Small Thought

It is ungraceful to tell directly to people's face that you will not compromise on a certain thing, that it is an absolute to you. It is worse to have no absolutes at all.

Football and Theatre

On why football is better than theatre

Football is better than theatre because it is unpredictable. In a real sense. A plot twist may be left unpredicted. But when something is unpredictable it means that it has to be left unpredicted. You may get it right, in football, but that is not to say you have predicted. A plot twist is something a mind has thought- something man made. Some human being holds all the secrets to a plot. He is the plot’s creator, its deity. But still a human being, a maybe remarkable one, but still a human mind. Biologically- over 99% compatible with a chimp.

Yet consider what can happen when you put 22 men on a field and tell them to put a ball in the back of two nets. Well, they will start by trying individually to do it, and then realize that specialisation pays and start playing in positions. Some will play midfielders, some strikers, the bravest in defence. But from then, no one can tell. That is, as it involves more than one person, it is impossible for one single mind to predict what will happen next. There is no creator, yet there is a plot. A cynical plot at times, an heroic one other ones. And then, of course, what you do not know you can explain in all the ways possible, possibly choosing the best ones. Beating a team after they have badly beaten you can be called revenge, or justice. You can say: surely, in theatre you get such ideas of Justice, revenge, nemesis. And more than in football. True, but, as said before, it is the product of a human mind, the piece is its child: if you ignore this, you enjoy theatre more. While in football, because no one has written any script, it actually might be Justice at work. Probably not, but then again, what you do not know you can explain in any way you want. And at this point why not choose the best ones? They are just as true as the worst ones, when one does not know. To choose the worse explanation in such cases is pettiness of the soul.

It is often argued that if something originated in a particular context it can not be universal. What they mean by universal, those lovers of moral castration, is unclear, but whatever it means they are proven dead wrong a million times by football. Of all the examples possible in football, football itself is the greatest. A 19^th century British upper class activity for glorious English spring days, it becomes in a few decades the game of much of the world. How, is not very important. John Stuart Mill says that persecution is useless against truth: truth always comes back. Thus, how football spreads and British imperial sailors are not very important. What matters is that it becomes the game of the world: universal in any possible understanding of the word. So- our preservers of dead cultures, those who see the world as a museum to humanity, would have each stuck in their own little game, each one dying in its own way. Much like plants that can not any longer stay in a pot and need to be planted in the ground, we, the human animal, like and need to go beyond. Beyond what is local to what is good: by any standard. From Eton to: Bahia, Genova, Paris, Montevideo, Sao Paulo, Madrid and Barcelona, Kiev, Donetsk, Moscow, Seoul and Tokyo, Lagos, Teheran, Munich, Brisbane… This was the march of football, the local and particular game of educated upper class white males. But where it comes from matters little, really. Incidentally, to testify this, it is sufficient to look at the English team now.

Football, said once a trainer, is the most important thing of the things that are not important. So simple and good as a means football is, that anything, virtually anything, can be shown trough football. For example, British imperial arrogance, and Justice. From the start of the century, through to, say, the second world war, the English team was the best in the world. So good it was, that, like Americans used to do in basketball, they sent amateur teams over the world to represent them, and they would win. So great this arrogance, that the FA did not join FIFA for decades, and England did not win the first World Cups for they did not bother to play. So good we are that we are not going to grace this cup with our presence: that was more or less the thinking. And now, 2007, England have won only one world cup, and the regrets that come with that must be enormous- and enormously deserved. We do not know what it is: but it might be Justice. The harder they come, the harder they fall, one and all, even mighty England now has enormous regrets. You would really- but then again to feel so superior as not to engage in world cups should bring you some punishment. And punishment is here, every time you look at the white shirt, the three lions, and the one star. The shirt of Uruguay has two.