For 8 years, I lived in an immigrant community with a lot of people who grew up and lived in the Yugoslav Republic. I want to share something that one of them taught me, about one of the most important and yet ever so mundane things in daily European life.
Namely, football.
I had a teacher from Macedonia, and he was the man who helped me understand football. In Europe, football is like the air you breathe. I’m not very interested in football, but I still played it for years. Everyone does. Football is how working class people all over Europe, and not to mention the world, build communities.
It’s more than just a game, in fact, it is everything outside the game that matters. It becomes a language and a philosophy. Whether you are from the Emirates, Brazil or Poland, everyone speaks football. Football demands peace and solidarity. If the world is at war, the stadiums become empty. Football is one of the greatest forces of solidarity among working class people.
Yes, FIFA is corrupt, yes, hooligans fight, yes, football attracts all kinds, even fascists. But football is bigger than those flaws. This teacher of mine summed it up in a sentence. “You do not play football, you think football.”
What made me understand the raw and profound power that this simple sport gives people is when I talk to refugees. Not just from Yugoslavia, but also from the Arab world, and from Africa, everyone knows football. No matter how poor, destitute, wartorn or immiserated you are, there is always football.
And why is that? Because all you need is a ball and some friends. You can fashion the goals out of everything. People play it in parking lots, people play it in fields, people play it on the street, people play it in the woods. From refugee camps in southern France, to the upper class waterfronts of Holland, every kid will find a way to play football.
Even if people don’t speak the same language, even if they don’t come from the same culture, even if they have nothing in common, all you need is a ball and strangers will become neighbors. Enemies will become friends. Otherness will become society.
Growing up I took this for granted, it was so natural to us all. Whether it was on breaks in school, or in the football field after school, we just played football. What else is there? Not playing football? I don’t think so.
And it wasn’t like American football where you line everyone up and pick teams, and the least popular kid gets chosen last, people just kind of split in the middle, there was no colour line, or class line, or popularity influencing it. The talented kids would try to even themselves out a bit to keep the teams balanced but that was about it.
In fact, the moment you walked past an ongoing game, there was always room for another. Even if you were bad at it you were still welcome.
Looking back at it, it was so innocent. We were just a bunch of kids playing a game, completely ignorant of the cynical ways in which the world would divide us as we grew up. Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus, Atheists, Buddhists, you didn’t even think about it. There were no foreigners and no natives, there was only football.
And every kid who plays the game has this stuck in the back of their heads even when they grow up. It remains with you, even the most knuckledragging reactionary will still respect the game.
Because even if the other team is comprised of people that they hate, even if they would be the first to tell them to go home outside of the stadium, inside of the stadium there’s no game without two teams.
That’s the magic of football. For just a few hours in those bleachers, people turn into those school kids who were just playing a game. That’s why people take it so seriously.
I don’t watch television, but whenever our team scores there’s dozens of people in my building all cheering at the same time. I hear that sound through the wall, and it still warms my heart. Even though I am not very interested in watching the game, I would still fight for football. For the beauty of football.
It it took me a wise Macedonian comrade to help me understand why.
God bless Yugoslavia, and I am very excited to witness its return some day. I believe it is foretold. Because the kingdom of god will always be a republic.
