Naturally, all this has got me thinking: What is it for? Why should we care? I reject the tribalism inherent in supporting a team as I am suspicious that it teaches a kind of jingoistic nationalism, an unquestioning subservience to power at which I instinctively recoil. Do fans support a team because they wear the same colours as them or do they wear the colours because they support the team? Why do fans pin their emotional well-being to the failures and successes of people they have never met and probably wouldn't get on with if they did?
On the one hand it seems arbitrary: Why are teams divided geographically? Why not by height or hair colour or age? If we are to have geographical teams shouldn't they be drawn from constituencies of equal size? Why all the fuss about this World Cup and not the one played by the other gender? In tennis, equal coverage (and pay) has been granted to both genders (after a long struggle). Why is football so far behind?
On the other hand it seems sinister: The massive corruption at FIFA that their internal investigation process is amazingly unable to investigate because... er... there's a World Cup starting. The billions spent on stadiums in Brazilian cities with barely functioning hospitals and no public transport. The hundreds of migrant workers enslaved in Qatar (due to host the tournament in eight years time) their passports impounded on arrival, forced to work and watch their colleagues fall to their deaths. The beautiful game.
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| I would quite like a caxirola though. |
