Watching, nay, indulging myself in the World Cup over the last month has reminded me just how damned emotional football – the great game that we alternately love and hate with equal relish – can be.
Commentators and critics alike have long compared it to a form of theatre. Alf Garnett called it the ‘working class ballet’ whilst, even more prosaically, George Orwell described football as something that is, “…bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence.”
A bit over the top? Not really, at least I don’t think so. Indeed, in many ways, I think George has summed up the modern game perfectly.
Zoologist Desmond Morris went a step further, writing an acclaimed book called The Soccer Tribe in which he examined the game as a sociological force, attempting, as he did, to try and explain, to understand the fanaticism and mania that surrounds the game.
And oh for a sequel, or an updated version of that one – Morris penned The Soccer Tribe in 1981, long before the game switched from having a nice cup of tea on every matchday morning to, as it does now, snorting a quick line or two for breakfast before it comes out to play.
What would Morris, as intelligent and astute an observer of the human condition as there has ever been, make of the game today? Undoubtedly he has an opinion – he’s still with us after all – but he may feel, quite rightly, that football is one area of study that he’d probably prefer not to enter again. And who could blame him?
Because we’ve seen it all in Brazil; a micro Universe of the game squeezed into a 32 day long maelstrom of just about anything and everything you can expect to see in the game. To coin a phrase, it was net smacking, match winning, game changing, motivating, good passing, cool finishing, high scoring, fast flowing, goal scoring, cool fizzing……football.
And then there was the emotion. Especially the crying. Oh yes, most definitely the crying.
Tears are liquid manna from heaven for television producers all over the world. The sights and sounds of personal grief attract television cameras like bees to nectar, private heartbreak that immediately becomes public and copyrighted, images that are seen as essential to the drama of the game as the match itself.
One scene in particular comes to mind, one that was displayed for all the world to see during Brazil’s compelling capitulation in the semi-final against Germany. It showed a young woman, probably in her 20s, all dressed for the occasion and, you can imagine, ready for a post-match party. Yet the image we all saw was her slumped forward in her seat, busy tears smudging the carefully applied colours of the Brazilian flag that adorned her face; a look of utter and complete despair on her face.
A death in the family or defeat in a football match? I did wonder if I, or anyone, could ever have told the difference.
Yet the tears and despair have become addictive as has the need to publicly demonstrate the love and devotion that people have for their team and the ideals that they share with it. Because some of the players seem to have caught on to such an extent they are all doing it now.
Take David Luiz for example. Sometimes brilliant, sometimes woeful. But always emotional.
Those same cameras that were drawn to the faces in the crowd will invariably home in on him pre and post-match to capture the full gamut of emotions that can traverse his face in a matter of seconds. Indeed, you could almost map the history of the world by studying David Luiz’s facial expressions.
It’s all there. Joy, despair, grief, rage, calm, ecstasy, subdued and alarmed. Plus a few more. Luiz also does a good impression of the cat in Shrek.
It would also seem that he is a very spiritual man. Devout infact. Those long, lingering shots of Luiz publicly prostrating himself, knees bent and arms raised as he mouths supplicant prayers to his God, were a feature of both the post-match delight that followed the Chile game, as well as the post-match despair against Germany. And boy oh boy, does it get him seen on screens, in newspapers and online all over the world.
Money shots. And he knows it. And it must all have worked because he is now reckoned to be the highest paid footballer in the world; commercial interests included, with his earnings for 2014 reckoned to around $82 million. His estimated net worth is $245 million, that fortune coming from, including others, an endorsement deal with Cover Girl cosmetics, his own brand of vodka and a top selling perfume known as With Love From David.
Oh please.
I very much doubt that our very own Ryan Bennett’s agreement with Anglia Alloys last season was quite as lucrative. But here’s the thing Ryan, a few tears during the game, a post-match prayer perhaps and who knows where it could lead you?
But there you are. Character, personality, emotions – they sell. Messi may be by far the superior player to Luiz – but he is, personality wise, about as interesting as a paperclip.
Luiz is obscenely wealthy because someone, somewhere suddenly realised that emotions are big bucks and that any player who empathises with the fans is going to be a massive favourite.
“Look at me, look how much I love the shirt, the badge, the club, look how much I care. I’m one of you.”
Ker-chingggg!
But wait a minute. Can you blame them for tapping into the way we all feel about our clubs?
Has a football match ever made you cry? (and answers to that below if you please).
I’m guilty of that charge.
