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Monday, March 8, 2021
Soccer gives for many things, television, stadiums, sponsorship contracts, games, profession. In the legal, commercial and sports fields. Great writers also appear who like this sport and decide to write. There are classics such as Fútbol a Sol y Sombra by Eduardo Galeano, authors more specialized in short stories such as Eduardo Sacheri who has more than four books with football stories. Many people knew him and recently, surfing the internet I found, Fever in the Stairs by Nick Hornby. A story from a furious Arsenal fan who has very good notes on what English football was like in the 60s and 70s with which various legal issues can be analyzed.
The author narrates his relationship in the Arsenal club, his life as a teenager around that team and how most of his daily activities were related to that of his team. Game by game he tells stories about English football. It tells how many of us have happened, that football is a place to meet our children or parents, the stadium, at least personally brings back memories where I could share family moments with my children or great friends from adolescence and university.
The value of going to football from the 70s compared to the current one is impressive, before, in England football was a cheap spectacle open to the public, an afternoon football plan was perfectly manageable for a construction worker with two children.
It also narrates the state of English stadiums, in their time dilapidated and unsafe with crowded spectators, standing and without much control with all the risks that this entails. Without a doubt, what most caught my attention is the treatment they give to violent people, totally normalized and understood as part of the show. According to the author, he went to the stadium in part to see these misfits who were part of the show.
With this preamble he brilliantly narrates, it seems to me, the tragedy of the final of the European Cup in Heysel where more than 30 Italians from Juve were massacred by English Liverpool fans who carried out activities, as I have said, standardized in England in every game. Keeping some distances is the current situation of Latin American football.
All of this culminated in the Hillsborough tragedy where more than 90 people were suffocated to death by police incompetence, disorganization and the belief that good football should be viewed in an uncomfortable light.
The English, practical and above all lovers of good football, modified this situation and through a serious study and, of course, rules were implemented that improved comfort and safety in the stadium. The island’s soccer, thanks to this study (Taylor Report) stopped being a dark, dangerous and, according to the author, quite frustrating spectacle, to become a familiar spectacle with the entire stadium with adequate seats.
It would be desirable for those who handle football to read this book dispassionately, it is about football in its pure, real state, with known players, markers, joys, travels and many dangers that can be handled intelligently and removed from the stadium.
Finally, it would be interesting to do an exercise on football from the 70s and the current one in the same place, the same team, with a modern stadium, with the best players in the world and with the spectators enjoying and spending to see a good show.
