The Unpredictable Universe
Arsenal is a reflection of life
One of the reasons I love football is how it reflects the complexity and ambiguousness of life itself. Life is chaotic and illogical and wildly unpredictable. We spend enormous efforts trying to capture all this insecurity and make it safe and put it under control, and yet all we really do is increase the complexity. For every pull of a lever in one direction there’s a reaction in the other. The tighter you grab something the more resistance it develops.
I love the way football tries to create a “even-playing field” with rules and rewards and penalties, hoping to encourage behaviours and cultures on the pitch. Sound a little like human societies with laws and morals and desires to create desired outcomes? Of course it does because that’s what sport essentially is: human experience in gamified miniature.
Look at the referees. The personification of morality and law running about policing transgressions. The huge feeling of injustice that boils up when referees get things wrong is a perfect reflection of the fundamental sense of justice exhibited by all the higher (and lower) primates and other animals. What we want is not for referees to be right all the time, but for them to be fair all the time. These things are hardwired. Dutch primatologist Frans de Waal has spent his entire career explaining the ethical leanings in animals.
But strangely, the culture within a lot of the football universe is that football isn’t anything to do with real life, that it’s not a reflection of who we are but a dream about who we ought to be (the irony of this moral position isn’t lost on me - this is the classic human is/ought conundrum where we battle all the time with what is in an attempt to create what ought to be).
Right now the football world expects human bodies to play more and more frequently because the market demands it, because huge money is behind it, as if players weren’t breakable flesh and blood, but actually digital characters in some FIFA 24 game. Naturally, under these circumstances footballers start breaking and the entire game suffers.
We’ve tried to outsource the moral authority of the human referee to a VAR system that is supposed to be non-judgemental and ultra fair, only to discover that the judgement and fairness is embedded in the algorithms or human handlers anyway. Just like we are doing in wider life with algorithmic AI systems that embed the prejudices of the programmers out of direct view, which we then pretend is balanced and fair.
So why am I saying all this?
Well, believe it or not Arsenal’s current struggles almost make me feel…strangely content, because for me, Arsenal are reflecting real life beautifully. Not projected moral life, not digital pretend life but actually blood sweat and tears real life.
Arsenal are playing some excellent football, and getting nothing for it. The are performing small acts of petulance or rebellion or even mere misjudgements (Rice poking the ball away at Brighton, Trossard kicking the ball at Man City or Saliba’s defensive attempts at Bournemouth), and receiving vastly over-blown punishments. Isn’t that just like life? Don’t you find that the odds are stacked against you, that you are misread or misjudged on occasions with the penalty seemingly far outweighing the crime?
How many times have you tried and failed, performed perfectly and got nothing or no matter what you do there is always some barrier placed in your way. Life is unfair. That’s why primates and other animals have such a delicate radar for injustice - because the brutal fact is that the universe doesn’t care about you or the moral position you take. Volcanoes will erupt all over your village no matter how good you are. Tidal waves will sweep through your land no matter how much you pray to your gods.
If we accept football is a reflection of life, then we have to accept that sometimes you can be wonderful, deserving, skilful and even better than the others, and life will still rain all over your parade. And that is precisely where Arsenal are at the moment. There’s no real problem, no one to really point the finger at, it’s just the universe messing with us just like it always does. And I’m ok with that. I’ve made my peace with the universe not caring about me, or Arsenal.
But fret not dear Wonderlander, the flip side of this unpredictable coin is that for no seeming reason at all (there are always reasons but the data is far too vast to compute) things align and those tiny margins go your way. Just like life, sometimes the best thing is to hold tight, baton down the hatches and wait. Eventually the storm will pass and fairness will once again shine like a warming sun.
We are playing Nottingham Forest next, so maybe, just maybe the universe will finally align and once more we can taste fair reward for the efforts made. Have a great week and I hope life treats you with the kindness that can sometimes just happen :)
You beautifully stated how I was feeling after the Chelsea game. I felt strangely optimistic, more optimistic, than I had in a month of Arsenal games. There was something so beautiful and human about Martin returning to the pitch, gaunt and almost frail as if released from solitary confinement, and to see the absolute grit and determination to gut it out until the very end. Young men playing out of their preferred positions fought gallantly for two months with calls going against them, a relentlessly negative English media, and Arsenal held to standards to which no other club was held. Yet I felt reassured like a worried mother that all will be well, no matter what. Mikel Arteta is at the helm. The young men will not give up. The rough seas of long travel and international games will catch up to all eventually and the Arsenal will still arrive safely to shore, perhaps battered, hopefully in triumph, and a sigh of relief until it begins again.
Excellent, existential comparison. “I’ve made my peace with the universe not caring about me, or Arsenal.” Some might see this statement as fatalistic, depressing, pessimistic. But like you, I find it freeing. My husband was raised in a fundamentalist Baptist church and spent the better part of his first 30 years believing that some other power was always measuring his thoughts and actions and rectifying them through consequence. But free of the church it’s now it’s up to him, each moment to accept the randomness of it all and not hitch his happiness to circumstance. He’s said this approach has made him a kinder, more creative and compassionate human than he ever was before because we’re all in this game of uncertainties together.