A few weeks ago, those of us who have a crush on football (soccer) received the news that Florentino Pérez, president of Real Madrid, along with the managers of eleven of the most economically powerful teams in Europe, raised the possible creation of a European Super League. The project was basically intended to be a competition where fifteen founding clubs would play an annual continental tournament, in which they would have a fixed quota and five more clubs would be allowed to participate, which of course, they would choose.
This proposal immediately generated a total rejection, mainly in English fans, players and coaches, the country that gave birth to this sport. Among other things, this league was labeled as elitist and it was denounced that its sole objective was the economic benefit of the already richer teams.
On April 19, Leeds faced Liverpool – one of the teams suggested to make up the Super League – and their players wore a shirt during warm-up that read: “Earn it! [on the pitch] / Football belongs to the fans”.
On April 19, Leeds faced Liverpool – one of the teams suggested to make up the Super League – and their players wore a shirt during warm-up that read: “Earn it! [on the pitch] / Football belongs to the fans”, in a clear allusion to the elitist positioning of these clubs, in which economic interests were above sporting merits.
In the end, it was the English fans who made the six teams from their country that wanted to be part of the Super League give up, producing a cascading effect on other clubs. This event encouraged me to write and move the focus to what makes soccer to this day continue to be such an important and beloved sport around the planet. Although by this time this project has already been discarded by its promoters, it is well worth understanding what is truly important in football: the fans, that is, the people.
I started to think about how long I have been in love with soccer, and I couldn’t remember a particular moment, it was more like a collage of moments: playing it; proud of my uncle “El Tanque Díaz” and going to the stadium with my friends, even though they were rooting for the team that was the eternal rival of my favorite team. That collage of memories grew and was enriched with the first trips to the stadium with my son, to see him play, as well as so that together we could support our beloved Pumas from the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
So I decided to ask my close friends, soccer lovers like me, why do they like soccer? And their answers are what gives substance to this writing, especially now when it is more common for women to become soccer fans beyond simply accompanying their couple to the stadium or having to be forced to watch matches on television on Sundays.
“Why do I like soccer? I don’t know, for me it’s part of those things that you don’t remember when it started, that were always in your day. But definitely love struck for the first time when I saw the grass of Hernando Siles.” Delfor Ulloa
For Carla, soccer has always been a family activity. Her parents who are fans of Bolívar (team from La Paz, Bolivia) introduced her and her two sisters to the team they loved, and thus soccer brought these three sisters much closer together with their dad.
Oscar carries it in his heart as a family legacy; for Roberto, it means family memories and sharing with friends; and, for Leonardo, soccer is a representation of life itself. Moreover, Leonardo tells me a perfect analogy: on average you live ninety years, and a game lasts ninety minutes; at the beginning of the game, as in life, we are fresh, full of energy, but we also make mistakes, but as the game, and life itself, progresses you become more experienced and you must learn to play with those who are on the pitch, making a simile with our daily lives.
For Carla, soccer has always been a family activity. Her parents who are fans of Bolívar (team from La Paz, Bolivia) introduced her and her two sisters to the team they loved, and thus soccer brought these three sisters much closer together with their dad.
That experience that connects us with soccer is felt by the most affluent millionaire and even the humblest worker, because if this sport has something, it is that it transversally crosses all social classes without distinction.
If Florentino Pérez and his accomplices were interested in recovering these bits of stories and experiences that people live when they hear the whistle that starts a game, perhaps they would be able to understand why their elitist idea failed. As the Leeds players clearly said, soccer belongs to the people, to the fans. And we should stress that no matter how big the efforts of leaderships, club owners and dominant sports channels may be in trying to transform soccer (and any sport) into just a business, they will always encounter those of us who vibrate watching a ball roll, to remind them that this sport belongs to us and that it is supported by those who pay their ticket to a game, by those who turn on a television or buy a shirt, by the tenacity of those who play it and because of this, it continues to be the illusion of many boys and now fabulously also of many girls, to eventually become the next Cristiano Ronaldo or Megan Rapinoe.
If Florentino Pérez and his accomplices were interested in recovering these bits of stories and experiences that people live when they hear the whistle that starts a game, perhaps they would be able to understand why their elitist idea failed.
When I asked my son Diego why he started to like soccer and decided to be a goalkeeper, he replied: “It was during the 2014 World Cup, when I met Kaylor Navas. He had an exceptional World Cup and I thought: I want to do that.” And thus, now it is his turn to continue adding memories to his personal collage of moments, accompanied by a ball.
Is a Bolivian-Mexican; feminist, mother of a teenager, music lover, lover of concerts and soccer. Ethnologist from the National School of Anthropology and History with master’s studies in Human Development at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences, Argentina. A human rights defender, she has worked mainly on women’s rights and cultural rights in different spaces, from civil society and public service.
