Ah, the football. Come ye huddled masses and watch a bunch of millionaires kick a ball about with the vague goal of putting it in the net. Put your hopes, your dreams, your faith in humanity and your general happiness all on the line. Eleven versus eleven. Maybe you’ll win, you probably won’t; these arseholes never win. But hey, there’s always next week. You’ll be back.
To the uninitiated there is something ridiculous about this entire charade. None of this matters. Your life will never functionally change if your team – be it Aberdeen, Arsenal, Chelsea, Man United, Liverpool, Celtic, Dundee, Hibs – wins, loses or draws at the weekend. Even the big wins – the league titles, the cup triumphs, beating Rangers away – will change absolutely nothing in the material conditions of your life. Maybe you’ll get some bragging rights for a while and you’ll feel a bit better about yourself, but your life, inevitably, will return to the mean. You will gain nothing for all the time, money and emotional investment you put in.
Despite this, you’ll find no shortage of people claiming to be willing to chop their big toe off to see Celtic lift the Champions League or see Scotland reach the quarter final of the World Cup. Are they stupid? Do they not realise the total unending futility of it all? I don’t think so. To explain why, I turn to The Myth of Sisyphus and Albert Camus’ theories of the absurd. For Camus, the absurd arises when humankind’s ceaseless quest for meaning and transcendence through religion, philosophy and any other construction we fancy clashes with a cold, vast, chaotic and uncaring universe. When we look up at the stars, some of us imagine a god or some sort of cosmic order, but all that truly exists is a deafening, incomprehensible silence. Camus’ “absurd man”, when faced with this realisation, this wasteland of reality, is resolved to press on, to learn all he can from this abyss of meaning. He chooses to reject the siren calls of all those who would offer him a metaphysical construction, immortality through God. He sees the void at the end of his life rushing at him, unceasing, and he accepts it. There is no life after death, and there is no meaning. In this sense, his life becomes hopeless, but he does not despair, as he needs no hope. His revolt against the inevitability of his demise through continued life is all he needs. He cannot kill himself, as to kill himself would be to put an end to the revolt through which he draws his energy – to give in to the absurd.
You might be thinking: ‘That’s all very good, mate, but what are you chatting about and what does it have to do with Rangers away?’ At the last few football games I’ve attended, these thoughts about the meaninglessness and futility of football have crossed my mind; ‘This is all a bit silly,’ ‘maybe I’m a bit past football,’ I’d think to myself. Yet, come kick off time, I’m in it. I’m entirely swept up in the atmosphere, singing my heart out. Every touch of the ball, every wayward pass and every shot on goal fires pangs of nervousness into my heart. At the Aberdeen-Rangers League Cup final, I was a wreck. I chewed through my nails, I couldn’t stop shifting around, my eyes remained fixed on the action for the duration of the game. When Rangers went 1-0 up, ultimately sealing the game, I was inconsolable. All this despite being acutely aware of the nil impact the result would have on my life. I believe, deep down, every football fan has this realisation at some point. People are not stupid; they know football does not matter. Everyone’s dad has uttered the magic words: “It’s just a game.” But when faced with this truth, the absurd football fan does not turn back, he doubles down. Football is meaningless, but if everything else is as well, what does it matter? He creates from the absurd a purpose. The football becomes his life, his revolt. Fans collectivise and form sometimes violent ultras groups (there were even paramilitaries formed from Ukrainian ultras groups fighting in the Russia-Ukraine war). It’s a level of devotion unseen anywhere else in society. The football fan realises the absurdity of placing this level of importance on what is essentially a company which trades in sport, and presses on. You could say this is just what any form of entertainment does, but I disagree. You don’t see a bunch of swifties forming radical ultras groups to go out and fight BTS stans. This is something different – truly absurd creation.
Some consider football a kind of new religion, or a new “opium of the masses”, if you will. I don’t think I’d agree with this assessment. In Christianity, for example, there is a specific end goal in mind: Devote your life to God and his ideals and you will be rewarded with eternal life in heaven. The kind of mass cognitive construction that occurs in football is something much more grounded than a religious framework for understanding the cosmos. In football, there is no eternal life, you will not be rewarded. You follow your team and then you die. The only thing you shall find at the journey’s end is nothingness. This may seem melancholic and despairing, but it is not so. Camus asserts that we must embrace our milieu of nothingness, embrace our coming demise with a smile on our faces. Embrace the labour of following your team without even beginning to consider where the end goal might be. Experience every moment fully – in life and football. If your team is a bunch of useless wasters, do not despair! Accept the struggle. Football, like life, has death as it’s great equaliser. Just as the destitute homeless man and the billionaire both find themselves worm food at the end of it all, so too will the trophy-laden Real Madrid fan and the downtrodden Dunfermline fan taste the same void. So get out there, support your team, chant the chants, hate those fuckers from across town, abuse the refs, find euphoria in the wins and grieve the losses. Embrace it all; take comfort in the absurd, draw your energy from the total futility of it. All is well.
“The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
