The Sociology of Soccer
"What it can do, however, is show us something politics often obscures: conflict conducted under shared rules, rivalry that requires the legitimacy of the opponent, grief and joy that people enter into freely. The World Cup isn’t a mirror of politics so much as a reminder of what politics has forgotten how to stage — great acts of empathetic togetherness."
Rowan Ricardo Phillips, Poetry editor of NT Times, July 8, 2026
"Soccer is tribal, and love of one’s own team comes hand in hand with a desire to destroy the other. But it also allows for camaraderie and solidarity after the contest."
"But in reality the game is about entertainment and free time, the importance of play and the right to have fun — no minor things. Even clichéd ideas about soccer stopping wars and so on only mean that for 90 minutes, some hideous reality was suspended. But after the final whistle, we all return to earth."
Mora y Araujo, Specialist in Latin American soccer, NY Time, July 8, 2026
Moving Bodies
"It is sufficient to say that a molecule in the sense of a moving body, with a history of local change, is not an actual occasion; it must therefore be some kind of nexus of actual occasions. In this sense it is an event, but not an actual occasion. The fundamental meaning of the notion of ‘change’ is ‘the difference between actual occasions comprised in some determinate event."
AN Whitehead, Process and Reality, 73
What Whitehead says of a molecule, he would also say of a soccer ball. It is not an actual occasion but rather a nexus of actual occasions, gathered together as a corpuscular society that moves through space while carrying with it a history of where it has been. A football game, a thunderstorm, a person's life, a molecule, and the growth of a tree are all events because they extend through space and time. Each is composed of many momentary actual occasions.
Thus, when it is in play during a soccer match, a soccer ball is itself an event within many other events: the match itself, the field, the players, the spectators, the weather, and the larger social and cultural setting in which the match takes place. The players and spectators have souls, but their souls are events as well. They are the dominant streams of experience—or minds—that receive influences from their bodies, integrate them into a unified experience, and coordinate responses. At every moment each mind is guided by a subjective aim. If you are a player, that aim may be to anticipate the play, cooperate with teammates, outmaneuver opponents, and contribute to your team's success. If you are a spectator, that aim may be to enjoy the unfolding drama of the match, to celebrate moments of skill and beauty, and perhaps to experience the satisfaction of seeing your team win.
In most soccer matches, many spectators are present, and their relationships with one another are events as well. Some experience a deep sense of camaraderie with fellow supporters, sharing cheers, songs, and collective excitement. Others encounter tension or rivalry, especially when surrounded by supporters of the opposing team. These relationships are themselves continually renewed from moment to moment as new actual occasions inherit from those that precede them, creating the dynamic social life of the crowd.
For Whitehead, satisfying experience depends upon the realization of contrasts. One important form of contrast in sport is rivalry.
Healthy rivalry intensifies enjoyment by heightening uncertainty, sharpening attention, and giving victories and defeats their emotional significance, all without destroying mutual respect. Indeed, one of the paradoxes of sport is that genuine competition can deepen community. Teammates are united by a common purpose, while opposing teams and their supporters become participants in a shared event that neither side could create alone. Each helps make possible the experience of the other. In this way, competition need not be the opposite of community; it can be one of its expressions, provided it is guided by respect, fairness, and a love of the match.
Unhealthy rivalry, by contrast, turns opponents into enemies, corrodes empathy, and replaces the shared enjoyment of the match with resentment, hostility, or violence. The same contrast that can enrich experience when ordered by sportsmanship can impoverish it when overtaken by hatred.
A Universe of Events
We and the soccer ball belong to the same kind of universe. Neither of us is a substance. We are both activities with our own histories of becoming.
The difference between us and the soccer ball is that, in our case, the billions upon billions of energy-events that compose our bodies (our arms, legs, internal organs, and brains) are gathered into a single stream of experience forming what Whitehead calls a living person who is the "regnant" concrescing subject of the body. This living person with its 'regnancy' is identical with our own immediate experience as lived from the inside, from a first-person perspective. This regnant experience is, says Whitehead, our soul.
