Love The Game Right

Photo by Zwelizwe Ndlhovu

In the many stories I have heard of township soccer, two stories stick out for me at this point. First was the story of the coach who made it a tendency to walk into the field and start slapping the referee when his team started losing by quite a margin. The second was this team that had supporters that would threaten to beat up the referee after the game of their team did not win.

Granted that this violence was less team performance more a referee aimed. It shows a problem that goes beyond professional football. This is not the first incident we have seen where this happen or the last.  Even internationally there has been violence in professional games.

Which begs the question, why do we get violent for the game we say we love?

We say we love this beautiful game, we have a passion for it that is almost unparalleled. We’ve seen people get overjoyed by the feeling of watching their favourite player do his magic on the field, clapped hands when a wonderful goal has been scored (even if it is against your own team). I mean this sport is called the beautiful game because of the all-round feeling it gave not only the beauty it displayed on the field. And violence has never been beautiful.

So when we get violent in the game we say we have a passion for, where does this passion come from?

Does it come from a place of genuinely loving the sport or is it more hatred of seeing anyone that is not your team doing better than you. A loss should leave us disappointed not angry, if anger and violence are the result of the passion for the game. We need to re-examine how we love this beautiful game.

Surely we cannot say we love this game if we keep doing things that harm the game?

And it is not just on the pitch, soccer lovers are some of the most vile, homophobic, abusive people in sports. Ever read the insults when a team is not playing well? Supporters of the beautiful game are some of the nastiest people when things do not go their way. Soccer fans either want to leave you scarred physically or mentally.

South African soccer already suffers from low attendance already, the acts that we as fans confine to show each season does nothing but hurt the game, the beautiful game.

This is not healthy for our sport. I think it is time to re-examine our we love this sports and it's magicians.