What every small child understands about football is that the game is a Manichean struggle to define the nature of the universe and that beauty and chaos are the terms contesting the definition. This is because football, compared to other popular games, is frequently boring and random, and because we perceive it as boring and random when the complexity of the forces at work within it becomes so great that we can no longer associate outcomes and causes. Tactics, individual decision-making, technical skill, team rapport, wind velocity, pitch conditions, and the influence of the crowd all become muddled together and the ball seems to go where it goes for no particular reason. Conversely, we perceive the game as beautiful when a clear intention emerges to triumph over the arbitrary swirl opposing it—when one set of tactics overcomes another, when teammates pass the ball as if they could read each other's minds, when a piece of brilliant skill produces the illusion that a player is controlling gravity.
Since this is so obviously an analogue of our own position in the world—uncertain whether our lives are governed by chance or by guiding intention, in the midst of forces we cannot control and do not understand—I think that the beauty of football is primarily a consolation, and that when we call football "the beautiful game," we don't mean that it is, but that we hope it will be.
Weird…I just wrote in part on the same thing. The Zeitgeist at it again. The uncertainty and the triumph of will over blind, arbitrary luck is also one of the reasons why football writing is so prevalent. Trying to fill the void left by chance.
Yes, "beautiful game" has always struck me as an inherently paradoxical phrase–the tension between the two words driven by the confusion and consolation you articulate here.
Chesterton wrote: "The city is a more poetic subject than nature, for while nature is a chaos of unconscious forces, the city is a chaos of conscious ones." Substitute 'football' for 'the city', and Chesterton would agree heartily with you.
Nowadays we have the means to view compact chunks of these moments of beauty, as low-res video compliations set to a light metal soundtrack (of course, they're only beautiful if you turn the sound down). They contain instances of things which your eyes tell you are beautiful, one after another after another. Yet removed from their context, the chaos from which they were hewn, much of the beauty gets lost along the way. It's as if we have to really have to earn the best bits. We may long to see order, but it's meaningless without the cloud of randomness from which it was formed.
Excellent question Brian. One I have tried to face a few times but abandonned due to - well - my own views - which you can have a glimpse of at beautifulgame.com. Despite my very particular view of the beautiful game - I have after much inner turmoil been able to admit that in football - as in life - "beauty is in the eye of the beholder".
(Believe me - this was a big admission for me. You see - I know everything
- and have believed this about myself most of my life.)
Now, to admit that "beautiy is in the eye of the beholder", means accepting that we will never have concensus on what the beauty of "it" is.
Yet the term - the beautiful game - survives - and gets stronger - year after year. I for instance felt compelled to register my domain in…1996. Pele poplularized the term in the 1970s in the United States of all places. And the Brazilians apparently used the term long before Pele.
All of which means that no matter why we find it beautiful - it is beautiful - simple as that - to most people who call the game football or soccer. In fact to those of us who love football it is quite simply the most beautiful game in the world.
By the way - just to satisfy my own little agenda here - while I do agree that chaos and beauty are key components to the question you ask, I also think there are other opposing and contributing forces at work such as: greed, ambition, cheating , addiction, obsession. And most of those and many other notions I would categorize somehow under the umbrella of winning. Too often winning compromises beauty. Take for instance the eternal pain I will feel about the fact that a country whose football I have loved most of my life - won the 2006 World Cup on a sinister dive (Grosso v. Australia) and a provocation (Materazzi). It still pains me that the "unbeautiful" (dishonest) Italy won that World Cup. And yet football fans and beautiful game fans the world over will tell you time and again that "winning is beautiful". This is a notion that has so perplexed me - due to my lengthy obsession with the beautiful game - that I've had to also registered the domain: winningisbeautiful.com. I know that this all sounds crazy - but - like you - I am compelled by something special at work and would love to finally get some clarity on why, oh, why, football (and life!) is so damn…beautiful.
PS- Fredorrarci - I love your idea of moments and video and bits and earning it…
The true beauty is in playing the game: Bob Marley said that when he played the world woke up around him.
But why separate chaos and beauty, surely the chaotic elements of anything is where the beauty lies. What hell would a life without uncertainty be?
Football is a beautiful game but it's also an ugly industry. We (observers, as a opposed to fans) often get lost in where the game ends and the product begins.
Sp3ktor - glad you raised this. Something that occured to me later is the fact that in the world of art - a world we may want to explore more if we want to get closer to the above question - beauty is found - yes - in the chaotic, in the unconventional, and - dare I say it? - in the immoral? So - is it possible then that while the "industry" of football is out of control - the game is still beautiful? Or even if Materazzi is goading one of the most beautiful players of all time into a red card - the game can still be beautiful? I think therefore that any meaning of the beautiful game has to accept the idea that beauty is full of contradictions…
[...] what does football "mean"? One way to answer the question is to note, as I did in my last post, that the relative complexity of the game—a large number of players moving simultaneously on [...]
For me it's got to do with the potential, the inherent qualities and characteristics, the movement, the dynamic and expansive 'game-play', the simplicity of the idea and the varied skills involved, the scepter of 'non-contact' and therefore 'clean' lurking behind, and above all, the easiness on the eye when all the above is in full flow that together have earned the game that moniker. No other sport really has all these qualities.
p.s. 'Boring' is quite a subjective description.
It is subjective, of course. But there's an amazingly high degree of consensus about what constitutes a dull match, to the point that it approaches a functional objectivity. The muddy nil-nil draw with no prolonged periods of possession or outstanding displays of skill just doesn't seem to thrill anyone.
I agree, but I meant it in relation to your comparison of football with other sports. I might find, say, the average basketball game boring and no better a spectacle than a dull scoreless draw in football.
Sure, fair enough—I feel the same way about hockey. What I think is true, though, is that football has more of a tendency than other sports to bore the people who love it, or at least frustrate them. You can "get" football, follow it avidly, know a lot about it, and still find long stretches of it crushingly dull. That's true of other sports, but not to anything like the same extent.
This is the only sport I know in which commentators routinely complain about games as they're describing them.
Yes, you're probably right as, to borrow your term, another of the 'chaotic' games, Australian Football also has a tendency to bog down through tactical formations, though like you say, not to the extent to which soccer can do.
[...] from the particular geometry of player movement and the flight of the ball, but from when, as a better writer than this one put it, "a clear intention emerges to triumph over the arbitrary swirl opposing [...]
[...] from the particular geometry of player movement and the flight of the ball, but from when, as a better writer than this one put it, "a clear intention emerges to triumph over the arbitrary swirl opposing [...]