At a time like ours which is not exactly devoid of fascination, football takes an exceptional position. Regardless if managers or street-sweepers, politicians or prisoners, more than that, even entirely opposite social groups will gratefully resort to that topic. The author cannot avoid the question what makes football that interesting, what makes it a social phenomenon. And the fact the question cannot be answered thoroughly, does not impair its attractivity. Quite the contrary.
As for the bare facts: 22 persons hunting a ball is from a technical point of view quite boring. The more amazing are the fuss that is made about it, the tears that are shed, the noses that are broken and the children that are procreated, simply because one team has beaten the other. This technical side can be called 'denotation'. This term means a quality which we can without being too malicious characterize as dull information - an implied invitation, in other words, to have a discreet look at the wristwatch and to wonder how time sometimes seems to stand still. But over that basis another component piles up, the cultural meaning which is attached to the neutral fact. And it seems it is exactly the hardly challenging original idea of football which literally cries for being emotionally and intellectually supercharged. Being trivial is still the best precondition of being profound.
Umberto Eco has stated a similar thing with regards to verbal sign systems, texts in other words. He subdivides them into 'open' and 'closed' ones. Closed texts imply a single reading, thus preferring being informative to being creative, texts for everyday use, for instance. In contrast, open texts enjoy their own variety of readings, thus inviting the readers to speculation. They do not confer their meaning in themselves, but require an actively participating reader. The interesting point of this is the more closed a text is conceived to be, the more meanings can be constructed anyway. There is no text with one single meaning. (With a compassionate address to religious fundamentalists of any kind.) In turn a text, however open it might be, cannot carry any meaning; its scope of interpretation, albeit variable, remains end- (if not bound-)less in principle. (With a recommendation to political ways of dealing with civil rights.)
Now football is a typical example for the first case; its rules are so simple even Americans feel bored by them. After all, baseball or American Football matches are much more complicated. But it is exactly its closed primitivity, its dull denotative component which elevates this simple sport to an eternally sung phenomenon; now we are talking about its connotative compnent. So we might be more precise: The less imaginative the denotation, the more creative the connotation.
And football has been experiencing quite a breathtaking connotative development in the last 50 years. Originally considered to be a mere working-class sport whose executors might at best become a petrol station owner after they quit kicking, thus belatedly trying to climb the social ladder, it has grown into a huge cultural form by now. It is the lubricant of the media machinery, it provokes more and more profound comments and reflections, it conquered the status of a philosophical issue long ago.More than the history of political parties it serves as a blueprint for a principle analysis of the history of mentality, for it is endowed with such a universal quality delighted sports palace attendants celebrated in this country about sixty years ago the last time. It is a code of the declining and constant values, mass psychosis, individual motivation, suspense, the schematic, in short: for everything and nothing. And nobody blames it for that. By now, the common fan himself reflects hedonistically upon the emptiness of the language of football (players). This means the factual component has become so complex that it reflects upon itself.So komplex ist die sachliche Komponente mittlerweile geworden, dass sie sich selbst reflektiert.
Nobody can evade football as a way of life anymore. Particularly before big events such as international championships even the disinterested loudly display their temporal reformation, exactly posing that kind of questions every real fan enjoys answering - for instance, what are the chances for the German team like, what is an offside trap, what is meant by the competition arithmetics and so on. Intellectual circles either participate fully, albeit aware there is still time left for a wink or they resort to the observation of the second order, which means they have a look at the football madness around (and inevitably at the first order object of observation, too, namly football). What is more, it has become a veritable topos to draw conclusions from the national team's state and its way of playing to the national state in general. And maybe for that reason, too, the professionals crawl more and more depressedly over the field, with the weight of the entire Western cultural state on their shoulders. Given that, the well-(?)meant advice to simply regain the joy of playing seems to be totally useless.
Technically speaking everybody tries to dissolve the closed factual form into the open medium of conclusion by finding relations to the economy, politics, psychology, mythology, biography, science and culture. So football can be anything, but hardly pure sport. This involves a certain danger: theoretically the football fans mightturn their backs to the expanding cultural relations which do not seem to have anything in common with the simple truisms of football. But paradoxically the inklings of the growing alienation of the fan basis, the credibility crisis of highly paid professionals actually secure its existence: every irated fan will dispute the football millionaire's frighting spirit and his enthusiasm, but not the notion of football as such. Lamenting the once innocent club sport has become too commercial just do not result in the break with football; instead the football business absorbs it functionally. Pure unadulterated football remains authentic for the fans; they only blame the overestimated and spoilt players who have forgotten to be enthusiastically earthy. So the spectators complain by the ten thousand about the missing club identification the players show, their luxury problems of motivational lack - but they do so at the only place they can utter loud criticism - the stadium, having paid the entrance fee. Paradoxial? Of course. Boycotting seems impossible. The fans see themselves as the guardians of the Grail of Football and detach themselves from all those intellectual smarties, eggheads, arrogant club chairmen, snappy managers, dubious consultants and just the lazy players.
