Football: Metaphor Of Life

IN BRIEF: In this post we dissect the sport of Football in terms of how relatable it is to life. We belive there are so many aspects to football which mimic lives various phases. We address some of the aspects in this post for your delectation.

Kicking, screaming, yelling, fighting, celebrating, crying, elation, dejection, all these are part of life as much as they are about football. When I say football, it is in fact football, not American football, where only one person is dedicated to kick the ball.

There are millions of us who are fascinated by the sport, and we follow our beloved clubs or countries on television. There are some of us who feel, it is infantile to dedicate hours in a day towards watching the sport. Well, that may be true.

But, there is more to football than just wasting time or shouting glory, glory… Here are some aspects of football which are exactly like life’s many situations. Either you watch or hate football (if you hate chances are that you may not be reading this far), you would have to try really hard to disassociate the below points with experiences in life.

Skill and Talent: 

Even with factors such as nepotism and high degree of influence, and luck, we need skill and talent to make it good in life. We all possess traits, some of them are polished, most of them are not.

We see images and videos on TV and on the internet of players working out and practicing hard on drills and techniques. Life is pretty much the same, it’s just that we do not see a neighbour kid on TV studying hard, or a medical student learning the intricacies of colonoscopy, on the web. But, even without cameras around us, we all work hard in honing our skills. We go to classes, tuitions, take courses, learn on the job, etc. We all work hard to improve.

Team Work: 

Though football players don’t get shoved into an incredibly small, suffocation meeting rooms, and “discuss” about the most boring work stuff, but they do contribute at every level of a particular game.

This is where the coach will devise a strategy, where experienced players get to put in their points, letting the younger ones take it all in and learn. From a manager’s perspective, football is primarily about man management. He has to work with a bunch of teenage millionaires, and make them work hard. It is a ridiculously hard task. That is why there aren’t many long standing successful ones nowadays. Sir Alex of Manchester United, the elegant Arsene Wenger of Arsenal, and Harry Redknapp of many clubs.

Ups and downs:

Football has dramatic ups and downs, just like life. A completely confident team, all the way through to the finals of a tournament can lose the finals to a relatively inexperienced team. Or, a tall, thin manager, know for astute and frugal strategies with panoply of years of experience can come crashing down (almost), after being pushed by an imbecile of a counter part. Mind you, I have respect for both.

Setbacks and failures are part of the game, as they say. So is the case in life. Either we sulk, blame and we never come back and work hard (like Emmanueal Adebayor) or we look fate in the face and change the bloody thing (like Eric Abidal or Leo Messi or Nicolas Bendtner).

Surprise and Shocks: 

Yes, have you seen the projection of the Portuguese club Porto in 2010’s UEFA Champions League? Where did they come from, my god! They strategically moved past seemingly tough opponents to lift the trophy. The credit should go to the players, as much as their manager, the incredibly special one Jose Mourinho, and the clubs’s owners and support staff, who made success possible.

We do feel surprised and shocked often in life. Either through a backstabbing mate or a death of a dear one, we all experience ebbs of life. Though some of the setbacks take a long time to recover from, we eventually bounce back, like a puny Central Mid Fielder jumping to score a header from a Set Piece.

A surprising fun fact: when Chelsea’s John Terry’s photo was put on millions of ITC cigarette packets in India, leading a law suit on the company by the player. This fact isn’t shocking, because John has frequented quite a few tabloid front pages during his peak for many reasons.

Win and Lose:

Though there isn’t a DRAW in life, unlike football. Hitler didn’t go on crying “LETS CALL IT A DRAW” before he killed himself. But, there are wins and losses in life. As the saying goes, “we gain some, we lose some”.

We invest our time, energy and money on many factors of life and we end up winning or losing. It is incredibly difficult to immediately recover and take a chance again, but, we have all learn’t that it is worth taking another chance for various reasons.

Spectator and Player: 

Ah this is a big one. How many times have we seen people on TV or in books who say “Are you a spectator or a player, in life?”. We either participate to win and celebrate, or end up losing and learning, or we let others take chances while we sit and watch like a spectator.

However, in football, spectators can have a lot of fun. Only the spectators can yell, abuse, and make fun of everyone else on the field. They can hurl abuses at their own players and call them a pair of Cahonees. Or we see them waxing lyrical about how terrific a player is by referring to his lifestyle or a his demeanour.

Conclusion: The Experience: 

Like football where we support one club and hurl abuses at others, in life too we tend to like and love only a handful of people and wish the moronic ones die of diphtheria.

There is so much to relate to football, I believe that I haven’t done justice to the beautiful game nor to life (not my life). But, remember folks, even if the score is 1-0, and its the 90th minute, an idiot from nowhere will put his head through and score a bloody equaliser, especially on FIFA, agrrr. What I mean is, that there is time and chance for us to make a good life, even out of the most challenging ones.