The soccer ball, by contrast, is a coordinated society of billions upon billions of smaller enduring societies—atoms and molecules, each with its own history of becoming—whose collective continuity gives the appearance of a single moving object, what Whitehead calls a corpuscular society. As far as we know, it has no coordinating stream of experience and thus is not itself a living person. Yet it, too, is a dynamic pattern of energy and becoming.
Truth be told, we are kin to the soccer ball, and the soccer ball is kin to us. Neither of us possesses absolute solidity; both of us are enduring patterns of activity in a universe of creative advance. The soccer ball is an activity, even if it remains seemingly 'still' in some location. And the soccer player, and we ourselves, are activities, even if we are asleep in bed. There are no substances, there are only activities.
The difference between us and the soccer ball is that, in our case, the billions upon billions of energy-events that compose our bodies (our arms, legs, internal organs, and brains) are gathered into a single stream of experience forming what Whitehead calls a living person who is the "regnant" concrescing subject of the body. This living person with its 'regnancy' is identical with our own immediate experience as lived from the inside, from a first-person perspective. This regnant experience is, says Whitehead, our soul.
The soccer ball, by contrast, is a coordinated society of billions upon billions of smaller enduring societies—atoms and molecules, each with its own history of becoming—whose collective continuity gives the appearance of a single moving object, what Whitehead calls a corpuscular society. As far as we know, it has no coordinating stream of experience and thus is not itself a living person. Yet it, too, is a dynamic pattern of energy and becoming.
Truth be told, we are kin to the soccer ball, and the soccer ball is kin to us. Neither of us possesses absolute solidity; both of us are enduring patterns of activity in a universe of creative advance. The soccer ball is an activity, even if it remains seemingly 'still' in some location. And the soccer player, and we ourselves, are activities, even if we are asleep in bed. There are no substances, there are only activities.
Relational Cosmology
Events can be bounded but they are never isolated. They are like living cells with permeable membranes. I have said that the event of the soccer ball, when used in a game, is an event within the other events, include the match itself. Thus it is a relational event.
From Whitehead's perspective, all events are retational. They may seem localized in time and space; but they are not 'simply' located. To think of them this way is to commit what Whitehead calls "the fallacy of simple location," Any apparently located even, but it a soccer ball or a soccer game, is what it is in relation to, and dependence on, all other events, not only in the world but in the universe. Each actual occasion is a "concrescence" of the universe, says Whitehead, and each event, consisting of a multitude of actual occasions, is likewise, in its way, a coming together of the universe, through its component parts.
Where are these events unfolding? In what are they unfolding? This is the theological side of Whitehead. In Whitehead's philosophy there is a cosmic event, within which all events occur, and which is itself akin to the soul or mind of a body. It is not made out of a different kind of substance. It, too, is a series of moments of experience, each decisive, each with an aim, and each with feeling of what is given to it. It is said that this universal soul is unique in that it welcomes all other souls and bodies without a sense of rivalry. It seeks the well being of each and all. This soul is what - or better whom - Whitehead calls God. As the soccer game unfolds, this soul wants each side to win.
What is it the Moves?
Thus an actual entity never moves: it is where it is and what it is.
Whitehead, Alfred North. Process and Reality (74)
There is a becoming of continuity, but no continuity of becoming. (36)
Whitehead, Alfred North. Process and Reality
The statement that actual entities never move can seem absurd. Surely soccer balls move. Soccer players sprint across the field. The referee runs after the play. Fans leap to their feet, clap, and wave their arms. Even the stadium itself races through space as the Earth rotates on its axis, revolves around the sun, and journeys through the galaxy. If actual entities never move, how can Whitehead possibly account for the obvious motion of the world around us?
Classical physics has remarkably successful mathematical descriptions of motion. Newton's laws explain why soccer balls follow the trajectories they do, why players accelerate and decelerate, and why every kick, collision, and bounce unfolds as it does.
Whitehead does not reject these explanations. Instead, he asks a deeper metaphysical question: What is it that moves?
