Football (soccer)

There is  nothing intrinsically wrong with football (soccer). So why is it that every year about this time the arrival of triumphant advertisements and inarticulate but excited pronouncements from journalists, managers, players and vox pops concerning the new season is so depressing? I suppose one obvious reason is that there is nothing obviously right with football (soccer) either. Objectively, it is neither superior nor inferior to many sports that involve two teams simultaneously trying to propel an object into a target device, while trying to prevent the other team from doing the same. Handball, basketball, netball, hockey (field or ice), water polo and many other sports fall into the same category. I wouldn't swear to it, but trying to propel an object into a target while trying to prevent an opposing team from doing the same thing is possibly the most common sporting format across human cultures. The particular combination of object, target and associated accoutrements (pitch size, team size, rules and so on) that anyone prefers seems to be an entirely cultural phenomenon. There is no point in trying to argue that one or other variation is better than another. They tend to be "better" or "worse" than each other in obvious ways, and which you prefer seems to be entirely dependent on socialisation processes. If you were born in Karachi, you probably think that field hockey is the best sport, if Los Angeles-basketball, if Liverpool-football (soccer), if Toronto-ice hockey. You may learn to enjoy tremendously action-packed, ceaselessly fast-paced high scoring action on a small pitch (basketball); or you may learn to enjoy a generally slower-paced game with short injections of high-speed action and low scores on a large pitch (football).

I suppose the problem is that football (soccer) enthusiasts seem uniquely blinkered. For example, to try to appropriate the term "the Beautiful Game" for one particular version of propelling an object into a target rather than any other (or any one of myriad other sports) seems both arrogant and ignorant. While I'm not a great basketball fan, or netball fan, or hockey fan, I don't see any justification for any of these to be described as less, or indeed more, beautiful than football (soccer). To argue that football (soccer) creates uniquely exciting moments, such as the climax to the 2011/12 English Premiership (or Manchester United/Bayern Munich 1999) is simply wrong. These are not uniquely exciting moments. They are, indeed, very exciting moments and epitomise why human beings enjoy watching sport. But fans of any other major sport could point to equally exciting incidents in their own fields.

Would be nice to think that football (soccer) fans might exercise a little humility, understanding and restraint following the Olympic Games (fat chance). Human beings can deliver astonishing, exhilarating, transcendent, climactic sporting moments without being paid many thousands of pounds a day. Who'd have thunk it?