Â鶹Éç

Good morning. There’s a typical airport scene in a film of postcolonial crisis. Recall The Killing Fields or Hotel Rwanda. The blades are whirring, and a last cluster of westerners just make it on board before the helicopter lifts them off to safety. As for those left on the ground: it’s best not to think about it.

A similar logic seemed to be at work in the short-lived plans for a European Super League. Real Madrid’s president announced this was to ‘save football.’ But the model of salvation on offer was that a dozen clubs are airlifted out, and as for the Aston Villas – let alone the Grimsby Towns: it’s best not to think about it.

There’s something powerful at work here that’s almost primal, and runs through the heart of Christianity. It’s the question of what salvation fundamentally is. Is it a sense of profound belonging, at peace with God and one another? Or is it more about escape, about finding a way to get out of life alive, about thinking as long as I’m rescued, everyone else can make their own arrangements?

All of us, in a weak moment, faced with a profound crisis, might focus on our own interests, and perhaps feel bad about it later. But what about when we portray salvation on those terms? What the Super League was promising was salvation – but only for a dozen clubs. The offer whispered, ‘This can airlift you out of the risk of genuine competition. The rest can fight it out on the ground. We can save football.’

In the 1880s, several of our leading football teams, including Manchester City, Everton, Southampton and Fulham, were founded by local churches, seeking to foster healthy rivalry among young men of the parish. The clergy saw football as a parable of life. We face adversity and disappointment, but by working together, in a team where everyone’s role is vital, we can find a common goal, and discover gifts in ourselves and others we never knew were there.

Elite football’s a business, and it’s naïve to forget that. But it’s also a game, and this week has shown us that a system that takes away the consequences of losing, and excludes the vast majority of players, has ceased to be a game at all. In the end, there’s only one society that has no promotion or relegation, and that’s heaven. As I see it, heaven is genuinely for everybody, and no one is finally left out. Ultimately, that’s the only kind of league worth belonging to.

Show less