Why football offers us the best model of governing our world

By Millington Gumbo

A couple of things intrigue me in life. Politics is one, history is another, but it is football which trumps them all.

Football is the ultimate meritocracy wherein skills and teamwork and not money or privilege determine the outcome. Life however, can be a little bit more complicated at times. The it-is-not-what-you-know-but-who-you-know creed has for years been the decider of who ends up top of the pile, and whose fate it is to scrap the bottom of the barrel. Not so in football, where teams as an assuming as Arsenal have dismantled opponents the size of Goliath in epic battles fought at the formidable fortresses of the Bernabeu and the San Siro.

In football you play to win but accept defeat properly. Not so in politics. And it doesn’t get Messi(er) than the Zimbabwe election, where the losers govern and the winners play second fiddle in what nearly became a farce but was eventually dignified as a coalition government. Not to be outdone, the British have shown an unprecedented enthusiasm for this coalition-forming business, managing to stitch up theirs in record time and barely a week after none of the contestants in their recent election failed to get a clear majority. In their own rendition of third world politics, the oldest democracy in the world decided to go one better and turn away eager voters in their hundreds a-la Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, an irregularity which will tickle a certain Registrar General in Harare to no end.

But then again, isn’t it just interesting how politics gone wrong can take so much out of you emotionally? To be fair, there are other more compelling contests which can exact an even greater emotional price. Man-United supporters can attest to this fact as their hollow victory against Stoke on the last day of the premiership clearly shows. Unlike in politics, there are no coalitions in football and sometimes a one-point lead is as clear a majority as it gets. Well done Chelsea!

And speaking of Chelsea, you had to be at a pub in Abidjan or Accra to appreciate the enormous global impact of this game. At the spot where I was in Accra, each one of Didier Drogba’s three goals was greeted by a crescendo of wild cheering, drum beating and banging on tables! Locals and expats alike hailed Drogba as if he was their army general leading the front in a tumultuous battle on foreign soil. When the moment came for Michael Essien to lift the trophy, I honestly thought the roof was going to cave in! Such riotous applause for a player who notwithstanding the fact that he didn’t play a part in the eight-nil trouncing of Wigan, (being sidelined by a long term injury as it were), was the ultimate display of pride in a son of the soil carrying the aspirations of Ghana in a distant land.

If anything explains globalisation, football does the job exceptionally well. The game is a powerful advert for globalisation. The laws of the game are so profound in their simplicity that they could be used to order our chaotic lives quite remarkably so. Take the issue of fouls and misconduct for instance: if the world played by the same rules that govern the beautiful game, there should not be a single player left on the field for the side representing Zanu-PF in a game pitting dictatorship against democracy. Blow the whistle on impunity and straight red card the lot I say!

Only in football can you have one undisputed global leader claiming pride of place at the pinnacle of power. You see the thing is football is the definitive regulated war made up of two battles either half of ninety minutes. Each team stands or falls by a combination of its manager’s acumen, the decisiveness of its centre forwards, the trickery of its midfielders and the solid defence of its back four. As such, when the nations of the world go to do battle on African soil from June the 11th, it will not be a hopeless war such as the one the Americans waged in Vietnam and sadly are busy repeating in the rugged mountains of Afghanistan. What it will be is a series of high pitched strategic battles which will be fought in quick succession, sixty-four in total and each one fiercely contested than the last. But in the end, the World Cup finals in South Africa will yield one victor who will reign over a fragile truce for four years and no more. Old Bob could use some of that philosophy but he prefers cricket you see.

The Laws of the Game are not without flaws. But those that do exist can be overlooked as any attempt to get rid of them only takes away from the passion and controversy that binds us to the game. That said, if only the United Nations could apply the same rules in their bid to referee the affairs of the world, America would nearly always be found wanting in an offside position; the devastation of Iraq would never have been allowed to happen; the looting and plunder of the oil-rich Niger Delta would not be up for discussion and the atrocities of Darfur would not have gone unpunished. But then again, what do I know? I am just an unassuming Arsenal supporter who believes that we can use the behavioural model encapsulated in the Laws of the Game to simplify our lives more and still have one helluva of a ride.

Far more than just being a student of life, Millington is an avid student of football. He is a supporter of Arsenal FC – a team that transforms the game of football into a wonderful tapestry of human endeavour. He writes in his personal capacity.