Where is the love in football?

Compliments of the New Season to all our wonderful readers and here’s to hoping that you all had a great festive season, recharged your batteries and are ready to hit the ground running in 2023. It is such a pity that not all of us are back, following the passing away of Brazilian legend Pele, Orlando Pirates supporter Goodenough “5 Skippas” Sithole, former PSL administrator Peter “Squire” Mancer, legendary Cape Town Spurs kit manager, Albert Hendricks, otherwise known as Mr A, and many other football followers who lost their lives during the festive break.

Football was not monikered “The Beautiful Game” for nothing. This is the most popular and loved sport, the world over! This is one sporting code where people get their most joy from. This number one sporting code influences the social and economic trajectory of any country. This is a sport that transcends religion and everything else you can think of, a sport that even non-footballers have a strong connection with by supporting a favourite team. As physical a sport as football is, unlike rugby, for instance, injuries come with the territory but at a far less degree. It is common knowledge that rugby is more physical than football, but the number of injuries, career-threatening injuries at that, which have been suffered on the football field recently are as bad, if not worse, as rugby injuries. This makes one wonder if “The Beautiful Game” isn’t just a meaningless phrase to some of our players? Where is the beauty? Where is the love, when people’s careers and lives are put in harm’s way, on a football field? Yes, football is a competitive sport and there’s a lot at stake. Yes, there’s rivalry and sometimes competition oversteps love, but love and respect should always prevail. Is there anything more important and valuable than human life, in sport? Surely the safety of the next person is as important as yours. Why does it seem to be so easy for competition to take over love and respect?

You may not like your opponent, for whatever reason, but when you respect them, you understand that they are only doing a job for their club and to provide for their families. You’re both doing the same thing for the game. When you inflict an injury, intentionally, to an opponent and they are out injured for months, how do you feel? How would you feel if the roles were reversed and you were on the receiving end of a career-threatening injury? Would you not see that as someone threatening your livelihood? These injuries can be avoided and we don’t have to win at all costs, to such an extent that we put lives and careers in danger. There is a limit to competition, which is why there are Laws that need to be respected. This is a professional game and the last thing we expect to see is someone losing their life or suffering a career-threatening injury on a football field. How would you live knowing that someone’s career ended abruptly because of your reckless and malicious tackle? This is not what football is about. Certainly not what people expect to see. No one enjoys losing, coach Steve Komphela said it perfectly, “Kubuhlungu ukutyiwa” (Losing is painful). No one enjoys being overpowered by the opposition but, by the same token, we have to restrain ourselves, respect the game and the opposition. We also need to respect ourselves to say, that which I would not want done to me, I will never do to the next person. “Do unto others as you’d have them do unto you.”

We are slowly running the risk of glamourising “thuggish behaviour” in our football by keeping quiet when players are made to suffer needless injuries through negligence and malice. We’ve seen a couple of worrying incidents where players got injured and they left everyone holding their breath, wishing they could unsee the scenes that are so not like football field activities. Most of them could have been avoided if FAIR PLAY meant anything to someone. The worst part is when someone gets away with it and life goes on. Yes, no booking will undo the damage done to the opponent, but it will go a long way in ensuring that sanity prevails. There’s really no place for brutality on the football field. This is “The Beautiful Game”, so we expect to see players expressing themselves with passion, fair competition and respect for everyone involved, whenever we watch football games. If you lose, you do so with integrity and win with humility. A football field is not a boxing ring where the first rule of thumb is, “Protect yourself at all times!” You walk onto the football field to play football and then go on to live your life with loved ones afterwards. The aim is not to play and then be admitted into a hospital a few hours later because of an injury.

It is sad that people choose to turn a blind eye to this growing phenomenon in our football. These injuries are getting out of hand and should be nipped in the bud. We can’t apply a win-at-all-costs attitude in this game. We also need the same energy we see from teammates and coaches when their player is on the receiving end of a brutal tackle even when their teammate or own player is the perpetrator. That’s one of the ways to end this barbaric behaviour and send a strong message. You can’t lambast the opponent for a career-threatening tackle and keep quiet when one of your own commits the same infringement on the opposition. At the end of the day, we all need to protect one another on the field. We all know that football is a contact sport, but let’s not forget the Laws that govern the game. There’s no place for brutality in football.

Match officials need to protect players from themselves even more these days. Coaches also need to play their part and hold their own players accountable for the harm they cause their fellow colleagues. At the end of the day, it is not just about winning but protecting the very same sport that we all love. Football is about having fun and making the supporters happy. Let no player’s career be terminated by a reckless and malicious tackle. Football is one of the sporting codes that have changed so many lives, now imagine when that well of income has dried up because of you and the player’s family is left without any financial support. That’s not what we want to see. That’s not what football is all about. Some players don’t even show remorse after inflicting pain on the opposition. They don’t even bother to check up on them or give them a hand up. That’s unsportsmanlike. Let’s protect and respect one another on the field of play, guys, please! No one goes to a football match to watch kickboxing or wrestling. Maybe it is time for teams to take strong action against their own players who harm the opposition and the League also look into heavy punitive measures so that players think twice before inflicting pain on the opponent. If things continue as they are, unfortunately we’re in for even worse challenges and injuries.