Play-off final 2002. Darren Carter has just slotted Birmingham’s winning penalty past Robert Green to seal their victory and promotion.
Watching at home it’s all too much for me. I blundered out of the room, through the front door to get outside and away from it all, and, right there, burst into tears, sobbing away noisily until my partner came to console me.
That was the last time I cried – and I’ve been through the whole range, just as we all have, of life experiences since. Serious illnesses, family deaths, you name it. But did I cry at or because of any of those?
Nope. But I once did because Norwich City lost a bloody game of football!
So yes, I can gently mock, anyone can, at the seemingly OTT reactions of football fans to their teams adversity.
Who can forget, after all, the sullen face Wolves fan, damp cheeked woe reflecting another playoff defeat and his famous banner that he displayed to the whole world as a result – a world that, for the most, laughed at him. Yet, post-Birmingham, I knew exactly how he felt – and not because I felt Norwich had ‘let me down’. In fact, it was all the harder for me to reconcile because they had given everything and we all knew it.
Remember, this is football. It’s a game, nothing more, nothing less. Hideously simple in fact. So why the hell do we get caught up in it so much? Why does it affect our lives in such a big way?
I remember our home game against Reading towards the end of the 2012/13 season. One of those ‘must win’ games that we are all so familiar with in and around Carra’ Rud. I was staying at the Holiday Inn on the night before the game and, as I bided my time in the bar pre-kick off I got talking to my fellow Norwich fans. The feelings were clear and unequivocally.
“I’m not looking forward to this.”
“Me neither. In fact, I’m dreading it.”
“I wish I was somewhere else.”
“I just want today to be over.”
“This is awful. Just awful.”
“I can’t stand it. Why do they put me through this?”
The friend who I went with took, without me realising, a photo of me during the game. My forehead is creased with worry, my features are pure hangdog and I’m biting my fingernails. I look like I’m sat on death row, not sat in the River End on a Saturday afternoon watching the football.
I’ll never forget the outburst of emotion (yes, even in the River End) on that afternoon when Elliott Bennett scored. It was as if someone had just corked an overactive bottle of Champagne, the release was extraordinary. One vaguely respectable looking man got up on his seat and bellowed, at the top of his voice the response, “Elliott Bennett, I bloody well love you.”
That person was me. And I did. We all did.
But wait a moment.
This is FOOTBALL. That’s all. And yet, oh bloody hell, and yet…
Brazil fans sharing a communal footballing doomsday in Belo Horizonte or those of Norwich jumping around in sheer unparalleled delight because they’ve scored a goal, that and the significance of it. We’re all the same. But did grown men hug each other in the Barclay back in the 60s whenever Norwich scored?
Hell, you didn’t even hug your dad on his Birthday back then. But we all get familiar with one another whenever we score a goal now.
Footballing joy and despair. And we can’t even escape the latter in the close season now. It’s all around us.
The club announced on Monday that Joe Royle, after barely six weeks at the club, had left in order to take a position at Everton.
Well, the rage and recrimination on one popular Norwich City fans site was remarkable.
I could just see the veins in peoples’ necks throbbing and their skin rapidly turning red as their blood boiled in response to the news.
According to some, the club was now a laughing stock. It was embarrassing. It had to be because the new set up wasn’t working. There’d been rows, fall outs, disagreements at the very highest level. A fiasco, a catastrophe, the early signs of a season of woe that will ultimately end in relegation.
Yet all that really happened is that a bloke who has just started working for us has been offered a job at his first footballing love and, all things considered, has decided to take it.
It happens. And if it happened anywhere else, no-one would say a word about it – mainly because most of us would be completely unaware that it had ever happened at all. But this is football. And it’s different.
But why?
Why do we get so caught up in it, why does it matter so much? And, for those of you who have been supporting the club for some considerable time now, a question:
Was it always like this?
Ed, to answer your question, No it wasn’t always like this. It’s only recently (probably with the growth of the Pink’un forum) that the conspiracy theorists have been venting their paranoia.
Having heard Neil Adams statement, which implies that there are family reasons behind Joe Royle’s decision, and that he will still be mentoring Neil, then Big Joe’s actions seem very reasonable.
Why do so many people always jump to the conclusion that there are dark and dirty deeeds and massive top level fall-outs at the club? They are dragging us down to the level of our neighbours down the A140 (who may have some genuine reasons for concerns over their board and ownership).
I cried when we sold Chris Sutton when I was 9.
I cried when we were relegated to league one.
