There is a lot of theatre in football, a rich choreography of 22 players displaying their talent on a gigantic stage (up to 90 metres long) from the moment the referee blows the whistle and the curtain opens until, an hour and a half later, the show ends, divided into two acts. In stadiums there are boxes and a cockpit; backstage and dressing rooms (tunnel and changing rooms); typical errors of stage fright; a prompter (coach) who scolds his cast from the technical area when they disobey his instructions and who often changes the plot on the fly, forced to improvise due to an unfavourable score, an injury or a surplus of cards on the field. Sometimes, when they score a goal, the footballers break the fourth wall and climb into the stands to celebrate with the public. There are also divas who get off the bus without looking at the children who have come to wait for them, hoping to get an autograph, and grateful stars who hug the little one who looks at them with devotion in the pre-match pose. On the stage, the players take on different roles: protagonist, substitute, false 9… pool boy. It is easy to see great performances: throwing himself on the ground, writhing in pain trying to move the referee to get a penalty, or making dramatic pauses, counting to 100 before kicking off when they are winning, like those actors who take time to remember a line from the script. And we have become so accustomed to these dirty tricks that it is worth highlighting the gestures of honesty and nobility. Virtue deserves as many incentives as fouls are punished. Recently, Aimar Oroz, from Osasuna, tried to prevent the expulsion of Alfon González, from Celta, when he was shown the red card for dangerous play: “Arbi, he doesn’t see it,” he said to Martínez Munuera. He didn’t pay attention to him, but the Galician club thanked the red-and-white player for his attempt on their social networks: “Honour, Osasuna.”
They don’t have the cachet of the Golden Ball, but there are some awards for it. fair play or fair play on the pitch. In 2019, it was awarded to Marcelo Bielsa and the Leeds players, then in the English second division, for allowing themselves to be scored on after scoring another when their rivals, Aston Villa, were treating an injured player. That day they were playing for promotion and they did not get it. At the award ceremony, Bielsa explained how what is legal – his team’s goal when Villa thought the game had stopped was actually put on the scoreboard – does not always coincide with what is fair; he spoke of the “effort” that “decency” requires and shared the award with anonymous examples from everyday life.
In 2005, a referee awarded a penalty to Miroslav Klose. The German told him that it was not a foul, but the referee ignored him and when taking the penalty, the player threw the ball out of the goal. That year, the Bundesliga awarded him the Fair Play Award. In 2012, Klose scored a goal against Napoli with his hand and warned the referee about it. The confession earned him another award for fair play. When asked why he did it, he said: “There are a lot of young people who watch football and we are role models for them.” Admiration always implies responsibility, but not everyone who arouses it has this in mind when they go on stage.
These kinds of awards go more unnoticed because we focus more on traits of genius than on those of character and because honesty is not always well understood in the stadiums. I would like to think that if one of my own, that is, from Oviedo, made a similar gesture, I would be proud, but being honest, I don’t dare say that I wouldn’t be angry if it ended up costing us promotion, like Bielsa’s Leeds.
Football sometimes brings out the worst in everyone, as evidenced by the proliferation of racist insults. I had a neighbour who, in the Galician derbies, when Deportivo and Celta were in the First Division, when Mauro Silva or Donato got the ball, he would shout at the television with all his might, “Come on, come on!” dark-skinned boy!” and when it was Engonga who had the ball he called him “fucking black”. Nobody in the bar ever reproached him for it. The last award to fair play The award by FIFA was given to the Brazilian team precisely for wearing a black shirt to raise awareness against racism. The bad news is that it still exists, both inside and outside the stadium. The good news is that we are noticing it and are beginning to ask ourselves how to combat it.
