Football Is a Metaphor for Life
Football Is a Metaphor for Life
In the Croatian case, the national football team is the most convincing metaphor of the nation. But the nation is also just a metaphor.
When I first heard the ’22 World Cup is to be held in Qatar, a non-football country, in the middle of the winter, I was offended. How dare you? World Cup is an event, the occurrence you watch in your tank top and shorts, half drunk in the middle of the day, talking smack with your friends and anonymous enemies online belonging to a country yours is playing against.
This was blasphemy, I thought.
You robbed us of this, I thought.
And yet, this particular World Cup and all its dramaturgy worth of a volume of one Shakespeare or at least a Sartre, delivered so much, in the exact time we needed it, finishing off not just 2022, but a period of taxing two years with a bow-out worth of Broadway.
What is she going on about, talking about football, you ask? Child. Please.
Football is a metaphor for life itself. If you didn’t grow up in a country that plays football (sorry, I can not write the word ‘soccer’ more than just this one time) you might feel this story isn’t for you; I implore you to stay. It might be more for you than you think.
Football is a sport. Naturally, there are 22 guys running, trying to do something. But within life, football becomes the language with which we interpret life itself. It’s a metaphor for belonging. It’s about who you are, but even more so who you are not. Football is political, emotional, scandalous, and revealing. It has acting, falling, elbowing; just like life.
Pier Paolo Pasolini once said - “Football is a complete language, with its syntax, lexicon, and grammar, and the language of football offers the power of understanding, communication between people who understand it.” Pier Paolo also said that there is football prose and football poetry. The prose is primarily related to European teams, poetry to Latin American teams.”
There’s no other sport in the world where spectators are such active participants. Fans aren’t just a part of the narrative, they create the narrative. I come from a country that endured a 4-year war that started on a football pitch.
Football was never just a sport.
It’s who you are, and who you aren’t.
People like to collect their favorite songs, series, movies; we all can name our favorites at any time of the day. I also have my favorite football matches. I know the year, the teams, and the goal scores of my all-time favorites. I have favorite penalty shootouts in my bookmarks. The way I feel listening to a song that touched me, I feel the same when watching my favorite goals.
There is poetry in goals, if you know how to watch it.
Why are we so emotional about football? How did my friend, a Croatian, living in the US since she was 14 years old, completely divorced with anything about the place she hails from, so Americanized we communicate in English and not our native tongue - texted me 25 times while Croatia played in Qatar? Talking about the players, the game, analyzing neighbors who hate our wins, I was stunned. She was activated. Someone in her house turned her on!
We can be living totally separate lives, not having anything in common, not even like each other, but when our country enters the tournament, why do we all assemble like the godamn Avengers? Or a sleeper’s cell that’s just been activated?
It’s the phenomenon of this sport. And a miracle.
It fascinates me. Countries depending on these 11 guys on the pitch, so you can identify with success in the case of the win, so you can respond to that person online or in real life that doubted your team; it fascinates me.
The level of responsibility these players have, representing not just a nation, but an emotion of every single citizen you represent; and people, as my friend from the above paragraph suddenly being taken over with a sense of belonging I didn’t see in her for 20 + years.
I’m proud of this team. I’m proud of what we represent in this world and how we came about, how bloody we had to get in order to have this; which answers a question many sports commentators have - how does this team manage to do THIS?
A team reflects a nation, they say. But also it doesn’t. As one Croatian columnist said:
“Football is just a metaphor for life. In the Croatian case, the national football team is the most convincing metaphor for the nation. But the nation is also just a metaphor.”
He meant it, or I read it as a not-so-slight shade. Regardless, I’ll pile on: I like the metaphor of my nation, who they are, and what they allowed me to experience at the end of the arduous two years.
Times are very different for the past two years. There are pre-pandemic and post-pandemic times. Qatar was about money. The winner was about money. Croatia and Morocco managing to go through to the last 4 teams in the world intoxicated my heart.
The Athletic said it better than I could:
“And so while so much about this World Cup — and modern football in general — has been bought or tainted, the presence of Croatia and Morocco in the semi-finals of Qatar World Cup is a reminder of something important. That even here, at the climax of the $200 billion circus in the desert, tournament football retains a resilient unbuyability of its own.”
Or:
“Over this tournament, Croatia played to their strengths, playing a canny, patient, level-headed game, waiting for their opponents to make a mistake, and always ready for a penalty shootout.
It got them out of a tight group, past Japan and past Brazil, the team whose potential semi-final against Argentina would have been a dream for FIFA, Qatar, and their many sponsors. Instead, they were crestfallen when Brazil went home.
Some might read that as a morality tale.”
A morality tale.
I like the metaphor of this team.
“Football is just a metaphor for life. In the Croatian case, the national football team is the most convincing metaphor of the nation. But the nation is also just a metaphor.”
In the midst of a 200 billion dollar business, ego, tantrums, disrespect; this team is a metaphor of the nation and the nation is a metaphor for modesty and resilience.
Or in the word of one distinguished Twitter Commentator:
“Croatia don’t dance, don’t make noise, get on their business quietly, and are one game away from back-to-back World Cup finals. Respect man.”
I read that last “respect man” in the voice of Wayne from Wayne’s World.
“None of us is only what we are, but also what we’re not. Especially when it comes to us who were born by hardships on the borders of the worlds.”