A martial artist's view of the World Cup

Why I'm not a fan

While a lot of people all over the world right now are fixated on the World Cup, I myself am not a fan of football. This might sound strange coming from a British man, but the passion my home nation shares with the sport is actually one of the reasons that contributed to me leaving the place.

Of course, people are allowed to enjoy any sport they want. I’m sure there are things that I enjoy that other people don’t approve of. But the reasons why I am not a fan of football might make a bit of an entertaining read. So while the World Cup is on everyone’s mind, let me share my thoughts on the sport.

Image by Grok

Getting the positive things out of the way

Before I start laying into football for all of its flaws, let me get the positive things I am obliged to say about the game out of the way first.

Community building

The enthusiasm people have for football brings them together. It’s a team sport and as such it gives people the opportunity to get together to play, get together to watch, and basically get out of their houses in order to engage in an activity with other human beings. That aspect, I can appreciate.

Infrastructure building

There is a lot of money involved with football and as such a lot of money gets spent on infrastructure building. There is the obvious infrastructure of getting football grounds set up, but there is also the additional pressure (and funding) that goes into places to make sure people are able to get to and from football games. So in theory, transportation infrastructure should improve whenever a big sporting event is introduced.

Some extra level of praise that I have that might not be as common knowledge is the influence of the World Cup on the global telemedicine infrastructure. A few years ago I worked in a hospital in Japan and I was quite well connected with the international medicine department. I was told that because of the popularity of the world cup, a certain amount of broadcasting infrastructure needs to be installed in countries that otherwise would not have it. That infrastructure is then repurposed after the world cup to do conference calls between medical experts, or even have expert surgeons perform operations on patients from across the world by operating high precision surgical arms via remote control. Very cool technology.

Telesurgery example

Let’s get negative

Now that I have my two praise points out of the way, let me get to what I don’t like about football and why.

Displays of weakness

Over my time doing martial arts in Japan I have frequently been a judge at competitions. Some of the most annoying fighters I see are those who pretend that their opponent has done some illegal move on them in order to either recover or have their opponent punished.

In full contact karate kicking your opponents inner thigh is allowed. But I have seen many fighters take a solid kick to the inner thigh only to then claim they were kicked in the crotch in order to buy a bit of recovery time or have their opponent get a warning (with the hope of receiving a point back).

We often referred to people like this as 役者 (yakusha: actors), but in a VERY negative way. If you are unable to beat your opponent fairly and rely on your acting skills in order to try and get one over on your opponent it is seen as a dishonorable way to fight.

In football, people pretending to be hurt seems to be the default position. It seems to me that any opportunity a football player has to pretend they are injured in order to get one over on the other team they will take it. I get second hand embarrassment from watching people get slightly nudged and then rolling around on the ground as if they have had a career ending injury.

I can’t find who this quote is attributed to (it might be a common phrase now) but the following resonates with how I see football:

Football is 90 minutes of pretending you’re hurt. Rugby is 80 minutes of pretending you aren’t.

And while I’m not much of a rugby fan either, as a martial artist, pretending not to be hurt is something that I empathize with a lot. Most full contact martial artists focus on trying not to look hurt no matter how hurt they are instead of trying to get one over on their opponents by faking injuries.

Lack of respect for the other team on the pitch (the lesser of two evils)

I used to practice Wado Ryu Karate. I spent quite a bit of time with Otsuka Sensei (the second head master of the style) and during the time I trained with him, I heard about his opinion on competitions and the conduct of competitors quite often.

Otsuka Sensei did not accept people openly celebrating after winning matches. He was quite against people even doing ガッツポーズ (Guts pose) (fist pumping, in English) in front of opponents.

