Nothing like watching football played in the times of Covid to help one reflect on the sport and what if anything we might learn from it.
My local beloved Battersea Park was earlier this afternoon alive with the sound and sight of young boys enjoying an outing in the glow of a gentle autumn sun, their teacher half-heartedly trying to impose some rhythm and order on their young charges’ play.
Hard as the track-suited sports master tried to channel the ball and encourage a decent combination of a pass or two among the short-trousered minnows, he miserably failed to impose any kind of system. Instead the boys joyously kicked the ball in whatever direction they fancied, or simply ignored it, jumping or running around each other in a collective carefree dance of sheer frivolity across an open field.
These boys I should add, judging by their pampered physical demeanor and accents, not to mention the color of their skin, were not exactly under-privileged, let alone street-wise. But exempt from their lock-down for an afternoon in the park, they were damned if they were going to get, well, locked down.
Quite a different scene from yesterday when in the early hours of a dry night I stood and watched another group of kids play on a nearby all weather pitch under floodlight. Here was a mix of mini Messis, Ronaldinhos, and Jordi Albas, with a couple of unshaven Harry Kanes and Raheem Sterlings lookalikes hard on their heels, all running on and off the ball, in a series of quick perfectly timed and choreographed moves.
I was struck by the effortless display of poetry in motion, but also by their evident hunger for the ball, which had these boys rising above their social condition, and feeling good about themselves.
Trusted by their Brazilian coach, these boys were left to play with minimum interference. It turned out they belonged to a local community football club. They were there these young amateurs because they really wanted to learn and play to their best of their ability, rather than as an excuse to get away from the classroom and indulge themselves because they could afford to or were paid to do so.
Which takes me to the sight these past few weeks of elite hugely overpaid adult footballers playing their league and championship matches, their televised and livestreamed encounters sound tracked with anonymous unvisible audiences roaring their support , a complicit and artificial passion, no longer a spectacle but simply a game , stripped of its razzamatazz, eleven adult men kicking a ball around in an empty shell , and trying to make a show of celebration whenever it finds the opposing net.
We are expected to believe that the players really are inspired and motivated to play their best without the atmosphere of live fans and with the knowledge that their real value now stands exposed without the overpriced tickets sales and sponsorship and merchandising and TV rights that had inflated the business of football before Covid and the suffering and dislocation that has affected so many people.
The stadium has lost its heart beat, it has become soulless with out fans, the players visibly diminished, struggling with their egos, amidst the emptyness , keeping up the pretence that they deserve to be watched virtually but also still being paid massively for it. But then I catch a glimpse of football as they must have played it before they made a lot of money from it, some really skilled naturally talented players, boys in the park.
