The euphoria unleashed by the Spanish team after winning the European Championship was followed by a kind of heartfelt disappointment at the players’ celebration in Madrid. Not a single mention of racism, sexism, the drama of Palestine, the civil war in Yemen, evictions, the housing crisis, nothing at all; just music of questionable taste, Spanish Gibraltar, testosterone and alcohol. So for some, the team has gone in just a few days from defeating racism – although this does not appear in the referee’s reports of the matches – to lacking any civic or moral value.
But of course, neither did the national team defeat racism (as if that were even possible), nor did Lamine Yamal and Nico Williams dress up as Martin Luther King for three weeks, nor have they suddenly entered into unknown amoral territory. The national team won a European Championship and made a lot of people happy for a few days. Those who hated football before will continue to hate it with joy and renewed motives. And those who enjoyed it before will continue to be there, we will continue to be there Sunday after Sunday, consuming its virtues and defects.
But let’s see, what exactly do we expect from a football player? Do we expect him to change the world like a Gucci-clad superhero? What Marvel personalities do we expect him to embody? And what do we expect from a national team? Do we expect it to make society’s ills disappear?
I suppose that the extensive exchange of time and money that we maintain with football gives us fans the right to feel that we can demand, expect and demand everything from it. Football, we think (or at least I think so) owes us. Footballers owe us, obviously. And of course (almost) all of us would like our players to take advantage of their enormous loudspeaker to speak about social causes or mobilize consciences. Some do, some even mobilize votes, most don’t. Most just play. That’s how it has always been and that’s how it will continue to be unless the operating system of football is reconfigured from scratch.
For football to have that beatific quality of changing the world, we would first need football to change. And if the first is impossible, imagine the second. Football is still a space where players have been exposed to sanctions for certain actions, where federations have more power than the UN, where Count Dracula could set up a league and it would look good if players joined it for millionaire sums, where supposed neutrality in political and religious matters has become neutrality in matters relating to human rights – Oh, the World Cup in Qatar! – Although inaction is in itself a deeply political option, but that is another matter. And footballers continue to live in bubbles with certainties that normally do not correspond to ours. I think that is why so many ex-footballers and footballers fall for financial scams and conspiracy theories (that the moon did not land, that the sun does not cause cancer, that the vaccine controls us), convinced that different rules apply to them in the world.
Players are slowly finding their voice in a system that has always silenced them. Some are beginning to speak out and share their political ideas (be careful, they may not coincide with yours). But they do not have to offer us anything beyond their work, much less the salvation of the world. No one should force them to play a public role that they do not want. A night like the Euro final, that collective joy, should be enough for now. Because, I repeat, for football to change the world, football would have to change first.
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