This year I decided to watch the World Cup.
Not because it fascinates me so much, but because it seems strange to me that I wouldn't know anything about the thing that preoccupies the world the most for an entire month, except for Ben Gabir and Tnuva.
I messed around a bit with our sports editor on WhatsApp, googled some terms, cross-checked with what I hear from the commentators.
And I understood the idea, it turns out that it is not very complicated.
The fact that the other channels canceled programs because they didn't want to compete with the World Cup helped my determination a lot, and I had no choice.
In short, and the more games I saw, the more I understood them.
I have to say I'm quite enjoying it - there's something meditative about watching this, and I've come to like the simple football universe where good and bad are so clear, but as part of this experiment, I realized a few more things.
Beyond the incessant preoccupation of the football universe with rankings and statistics (surely everything has statistics, and every second goal is a record of something, it's an incredible obsession), I mostly understood what Cristiano Ronaldo was going through.
It turns out that super footballers suffer from the same abusive treatment that women suffer from, and the same erasure later in life.
not relevant anymore.
Ronaldo (Photo: Reuters)
Men use passion for football in a similar way to how they use women in their lives.
There they allow themselves to cry, scream, rave, and experience extreme emotions - which is less possible for them day by day for cultural and other reasons.
Football and women share a role in their lives - an outlet - and in order to maximize satisfaction from the cathartic event, a dispassionate view of the matter is required.
It is impossible to feel all these absolute feelings of hate and love, black and white, without stripping the objects of their complexity, and just as the patriarchal male vision empties the woman's image of its content, and turns her into a means of fulfilling specific needs, Ronaldo is also emptied of his humanity on the altar of the crowd's useful admiration - He was never a human being in their eyes, but an object of desire, and the less useful he is as a superstar, the attitude towards him becomes hostile, contemptuous, dismissive, and from game to game it worsens, with the peak being the last game where he was suspended until the 73rd minute (I think), and announced Officially irrelevant.
to be transparent
It is very reminiscent of the process that women go through.
After all, it is well known that a woman in our world is not allowed to look bad (compared to the current beauty model of course), and it turns out that Ronaldo is also not allowed to grow up.
Being a revered superstar footballer is his main, if not the only, right to exist, and when he reaches extreme age (how old is he - 37?) or runs less than 24 km/h in a game, he is undone. If the symbolic death for women (especially the most desirable of them) is to stop being considered a sexual object, the ultimate death for a footballer is to become a super footballer and then, heaven forbid, to grow up.
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What happened to Ronaldo in this World Cup?
@guyzo commentator on #arrow_project pic.twitter.com/8UnQZhxiO4
— Here (@kann) December 6, 2022
In this World Cup almost every conversation about Ronaldo sums up his life and sends him to die in the glaciers, and little by little the world that crowned him and made him who he is, shuns him because he is no longer useful in the function for which he existed.
So you will die.
Really, I was personally offended by his name when I heard the words (and the bloated tone) when talking about him, eulogizing him thoroughly, and sinning even the basic respect he deserves for his performance thus far.
Enough, you killed the man.
I would expect football fans to at least pay respect to their heroes, even if they are not dead or on their way, but Ronaldo was buried alive, with every derisive remark adding a handful of extra dirt to his coffin.
The commentators talked endlessly about how Ronaldo is "no longer Ronaldo", and headlines abounded such as "Portugal flies higher without Ronaldo", "I did not despise Ronaldo, I was brought up to respect adults", "Portugal proved that it is scarier without Ronaldo", and "No Ronaldo, No problem!", closed the corner.
Like teenage women, super footballers also suffer from premature death - at the age of 37, maximum 45 (unless you're Jennifer Lopez), they turn from an object of interest to irrelevant in the sharpest and cruelest way possible, and are forced to do the most hated thing in the world - "invent themselves" anew", or get addicted to drugs and have a nervous breakdown, or both in combination.
Maybe that's why there are so many couples of a footballer and a model - both professions go through a sharp transition at a young age, and experience the identity crisis reserved for ordinary people of retirement age.
They understand each other and can support each other, and perhaps rebuild themselves.
So I just wanted to say - Ronaldo, we understand you.
We too must not stop being an object of desire, because as soon as that happens, the world throws us to the fringes of society.
Our use in the future is not clear, the message is indeed - you have done your part, you can go.
Raise children, or train children, or make ceramics, or push something - nobody cares.
This approach to growing up can be fought, but it is so ingrained in our culture that it will take another century.
And in the meantime, living alongside this matter requires tremendous mental fortitude, which a person who has been admired all his life has probably not yet acquired.
Our sincere condolences, Cristiano Ronaldo.
We understand you.
Sheee
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Tags
Cristiano Ronaldo
FIFA World Cup
football
women