First things first, I am no sports expert. Never mind soccer. I know nothing about most things sports related, and I got lost in quite a few of the analogies, references and examples made in both the text “In the Mouth of the Tunnel” by Sérgio Sant’Anna and the selection from “Soccer in Sun and Shadow” by Eduardo Galeano. It’s not that I don’t enjoy sports, the watching or the playing of them, because I do. I find it fun from time to time, and I like to watch it and play it with other people who like to watch it and play it more than I do. I’m just not a fanatic. Not quite the wife Sant’Anna describes, uninterested in the amazing goal her husband points out to her as he replays it on the TV, but I’m definitely not the husband either. What I do find especially interesting about sports though, and I must say soccer in particular, is the way that other people feel about it. What it means to them.
In the Galeano text alone there were references upon references to everything that soccer – sorry, football – is, was and could be. It’s talked about as a thing of beauty. The ball is compared to a woman, needing to be caressed and handled with care. A goal is orgasmic.
Then, they make several comparisons to football as faith and religion, specifically Christianity. They mention the team idol as being born in a straw crib in a shack with a tin roof, holding a soccer ball, and if that’s not a reference to the birth of Jesus then I don’t know what is (minus the soccer ball, of course… though, you never know). The stadium where the game is played is mentioned as a temple, and Galeano states that this is “the only religion without atheists,” because you can’t not believe in football. The day after a game is compared to Ash Wednesday after carnival, the desolation after the consolation. Referees are said to make sinners repent from their ways. The Immaculate Conception and the Holy Trinity are even mentioned, and these are only a few of the many references scattered throughout.
They also mention that it has become a thing of industry and money. It is no longer as joyful as it once was, though sometimes you can still catch a glimpse of it in the players. Goals aren’t as common because they spend all of their time on defense. It used to be a thing of play, and now it is a duty of work. A science, something planned out by computers.
It is an act, a play, a job, a love, a death and resurrection, a battle, and a passion. No wonder it unites people. How could it not? There is something for everyone to grab onto.
My question for the class is this: is football itself changed as our view of it and feelings about it change? What will happen to the game, and it’s fans, if football continues to be industrialized/monetized?
