Moral turpitude; aesthetic bliss
“the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” That’s F Scott Fitzgerald, writing in Esquire in 1936. The essay was called “The Crack-Up”.
It’s a sadly familiar trap for the writer on sport to fall into, a journalistic crime worthy of pillory in “Pseud’s Corner”, to find himself summoning airy literary quotations when trying to describe commonplace feelings about, say, a game of football. But I’m afraid Fitzgerald’s epigram popped into my head the other evening when I was plonked in front of the first leg of the Champions League semi-final between Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City, and resistance was futile. On the one hand, the distasteful spectacle of watching one mercenary superclub take on another for bragging rights in the Sportswashing Cup. On the other, the thrill of seeing a galaxy of stars, sportsmen of staggering skill, athleticism and finesse, play attacking football with such speed and ambition as to boggle the mind.
While I have, I hope, never pretended to a first-rate intelligence, or a first-rate anything else, I did congratulate myself, at the time, for retaining the ability to function, if I can use that word to describe a middle-aged man slumped on a sofa, self-medicating with European lager, while balancing those two opposing ideas — moral turpitude; aesthetic bliss — throughout the 90-something minutes of the PSG-City clash.
Hard to say what the author of The Great Gatsby, that enduring parable of misplaced emotion, spiritual emptiness, fragile ego and the shallow carelessness of the very rich, might have made of today’s elite football. More of a tennis man, perhaps, old sport, although he had something to say in his most celebrated novel about cheating at games (golf), as well as the dangers of corruption when powerful men without ethics are able to influence professional sport (baseball).
It was by accident rather than design that the morning in April when I called Simon Kuper to discuss plans for his interview with Kylian Mbappé, the outrageously gifted French footballer, was the Monday after the Sunday when 12 famous football clubs, including six from England, had announced their intention to form a European Super League, a competition for only the very wealthiest clubs, from which none of them could ever be excluded, no matter how poor their performances. They had, in effect, invented a competition which was anti-competitive. The era of the Win–Lose was over. This was Win–Win for Manchester United and Real Madrid and Juventus and the rest, Lose– Lose for everyone else, even the fans of Manchester United, Real Madrid, Juventus and the rest.
We all know what happened to that idea. But on that morning in April it was unclear what, if anything, the news meant. At least, it was unclear to me and, I imagine, to most of us. Simon, as perhaps the most authoritative writer on the business of football — his many books include the bestselling Soccernomics — was not quite dismissive of the hoopla, but he was sanguine,
despite the fact that he was going to have to set aside his plans for the day and spend it instead explaining the likely impact of the announcement to readers of his column in the Financial Times. Few people inside or outside football understand the machinations of the sport, and its players, both on the pitch and behind the scenes, as well as he does.
But we put that latest unpleasantness to one side and got down to the business of talking about Mbappé, the 22-year-old sensation from the suburbs of Paris. Mbappé is that rare global superstar who plays for his local team. He cost PSG’s owners a reported €180m, making him the second most expensive player in history, behind his team-mate, the flashy Brazilian, Neymar, who was bought from Barcelona in 2017 for €222m and whose salary is said to be in the region of €40m per annum. Despite the pandemic and the economic downturn, chances are that Mbappé would be worth even more than that were PSG to sell him today. There are so many aspects of elite football that are objectionable, and yet still we watch, because Mbappé, and a handful of others like him, have the ability to conjure moments of wonder that unite, momentarily, millions of people around the world in rapturous exultation. And god knows we could all use a bit of that right now.
As a business, then, football deserves the opprobrium heaped on it by fans and journalists and even, lately, opportunist politicians. Footballers tend to get a bad press, too, some of it earned, most of it a mixture of snobbery, envy and worse. But over the past few years, a few of the sport's biggest stars — Marcus Rashford most prominently, in English football, but he is not alone — have overturned the cliché that paints all its twentysomething multimillionaires as selfish, ignorant and boorish.
Mbappé, in Simon’s interview, emerges as well informed, thoughtful and impressive, a young man with his feet firmly planted, even as he glides across the pitch. His bid to help PSG to their first Champions League title ended in disappointment; a calf injury meant he was forced to watch from the sideline as Manchester City ran away with the second leg of the semi-final. It did not escape anyone’s notice that his team were much reduced in his absence, and PSG departed with a spiteful and embarrassing display of petulance.
Still, barring calamity, Mbappé will go into this summer’s Euro 2020 tournament (yes, they’re sticking with that name) as one of the brightest stars in the competition, perhaps the most-feared opponent of all. At the time of writing, some bookies have his country, France, the current world champions, as joint favourites to win. Joint favourites with… England.
For selfish reasons (magazine sales) I’m hoping that France make it to the final, during which Mbappé scores a screamer for the ages — only to have his efforts nullified by a Harry Kane hat-trick.
The Mbappé piece is not the only excellent profile of a sportsman in this issue of Esquire. Tim Lewis’ interview with the world-record holding race walker Tom Bosworth is a raw and moving story of an athlete you’ve probably never heard of, who has overcome bullying, homophobia and serious mental health issues to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics, where he has every chance of winning a medal for Team GB.
Eight-and-a-half decades on from Fitzgerald’s piece, we still do essays! Following in the footsteps of the great man this issue: Joe Dunthorne on Pixar’s death fixation; Tabitha Lasley on the importance of holding grudges; Andrew O’Hagan in celebration of nightclubs; Derek Owusu on his lockdown TV family; Will Hersey on the lost glory of the luxury hotel breakfast buffet.
Also: Alexis Self with a quirky and, I suggest, resonant tale from the 1980s of unlikely entrepreneurs manufacturing and marketing PPE, of a sort, during a previous pandemic. Plus the usual mix of style, culture and celebrity, and a really terrific short story, by Evie Wyld, about the desperate disintegration of a man called Bobby. It might have been called “The Crack-Up.” Instead, it’s called “The Place”.
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