If the ultimate constituents of reality are momentary actual occasions that exist only where and when they are, what is the ontological basis of moving objects such as soccer balls, players, referees, and even the Earth itself?
His answer takes a little time to explain:
The fundamental units of reality are not tiny particles that persist through time. They are momentary actual occasions of experience—brief energy-events that come into being seeking intensity and achieve satisfacton. After they achieve some degree of satisfying intensity, their subjective immediacy perishes and they endure only as influences (or superjects) on future events. Each actual occasion occupies its own unique region of space-time. It never travels from one location to another, because once it has become what it is, it is complete. As Whitehead says, it is "where it is and what it is."
Motion, then, belongs not to individual actual occasions but to what he calls societies of occasions. Here society does not mean a human or animal society, it means a network of energy events that share common characteristics and transfer energy from one to the others. A human brain is a society, as is liver or spleen. A living cell is a society, as are the molecules and atoms that compose it. The csll as a whole is what Whitehead calls a structured society because is indeed composed of its molecules and atom, but is also more them, not unlike the way in which they are nested within and contribute to a larger society: namely the cell. Thus the cell is akin to a living person, albeit perhaps not with a strong sense or a personal history. As regnant occasions of experience in relation to our own brains and bodies are also structured societies or, as one process philosopher, Charles Hartshorne put it, compound individuals.
A soccer ball, by contrast, is what Whitehead calls a corpuscular society. It is not a single enduring substance moving across the field. Rather, it is a highly organized society composed of innumerable interwoven strands of serially ordered actual occasions. Each strand constitutes what Whitehead calls an enduring object: a historical succession in which each new occasion inherits from its immediate predecessor through what Whitehead calls the vector transmission of feeling. The soccer ball is an almost incalculable network of energy events, which 'feel' the feeling of others. Whitehead's word for 'feeling' is 'prehension,' A prehension takes into account the feeling or prehensions of the others in the soccer-ball society, and thus becomes a 'soccer ball.'
Even enduring objects do not move through space as enduring substances. Their continuity does not consist in a single self-identical entity persisting unchanged through time. Rather, it consists in a serial inheritance of actual occasions, each receiving the influences of its predecessors through Whitehead's vector transmission of feeling. An enduring object is thus continually renewed from moment to moment through the reception and creative transformation of its past.
An old-fashioned motion picture offers a helpful analogy. A film consists of a succession of distinct frames. No single frame moves. Motion emerges because each frame is closely related to those before and after it, producing the appearance of continuous movement. Likewise, the actual occasions composing an enduring object are discrete moments of becoming. Each inherits from its predecessors and creatively carries their patterns forward, giving rise to the continuity and apparent motion we experience.
This inheritance is richer than the repetition of an abstract pattern. Through vector transmission of feeling, each new actual occasion receives a concrete feeling from its predecessor. That inherited feeling carries forward both the formal pattern embodied in the predecessor and the predecessor's causal efficacy—the realized energy through which the past remains active in the present. Every new occasion thus inherits not only what its predecessor was, but something of how it achieved its reality. The present is genuinely new, but it is also genuinely continuous with the past.
The motion of the soccer ball is therefore not the journey of one numerically identical substance through space. Rather, it is the continuous renewal of a corpuscular society whose successive actual occasions inherit both the defining pattern and the causal efficacy of their predecessors through vector transmission of feeling. Each occasion integrates these inheritances into a fresh act of becoming before passing them on, creatively transformed, to its successors.
The same is true of the players. Their bodies do not consist of enduring bits of matter traveling through space. They are extraordinarily complex societies of societies whose continuity consists in this uninterrupted transmission of feeling. And as societies with a 'regnant' occaion
Seen in this way, a soccer match becomes an illustration of Whitehead's process metaphysics.
Movement does not disappear. The soccer ball really does move. The players really do run. The referee really does race after the play. But none of these movements consists in a numerically identical substance traveling through space. They are moving patterns of energy inheriting from their pasts and contributing to their futures, each instance of which is what it is and what it is, not itself moving. The ball that enters the goal is not the very same collection of actual occasions that left the player's foot. It is the same historical society, but not the same actual occasions.
