One of the mistakes (and we’re ignoring protestors urging angrily for something they had already achieved, here) that those on the recent freedom marches in London made was presenting the immediate and complete opening up of society as a choice between living under restrictions and returning to total normality.
That’s a deliberate falsehood, a movement grounded in misinformation. Instead, the decision is between pandemic life with restrictions and pandemic life with no restrictions. Part of the reason that we struggle with the morality and practicality of opening up is because we have become hardwired by rampant consumerism to expect freedom of choice that increases with wealth and privilege.
Want a product to arrive today – you can. Want to watch pretty much any programme from history – you can find a way.
But the pandemic is a choiceless monster. Privilege clearly still exists and in many cases has been exacerbated. Some of us are fortunate enough to work from home, to get food delivered to doorsteps or healthy enough to move freely without fear of significant health concerns, but on a fundamental level, you cannot choose to return to previous normality because that normality cannot exist.
You cannot opt out of Covid-19. Everything becomes a dilemma, Sophie’s choice between enjoyment and risk.
Until now, elite football has largely been able to exist within a bubble that was facilitated by other elements of society being in lockdown. It was the highest-profile cultural exception, coerced by dependence on revenue – the show must go on.
There were obvious challenges: Accumulated fatigue, the strain of living within a micro-managed environment, adjustment to the lack of match-going supporters. But football was both an oasis of comparative routine for its adoring public and a suspension of its own reality.
Seasons were completed, competitions were won and we all desperately tried to convince ourselves that sanitised football was far better than no football at all. And it was.
The return of supporters to matches in high numbers will be heralded as a signifier of normality (after all, what could be more regular than 60,000 Arsenal fans arguing about the ineffectiveness of one of their senior players?). The presence of fans at Euro 2020, particularly in Copenhagen and at Wembley, created feverish atmospheres that demonstrably assisted England and Denmark.
But their return was also joyous on a neutral level after a prolonged absence. This was football in a higher definition and with extra meaning, like wearing a new pair of spectacles and catching sight of a rare bird in flight after months of squinting at blurry shapes.
But it comes laced with jeopardy; it would be dim to pretend otherwise. After Scotland supporters travelled to Wembley, the match was linked to 2,000 Covid-19 cases back home. England vs Italy became a super-spreader event with unwelcome extra supporters cramming together. Full stadiums are not the glorious signifier of achieved victory over adversity but of our enforced compromise with it.
As restrictions lift, football will lose the sanctity of its established bubble. It’s hard to argue that players should be shielded from social contact when few others are suffering from the same limitations, and far more difficult to manage even if you do argue it. Partners, children and family will be interacting in wider society and increase the risk of infection, even after double vaccinations.
We are already seeing that impact upon the sport. Manchester City will only have one pre-season friendly before the Community Shield after their match against Troyes was cancelled. Arsenal’s tour of the USA will not take place and creates a logistical headache for Mikel Arteta. In Scotland, three clubs in the first two days of the Scottish League Cup were forced to forfeit matches after Covid-19 outbreaks and two others have done the same since.
There will be processes to mitigate the impact. Mass testing allows for ongoing assessment and early identification of positive cases, although as you drop down the leagues the prolificacy of that testing decreases. Negative tests in teammates would likely avoid postponements if cases are isolated; Covid-19 may be treated like any other injury in that regard. But even that does rather ignore (as many seem wont to do) the foggy spectre and as yet unknowns of long Covid.
This is not an attempt to p*ss on chips. Football has been a hugely important part of my – and many others’ – mental health conservation over the last 18 months and even the thought of walking up those steps to see the lurid green of the pitch makes me a little misty-eyed, whenever that happens. We have hardly been without football this summer and will feast upon it again in August.
But the notion that football is about to get ‘back to normal’ is an illusion. Until now, it has operated predominantly as a control experiment in laboratory conditions designed to sate our demand for at-home entertainment.
When those conditions are removed or relaxed, control is relinquished and uncertainty rushes in to fill the cracks. The answer to this question probably depends upon whether you are an optimist or pessimist: Does the approach of football to its former self bring us closer to normality, or simply drag football closer to the pandemic?
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/2UEjuRc
Post a Comment