ガッツポーズ (Guts pose)

I am paraphrasing and translating him here, but his lesson about this can be summed up as:

Tournaments are important tools for helping you improve. But winning or losing a match only shows the result of that day. If you lose, you learn. If you win, you also learn. But if you win, it is important to remember that you wouldn’t be in the position you are in without your opponent. For you to win, they need to lose. They also trained hard to be in the tournament that day and will experience the sadness and pain of losing. If you celebrate in front of them you will make them feel worse. You could not be where you are without them, so be respectful, don’t celebrate in front of them, and do your best in the next match for them. You can celebrate later when it is appropriate to do so.

Football isn’t the only sport where excessive celebration occurs. I see people doing excessive celebrations even in Olympic events that are based on martial arts. (Excessive celebration in Olympic judo is disgraceful. These people should know better).

The excessive celebrations in football are not something that I am a big fan of when it happens on the pitch. But I understand that this is part of the game and I don’t expect football players to act like martial artists or monks.

However, the combination of gloating whenever a goal is scored on top of trying to get your opponent penalized by pretending to be injured makes me think that there isn’t much respect for the opposing team and they treat each other more like literal enemies to be overcome than an opposing team who all enjoy the same game.

Saying all that, more than the behavior of the players on the pitch, I am more concerned with the supporters off the pitch.

Lack of respect for the other team off the pitch

Some fans take football WAY too seriously and it makes them behave in quite despicable ways.

I often joke about my home town in England by saying that whenever the local team loses, people unhappy with the result often get into fights. And when the local team wins, people happy the result often celebrate, with a fight.

It’s a game. There is literally no need to get to the point of committing violence against another human being based on the result. There’s also no need to start smashing things up in a town because a ball didn’t go into the right net at the frequency you prefer.

As of writing this the World Cup is currently in full swing. Japan recently had a game against Brazil where they lost 2-1. One team needs to lose in order for another team to win. That’s how games work. But why is there this ridiculous animosity about it?

What:s the point?

I have been seeing a lot of posts on 𝕏 (translated from Portuguese) making atomic bomb references in response to Japan losing to Brazil. I have also seen a lot of posts (translated from Japanese) throwing shade at Brazil (largely in response to the atomic bomb references).

The results of a lot of games (win or lose) seems to bring out the absolute worst in people where references to negative situations related to that country (past or present) will be brought up by fans in order to be as hurtful as possible to each other. And I’m not sure why people think it’s appropriate.

I often see football bring out the worst in people. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it bring out the best in people. Japanese fans cleaning up the stadium after a game might be the closest we got to that (normal behavior from Japanese fans). But as soon as they got eliminated, degenerate people start making references to an event where hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed in a war.

Great job, Brazil. Enjoy the victory. *heavy sarcasm*

Why are football fans like this?

I don’t actually have an answer to this question. I’d love to know.

I have observed football fans be awful on a level that doesn’t seem to exist in other sports over many years of my life. I’ve seen the occasional hocky riot that displays a similar level of violent hooliganism than that shown by football hooligans, but the level of disrespect, mean spiritedness and emotional dysregulation I’ve seen from football fans just seems to hit different.

Martial arts specifically focuses a lot on character building through physical training. Some sports may focus more on the character building aspect than others.

Oscar Wilde once said for example that:

Rugby Is A Game For Barbarians Played By Gentlemen.

I also notice that rugby fans also seem to follow the example of the players by not acting like absolute reprobates.

Perhaps if football got the reputation of being a sport for gentlemen the behavior of people off and on the pitch would improve. But who knows.

Final thoughts

I should probably put a “not all” disclaimer here. It would be unfair for me to say that all football players are awful and disrespectful, and their behavior is probably at least partially responsible for the disrespectful behavior of the fans.

What I would like to say is that the main reasons I dislike football are because of the above mentioned reasons. If football was simply about bringing people together to enjoy a game and fostering the improvement of global infrastructure then I’d be all about it (even if I find the game itself a little dull).

With all that said, I hope everyone enjoys the rest of the World Cup and that animosity over the results is kept to a minimum. I also hope more than anything that nobody gets injured during any of the commiseratory or celebratory fights after the games.

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