(Written by: Rudroneel Ghosh )
They say football is the ballet of the masses. There is no other way to describe a game that has legions of fans all over the world, something that the World Cup bears testimony to. And the fan following is by far the most passionate of any sport. Some have literally sacrificed everything for the game – spent all their life savings to faithfully support their teams on tour and even had families walk out on them. Their love for football supersedes all else. What is it that makes football so beautiful, so fascinating, and so seductive?
There is something really simple and inherently natural about football that anyone, no matter which part of the world he comes from or what language he speaks, can relate to. Little wonder that football is the most popular sport in the world. You don't even need to know the rules of the game to play.
Football is the game that teaches you all the dos and don'ts. As soon as the rotund rubber bladder is placed at your feet, you know what to do. It is precisely this that the planners of this year's World Cup had in mind when they christened the tournament ball `Jabulani', the Zulu word meaning `to celebrate'.
At the same time, football is much more than just kicking around and chasing a ball. It is a game that has honour, respect, courage, teamwork and discipline as its fundamental values.
French-Algerian philosopher Albert Camus, a goalkeeper in his youth, had acknowledged that it was football that taught him everything about morality and duty. Camus's analysis stems from the fact that the camaraderie that one experiences on being a part of a football team, the sense of shared grief in loss and joy in victory, provides for great learning and wisdom.
The game of football itself is a metaphor for life, a constant struggle between free will and the unpredictable forces of destiny.
Just as in life, the number of variables in a game of football is huge.
To predict an outcome not only would we have to take into account the performances of each of the 22 players on that given day, but also consider external factors such as wind, liveliness of the pitch, flight of the ball, and team tactics, to name a few.
There are so many unknowns that a football game is not unlike the mysteries of the universe. Not even the best brains have been able to come up with a unified formula that explains everything in the cosmos.
The contradiction between classical physics on the one hand and quantum physics on the other continues to haunt us. Scientists have failed to marry the two effectively and come up with a universal theory of everything.
It is here that football might have an answer. For, like in life, contradictions reign supreme in football only to be intermittently superseded by moments of brilliance when opposing forces align to produce perfect symphony.
And what fans experience is blissful harmony when a player is able to see through obstacles, defy the unknown, take a risk and produce a spark of genius to achieve his goal. It is then that we realise that life is a football pitch and we ordinary mortals are connected to the music of the cosmos through the rhythm of the beautiful game.
(Presented by: Harish Nagpal; harinag49@yahoo.co.in; harineel76@ymail.com)
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