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The Weser Stadium of the second division soccer team Werder Bremen: a place of longing and distraction for fans
Photo:
Thorsten Baering/ imago images/Baering
A sports reporter friend of mine recently wrote me news from a stadium, reporting on a football match from there.
"Feels so wrong to be here," he wrote.
"Wild partying as if nothing happened."
"I can't concentrate on this nonsense."
I myself was sitting in front of the television, that game was playing.
I watched 22 soccer players for 45 minutes and between the moves on the pitch: doom scrolling on the smartphone.
The term hides the non-stop sifting through of horror news, for example on Twitter.
detonations in Kharkiv on video;
People who report how worrying about their local relatives wears them down;
Russia's propaganda, Putin's atomic bomb.
On Twitter, there's the "Doomscrolling Reminder Bot," which regularly sends out tweets to remind you that consuming all of these messages can be unhealthy.
"Give your eyes and your mind a break," it says, for example.
I don't follow him.
I watch soccer.
The escapism of the game
I do this as a job as a sports editor, but also because I love the game.
It happens that on a weekend I watch eight or nine games over the full 90 minutes, in the morning Bundesliga 2, then Bundesliga, Premier League, La Liga.
At the same time, I know about the connections between football and Putin: the Russian money, the closeness of the Fifa and IOC associations, Schalke and Gazprom.
Sport is complicit.
That's all known.
The same Russia that has been manifesting and expanding its influence in sport for years is now attacking Ukraine.
So is it wrong to follow sports?
Can you still be happy about goals
as if nothing happened
, or is that ignorant?
One function of watching sports is escapism.
You notice that most clearly when you go to the stadium.
Inside, time seems to move differently than outside.
There's this mantra of football, which dates back to the days when it was mostly working-class people who flocked to the games: Football lets me forget about everyday life for 90 minutes, no matter how bad it is.
Now football has changed a lot.
It's become too expensive for many, and for some it's even a parallel world that they don't want to drift into, even if it's just for 90 minutes.
But right now this romanticizing mantra of escapism could be comforting again.
The game can be a momentary bridge to less uncertain times.
Most of us started to love the game as children, and maybe it helps now to enjoy something that is actually very mundane like children, at least for a few moments.
That doesn't mean you don't care how millions of people from Ukraine don't know what will become of their homeland.
Whether their loved ones will survive the coming days and weeks.
It really doesn't matter who becomes champion, who rises, at least to me.
And I understand those who delete the "er" in the word "egaler".
But I still get excited when my heart's team wins games, and I watch them try to do it, with no reports and fanfare, just for the 90 minutes.
And when a goal is scored, that's a moment of happiness.
Therein lies perhaps the comforting effect of sport.
Luckily, it's fleeting and never permanent.
When people say they want to be happy, what they really mean is: content.
And this contentment with oneself, with the world, has become fragile.
A dark cloud hangs over it.
Anyone who can create moments of happiness despite compassion, empathy, should do so, whether through goals from their favorite team, through time together with loved ones, or in the club, where you can party again since Friday.
Without bad conscience.
Perhaps the doom scrolling is also directly related to the moment of happiness when celebrating a goal.
Maybe one pulls you down so much that the other stays important.
Maybe I need this simple football game for my own health.
In order not to freak out.
February 24th changed the world.
Bremen is playing Dresden at 1.30 p.m. on Sunday and I know I'll tune in and put my smartphone away.
Probably not for long.
But at least for a few moments.