In short, motion in Whitehead's philosophy, is not the persistence of substance but the continuity of becoming. " There is a becoming of continuity but no continuity of becoming."
The match unfolds as billions upon billions of momentary acts of experience arise, inherit, create, perish, and give birth to their successors. What appears to common sense as moving objects is, at a deeper metaphysical level, the ongoing life of societies whose identity lies not in remaining numerically identical through time but in the uninterrupted inheritance of form and causal efficacy from one generation of actual occasions to the next. The identity of a thing, in other words, lies not in the persistence of substance but in the continuity of inheritance.
Thus an actual entity never moves: it is where it is and what it is.
Whitehead, Alfred North. Process and Reality (74)
There is a becoming of continuity, but no continuity of becoming. (36)
Whitehead, Alfred North. Process and Reality
The statement that actual entities never move can seem absurd. Surely soccer balls move. Soccer players sprint across the field. The referee runs after the play. Fans leap to their feet, clap, and wave their arms. Even the stadium itself races through space as the Earth rotates on its axis, revolves around the sun, and journeys through the galaxy. If actual entities never move, how can Whitehead possibly account for the obvious motion of the world around us?
Classical physics has remarkably successful mathematical descriptions of motion. Newton's laws explain why soccer balls follow the trajectories they do, why players accelerate and decelerate, and why every kick, collision, and bounce unfolds as it does.
Whitehead does not reject these explanations. Instead, he asks a deeper metaphysical question: What is it that moves?
If the ultimate constituents of reality are momentary actual occasions that exist only where and when they are, what is the ontological basis of moving objects such as soccer balls, players, referees, and even the Earth itself?
His answer takes a little time to explain:
The fundamental units of reality are not tiny particles that persist through time. They are momentary actual occasions of experience—brief energy-events that come into being seeking intensity and achieve satisfacton. After they achieve some degree of satisfying intensity, their subjective immediacy perishes and they endure only as influences (or superjects) on future events. Each actual occasion occupies its own unique region of space-time. It never travels from one location to another, because once it has become what it is, it is complete. As Whitehead says, it is "where it is and what it is."
Motion, then, belongs not to individual actual occasions but to what he calls societies of occasions. Here society does not mean a human or animal society, it means a network of energy events that share common characteristics and transfer energy from one to the others. A human brain is a society, as is liver or spleen. A living cell is a society, as are the molecules and atoms that compose it. The csll as a whole is what Whitehead calls a structured society because is indeed composed of its molecules and atom, but is also more them, not unlike the way in which they are nested within and contribute to a larger society: namely the cell. Thus the cell is akin to a living person, albeit perhaps not with a strong sense or a personal history. As regnant occasions of experience in relation to our own brains and bodies are also structured societies or, as one process philosopher, Charles Hartshorne put it, compound individuals.
A soccer ball, by contrast, is what Whitehead calls a corpuscular society. It is not a single enduring substance moving across the field. Rather, it is a highly organized society composed of innumerable interwoven strands of serially ordered actual occasions. Each strand constitutes what Whitehead calls an enduring object: a historical succession in which each new occasion inherits from its immediate predecessor through what Whitehead calls the vector transmission of feeling. The soccer ball is an almost incalculable network of energy events, which 'feel' the feeling of others. Whitehead's word for 'feeling' is 'prehension,' A prehension takes into account the feeling or prehensions of the others in the soccer-ball society, and thus becomes a 'soccer ball.'
Even enduring objects do not move through space as enduring substances. Their continuity does not consist in a single self-identical entity persisting unchanged through time. Rather, it consists in a serial inheritance of actual occasions, each receiving the influences of its predecessors through Whitehead's vector transmission of feeling. An enduring object is thus continually renewed from moment to moment through the reception and creative transformation of its past.
An old-fashioned motion picture offers a helpful analogy. A film consists of a succession of distinct frames. No single frame moves. Motion emerges because each frame is closely related to those before and after it, producing the appearance of continuous movement. Likewise, the actual occasions composing an enduring object are discrete moments of becoming. Each inherits from its predecessors and creatively carries their patterns forward, giving rise to the continuity and apparent motion we experience.
