Arsenal And The Realpolitik Myth

It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game

The dog and I took a new route. I took 22,000 steps and we passed approx. 60,000 trees of 11 species. The temperature was 8 Celsius and the land ranged from 0-35 meters above sea level. The walk took 3 hours.

During the walk I thought 64,000 separate thoughts some of which lead to me to the conclusion that the unverifiable and subjective information I usually offer is useless compared to the important business of measuring and statistics. So, there you go. What more do you want?

It’s curious though, don’t you think, that so much football analysis and measures of success are determined in just this manner? How would we see the world and football if we “measured” things in a totally different way?

So when we got back I wrote this “thought for the day” style article (1324 words). I hope you enjoy it.

Photo by Clemens van Lay on Unsplash

There is a saying you’ve most likely heard, “It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game.” This comes from a poem called Alumnus Football written in 1908 by Henry Grantland Rice, an American sportswriter known for his elegant prose. The poem is an ode to (American) football and a metaphor for life. Apparently Grantland Rice often weaved in mythic tales, the human condition and the social and personal meaning of sports into his writing. I’ve never read him but I think he sounds wonderful.

Anyway, the saying “It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game” is deeply beautiful and simply true. But like many beautiful and true ideas it’s also easily and often dismissed. This is a great mistake. A stupid mistake even. And I’d like to explain why.

I discovered Henry Grantland Rice coined the phrase when I was thinking about footballing success, how its defined and who defines it. The most (painfully obvious) definition of footballing success is determined by winning the league. One winner. Nineteen losers. That’s the Realpolitik Myth of football. A very modern view. Football is a competition and success comes through accumulating points. Grantland Rice is wrong and it’s all about whether you win or lose. End of. Job done.

I get it. I understand the mechanics of The Realpolitik View. And I live with it because let’s be honest, we all want to win the league. It would be (still could be) truly wonderful in a way only people with football running through their veins can fully understand, like seeing land after drifting on the open ocean of football obsession for months and months.

It is curious that we happily detach our ordinary conduct from our sporting conduct, either on or off the field. Of course sport is a highly organised formulaic set of rule-based interactions (although so is much of life) but how we conduct ourselves is deeply important to we social animals. And yet the Realpolitik View fixates only on the destination and never on the journey.

Photo by Matt Howard on Unsplash

So why do we push so much of life through this reductive funnel? And not just in football. Even though Grantland Rice was ostensibly referring to sport, his phrase with its implicit plea to live with grace and dignity and reflection is really about life itself. How you play the game is really what makes football and life rich and beautiful leaning as it does into relationship and experience. Whereas conventional “success” is so often merely a disciplining force that inspires certain behaviours.

But here’s the thing. In this age of fleeting attention spans and colossal expectations no one wants to sit in the shade and contemplate the world as it strolls by. But time is the element through which all journeys are traveled and Arteta and Arsenal have only really embarked on theirs moments ago. Sit back friends. There's some beautiful sights to see. This journey has only just begun. Think of all that time you’ve dedicated to watching the team, all the emotional investment, all the thought and discussion and argument around the games, all the dreaming and imagining and hoping and praying. Think of how you’ve built such a strong allegiance and identification with the team. This is the relationship we all have with football. This is the journey. Whatever happens at the end of the season I’ll write a “look back at the season” article and you know it’ll be full to bursting with wonderful moments that, even when we lost, made us proud because of how we played the game.

Screen grab from You Tube

And that’s why The Realpolitik View of football has a glaring weakness. On the surface it appears like infallible logic, a perfect definition of the true meaning of success. But after a mere moment’s contemplation this infallible logic collapses like the little piggies house of straw. Because if winning the league is intrinsically entwined with the journey then success can easily be unpacked from the journey without actually having won the league. How you play the game becomes the vital ingredient through which through which our relationship with football thrives.

And the same could be said for life itself. We all know that the price of a ticket to life is eventual death. You can only pop into existence by accepting that eventually you will pop out of existence again. That’s the rules. You could fixate on death the whole time, but you’d be fixating on an inevitable and arbitrary destination instead of paying attention to the beauty of the journey.

For me, and probably for you, this Realpolitik View is far too narrow and aggressive. Yes, this definition is popular across the social media playground, because simplicity is appealing when cruelty and banter is the name of the game. But, ever increasing complexity is the true nature of things so such simplicity becomes a stumbling block.

There is a reason why (leading) managers and (quality) players are always looking forwards, always thinking of the next game, always thinking of the next season, always thinking of new players to shore up the defense or to free up the attack. There is a reason why plans are always being made for the future. What these football people know (and we fans find so hard to take on board) is that because there is no destination, there is no arrival. Even winning the league isn’t an arrival but just another moment in an infinite string of moments. So if you want to find success the only place to look is in the journey, because the destination is but a fleeting moment through which we hurtle at the speed of life.

Screen grab from You Tube

No matter what happens, this season will always be a strolling joyful surprise that burst upon us unexpectedly. It forced us to cast off that complacent and false certainty that we know what lies in store. This season has its roots in the shaky earth of uncertainty (when Wenger lost his way and Emery found he was on the wrong bus) and yet here we are tottering about on the summit of the league with a team playing football with dignity and style.

So let’s blow down this little piggy house and revive the beauty of Grantland Rice’s “It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game” which is much more delicate and yet robust, much more transient yet timeless, much more complicated yet simple. And much more true to the nature of things because it’s complex and beautiful.

So there you go. I hope this slightly off-pitch look at the beautiful game wasn’t too off pitch, so to speak. Have a graceful and dignified week fellow Gooners! I’d love to hear from you so feel free to comment below, and thanks again for reading Arsenal Wonderland.