CAIRO: As the world cup wound up on Sunday with an ending engaged with what must have been fantasy, we will now be counting down another four years and live in anticipation for more magic, theatrical prose and just another bout of beautiful football. Growing up in multicultural Australia and hearing just what football meant to people and how seriously everyone became when their nation was playing, has always made me ponder over, just why so much lyrical freedom was associated with this sport: well after all, wasn't it only just a sport? What I could understand about the mystery of the game has been a slow but continued-to say the least- development and over the years I remain stubborn in questioning clichés surrounding the game; “the beautiful game”: can it really explain the world? I mean all the hype that is conjured up during a match and the nostalgia that lingers on. This organized, well prepared production, enthuses an audience ready to divulge every moment. Can it all be in vain, can it really be about twenty two men fighting it out, just for victory? Brought into the public discourse, there has been much said in recent times about the commercialization of the sport. Once boasting beauty, elegance, romance- poetic description; a game for gentlemen, now crippled by a win at all cost concept and one that has seen the inspiration of beautiful fluidity and abstract movement, now somewhat mere mathematical strategy. Luis Suarez and his actions against African nation Ghana has been met with much grappling opinion over the past week about the fairness of the game. If football is really used to describe geo politics, globalization and of course corruption, where are we headed as an international community and as a people? My love for the sport can be best described in a sort of narrative: an inwardness that takes me to a place of solitude and then equips what I hold dear in a collective nuance. Just like sitting and listening to an opera or when discussing classical music, it would not be fair to only just discuss an opening scene or a climactic moment. The game to me has always been a story, one promised to be told and we should aptly enjoy the sadness along with the triumph: the ups and downs and the weaving of a tapestry is just that. What it eventually creates are different tones and so the game is of different tones; the fairness, the executions and the mishaps all add to flowing emotion and an allowance of expression. Political agendas and a new wave of corporate marketing to increase viewers in countries ,where dominant sports are encouraged by hyper masculinity, only adds to a resistance to the literature that the Spanish have been writing about for over fifty years. In the English speaking world there has also been a recent embrace for the poetic passion; due to the less physical concentration it has become popular amongst writers, who discern observations vigorously, but with rather a dialogue, explored through spontaneity, even musical terms. Avoiding and steering away from blunt results has given rise to a complex- intellectual versus probability and statistics debate. The quick pace and percentage of clinical set plays as opposed to a lyrical honesty and staggering, critical portraits of failure, tragedy, even absurdity. Not always favorable with an audience wanting only the enchanting moments; who in turn disregard a lead up which had to take place and a follow up with a distinctive future. Football in my opinion- and I'm sure some will agree-;others maybe a chuckle…can be explained as you would a branch of the social sciences and just like literature one is encouraged to use methods of application; philosophy even-at an inherently skeptical distance. The game has been the single most globalized phenomenon and has captured the hearts and minds of many; those in struggles use it as a time to freely express what they believe, hooligans also have their part to play: an entire genre of hooligans I might add. However in saying that, in this theatre there are definitely lessons, maybe not obvious ones that can stir revolutions per se, but the like in our not very certain theatre of life, on our journey of becoming, there will always be struggles, debates about capitalism and moments of violence and triumph: all intertwined with a human spirit, eager to divulge and permeate through a story. To arrest motion and image through words: that is the thunder, drama and the music of the prose. Each story a painting: transcending and seeking to be heard. BM
