Tilsa, a friend of mine who is a PhD scholar at the University of Hyderabad, often comes to mind when thinking about football, not just as a random player or for the exceptional playing abilities they hold, but as one of the few who watch and hold opinions about football beyond the men’s top-tier leagues in the four or five Western European states.
Almost everything we know about and wish to know about football and its history has an undeniable political trajectory it came across. A game whose origins trace back to the Victorian era of grooming gentlemen has now been overwhelmingly identified as a space of aspiration, articulation, and resistance, most importantly from erstwhile marginalised groups, not only from classical third-world countries but also from Europe.
The FIFA World Cup is set to begin in a couple of hours. This time, the USA, Canada, and Mexico are hosting the world’s biggest carnival together. No doubt the number of people football can entertain has led to it being considered the most popular game in the world.
Who gets to witness the finest spectacles on the world’s largest stages has already created scepticism among football fans elsewhere. For the first time in the history of the FIFA World Cup, FIFA has adopted dynamic ticket pricing, making tickets unaffordable and many times more expensive on the black market.
The quota for natives has been abolished; now it is all structured like a show hosted for a special class of invitees, keeping many low-income football fans aside, regardless of whether they are natives or foreigners. Not just in class have we seen discrimination so far, denying visas to spectators from countries like Iran, Haiti, Senegal, and Egypt must not be read in isolation from the World Cup; the geopolitics and imperialist interests the USA has always been known for come as the logic behind such exclusion.
One thing that is certain in analysing the events unfolding around football is that there is no linear way to make sense of things; ascribing everything to a class-centric reading would be nothing short of a disaster. Race, gender, religion, ethnicity, and much more all have their place in the history and politics of football, where we each have our own perspective.
What does football mean to the millions who breathe and bleed it? As famously attributed to Otto von Bismarck, “Politics is the art of the possible” Football is no less political, and it offers a path to pursue that art in its most pragmatic forms. For many, pursuing the politics of football means achieving the very next best possible outcome through negotiation and compromise, never through any ideal or perfect solution. You can’t chant your racist slurs the way you used to a few decades back; it didn’t happen in a day or a year. It took a long time to reach where we are now.
The solidarity football galleries offer, from decolonising Palestine to Catalan assertion, from Milan derbies to Kolkata derbies, the principles people have stood for have made the game inextricable from the politics around it. Galleries tell a great deal more than what happens on the field. On any given day, you will feel that the Indian football galleries are a mirror of what the state as an institution does to the game.
European elite divisions tell another wide range of stories, from the ever-rising commercialisation of the English Premier League to the German ownership model of the 50+1 rule. If you want galleries filled with diverse people and diverse interests, you cannot charge what many English Premier League clubs do.
Departing from the high politics of football, it is the everydayness of football that connects any enthusiast to their counterparts elsewhere. Being involved in football events in the city of Ahmedabad, Gujarat, a city known for its history of riots and highly segregated neighbourhoods along communal lines, football stood out as one of the few existing rituals that brings people together, and stories such as this are not confined to this city in western India.
Watching a “top five” league has been a matter of personal realpolitik for many fans residing in far different time zones. Given the popularity of these leagues, football enthusiasts from elsewhere are compelled to disrupt their sleep cycles, but what makes it political is the realisation that it is never a two-sided exchange. It always happens the same way. A casual observer might invoke claims of the “merit” of these leagues, yet the creation of merit is no less than manufactured consent.
On and off the pitch, football bleeds politics, from FIFA’s silence towards the Israeli army’s killing of Palestinian players to the discriminatory treatment of the US bureaucracy towards Senegal and Iran.
What seems paradoxical is FIFA’s discouraging stance towards political demonstrations on the field. Players have been cautioned for wearing armbands, fined for gestures, and warned against any expression deemed “political.” Yet the institution that issues those warnings has awarded a peace prize to the President of the United States, who, if right-wing authoritarianism has a face, is obviously its poster boy and selling World Cup hosting rights to a state known for the commercialisation of sporting events sits in direct opposition to the egalitarian values the game upholds. FIFA has become structurally dependent on states whose values conflict directly with the rights-based language in its own charter.
Drawing on James C. Scott’s foundational work, Weapons of the Weak (1985), the famous political scientist and anthropologist argues that resistance rarely announces itself. Everyday resistance consists of tactics that exploited people use to gain small material advantages while temporarily undermining repressive domination, particularly in contexts where open rebellion is too risky.
Football too holds its own forms of resistance, ones that challenge structures and institutions: a raised fist, a keffiyeh, a Gaza-patterned boot, a pointed celebration, a resistance-themed t-shirt, acts that carry meaning without supplying grounds for formal sanction; foot-dragging and false compliance in sporting form. After all, in its utmost complexity, the game has made this planet more livable than ever, and every small gesture of announcing the politics of the marginalised will continue to keep the game alive.
Read more – The Diaspora Advantage: How Cape Verde Built a World Class Roster from 14 Countries
Also see – First Steps on the Grand Stage: The Inspiring Rise of the Debutants
Follow Footy Times on Social Media:
Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube
Discover more from Footy Times
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.