the ritual of sports

Football is a contact sport, its about body clashes, sweat dripping brawls and constant jostling. Today when our lives are increasingly getting individualised, contact of any kind, symbolic or physical is getting compartmentalised. Most of long for our own spaces, hate crowded public areas and will pay a premium for anything thats'exclusive'. In such times where does football fit into our psyche?

In my opinion, it symbolises the modern spectator sport. It is the modern equivalent of the amphitheatres, which showcase human extremities for all of us to enjoy from a distance. There is the range of emotions, there is the struggle, the ecstasy and the disappointment. With evey match there's a modern day tragedy that gets enacted. what makes it even more spectator like is the whole physicality associated with it. It packs in all the physicality that we miss in our lives.

By extension, it isn't difficult to believe why football and sexual exhibitionism are so closely interlinked. No other sport to my mind is so closely linked to body contact of the most primal kind. Energy levels are always high with both players and fans, no wonder that prostitutes make a killing during the world cup. Coaches of course, try to encourage or curb sex depending on whether their team is winning or losing.

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