52 - The End of Boyhood

 We played our beloved game for as long as our legs held up, but with the years gone by the agility of youth was lost, the bones have become more fragile, the breaths shorter. The football matches we played became less frequent. Contrived and with rigid rules, they lost much of the spontaneity and passion of those boyhood days: the fuss about finding a decent ball and a pitch, the laughter, the arguments, the camaraderie, the celebrations and embraces after goals and wins, the collective disappointment after a defeat, all that special friendship amongst boys, which football and team sports glue together, entails.

The dusty streets and sandlots, the scratched knees and elbows covered with sweat, blood and soil, vanished under concrete structures and asphalted streets choked with cars. The rare games, in the margins of our spare time and the other priorities life dictates, such as family and work, were played in proper pitches, with goals and lines, even turfed surfaces, but they lacked in spirit. Our childhood dreams did not materialise. And whilst our ageing bodies were declining in a sport that demands strength and vigour and endurance, we adapted in passively enjoying the spectacle of what we used played in our boyhood, outsiders in the stands of an arena or a ground, in cafés or pubs with one or two or more beers, or spread out on a couch. With the same frequency and interest, it must be said, and similar breadth and depth of emotions, such as those that stirred us in our boys’ ball games.

A lot has been written about the psychology, the way of the communal thinking and behaving of football fans. The literature on the subject seems inexhaustible. Perhaps, being a fan does not just offer an illusion of active participation in a game from the stands or an armchair. The dedication and subsumption into the sport, sometimes to the point of brushing aside and even withdrawing from other social activities, with obsessive discussions about rules and techniques and statistics, ad nauseum analysis of tactics and strategy, before, during, and after a match, seems difficult to explain just by a temporary psychological connection, which is nevertheless emotionally intense and in an inexplicable disproportionality with an object that is merely an entertainment show. A club with its symbols and slogans, banners and songs, a team and its players on the field, are elevated to an über alles entity, a deity almost -to be worshiped. Nor is supporting a club offers oneself a tentative illusion of security via attachment to a collective linked by objectives and a purpose, however insignificant compared with far more important events taking place around us. Nor is it just a way out and an escape from the often-unbearable everydayness, as another manifestation of Marxist alienation from the process of capitalist production. Or, perhaps, it is a combination of the above with different weights for each individual fan.

Once Albert Camus, the philosopher who inspired me in my youth and whom I re-read forty years after the first acquaintance equipped with the maturity of years past, so much so that many of his thoughts and findings still lead me in what is left of life, was asked by a friend whether he preferred theatre or football. He replied: “Football, without hesitation!”. He dealt passionately with both, it seems. Several times I thought that this ‘without hesitation’ claim was in harmony with his philosophy of the Absurd. Both the footballer and the actor are ‘players’ of the Absurd in a desolate and transient world, without gods and eternity, fully conscious of the finitude of life. Both the footballer and the actor express during a match or a theatrical performance, a separation and a detachment, a ‘divorce’ of the man from his life, which are manifestations of the Absurd. For the ‘players’ and spectators of a drama that lasts a few minutes, these are the only moments of a unique experience with no counterpart in eternity, amongst a multitude of finite ones whose aggregate total constitutes life. After all, our life is the sum of our experiences and memories. The same philosopher wrote that belief in the Absurd should prioritize quantity over quality of these experiences, diversity over repetition and uniformity.

“What I know, what is certain, what I cannot deny, what I cannot reject, are all that counts. I understand only in human terms”. Everything that a man can see, touch, hear, feel, spontaneously or, for that matter, because of ‘playing’ or ‘acting’, is the only thing one comprehends. In the case of Camus and not just, the sense of football for the common folk, either the experience of playing it or being absorbed by its spectacle as a fan, is more intense and, perhaps, his perception and understanding better, than that of a theatrical play. In the spirit of Camus, I realized that I loved and still love football merely for the range and diversity of emotions it excites, for their transience and reappearance in different shades and hues in each game, for the integral of infinitesimal impressions it has imprinted onto the soul and mind. We live for such little things and joys, one could say. Why not sense and embrace them as much as we can and as long as we exist?

I left boyhood behind me, along with that unique friendship with Kostakis, after our street games were curtailed and our paths diverged since joining different secondary schools. It ended on a Sunday afternoon at the stands of the Harilaou stadium where we watched together our beloved team playing against Olympiakos, the football giants of the capital. It was an afternoon where I nearly choked, when balls of the Styrofoam pad I was sitting on and chewing in tension were nearly stuck in my throat, after the deep breath I took before cheering an Aris’ goal. It was the last day I met with Kostakis, my closest boyhood friend, to share our enjoyment of a football related activity. It could be also said that day marked the end of boyhood itself. The game in Greece was entering a long period of decline, the quality of the show was getting poorer, the crowds in football grounds were dwindling, the hooliganism from a core of fanatics were pervading the game. For several years that followed it was reduced to only a few rare escapes from the shackles of parental controls and the imperative of getting an education, and those mainly in front of the TV or watching basketball, still considered more civilised, in the city’s enclosed arena.

In the meantime, we had to endure adolescence in our own individual ways: that age of more dreams and ambitions yonder, as much as worries and unbearable frustrations. Other types of passion were coming to the fore, as we were growing into men.