly how our old freedoms can be restored. Including the freedom to play and watch sport.
Confronted by such a complex and unprecedented set of circumstances, it’s inevitable that different conclusions will be reached: Dutch authorities, for example, have banned football completely until September, whereas the Swedish league is set to resume in June with fans inside the stadium.
Most other countries will probably find an answer somewhere between those two extremes, and the prospect of leagues and competitions being brought to some kind of conclusion – perhaps with altered formats – behind closed doors will become commonplace over the next few months. It will be a compromise, it won’t be the same and it will be in some cases controversial… but it will be better than nothing.
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Sport, and especially football, is often accused of taking itself too seriously. All the hype, all the money, all the melodrama.
It’s just too much, as far as many people are concerned, and the impending return to action of professional athletes will be an infuriating sight for those who believe that playing games should be the last of our priorities as life slowly gets back to normal. But that’s too simplistic a viewpoint.
Firstly, from a cold financial perspective, top-level sport makes a rarely rivalled contribution to local, national and global economies. La Liga boss Javier Tebas – never knowingly understated on any subject – regularly points out the value of Spanish football to the country’s finances, taking into account tax contributions, full and part-time employment (both direct and indirect), patronage of bars and restaurants, associated merchandising and so on.
But money is probably the least important aspect of sport’s wider significance, and maybe the most meaningful role it will play in the post-virus world is its ability to engender a sense of community. It has often been noted with approval how the current crisis has, paradoxically considering our isolation from each other, actually served in some respects to bring people closer together – we are thinking more about how our actions impact upon others, and showing greater appreciation for the efforts of those who help us.
Whose heart has not been warmed by the widespread public demonstrations of gratitude towards medical staff and other frontline workers?
Well, sport has been providing that sense of togetherness for years. When you are a fan of a team, or even just a follower of a sport, you become a member of a tribe – a complicated network wherein people look after each other and protect each other, even if they don’t always see eye to eye.
The Netflix documentary series covering Sunderland’s floundering in the Football League makes it very obvious just how important that club is within its local community, while the newly-released show detailing Michael Jordan’s ascent to greatness does a similar job in championing our obsession with high achievers and great human stories, even if their lives are far removed from our own.
And it is perhaps that simple word which best encapsulates sport’s significance: stories. As a species, we deeply cherish story-telling.
From Ancient Greek odysseys and tragedies, through great religious texts and creation myths, to best-selling novels and modern-day TV soaps, we humans have always been addicted to captivating plots and larger-than-life personalities.
And sport, perhaps more than anything else in contemporary culture, is a never-ending supply of stories, big and small, awe-inspiring and tawdry, commendable and distasteful.
In short, sport – however banal it appears to be when taken at surface-level face value – matters. It is important, and we should not be shy about arguing in favour of its return to the forefront of cultural life as soon as possible.
Of course, precautions should be taken to protect the health of everyone directly and indirectly involved, and health experts should be given an influential say to avoid a repeat of the reckless decision to allow Valencia’s Champions League tie versus Atalanta, in Milan, to go ahead with supporters inside the San Siro
As with other aspects of public life, we must be careful not to allow sport to ruin the containment of COVID-19 that has been achieved in the last few weeks.
But, where it is safe to do so, we should not be worried about whether it’s distasteful and vulgar to go the extra mile to allow a bunch of pampered, overpaid prima donnas to start running around again, or whether we should force ourselves to restrain our excitement about their exploits.
Sport may be irrational, but so are people – and thank goodness for that.
Sport should be celebrated, and it should return to our lives as soon as possible. It’s what makes us human.
