"Sometimes soccer is a pleasure that hurts"
There is no ethical consumption under capitalism, of course, but there are ethical lines that we all eventually end up drawing because we need to be able to look ourselves in the eyes every morning. I’ve been thinking about whose blood greases the wheels of my existence non-stop since my friend Rowan sent out that newsletter on May 3.
The question becomes all the more apparent on days like this one, when a whole professional football league¹ comes back to empty and echoing stadiums and hundreds of thousands of us are tweeting about a sport we haven’t watched in over two months. The farce of a contact sport returning during a pandemic regardless of what fans wanted because a bottom line is in danger doesn’t fade away no matter how many goals are scored.
Whose blood greases the wheels of weekend football and the collective relief of one of the biggest global fandoms returning to some semblance of routine? It’s the groundskeepers, and the cleaners, and the clubs’ medical staff, and the officials’ assistants, and the personal chefs, and barbers, and and and. The people who never get paid enough, who probably aren’t all that young or healthy², who don’t have an entire medical team dedicated to making sure their health remains at its peak because their health is tied directly to how much is in a club owner’s pockets.
Whose blood greases the wheels of our fandom, and lines the pockets of the people who have the money to make decisions about how many lives lost are acceptable for league sports to crown a winner by June 30?
I watched two of the Bundesliga games today because sports on Saturdays is just something I do. I joked with my wife even before the game started that I was going to be watching but angry about it³, but that stopped being a joke even before the first whistle was blown.
When one of your fandoms is a nightmarish capitalist behemoth that actively disregards human lives, being a leftist fan becomes a daily struggle (something my friend June wrote about a few days ago).
Whose blood greases the wheels of my fandom, and is it possible to keep engaging with said fandom when all I see is the blood that’s being spilt for my weekend morning and afternoon routine⁴? I don’t know, anymore. But in a kinder, juster world (one that I really do think is possible), football would be different.
This was an angrier newsletter than most, so here’s a tired walrus in a flower crown.⁵
¹ The Bundesliga, for those of you who have every single sports fan on your social media account muted or blocked.
² One of the most famous former German footballers said that players weren’t at risk because they were young and healthy, and I haven’t been able to get over that quote since it came out.
³ Which would just make it a regular Saturday.
⁴ And what makes this so different than the daily atrocities that were being committed in football’s name even before this global pandemic?
⁵ As a treat.
The title is from Eduardo Galeano’s Soccer in Sun and Shadow. He was talking about the 2010 World Cup ending and how much he missed the euphoria but also the mourning that comes with every game. In 2010 after the World Cup final, I (a Dutch fan) got very drunk and shouted a lot about how utterly ridiculous it was to be a Dutch fan when the team had just insulted the sport with the way they played. I thought that was the end of my lifelong love of the sport, but my resolve lasted approximately the amount of time it took for my hangover to fade.