So it is exactly that diversification of meanings making the fans aware of the authentic roots. Might others break the closed text open for futher readings, medializing the form - the fans do know it is closed. That is why the primitivity of football remains a constant scandalon for the other oberservers and keeps inducing intelligent and far-fetched explanations.
As for the bare facts: 22 persons hunting a ball is from a technical point of view quite boring. The more amazing are the fuss that is made about it, the tears that are shed, the noses that are broken and the children that are procreated, simply because one team has beaten the other. This technical side can be called 'denotation'. This term means a quality which we can without being too malicious characterize as dull information - an implied invitation, in other words, to have a discreet look at the wristwatch and to wonder how time sometimes seems to stand still. But over that basis another component piles up, the cultural meaning which is attached to the neutral fact. And it seems it is exactly the hardly challenging original idea of football which literally cries for being emotionally and intellectually supercharged. Being trivial is still the best precondition of being profound.
Umberto Eco has stated a similar thing with regards to verbal sign systems, texts in other words. He subdivides them into 'open' and 'closed' ones. Closed texts imply a single reading, thus preferring being informative to being creative, texts for everyday use, for instance. In contrast, open texts enjoy their own variety of readings, thus inviting the readers to speculation. They do not confer their meaning in themselves, but require an actively participating reader. The interesting point of this is the more closed a text is conceived to be, the more meanings can be constructed anyway. There is no text with one single meaning. (With a compassionate address to religious fundamentalists of any kind.) In turn a text, however open it might be, cannot carry any meaning; its scope of interpretation, albeit variable, remains end- (if not bound-)less in principle. (With a recommendation to political ways of dealing with civil rights.)
Now football is a typical example for the first case; its rules are so simple even Americans feel bored by them. After all, baseball or American Football matches are much more complicated. But it is exactly its closed primitivity, its dull denotative component which elevates this simple sport to an eternally sung phenomenon; now we are talking about its connotative compnent. So we might be more precise: The less imaginative the denotation, the more creative the connotation.
And football has been experiencing quite a breathtaking connotative development in the last 50 years. Originally considered to be a mere working-class sport whose executors might at best become a petrol station owner after they quit kicking, thus belatedly trying to climb the social ladder, it has grown into a huge cultural form by now. It is the lubricant of the media machinery, it provokes more and more profound comments and reflections, it conquered the status of a philosophical issue long ago.More than the history of political parties it serves as a blueprint for a principle analysis of the history of mentality, for it is endowed with such a universal quality delighted sports palace attendants celebrated in this country about sixty years ago the last time. It is a code of the declining and constant values, mass psychosis, individual motivation, suspense, the schematic, in short: for everything and nothing. And nobody blames it for that. By now, the common fan himself reflects hedonistically upon the emptiness of the language of football (players). This means the factual component has become so complex that it reflects upon itself.So komplex ist die sachliche Komponente mittlerweile geworden, dass sie sich selbst reflektiert.
Nobody can evade football as a way of life anymore. Particularly before big events such as international championships even the disinterested loudly display their temporal reformation, exactly posing that kind of questions every real fan enjoys answering - for instance, what are the chances for the German team like, what is an offside trap, what is meant by the competition arithmetics and so on. Intellectual circles either participate fully, albeit aware there is still time left for a wink or they resort to the observation of the second order, which means they have a look at the football madness around (and inevitably at the first order object of observation, too, namly football). What is more, it has become a veritable topos to draw conclusions from the national team's state and its way of playing to the national state in general. And maybe for that reason, too, the professionals crawl more and more depressedly over the field, with the weight of the entire Western cultural state on their shoulders. Given that, the well-(?)meant advice to simply regain the joy of playing seems to be totally useless.
Technically speaking everybody tries to dissolve the closed factual form into the open medium of conclusion by finding relations to the economy, politics, psychology, mythology, biography, science and culture. So football can be anything, but hardly pure sport. This involves a certain danger: theoretically the football fans mightturn their backs to the expanding cultural relations which do not seem to have anything in common with the simple truisms of football. But paradoxically the inklings of the growing alienation of the fan basis, the credibility crisis of highly paid professionals actually secure its existence: every irated fan will dispute the football millionaire's frighting spirit and his enthusiasm, but not the notion of football as such. Lamenting the once innocent club sport has become too commercial just do not result in the break with football; instead the football business absorbs it functionally. Pure unadulterated football remains authentic for the fans; they only blame the overestimated and spoilt players who have forgotten to be enthusiastically earthy. So the spectators complain by the ten thousand about the missing club identification the players show, their luxury problems of motivational lack - but they do so at the only place they can utter loud criticism - the stadium, having paid the entrance fee. Paradoxial? Of course. Boycotting seems impossible. The fans see themselves as the guardians of the Grail of Football and detach themselves from all those intellectual smarties, eggheads, arrogant club chairmen, snappy managers, dubious consultants and just the lazy players.
So it is exactly that diversification of meanings making the fans aware of the authentic roots. Might others break the closed text open for futher readings, medializing the form - the fans do know it is closed. That is why the primitivity of football remains a constant scandalon for the other oberservers and keeps inducing intelligent and far-fetched explanations.
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