The World Cup began on Sunday. I love football as much as the next woman, but I do have some interest in this tournament: my brother has lived in Qatar for 15 years and my sons love the game. In prayer this week some school students asked God to “make England win”, others asked Him to “make Spain win” and one child, with a lot of faith, asked God to “make Ghana win”. God has his hands full.
“Why do you watch football?” I asked a few of the students while I was on playground duty. “Dunno,” came the reply, “we just love it”.
They love it, I wager, because the religious instinct is inevitable and in football we see, played out in the public square, a simple version of the great quest for salvation.
Bill Shankly famously said, “Football is not a matter of life and death…it’s far more important than that.” Football can either be an alternative religion – worshipping a false idol, as some have suggested – or it can be an inspirational, illustrative conflict, which brings us to the threshold of truth itself.
As the world draws together to watch the tournament there is something we Catholics can learn from the moral clarity to be found in football, a clarity that we are in danger of losing as we blur boundaries, challenge hierarchy and fail to talk of the dangers of missing the target, the dangers of sin.
Football, like all sports, has rules. When in football rules are examined and refined it is with the intention of aiding the game, not changing it, for example the introduction of drink breaks for players, VAR (video assistant referee) and the back-pass rule. The fundamentals remain the same. A hermeneutic of continuity for football. The ball must be manoeuvred using feet, that’s just how it is. There is no demand for the sport to encompass those who like to pass with their hands. In fact, there is uproar in the terraces if it is suspected that a player has unfairly “handballed”. Rules is rules. There is no spirit of Vatican 2 here, no hermeneutic of rupture.
In the gospels sin is described as Hamartia, which means missing the target. At the heart of the beautiful game is the saint who hits the target, his whole life dedicated to this aim. Young footballers look to the heroes of the game who went before them and take seriously the cautionary tales of such fallen greats as Gazza and Best who, like St Peter, drowned when they failed to fix their gaze right.
When the footballer misses the mark there are consequences. He is not surrounded by sycophants telling him that it doesn’t matter and that he is fine as he is. Instead he hears the chastisement of a manager and supporters who call him to a higher standard. Aware of his potential, he resolves to do better. Football understands the difference between sin and righteousness, as we increasingly shirk from it. It introduces us to this wonderful, polarised conflict. There is no relativism for the footballer, only the absolute truth that his team are the good guys as they play to defeat the enemy.
All sportsmen understand this battle between good and evil, and all know that they have to fight to the last whistle. Jesus said, “But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved”(Matt. 24:13.), and so when it comes to our salvation we must be at least as determined as a football team.
The danger for us in the spiritual realm is forgetting that there is an enemy at all. “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled,” said Baudelaire, “was convincing the world he did not exist.” But he does exist, and just as in football, in life there are attempts to sabotage us; a tackle, a dive, a block – these come thick and fast in our daily striving for sanctity and we only stand a chance of sidestepping them if we have trained for battle. If we are caught sleeping, we’ll be knocked sideways.
When things are going well we recognise the good of being on target – a beautifully aimed goal, a great pass, but what we love about these things in football is only a shadow of the summum bonum. And here’s where Catholics can teach football fans a thing or two – that instinct for the ultimate good comes from God who offers not a spectator role but real participation, real union.
Christ tells us in the gospel that we are more valuable than the birds of the air, yet they are fed. We might say that the joy we find in football is like the feeding of the birds: it is wonderful to have a basic need met, but it’s not the joy that we have been created for.
The joy we have been created for is far greater, richer and deeper. “You were not made for comfort,” Pope Benedict XVI once reminded us, ‘you were made for greatness.” Football can show us something of the heroic call, a step on the right path, but what we Catholics canshow is the top of the mountain. We can cheer and celebrate throughout the World Cup, then, seizing the opportunity, place ourselves ready to respond to those who, when it’s all over, ask “now what?”.
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