I have always had very little interest in sports. This was partly because my father spent every weekend glued to the television screen watching an endless number of football games, while drinking an equally endless stream of vodka martinis. In silent revolt at this incomprehensible way of wasting a weekend, I would retire to my room and bury myself in a book, which was my usual escape from reality.
When I finally was able to leave Florida and go to college in North Carolina, I discovered that despite being no longer at home, I had not escaped football. The only difference was that the games were not televised; they were real.
The football event at the university occurred every other weekend in the fall. To go to a football game, one was expected to have a date. Having a football date was a sign of one’s attractiveness and success on the dating circuit. If one did not have a date that weekend, it was a sign of failure.
However, for me, going to a real football game, even with a date, was a subtle form of torture because it was necessary to feign interest in a sport with incomprehensible rules. As a result, I usually ended up watching the clock instead of the game. I could never quite understand why the referee had to stop the clock so often since this meant the game dragged on forever. At the end, I found myself silently rooting for any team that managed to keep the clock running so that the game would finish.
To make matters worse, in the late 1960s, UNC had a lousy football team, which invariably lost. I learned that when this happened, one had to smile and cheerfully say something like, “Well, at least there is always basketball season.” (The basketball team was very good and usually won, but I did not really care about basketball either.)
When I went to live in Spain, I thought that I had escaped the football nemesis, but I was wrong. Europeans (usually males) are as fixated on watching other men kick/throw a ball around as their American counterparts. Players who are particularly talented at this activity earn more money than I will ever see in three lifetimes. This strange passion is worthy of an anthropological study or two.
In Spain the sport of choice is known as ‘futbol’ [football/soccer]. Before living in Spain, I had never watched a soccer game in my life. However now thanks to my three sons (my daughter has better sense), I have inadvertently ended up seeing more than a few. Over the years, I have learned a few basic things about the sport.
For example, even though there are many soccer teams in Spain, the two big teams are Real Madrid and Futbol Club Barcelona, who vie with each other for all of the trophies. About 95% of the time, the league championship is either won by Madrid or Barcelona.
When one of these teams wins, multitudes of fans gather at a fountain at the city center and fervently cheer the team and coach. The team is chauffeured through the city in a double-decker bus as everyone pays tribute to the great victory.
This is not unlike the triumphs of Julius Caesar and his armies returning from a successful military campaign in Gaul or Egypt. Ancient Romans knew how to celebrate. They also knew the value of crowdsourcing to achieve popularity. They would drive their chariots through the city with their enemies in chains, receive the homage of the populace, and offer the spoils of their victory to the Senate and the gods. Bread and circuses are the bromide of the masses.
Of course, in a soccer triumph, the losing team is not placed in chains, but the rest of the celebration seems to fit. After parading their triumph through the city and being congratulated by the mayor, the soccer players generally go to the cathedral and kneel at the main altar. They then present their trophy to a statue of the Virgin Mary, who is probably thinking, “Hey, guys, get real” and/or “WTF”.
This scene is only surpassed in absurdity by President Trump, standing outside of an Episcopalian church with an upside down Bible. Both are evidence that human intelligence has evolved very little over the centuries.
A soccer victory does not make one richer, handsomer or wiser, but it seems to generate a kind of euphoria that lasts perhaps a week or two until it finally dissipates as all things must. In contrast, when defeat occurs, this can be a very traumatic experience. Fans rend their garments and gnash their teeth.
Losing a game is regarded as a disaster of catastrophic proportions. Sometimes, the coach even gets fired. This is not only true of Spain, but also of other European countries.
One year, during the European Soccer Championships, I had to travel to London for a conference. When I was boarding the plane, I was struck by the faces of many of the British passengers. Their empty expressions of loss reflected a depth of sorrow and melancholy that could only stem from some profoundly tragic event. Although most were bravely sniffing back the tears, some were actually crying.
I asked the flight attendant in a hushed voice what had happened. She took me aside and informed me that they were returning from the soccer championships, where England had been unexpectedly eliminated. Little did they know that the worst was yet to come.
Now, the coronavirus has triggered an even more tragic event. The Covid-19 Grinch first took away all soccer games. Fans had nothing to watch on Saturday or Sunday evening throughout the lockdown. Some doubtlessly went into withdrawal. The only methadone available consisted of replays of games from the previous year. The evening news had no more soccer to report on.
The solution was to broadcast interviews with Sergio Ramos or Leo Messi in confinement. These soccer players, whose annual salary is on a par with the revenues accrued by Al Baba and the Forty Thieves, were languishing away in their mansions with a private gym, sauna, and indoor swimming pool. It was all very sad.
However, now in De-escalation Phase 3, soccer games have returned (more or less). They are being rapidly played in empty stadiums so that the League can finish. The teams are having a rough time because no public can attend.
It seems that players have difficulty getting their testosterone up to the appropriate level without thousands of screeching fans telling them to mark a goal. When they do score a goal, there is no loud cheering to validate their historic feat. The thrill is gone.
This is such an issue that some clubs have opted for canned crowd noise to give the players the illusion that they are not alone. Unfortunately, the stadium seats are still empty. In Japan, one club filled its stadium with inflatable sex dolls, but that initiative has not caught on here.
Just as gladiators would never have fought in an empty Coliseum, soccer players are not at their best either without a crowd. Of course, they still must play because that is what they are paid quite a high salary to do. With all of the money that they receive, one would think that their talents would be more polyvalent.
For example, in the worst days of the coronavirus pandemic in Spain when there were over 900 deaths per day, when my son, along with many others, were risking their lives to save people in the hospital, I could only wonder…. Where is Sergio Ramos? Where is Leo Messi? Where is Cristiano Ronaldo? After the millions of euros that they have been paid, they should certainly be able to do something else, something more useful than kicking a ball around.
But no soccer super hero appeared to rescue the country. Those who flew in to save the day did not live in palatial mansions or drive expensive sports cars. Those who finally rose to the occasion were those who worked in hospitals for a pittance.
