Football will always matter

It is one of those elements we so joyously fill our lives with and that is something that has only been emphasised in these emptier coronavirus-conditioned days

WHEN football’s various powers came together for multiple video conferences last week about the fate of the game, there were a lot of private messages about what was going to be discussed. But there were also many about the coronavirus pandemic in general.

“What’s it like in your country?” “What have you heard?” “When is this going to end?”

The reality – for the distorted reality of football as much as anything else – is that it’s difficult to think about or concentrate on anything else. The players are the same.

Days pass in waves: spells of normality and trying to find a bit of fun, suddenly invaded by feelings of despair about what’s next. Many in the game are justifiably worried about the financial futures of their clubs.

It started as some far-off concern in the east, only to incrementally envelope the rest of the world until we were very quickly forced into a complete change of life.

Every single contingency plan, every single “solution”, can be instantly rendered meaningless by the virus.

“It’s not up to us,” UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin said, in such simple but such significant words.

That in itself has raised a lot of sideline discussion about what should actually matter to us, whether we should even be thinking about football, whether we should even care what happens to football.

It should also go without saying, however, that football is one of those elements we so joyously fill that world with.

It is what we fill our lives with, and that is something that has only been emphasised in these emptier coronavirus-conditioned days.

The place of the game is important precisely because it is so unimportant. This is what makes life fun, and enriching.

For the perfect illustration of this, consider the following elusive but encouraging thought.

Imagine what the first game back is going to be like. Imagine what the first goal back is going to be like.

Imagine what your stadium is going to be like. It’s easy to come up with the picture, be it Anfield or Old Trafford.

It will be a glorious congregation of people, and thereby a celebration of life itself – until we get the celebration of a goal.

Football, or our everyday lives, will have rarely seen anything like it: the release, the emotion.

It will be an atmosphere like no other, thousands of people waiting for a match that is no longer a mere game but is an affirmation of why we’re all here, and the feelings that actually are important to life.

It’s why it matters, all the more so because it doesn’t matter all that much at all.

It is, right now, something to savour. – The Independent