Football
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Perhaps I am overlooking something significant in my account of the desire to win. Am I not romanticizing football in claiming that the desire to win is what produces football’s beauty? The philosophy of win at all costs also produces what is ugly in football. It gives us dirty fouls, play acting, time-wasting, brute force. It gave us the long-ball game. It gave us Maradona’s ‘hand of god’. It has sometimes given us racist abuse, biting and the use of performance-enhancing drugs. None of that was pretty. This only supports the claim that football is about victory, primarily, and any subsequent beauty is a by-product of that quest. The beautiful moments of football might be rare, but it is not surprising that they get a disproportionately large share of the attention. Aesthetic experiences are precious and worth waiting for. I often look at countless paintings in the art gallery before finding one that really moves me. Why should football be any different? As with art, it is the greatest works that will be remembered. Teams that win ugly, playing football the wrong way, will find that they do not endure in the fans’ hearts. Football is capable of far more than that.
I have explained during this book that there are good reasons why the game of football can mean so much to so many people. Initially, it has a superficial appeal, and this might attract its younger enthusiasts. It is an allure based around excitement, colour and glory. Football would not have the popularity it enjoys if it were only that, however, for it can also attract a more sophisticated and thoughtful viewer. The game has an intellectual depth that rewards more detailed consideration, and I have outlined just some of the ideas to be found in it: that teams are interacting wholes, capable of changing the individuals that make them up; that the sport balances a set of athletic virtues against chance elements in a seemingly optimal way; that aesthetic appeal can be found where victory is the aim; and that success can be dependent on the control and exploitation of space. The best coaches understand the philosophical richness of football probably as well as anyone, for it is they who have to solve the myriad problems in the way of their victories. But we outside observers can have the pleasure of understanding these footballing solutions too. My hope is that a reader who has come this far will be looking at their next game even more closely than usual and thinking their own thoughts about the nature of this wondrous creation of the human spirit. I have covered a select few topics, but the contemplative inspiration that football offers seems inexhaustible.
References and Further Reading
Brown, P., Savage Enthusiasm: A History of Football Fans, County Durham: Goal Post, 2017.
Critchley, S., What We Think About When We Think About Football, London: Profile, 2017.
de Sousa, R., The Rationality of Emotion, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987.
Hornby, N., Fever Pitch, London: Gollancz, 1992.
Hunt, C., World Cup Stories, Ware, Herts: Interact, 2006.
Kretchmar, R.S., ‘Game Flaws’, Journal of the Philosophy of Sport, vol. 32, no. 1 (2005), pp. 36–48.
Martin, M.W, Happiness and the Good Life, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
MIT Technology Review, ‘The Statistical Problem with Soccer’, 29 September 2009, https://www.technologyreview.com/s/415507/the-statistical-problem-with-soccer/.
Mumford, S., Watching Sport: Aesthetics, Ethics and Emotions, London: Routledge, 2011.
Papineau, D., Knowing the Score: How Sport Teaches Us About Philosophy (and Philosophy About Sport), London: Constable, 2017.
Reid, H., Introduction to the Philosophy of Sport, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012.
Russell, B., In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays, London: Routledge, 2004.
Ryall, E., Philosophy of Sport: Key Questions, London: Bloomsbury, 2016.
Skillen, A., ‘Sport is for Losers’, in M.J. McNamee and S.J. Parry (eds), Ethics and Sport, London: E & FN Spon, 1998, pp. 169–81.
Skinner, G. and G. Freeman, ‘Soccer Matches as Experiments: How Often Does the “Best” Team Win?’ Journal of Applied Statistics, vol. 36, no. 10 (2009), pp. 1087–95.
Suits, B., The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia, 2nd edn, Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview Press, 2005.
Wilson, J., Inverting the Pyramid, 2nd edn, London: Orion, 2013.
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