Women are often annoyed by exaggerated (in their opinion) passions around football. Maybe this is just the case when it is enough to at least try to understand in order to reduce the intensity of … your own irritation?
I’m talking about fan passion. But first (I am addressing, first of all, women), you must take my word for it that I am a sane person. Worker, whatever you say, mental labor. And with all that, I support football.
There are many worthy and even famous people in my company, listing them is like showing off. However, if you are suspected of something unworthy and somewhat insane, why not name at least a few. Lev Kassil and Yuri Olesha, Kirill Lavrov and Joseph Brodsky, Dmitri Shostakovich and Natan Eidelman. Enough. It’s embarrassing to even make excuses. No, still: Matvey Blanter wrote his «Football March» in the same year as the famous «Katyusha». Do you think he was a fan?
Wives are often annoyed by this passion of the husband. Such a scene has long become something like a pop reprise or a cinematic stamp. I am aware that these scenes are only an excuse for already disturbed relations. But still, perhaps my arguments will deprive lovely women of at least this extra reason.
They usually shout on the run: “It would be better if you …” Well, in the sense, I fixed the stool, went to the store, I would work out with the child. All this, alas, does not stand up to scrutiny. There is nothing «better» in life. Everything has its time and mood. Reading a book, jogging, making love, writing reports, meeting friends — everything has its own mood and time. Passion has no obligations at all. And pain (a strange word, I agree) is a passion.
It is difficult to explain it, like any passion. Previously, this was justified at least by local patriotism. Our guys play against strangers. Just like you guys. Or: the same as you, yesterday’s kid. Now where are these guys? Brazilian, Portuguese, Croatian. The coach is Italian. Twenty-two millionaires are running across the field. And you worry like a fool. What distinguishes one team from another, except for registration, the club badge and the amount of injections? Stupid fetishism.
No, I will answer you honestly, not stupid. You follow this team, it’s yours. You know the character and mood of a football player, the dramaturgy of relationships. If this one is philonite today, you cannot be deceived. And he jumped above himself — delight. The third had a problem with the coach, he said too much in an interview, but the coach (well done) still put him on the game. And he, half-disgraced, scored a goal, runs up to the coach and says in pure English: “This is for you!” Shakespeare would have been touched by this mutual nobility.
The match is a drama that is played out in front of your eyes non-stop. Here and now. In life, generally speaking, everything is here and now. But we rarely feel it. And here it’s honest: they came out, they started, some faces are kind, others are gloomy. How it will end, no one knows. Not them, not the coach, not you. And it will be over in two hours. The beginning and end of the intrigue in a short and selfless performance.
The masterpiece lasts sometimes two or three seconds. The football player jumped out and hovered like Baryshnikov in a ballet. Already out of reach, he sends the ball head-to-toe with the bar. Then, rising from the grass, he looks gratefully at the sky. He himself could not have done this. And God probably smiled back at him.
They often object: in the theater there is also direct contact, but the passions are high. Of course, who would mind. But according to the learned text, and often according to a well-known plot. And why don’t they yell, cry and laugh like that in the theater? There’s a different level of emotion, they answer. Again, I do not argue. But we also need some that are not what, but genuine. Stronger, better, faster, smarter. The mind of the player is reflected in the feeling of the partner, in the calculation of the situation. And instant. Not a smart player is a disaster. And I see everything. I’m here, I’m on, I’m playing. Huizing called his treatise «The Playing Man» for a reason. He believed that the game precedes culture, creates culture, and that the basis of all human relations is the game. So let me play, if I myself am not so dexterous that I do not run out onto the field.
The field of play, among other things, is the field of freedom. Partly because they play by the rules. Where else in your life have you seen people play by the rules? If a player fouls to injure an opponent and not to protect the team, the hatred of the stadium will fall on him. I see. Nobody can be deceived. But there are, they will say, match-fixing, doping and so on. There is. But even in love, it’s all there. And we still fall in love and are jealous. And we repeat to ourselves until the onset of evidence, like a theatrical elder: “I don’t believe it!”
I can give a simple advice to women. It’s annoying what you don’t understand. So try to understand. Out of love or just for practical reasons. I know such women. They are not just hooked on football with their husband, but they know a lot about it, they can discuss and argue. The main thing is to participate. What else does a person need?
In Hemingway’s short story «The Old Man and the Sea», for which he won the Nobel Prize for good reason, the main motive is the relationship between the old man and the boy. The old man teaches him the secrets of fishing. They also talk about baseball. Between them is the true love of the elder and the younger. Every trifle, a change of mood, a whim and an addiction is important to them in each other. Talking about baseball is such a love password between them. I watched an American film based on this story. The film ends with the boy yelling to the sick, shark-fighting, life-wrecked old man something like, «You know, the Yankees beat the Tigers!» “Yes, what are you talking about? With what account? The old man had tears of joy in his eyes.
There is no such scene in the story. I checked. But Americans know a lot about happy endings.