In Defense of the Boys

Guns, smashed up cars and other soccer related matters.

By Andres Burgos

Colombian players are, within a soccer field, capable of making a reality the most heroic acts or the least well known stupidities in the history of humanity. Outside of the field, and with very few exceptions, they spend their time kicking mini-buses, hitting their wives, crashing cars against electricity poles, and there is always the one with a mob-like arsenal in his home.

Despicable? Yes, but, at least, for now, it should stay that way.

I have very specific reasons to think this way. One of them is that I am a damned egomaniac and I like to go to a soccer stadium like a regular Roman citizen would attend the coliseum: without any humanitarian prejudices.

Evading reality. I feel tightly entwined with those who go to soccer stadiums to avoid thinking about the lack of employment, their miserable wages, the violence that no one understands and no one stops, the partner who waits for them at home, and all those things foreign to what goes on in that grass rectangle which will be guilty of the happiness or sorrow of that day.

Given that, I do not ask players to show a civic spirit. I want them to represent their role as gladiators well and give me the right to judge them with my thumb up or down. I also expect them to stay on the field and not have to share any public spaces with them. I would rather not have them fill my visual space with their gold chains, vehicles and women. The rest I leave up to the crown attorney.

Besides, their excesses in and out of the field fill me with happiness. It may just be a perversion. But these types of men are inexhaustible machines for producing anecdotes, and boring people like myself need protagonists who can let us get a view of their hazardous lives. That way, we spice up our otherwise stale existence without risking losing the cushion in which we comfortably sit.

Even though they may not accept it, it is that same ambiguity which moves all those who enjoy literature, film and theatre. Thank God that people like Tino Aspirilla and the never well spoken-of Palomo Uzuriaga exist.

Of course, I too would like the world to be better. I would have loved to be blonde, about 1.80 metres tall, live in Holland and have my national team play like the “Orange-Clockwork”. But none of those items are anywhere near to my reality.

And if, all of a sudden, our teams were to become a lumping of manners and gentlemanliness I would feel (besides proud) betrayed. Not because I am a prime representative of my people, but because those soccer players would not be anything like the crowds who sit next to me in the bus. And, if we are to be just, soccer belongs more to them than it does to me.

Sports are one of the few legal methods that poor, ugly and ignorant people have to enjoy what has been denied to them. Pretty faces, manners, moderation and education should not be the dominant trait of our soccer. If we want that, we always have ESPN.