Where would we be without football?

So as the new football season has started weekend just gone, it would be wrong of me not to comment in my own way on modern football. Now obviously as a football fan and life long Arsenal FC fan I think football is brilliant, I love everything about it but apart from the shouting profanities at the referee or manager or player or even just the TV lets look at football at a deeper level.

Most people who dislike football come up with the same clichéd argument of “it’s just a bunch of men chasing a ball” but I do not believe football is simply 22 dim-witted gents fighting over one leather ball. There are so many things we non-sportsmen and non-sports women can learn from football. For example, lets look at the dedication these men put into their one sport, even the crap ones are pretty good and make us mere mortals look like we have never even touched a ball before and I think that’s admirable: just how bloody good some of these guys are. They train everyday of their careers with little holiday per year; we should look at this and say to our kids “if you wanna be good at something you should put as much into it as your favourite footballer puts into football”. I’m pretty sure if my old man told me that as a youth instead of “work hard because I say you should” I would have gone a lot further a lot quicker in life.

Another point to take note of is just how much of a risk these players run by playing so much and so hard every week. Ok now I can tell a lot may not agree with me of this point but seriously football or any sport at elite level is pretty risky. Arsenal’s Eduardo Da Silva is perfect example when he suffered a broken foot that was almost amputated. In the 07-08 season he suffered a horrific injury in which he was first told by doctors he would never walk again or Chelsea’s Petr Cech who suffered brain damage at the hands or rather knee of former Reading player Stephen Hunt. The surgery Cech went under involved removing pieces of loose skull from his brain and replacing them with metal plates. Now what’s the point in me going on about these nasty injuries? Well my point is these people did come back from these injuries and continue to play at the highest levels which looking at their situations is nothing short of a miracle showing that hope should not be lost in any situation. In the states they use the term ‘you can live through anything if Magic made it’ (referring to Magic Johnson’s survival of AIDs) and maybe we should look at footballers in the same way, well the lucky ones who do bounce back from injury to go on to be successful (ignore former player turned commentator Dion Dublin or Newcastle’s Alan Smith)

Apart from these there are so many more things we can look at and use footballers as an example to better ourselves. Watching David Beckham’s LA Galaxy fiasco has shown that you shouldn’t just do things just for money, watching Nicolas Anelka jump from club to club shows that people respect loyalty and watching Cristiano Ronaldo do anything goes to show you shouldn’t buy too many male beauty products.

Football is a massive part of our society and I believe it will remain that way until the end of time. It gives men something to talk and argue about for hours over since you know; no one wants to talk about politics or religion. It gives women another reason to be angry at men. For 90 minutes enemies become friends and friends become enemies, it gives us something interesting to watch on the BBC on Sunday nights, it fills pubs and empties libraries. It has become an act of patriotism. Football is ENGLAND! Excuse me getting a bit carried away. Football is such an important part of the nine months a year it occupies and whether you like it or not it will be around for as long as Coke-a-Cola, iPods and crappy English weather.

Da Vinci

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