This inheritance is richer than the repetition of an abstract pattern. Through vector transmission of feeling, each new actual occasion receives a concrete feeling from its predecessor. That inherited feeling carries forward both the formal pattern embodied in the predecessor and the predecessor's causal efficacy—the realized energy through which the past remains active in the present. Every new occasion thus inherits not only what its predecessor was, but something of how it achieved its reality. The present is genuinely new, but it is also genuinely continuous with the past.
The motion of the soccer ball is therefore not the journey of one numerically identical substance through space. Rather, it is the continuous renewal of a corpuscular society whose successive actual occasions inherit both the defining pattern and the causal efficacy of their predecessors through vector transmission of feeling. Each occasion integrates these inheritances into a fresh act of becoming before passing them on, creatively transformed, to its successors.
The same is true of the players. Their bodies do not consist of enduring bits of matter traveling through space. They are extraordinarily complex societies of societies whose continuity consists in this uninterrupted transmission of feeling. And as societies with a 'regnant' occaion
Seen in this way, a soccer match becomes an illustration of Whitehead's process metaphysics.
Movement does not disappear. The soccer ball really does move. The players really do run. The referee really does race after the play. But none of these movements consists in a numerically identical substance traveling through space. They are moving patterns of energy inheriting from their pasts and contributing to their futures, each instance of which is what it is and what it is, not itself moving. The ball that enters the goal is not the very same collection of actual occasions that left the player's foot. It is the same historical society, but not the same actual occasions.
In short, motion in Whitehead's philosophy, is not the persistence of substance but the continuity of becoming. " There is a becoming of continuity but no continuity of becoming."
The match unfolds as billions upon billions of momentary acts of experience arise, inherit, create, perish, and give birth to their successors. What appears to common sense as moving objects is, at a deeper metaphysical level, the ongoing life of societies whose identity lies not in remaining numerically identical through time but in the uninterrupted inheritance of form and causal efficacy from one generation of actual occasions to the next. The identity of a thing, in other words, lies not in the persistence of substance but in the continuity of inheritance.
The article below is a reflection on the 2014 FIFA World Cup, the tournament in which the United States reached the Round of 16 before losing to Belgium, 2–1, in extra time. The author - Jesse Bettinger - writes as he awaits the conclusion to the final. As it happened, Germany beat Argentina. But back to 2014 and the match between the US and Belgium. It was a memorable and emotionally charged match, especially because of US goalkeeper Tim Howard’s extraordinary performance, which became one of the defining American memories of that World Cup. Bettinger's article offers Whitehead-influenced reflections on soccer itself.
Reflections on the 2014 Finals of the World Cup
Jesse Bettinger, 2014
Now that the US has exited the World Cup and the tourney stands on the precipice of the final stage, we can pause to reflect for a moment on what lessons we’ve learned and what themes from process thought we can extract from the matches Soccer (the world’s football) is one of the global sports that all nations rally behind, but from the perspective of a nation predicated on high-scoring, fast-paced games like basketball and football, many Americans ask themselves what gives soccer such worldwide appeal?
As a western civilization classically steeped in materialism and substance metaphysics, the high-action, high-impact, hard-hitting elements of our staple sports can almost be considered an artifact of our cultural DNA. Let’s call this hard power.
By comparison, soccer encapsulates a more patient pace of play; the match is played for ninety minutes of running time and more-or-less continuous action. At the top level, players are expected to perform under dynamic circumstances for up to 120 minutes: progression of play is continuous and conditions are always changing on the field. Unlike in American football where there are discontinuities and resets of play every seven seconds or so, soccer is based on the collective regulation of a changing system trying to maintain multiparty composure: an integrated network of passing marked by individual acts of chivalry. Let’s characterize this as soft power.
Now, the usage of the terms soft and hard power certainly elicit a military connotation and this is not unintentional; indeed, only just recently in a blog post of his own, Andrew Bertoli— a doctoral candidate in political science at the University of California at Berkeley researching nationalism and war—develops the positive correlation of how surges of nationalism from sporting events lead to conflict and examines whether the World Cup incites nationalism that encourages political leaders to behave more aggressively in the international arena.
