The appeal of Football?

Over the past few weeks the interval in the football season has given me time to reflect on the game itself. While the media works itself into a frenzy over the next big name superstar to jump ship and the dedicated fan is drooling over pre-season friendly’s I have been gnawing over the question: why do we love football? What is it about the beautiful game that so captivates millions of every race and every creed?

“Football is simple. But the hardest thing is to play football in a simple way.”

- Johan Cruyff

There it is, the key to footballs popularity uttered by one of the greats himself – simplicity. This is what makes football so great. This is why millions follow it week in and week out regardless of job commitments or personal circumstance; to many it is indeed more than a game.

Simple, really? What of tactics, formations and strategies. A glimpse at Valeriy Lobanovskyi’s notebook or Helano Herrera’s drawing board would seem to prove this assertion otherwise; how can football be so simple when it is so complex? Let’s not just confine this complication to strategy but let us bring in the theory of rules and stature too. It is nigh on impossible in this day and age to fully understand every rule and regulation in the game as so many are open to interpretation. Similarly the concept of transfers have become increasingly convoluted and problematic. There was a time when a transfer was simply one club paying another a lump sum for a player; now we have 3^rd parties, Bosmans, installments, image rights, media rights… where does it all end?

So, you might ask, football is simple? In its fundamental, unaltered and pure form – yes , it is. And this is why millions love it.

Anyone can understand the concept of football. Two teams, 11 players on each, a ball, 2 goals; play! This is what football is. Lets divulge further and its simplicity can be magnified by the fact that football can be played by anyone. It is not necessarily essential that the above requirements have to be met, not in an unofficial stance anyway. You can play with your friends; 5 a side, 4 a side, 6 a side etc… you can kick a ball against a wall, you can kick a bottle around the playground – this is all based on the concept of what football is; all these variations are almost, in a sense, a replication of the platonic form of football that is idealized and pure in a distant world, a world in which we can never truly understand but rather we imitate it to a lesser or less accurate degree.

The experience of football in its pure form and football as it has evolved have become blurred and hazy to the point where we cannot pin point when it transcended into the complex, intricate and obscure monster we now know it to be. For Merleau-Ponty this would be the ultimate sport in which to suggest the fundamental experience of existence.

But yet, football is still simple in the minds of many. It is this simplicity, this minimalistic concept that reaches out, grabs us and never lets us go; the emotion, passion and adrenaline rush all accompany the simplicity of the sport – for all these emotions stem from a very basic aim, to put the ball in the net. Modernists can complicate the beautiful game as much as they like but, ultimately its straightforwardness and ability to hypnotize so many under its spell, will continue to prevail.