Gramsci's Game

Gramsci’s idea of football is certainly odd; the scholar Steve Jones describes the ol’ Italian’s mistake in the very first place, in suggesting football held no future in Italy, due to its Northern European ‘work ethic’. What else? Well, according to Gramsci, at a symbolic level of behaviour, football represents a capitalist society in flowing function. In the specialised, division of labour of roles across the pitch, football is described as crudely ‘individualistic’ and ‘hierarchical’. For Gramsci, this specialisation demands ‘initiative’; an initiative eagerly regulated by the rules upon which the game is structured, and to maintain the analogy with capitalist societies, the bourgeois bite of the law. Here, I think resides a painful, plaguing error of judgement, an error that decays the foundations of Gramsci’s argument in front of the reader’s eyes. The general, most basic rules of football are historically accepted; moments of tension surrounding the development of these rules are not produced by the crashing conflict of organised groups of players, and nor is the game so patently suited to the talents of a specific set of players. Of course, in a certain real sense, the cocoon structure of the professional game is very much designed by architects of a golden glint, by bricklayers cursed by capital’s prying purse. The ‘passback rule’, introduced in 1990, forbidding the goalkeeper to collect the ball into his or her hands from the feet of a teammate, could well have been introduced to produce the kind of ecstatic, relentless, speed-sport that modern television revenues demand, for instance, and the rule depicts how the professional game is very much a mirror of civil society, reflecting the methods and endeavours of the social world in the shining glass of its very own spectacle.

Yet varying forms of the game are played casually across society, the rules for which are often sketched ad-hoc, without the daunting stare of a referee – capital’s prime muscle, the security services of the state, to maintain Gramsci’s analogy. That any number of any adults or younglings may pick up an object in vague resemblance to a ball and, for as long as they so please, plunge into a dense haze of enjoyment, teamwork and skill holds I think, in the sublime essence of its sheer accessibility, a certain egalitarian quality.

I also think the very texture of football as a sport in action, being played upon the pitch, can offer a form of dynamic collectivism. I refer here to the beauty of a unit of human beings in harmonious action, the subtle, accorded movements of boots across the grass, the delicate strokes of the ball between teammates in the aim of crafting an aim: a goal. In the striking real essence of the professional game, this aim can represent, in its ultimate stage, millions of dollars, or a slab of crafted trophy-gold. Yet elsewhere, this aim can represent much more; it can engender friendships, earn the pleasure of paying for the first round of beers at a bar, or simply reward everyone present with a feeling of awe.

And this aim or goal, can come to represent its realistic opposite, even in the professional game. The most successful coach of recent times, Pep Guardiola, demanded his Barcelona side play with the style of keeping possession of the ball, and refusing to yield time on the ball to the opposition. Paradoxically, the goal of play becomes not simply the goal itself, but the manner in which the goal arrives, while the contextual value of the ultimate aim, that of winning the contest, regulates the exact balance upon which the two objectives are placed. Could it be that the form in which a ‘goal’ is achieved, perhaps, could come to offer some kind of social analogy? Could the movements of a team not offer a microcosm of a collective, rather than individualistic, society in flowing function?

Consider two of the greatest sides to have played the game, Guardiola’s Barcelona side and Rinus Michel’s Holland team during the 1970s. In watching the former, even on television, one could gain a sense of genuine beauty bursting from the screen: there was the aesthetic art of a side able to maintain and circulate the ball in short, triangulated rolls across the turf and around the opposition players for minutes on end, and the ability of each individual, including the goalkeeper, to perform this, and to swap roles at will with a teammate on the pitch. One would often see the centre forward Lionel Messi gliding into the midfield zone, while the midfielders Iniesta and Xavi foraged forward to offer the momentary reference of attack, or the right-back Dani Alves galloping forward to join the front three forwards, while the rest of the side swiftly shifted from a 4-3-3 formation to a balanced 3-1-2-1-3. It was not uncommon to witness the side swiftly adapt to the circumstances of a game in an instant; the defensive midfielder Sergio Busquets would often slide into the backline, allowing both fullbacks to become wingers, in an effort to provide more width in the attacking part of the pitch. The Dutch side played with a similar vein, with an exaggerated emphasis upon players switching positions which very nearly won the World Cup.

The football both sides strove for is the football of the universal, of individuals whom, far from being repressed into a strict division of labour, are liberated explosively into the act of performing every conceivable role, of a team capable of attacking and defending as one, fluid unit. Is there not an extreme value in this style of football? Is not there not something distinctly socialist about a collection of individuals operating in such orchestrated harmony, adapting to the music of a given instant within the game, covering for each other’s every movement and working towards a ‘goal’, and indeed, defending a ‘goal’ together? The kernel of this successful style I feel, is illuminated by the radical glow of a utopian dream: one of ultimate liberation into the full potential of humanity, the binding chains of a capitalist social structure acerbated, smoke rising from their ashes upon the ground. Is there not then, a certain value in teaching this type of football? If there is, then perhaps the crucial lesson of the success of the collective, which can be witnessed across all team sports, is an idea football may beam onto the shining glass of civil society's very own spectacle.