Aside from the militaristic component, the basic thesis of this article is that the soft-power components of the game are more tailored towards a process mentality. Such a mindset is distinguished in soccer, lending itself to a more cooperative dynamic that unifies individual athleticism within the overarching choreography of an emergent network. This reinforces the notion of the team over the self. A team, after all, is an ecological organism. A fine example of this comes from the US v. Belgium game when Tim Howard’s stalwart goalkeeping broke a record but he still just spoke about the overall effort of the ten other players in front of him. Soccer, perhaps more than some other sports, emphasizes the mindset of a band of brothers, a solidarity of sisters. I would link hockey and rugby here as well. All of the most successful teams I’ve ever been a part of as a player or a coach have all shared the same basic elements: we were a cohesive unit both on and off the field, we all bought into the team, we had strong leadership with good integrity, and we played for each other.
On a practical level, process mentality teaches the importance of relational power and the virtue of embracing rather than hiding from enriching tensions. A great example of this was played out in the first round during the Germany v. Ghana game when in the middle of play a neo-nazi ran onto the field unrestrained and proceeded to parade around to the behest of exactly zero field officials. Instead, one of the Ghanese players calmly placed his arm around the man and eased him slowly off the field with the composure of a shepherd.
That said, like all human enterprises, soccer too has its fair share of corporate corruption by the governing body of FIFA as well as in the modern culture of the game itself. Both these issues need to be addressed. First off, the governing organization of soccer does little in the way of trying to help those countries who host the games. Instead FIFA profits a great deal off the games and keeps all moneys in private rainy day accounts even though they’re a not-for-profit organization. So much for the integrity of the administration.
The coaches, players, and referees also share in responsibility for allowing the culture of flopping to now permeate the game. The running joke has grown so ubiquitous that it has become a meme. Just yesterday NPR published a video about what it would be like if everyday people behaved like soccer floppers. This has led to many offshoot videos. If soccer wishes to regain its integrity it must deal with this culture of flopping and must make changes to discourage it. Without heavier sanctions the game loses honor in the eyes of all spectators and when you really admit it, even the coaches and players must lose a little part of themselves every time someone takes a dive.
We must at some point recognize that flopping for calls, even if it gains something in the short term, is nothing more than a pyrrhic victory and that ultimately the game doesn’t lie and justice plays out one way or another. We’ve seen this play out over this tournament and I’ve seen it play out in real life. The lesson is one whose theme is certainly overarching and speaks to an entire generation of people operating on principles of entitlement, be it in youth culture, capitalist culture, consumer culture, you name it…too many people feel the sense of entitlement to take something that isn’t theirs, be it a call, an insider stock, a higher profit in the name of economic principles, or what have you. The point is that as a society our playing field is no longer level and even on the soccer pitch we see this same reality play out every time a player takes a dive and steals from their fellow player what has not been earned. Even within competition we must have honor or else what are we competing for and what do we gain in the victory?
As we sit down to watch the grand finale tomorrow be sure to watch with a keen eye for the complex network of passes and layers of communication both on and off the ball that permeate the field. This is what makes soccer beautiful. In the same stead, also do not hesitate to admonish the dishonor of players who manipulate the principle of fair play as it occurs. That said, the teams that travel and travail all the way to the finals usually have gotten there because they pass the prior tests with sounding dignity in the first place. I trust we will see a hard fought battle and an honest match tomorrow and hope that we will celebrate the beautiful game together.
As a western civilization classically steeped in materialism and substance metaphysics, the high-action, high-impact, hard-hitting elements of our staple sports can almost be considered an artifact of our cultural DNA. Let’s call this hard power.
By comparison, soccer encapsulates a more patient pace of play; the match is played for ninety minutes of running time and more-or-less continuous action. At the top level, players are expected to perform under dynamic circumstances for up to 120 minutes: progression of play is continuous and conditions are always changing on the field. Unlike in American football where there are discontinuities and resets of play every seven seconds or so, soccer is based on the collective regulation of a changing system trying to maintain multiparty composure: an integrated network of passing marked by individual acts of chivalry. Let’s characterize this as soft power.
