8/12/2019 Jorge Luis Borges About Football
1/3
Jorge Luis Borges: Soccer is Popular Because Stupidityis
Popular
At first glance, the Argentine writers animus toward the
beautiful game seems to reflect the
attitude of todaystypicalsoccerhater,whose lazy gibes have
almost become a refrain by
now: Soccer is boring. There are too many tie scores. I cant
stand the fake injuries.
And its true: Borges didcall soccer aesthetically ugly. He
didsay,Soccer is one of
Englands biggest crimes. And apparently, he evenscheduled one of
his lectures so that it
would intentionally conflict with Argentinas first game of the
1978 World Cup. But Borges
distaste for the sport stemmed from something far more troubling
than aesthetics. His
problem was with soccer fan culture, which he linked to the kind
of blind popular support that
propped up the leaders of the twentieth centurys most horrifying
political movements. In his
lifetime, he saw elements of fascism, Peronism, and even
anti-Semitism emerge in the
Argentinean political sphere, so his intense suspicion of
popular political movements and
mass culturethe apogee of which, in Argentina, is soccermakes a
lot of sense. (There is
an idea of supremacy, of power, [in soccer] that seems horrible
to me, he oncewrote.)
http://online.wsj.com/articles/the-world-cup-floppers-1402615568?tesla=y&mod=djemITP_h&mg=reno64-wsjhttp://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/why-soccer-is-un-american-107793.html?ml=tb#.U5sENxbvq9Fhttp://online.wsj.com/articles/why-i-hate-american-soccer-fans-1402012291http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/spanish/misc/newsid_5079000/5079664.stmhttp://elcomercio.pe/deporte-total/futbol-mundial/borges-no-le-gustaba-futbol-aunque-hay-quien-dice-que-si-noticia-1163996http://elcomercio.pe/deporte-total/futbol-mundial/borges-no-le-gustaba-futbol-aunque-hay-quien-dice-que-si-noticia-1163996http://elcomercio.pe/deporte-total/futbol-mundial/borges-no-le-gustaba-futbol-aunque-hay-quien-dice-que-si-noticia-1163996http://www.latercera.com/noticia/opinion/ideas-y-debates/2014/06/895-582396-9-de-peloteros.shtmlhttp://www.latercera.com/noticia/opinion/ideas-y-debates/2014/06/895-582396-9-de-peloteros.shtmlhttp://elcomercio.pe/deporte-total/futbol-mundial/borges-no-le-gustaba-futbol-aunque-hay-quien-dice-que-si-noticia-1163996http://elcomercio.pe/deporte-total/futbol-mundial/borges-no-le-gustaba-futbol-aunque-hay-quien-dice-que-si-noticia-1163996http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/spanish/misc/newsid_5079000/5079664.stmhttp://online.wsj.com/articles/why-i-hate-american-soccer-fans-1402012291http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/why-soccer-is-un-american-107793.html?ml=tb#.U5sENxbvq9Fhttp://online.wsj.com/articles/the-world-cup-floppers-1402615568?tesla=y&mod=djemITP_h&mg=reno64-wsj
8/12/2019 Jorge Luis Borges About Football
2/3
Borges opposed dogmatism in any shape or form, so he was
naturally suspicious of his
countrymens unqualified devotion to any doctrine or religioneven
to their dearalbiceleste.
Soccer is inextricably tied to nationalism, another one of
Borges objections to the sport.
Nationalism only allows for affirmations, and every doctrine
that discards doubt, negation, is
a form of fanaticism and stupidity, hesaid.National teams
generate nationalistic fervor,
creating the possibility for an unscrupulous government to use a
star player as a mouthpiece
to legitimize itself. In fact, thats precisely what happened
with one of the greatest players
ever: Pel. Even as his government rounded up political
dissidents, it also produced a giant
poster of Pel straining to head the ball through the goal,
accompanied by the
slogan Ningum mais segura este pas: Nobody can stop this country
now, writes Dave Zirin
in his new book,Brazils Dance with the Devil.Governments, such
as the Brazilian military
dictatorship that Pel played under, can take advantage of the
bond that fans share with their
national teams to drum up popular support, and this is what
Borges fearedand resented
about the sport.
Hisshort story,Esse Est Percipi (Latin for to be is to be
perceived), also may explain his
hatred of soccer. About halfway through the story, its revealed
that soccer in Argentina has
ceased to be a sport and entered the realm of spectacle. In this
fictional universe, simulacra
reigns supreme: the representation of sport has replaced actual
sport. These [sports] dont
exist outside the recording studios and newspaper offices, a
soccer club president huffs.
Soccer inspires a fanaticism so deep that supporters will follow
nonexistent games on TV
and the radio without questioning a thing:
The stadiums have long since been condemned and are falling to
pieces. Nowadays
everything is staged on the television and radio. The bogus
excitement of the sportscaster
hasnt it ever made you suspect that everything is humbug? The
last time a soccer match
was played in Buenos Aires was on 24 June 1937. From that exact
moment, soccer, along
with the whole gamut of sports, belongs to the genre of the
drama, performed by a single
man in a booth or by actors in jerseys before the TV
cameras.
This story goes back to Borges discomfort with mass movements:
Esse Est Percipi
effectively accuses the media of complicity in the creation of a
mass culture that reveres
soccer, and, as a result, leaves itself open to demagoguery and
manipulation.
According to Borges, humans feel the need to belong to a grand
universal plan, somethingbigger than ourselves. Religion does it
for some people, soccer for others. Characters in the
Borgesian corpus often grapple with this desire, turning to
ideologues or movements to
disastrous effect: The narrator of the story Deutsches Requiem
becomes a Nazi, while in
The Lottery in Babylon and The Congress, small,
innocuous-seeming organizations
quickly transform into vast, totalitarian bureaucracies that
dole out corporal punishment or
burn books. We want to be a part of something bigger, so much so
that we blind ourselves to
the flaws that develop in these grand plansor the flaws that
were inherent to them all
along. And yet, as the narrator of The Congress reminds us, the
allure of these grand
narratives often proves too much: What really matters is having
felt that our plan, which
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentina_national_football_teamhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentina_national_football_teamhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentina_national_football_teamhttp://blogs.elpais.com/amores-imaginarios/2013/09/http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1608463605/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1608463605&linkCode=as2&tag=thenewrep08-20&linkId=TF6HGBN3C5RTAGG5http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1608463605/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1608463605&linkCode=as2&tag=thenewrep08-20&linkId=TF6HGBN3C5RTAGG5http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1608463605/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1608463605&linkCode=as2&tag=thenewrep08-20&linkId=TF6HGBN3C5RTAGG5http://grumpyoldfan.net/esse-est-percipi/http://grumpyoldfan.net/esse-est-percipi/http://grumpyoldfan.net/esse-est-percipi/http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1608463605/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1608463605&linkCode=as2&tag=thenewrep08-20&linkId=TF6HGBN3C5RTAGG5http://blogs.elpais.com/amores-imaginarios/2013/09/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentina_national_football_team
