I do not understand football

and I understand the passion some feel for the game and "their" team even less. I suppose I should say I do not understand the passion for any form of competitive sport or the support of any team. I really am not interested. I am of Mark Twain's view that golf is a good walk spoilt, that physical competition of any sort is good exercise spoilt. 

This is not simply because I have never been able to participate in any form of competitive sport myself. That is not even quite true because I have been required to throw balls at certain times in my life. I have even done so quite successfully. Did I enjoy the experience? No. It was simply something which I was required to do so I did it. I have also been required to score for netball and softball...and had difficulty not yawning while doing both.

My interest in any form of sport starts and ends with the game of cricket. I cannot pretend I understand the game but the psychology of it does interest me if there is nothing else going on. I would go to a cricket match with some knitting and a book.  

I know. I am absolute heathen when it comes to sport. I cannot even get interested in the medal count for the Olympics.

So the current uproar about the footballers who allegedly behaved "inappropriately" towards a woman who had agreed to attend their celebrations at their request leaves me wondering yet again about the whole sorry business called "sport". Yes, "sport" is a business. It is not a recreation. It is there to provide "entertainment" to the masses but it is also there to buy and sell a commodity and make a profit. That commodity of course is the individual player. A good one can be bought and sold for an extraordinary sum of money. This is a human being we are talking about but how many people actually think of the player in those terms?

The idea of the selling and buying slaves in the old Roman market place is abhorrent to most people. It should be abhorrent. Buying and selling slaves to and in America was even worse. We tell ourselves how bad "white" people were for doing this while conveniently forgetting that there were any number of African "kings" and "chiefs" who were also complicit in the trade. That the same thing is now happening in sport is something we do not recognise as problematic.

Perhaps that is part of the problem. Do the players themselves have an inflated belief in their worth? High on adrenalin after winning a match shouldn't someone have kept them together and watched them? How can they be responsible human beings when they are also being told they are a commodity worth a great deal of money to someone, especially when they have won a game? Those who "own" the players are no better than the "whites" who bought them to sell to plantation owners or the "kings" and "chiefs" who sold them to those whites. 

If we stopped paying people to play what should be normal, ordinary exercise an entire industry would collapse - but would we really be any worse off?