EDITORIAL
It has been said that football is more popular than organised religion because of the sheer number of people who make time in their lives for the game, the amount of time they make for it, and the activities such as attending Church which they forego in order to watch their beloved game. In previous years, Sundays were exclusively reserved for church. However, in recent times many of us have been torn between watching our favourite football team and preserving the tradition of Sunday church. What has been appearing to happen more often than not is that football has been winning out over church.
Some argue that football is actually better at fulfilling one of the central functions of church which is to bring people together and escape the everyday stresses of life. Football fans argue that followers of the same team are able to form strong bonds with each other that transcend gender, race, religion and sexual orientation; issues they say the church hasn’t quite been able to transcend itself. Whether or not this is true, it cannot be denied that football for millions of people, has become very much more than a game, and in fact an integral part of their lives.
With 2018 FIFA World Cup presently in full swing, most of us don’t have to go further than our own homes or even work lunch rooms to see the importance placed on this game called football. It is hard to avoid hearing conversations or heated arguments about Germany’s defeat by South Korea or Brazil knocking out Serbia or Japan reaching the last 16 despite the 1-0 defeat by Poland, but still managing to qualify. If after this, one was still to be in doubt of the significance the world places on this game, one would only have to google the salaries of some of football’s top players to see what sort of economics are involved in this game. Madrid’s Cristiano Ronaldo earns 17.5 million pounds a year and Barcelona’s Lionel Messi has an annual salary of 16.8 million pounds. The reason these players are paid such outrageous salaries is for one reason and that is because of the massive popularity of the game which creates massive profits for the clubs.
Our forefathers foresaw the complicated relationship between football and sports and the massive popularity of sports when they declared Sunday ball games to be illegal and even arrested those contravening this law as late as the early 1900’s. Their rationale was said to be that Sunday games distracted from religion and clashed with the tone of the Sabbath day as ordinary Christians were supposed to observe it. However, what is interesting to note is that many football clubs have religious origins. These include clubs such as Aston Villa, Bolton Wanderers, Birmingham City, Southampton, Tottenham Hotspurs and Manchester City which was created from the Church’s mission to create male clubs that would help improve community spirit.
Therefore, for those who have declared that there is a competition between sports and religion, perhaps we just need to look at it from another perspective. Sports and religion can have a great partnership if we can just find a way for the two to coexist without taking anything away from the other.