Opinion: The morality of football
The beautiful game’s transcendent moral implications
Yesterday evening, Selecao correspondent Nathan Motz accepted a unique opportunity to appear as a guest on the Moral Maze – a BBC radio broadcast dealing with matters of moral and ethical significance.
Is football a moral force for good? That was the question of the day, and each of the four guests were asked to discuss various aspects of the debate from financial fairplay to club takeovers by foreign entities to racism.
Nathan’s segment was concerned with whether football has transcendent moral value, and what that is exactly. Is there a greater significance to the game we are watching, or is it merely 22 humans kicking a leather ball into a net?
Join Nathan as he elaborates on the most significant takeaways of what was a fascinating discussion on the sport and morality in general.
Football, for some, may be the most poignant reminder of the moral universe in which we live. While debate has raged for centuries regarding the precise origin of moral absolutes and how humans ought to live, it is simply unavoidable to say humanity is often troubled by events surrounding the game we all love so dearly.
In not so distant history, every normal act of human life would have been assigned some degree of moral significance. Every action had inherently moral indicators - for good or for evil. Today, postmodern views of morality dominate. These describe morality as an entirely subjective dimension. In other words, it cannot be pinned down exactly whether behaviors are objectively good or bad. We can only find fault with someone else’s interpretation based on their own unique moral code. Morality is relative to the individual or society.
Yet last night’s dialogue concerning football and human behavior was filled with moral accusations and claims which strongly suggested humans are not content with relativist morality. Indeed, we are at times frightened by and disgusted with what we observe in and around football. Our sense of moral justice is deeply disturbed. But with respect to what exactly?
The unanswerable question
In responding to the panelist’s questions, I observed a familiar paradigm. Each time I have discussed any aspect of moral behavior, the speculation humans are good or at worst morally neutral animals continually reemerges. This widely accepted presupposition is then followed shortly by disgust at some aspect of human behavior. Almost as if to ask “why are all these good humans behaving so badly?” while ignoring the very real implications of this line of inquiry. A question rendered unanswerable by the insistent a priori assumptions from which it was derived.
If humans are intrinsically beneficent, conscientious, fair, humble, and honest then why is football rife with racism, misogyny, greed, disenfranchisement, lies, cheating, violence, and the hypocrisy to deny the occurrence of any such behaviors except when a rival club is the guilty party? Behaviors which are perpetrated by individual supporters, fanatical groups, club administrations, corporate bodies such as FIFA, political entities, nations, and even the players themselves. No one participating faction is guiltless.
To so blithely sidestep more sufficient explanations for the empirical reality of wickedness in football and in human behavior more generally is not just factually incorrect. It undermines real attempts to understand the root of these behaviors where they might be dealt with more effectively.
Furthermore, in good faith, how successful is a response against heinous evil when those perpetrating it are regarded as behaving in accord with their unique moral ambitions? Humans refuse to accept their indisputably objective moral lacking at a fundamental level. This restricts us from ever doing any more than “stamping out” the alleged impropriety of others – while we ourselves may readily engage in these very same behaviors. Moral relativism cannot account for the moral outrage emanating from all corners of the football world. Is Qatar wrong to perpetrate human rights atrocities or is it allowable because their culture is indifferent? Is hooliganism objectively wrong, or only when someone else’s club is responsible?
The overlooking of our own failings while lashing out at others for theirs is quintessential to the morally fallen nature of humanity itself. Football tells all. There are not good people and bad people. There are only people who both willfully and unintentionally transgress the moral code embedded in each of our hearts. A moral law which can only have ever been given by a moral Lawgiver. Otherwise, it is truly your word against mine as it pertains to the moral validity of all behaviors - even those which may deeply violate your conscience.
Football’s role in the moral universe
Football generates an episodic, semantic, and imagistic description of universal archetypes: good and evil, sacrifice and greed, cruelty and mercy, hero and anti-hero. It speaks to every arc of life’s plotline: tragedy, comedy, victory, defeat, the finite nature of our circumstances. It is one of the preeminent existential dialects alongside religion, visual art, written and spoken language, music, and theatre. Football plucks a primal chord.
As metaphysics have been curtailed to just physics in the modern secular West, football has only elevated our awareness of the often dire moral predicaments of our species. Yet it is clear the moral conversation does not originate on a football pitch. The pitch is but a grand stage upon which moral themes may be observed and critiqued, a mirror held in front of our own soul.
The desire for ultimate purpose, for meaning beyond the material realm, never disappeared in modernity. Arguably, it has only become more desperate as the outcry for ultimate significance comes under more scrutiny and criticism by those who constrain ontological explanations to those accounted for by physics. The severity of the mental health crisis in the West is in no small part explained by the terrifying existential awareness we are cut adrift in an abstract sea of meaningless, hopeless wandering between two oblivions - that before mortal life began and that at mortal life’s end. Let football be one voice which reassures you - there is ultimate meaning and good reasons why football so unsettles our craving for justice.
In a palpable, unavoidable way, football and supporter communities across Europe are encountering moral quandaries. In Portugal, age-old debates between FC Porto and Benfica have routinely been haunted by, in many cases, farcical and cynical hypocrisy. Throughout its history, the FPF has been susceptible to showing partiality to a club, player, or style which ultimately degrades the performance of our beloved Seleção. Deny it all we like, and not one aspect of this reality is changed.
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In conclusion, whatever your thoughts or beliefs on the subject of moral significance, its origin, the meaning of life, and how football draws that out, I hope it will be beneficial to examine these matters more deeply. In my zeal, I admit I have not always been prudent to initiate these discussions in a way which respects thoughtful disagreement. It is my hope this effort to bring that discussion to Portuguese football will be well-received and carefully pondered. But I will contentedly listen to those followers who may be genuinely unhappy or unsupportive of this or any other idea about which I write.
The readers of this website and the larger Portuguese football loving world are my people. It is a joy and a responsibility I take seriously whenever I have the opportunity to raise important questions about the Selecao, the game, and our lives in general.
Força Seleção!
by Nathan Motz