Now, the usage of the terms soft and hard power certainly elicit a military connotation and this is not unintentional; indeed, only just recently in a blog post of his own, Andrew Bertoli— a doctoral candidate in political science at the University of California at Berkeley researching nationalism and war—develops the positive correlation of how surges of nationalism from sporting events lead to conflict and examines whether the World Cup incites nationalism that encourages political leaders to behave more aggressively in the international arena.
Aside from the militaristic component, the basic thesis of this article is that the soft-power components of the game are more tailored towards a process mentality. Such a mindset is distinguished in soccer, lending itself to a more cooperative dynamic that unifies individual athleticism within the overarching choreography of an emergent network. This reinforces the notion of the team over the self. A team, after all, is an ecological organism. A fine example of this comes from the US v. Belgium game when Tim Howard’s stalwart goalkeeping broke a record but he still just spoke about the overall effort of the ten other players in front of him. Soccer, perhaps more than some other sports, emphasizes the mindset of a band of brothers, a solidarity of sisters. I would link hockey and rugby here as well. All of the most successful teams I’ve ever been a part of as a player or a coach have all shared the same basic elements: we were a cohesive unit both on and off the field, we all bought into the team, we had strong leadership with good integrity, and we played for each other.
On a practical level, process mentality teaches the importance of relational power and the virtue of embracing rather than hiding from enriching tensions. A great example of this was played out in the first round during the Germany v. Ghana game when in the middle of play a neo-nazi ran onto the field unrestrained and proceeded to parade around to the behest of exactly zero field officials. Instead, one of the Ghanese players calmly placed his arm around the man and eased him slowly off the field with the composure of a shepherd.
That said, like all human enterprises, soccer too has its fair share of corporate corruption by the governing body of FIFA as well as in the modern culture of the game itself. Both these issues need to be addressed. First off, the governing organization of soccer does little in the way of trying to help those countries who host the games. Instead FIFA profits a great deal off the games and keeps all moneys in private rainy day accounts even though they’re a not-for-profit organization. So much for the integrity of the administration.
The coaches, players, and referees also share in responsibility for allowing the culture of flopping to now permeate the game. The running joke has grown so ubiquitous that it has become a meme. Just yesterday NPR published a video about what it would be like if everyday people behaved like soccer floppers. This has led to many offshoot videos. If soccer wishes to regain its integrity it must deal with this culture of flopping and must make changes to discourage it. Without heavier sanctions the game loses honor in the eyes of all spectators and when you really admit it, even the coaches and players must lose a little part of themselves every time someone takes a dive.
We must at some point recognize that flopping for calls, even if it gains something in the short term, is nothing more than a pyrrhic victory and that ultimately the game doesn’t lie and justice plays out one way or another. We’ve seen this play out over this tournament and I’ve seen it play out in real life. The lesson is one whose theme is certainly overarching and speaks to an entire generation of people operating on principles of entitlement, be it in youth culture, capitalist culture, consumer culture, you name it…too many people feel the sense of entitlement to take something that isn’t theirs, be it a call, an insider stock, a higher profit in the name of economic principles, or what have you. The point is that as a society our playing field is no longer level and even on the soccer pitch we see this same reality play out every time a player takes a dive and steals from their fellow player what has not been earned. Even within competition we must have honor or else what are we competing for and what do we gain in the victory?
As we sit down to watch the grand finale tomorrow be sure to watch with a keen eye for the complex network of passes and layers of communication both on and off the ball that permeate the field. This is what makes soccer beautiful. In the same stead, also do not hesitate to admonish the dishonor of players who manipulate the principle of fair play as it occurs. That said, the teams that travel and travail all the way to the finals usually have gotten there because they pass the prior tests with sounding dignity in the first place. I trust we will see a hard fought battle and an honest match tomorrow and hope that we will celebrate the beautiful game together.