The Beautiful Game

July 5, 2021 at 4:58 pm (Uncategorized)

“Every football club has its ‘supporters’ and a supporter can be someone who has never kicked a ball in his life. He goes to the match in his car, or by bus or the metro. He participates in the action and plays sports via an intermediary. He quivers with enthusiasm, he fidgets frenetically, but he never moves from his seat. A curious kind of ‘alienation.’ Sport is an activity which is apparently incompatible with illusion, and yet in fact it confronts us with a reverse image, a compensation for everyday life.“

-Forward to The Critique of Everyday Life

If you’re playing some kind of trivia game, you want me on your team. No brag, but my head is filled with trivia and stuff that has no use except for competing in trivia contests. However, I have a blind spot: Professional Sports. This wasn’t always the case. When I was younger I loved tennis, and like every British schoolchild, I loved football. All you needed was a place to play, a couple of mates to divide into teams, coats or school bags to serve as goalposts, and a ball. I supported Arsenal, but never saw them play in person. When I moved to Canada in 1981, my interest waned. Sure, if there was a match on, or an international competition I might watch, but it was no longer fever pitch.

In 1998, I worked at an international ESL school in Toronto during the World Cup. After the first couple of days of play, the school re-arranged its class schedule because none of the students were coming to afternoon classes when the games were on (didn’t matter who was playing). Bowing to an unstoppable force, the school moved one of its big TVs into the common area so any student who wanted could watch the game (and they wanted!) Students would ask me if I was a big England fan – I told them I was, but it usually didn’t require much long-term commitment.

When football it played well, it truly is the beautiful game. But there’s so much baggage that goes along with it. In the passage quoted above Lefebvre noted the displacement by sport, similar to the Surrealists’ critique of museums. of watching, but not doing. This voyeurism reaches its illogical (or perhaps logical) conclusion with the various unboxing videos that fill YouTube channels.

In 1992 and 1993, the Toronto Blue Jays won the World Series (so named for a competition in which the teams are almost exclusively from one country). The streets overflowed with people. It was a remarkable moment of public joy. (A similar event took place in 2019 when the Toronto Raptors won the NBA Championship) . And yet…most people did not the know any of the players personalty, and the players themselves were not from Toronto. In addition, the team that won the second championship was significantly different in membership that the first. No one offered to buy me a drink because I was from Toronto. And yet “our” team had won.

And there’s that…”Our team.” English football fans have a long and largely deserved reputation for bad behaviour, but they are no means alone. The “wars on the terraces” has a long and ugly international history, between clubs, between countries, and of course if you throw race into the mix…. the fascists of the National Front and the British Movement actively recruited in the stadiums, and a quick scroll through any social media reveals the racism directed against players who do not fit the “proper” profile (admittedly, if they are responsible for a victory, this ugliness ebbs only to return in the event of a defeat). Listen to the boos as players take a knee – though a number of waggish commentators have noted that England’s recent performances have dovetailed the practice, leading some to speculate, did England have to adopt Marxism to be good again?

So to the European Cup. At time of writing, England are in the semi-finals against Denmark on Wednesday. I’ve watched all of the England games, and have thrilled as they triumphed. But I haven’t succumbed to appeals to the Spirit of 66, the year England won the World Cup (I was two years old, and none of the current team were born, not even manager Gareth Southgate). I’ll be disappointed if England lose to Denmark or either Spain or Italy, but I won’t be committing acts of violence if they do. After all, it’s just a game.