And I had a tear in my eye when sunderland beat west brom just a couple of months ago.
cried at the same penalty shootout. then fell through a glass coffee table and spent the rest of the day in hospital.
Great stuff Ed. Far too much blubbing in the modern game. You have to expect it from the South Americans and maybe the French but did you ever see Bobby Charlton, Tom Finney or Nat Lofthouse sniveling on the pitch?..no me neither. It’s not how the empire was built (that was primarily slave labour) and sets a damn poor example to aspiring nippers.
I’m sure the sporting psychologists would say it’s good to release that energy and get in touch with your emotions – phooey! The thought of John Terry’s watery facade after missing the crucial CL final penalty always turns my stomach. God forbid Wayne Rooney should ever do likewise.
By all means tear up your season ticket or throw your clapper pitch-ward, but City fans please let’s set an example this season (whatever happens) and leave the sobbing to Luiz (or is that Louise).
I think people are still raw post-Hughton/relegation and so every possible slight against the club is magnified out of all proportion, every comment and decision is analysed to death.
And no I didn’t cry at that penalty shoot out but it was the most consuming despair I have ever felt as a Norwich fan – worse than watching Gary Megson murder the game I love whilst “managing” City.
Yes Ed – we do invest too much emotion in what is after all “only a game”, and we should grow up and out of it a little. At least that’s what I’ve been telling myself for most of the 50 years I’ve been watching football. For the first forty or so of those it was Leeds United and for the last ten it’s been NCFC – imagine the roller coaster of over-emotion that’s involved!
It has got worse – especially with the hype and hysteria of the Premier-thingy, which is almost entirely commercially driven and very little to do with quality football, and the starkest illustration of the ‘winner-takes-all’ moral blight of hyper-capitalism. One of my fondest memories of watching Norwich is the remarkable 4-5 defeat to Southampton in the early 90s- remember that? At the end of the game, I heard an old guy turn to his companion and say “Oh never mind, they need the points more than we do…” Can you imagine anyone saying that nowadays?
How about, if NCFC win promotion this season, applying to join the Dutch Eredivisie instead? It’s better football, more genuinely competitive, and most grounds are probably nearer!
It’s a conundrum. We can pour emotion into football while realising, in our heart of hearts, that it doesn’t matter. Somehow, that seems to be a healthy outlet. On the other hand, we rarely empathise with the public blubbing, even among our own fans.
I wouldn’t go quite as far as Russell S – who should certainly be our next representative at the EU – but a bit of quiet, stoic suffering may be more seemly. That’s generally how I am after significant defeats (and indeed, after large quantities of alcohol). Hope there won’t be much occasion for it in the forthcoming season.
I’m not sure I understand the point of this post. People get emotional about all types of “things that don’t matter”.
In sports it’s certainly not restricted just to Football. I can’t think of a sport in the Olympics where the participants weren’t crying with joy, sadness, or anger.
For the fans it makes complete sense. There are few things we commit our lives to. Our spouses, our children, and our Football teams. Not always in that order. When sitting in a movie theatre for two hours can make you cry (or only 10 mins if you’re watching UP), imagine what a lifetime of following Norwich City can do.
As for Joe Royle. He turned up. Had a nondescript job. Didn’t know anything about our POTS. Then left. Regardless of his reasons for leaving, that we let him go, we appear to not be too inconvenienced by it, and have had no word of a replacement, makes me wonder why people were so excited to have him (and that position) in the first place.
Not even Orwell could have imagined the nightmare vision of the PL awash with TV cash and dodgy foreign ownership – tradition (names/shirt colours/ground names) all laid prey to organised (corporate) attack. It’s enough to make you cry. Meanwhile in Zurich, grand controller Blatter is a scarily close realisation of ‘Emmanuel Goldstein’ (1984).
That quote you included from ‘The Sporting Spirit’ still strikes a chord as does the last line;
“There are quite enough real causes of trouble already, and we need not add to them by encouraging young men to kick each other on the shins amid the roars of infuriated spectators.”
Maybe not George but I still can’t wait for August 10th!
I found myself welling up after spilling a glass of milk – and it was only semi-skimmed.
I agree with Stoke’s ‘hard-man’ Robert Huth who suggested a 3 match ban for a player who blubs on the pitch (after Luis/Louise Suarez’s outpouring at Palace).
You have to blame the X-factor culture of public sobbing which spreads like a wave through a crowded place. It’s good to cry but in private and not over a bunch of very well paid blokes kicking a ball and chunks out of each other.