I was paying attention to the last match of the Spanish soccer team against the Scottish team of the same name. One of the main plays of the game, the one that gave rise to the second of the Spanish goals, was like a joke of outtakes on television programs at the end of the year. A Spanish player took a long shot, another player wearing the same shirt collected the shot, a Scottish colleague got in his way, but lost his balance, as a result of which the second goal was scored. It was, for the poor player who fell, and surely for his teammates, and even for his compatriots present on the pitch in Seville, a degrading fact, a frankly diabolical bad act. His national team was left with no way to recover, and everyone, including the saddened, held back laughter.
It is an anecdote, without a doubt. Throws like this don’t happen too often, on the contrary. Many plays are good, precise, the players take seriously how they begin and end plays, and in general the quality is good, or passable. But something is happening today in football, not only on the field, because there also the referees, who every day observe a more arbitrary attitude, and more suspicious of neglect of their refereeing mission, but behind closed doors, which leads to the feeling that The time is not far off when many people, apart from laughing at the current situation, are thinking about dedicating themselves to other entertainment. Like reading, I hope.
That play that I cited above explains, broadly speaking, problems that are seen on the field, related to oversights of form, and even substance. What is not seen, because that does not happen there, clearly, is what is hidden in the different levels of the box that this game has. The presidents, the pimps, the referees, their pimps, the football agents (and their pimps), who make compromises behind the backs of the very nature of sport: respect for those who carry it out in the stadiums and for those who watch them play. That passion, that decorum of many footballers, and of many spectators, that is appreciated in the matches, contrasts more and more with the lack of respect of those who are around the business or who directly do business with it.
Society, in general, is experiencing a crisis of self-esteem, which manifests itself in wars, in insults, in the neglect of consideration of adversaries, who are treated as enemies and on whom different forms of harassment or slander fall. The last major episode of this misfortune, in this field of football, strictly speaking, was the inconsideration that the former president of the Spanish Football Federation showed towards the then very recent triumph of the women’s team. That episode reached the level of a national and international insult, and it will surely have its repercussions, it already is having one. But there are reasons to fear that the degradation that he revealed is an epiphenomenon whose depth remains hidden.
Degradation
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Everything conspires for the degradation of football. For example, that Spanish incident (so Spanish) left behind some brawls that were not seriously resolved, for example, by men’s football, hidden behind their professional ego. And the team managers who turned a blind eye continue to be, strictly speaking, the protagonists of the command that seemed like it was going to leave through the narrow door of common ignominy.
Not much has happened, and little will happen, it seems. It is an example, just as in field football the Scottish footballer’s unfortunate mistake was clearly an object of laughter, the supposed seriousness that seemed to follow Rubiales’ terrible action is still half there, as if football were just a broken mirror or a fair joke. A sport that for years, in the most intimate or secret embers, has, alas, produced shame in others. n