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Richard Littledale's
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Give an inch…
I don't know how many years it is since we went metric in the UK, and yet when we discuss news coverage we still talk about column inches. In the past week or so two men have been seizing those column inches - namely Sepp Blatter, President of FIFA, and Ratko Mladic, former Bosnian Serb General. Mladic is charged with presiding over the murder of thousands of Bosnian men, and Blatter with presiding over a mass of seething corruption at the heart of worldwide football. One is believed to be guilty of corruption and arrogance, the other of barbarity and disregarding human suffering.
Which will receive more column inches in the end, I wonder? The likelihood is that it will be Sepp Blatter and the FIFA scandal. There may be many reasons for this:
- Blatter's misdemeanours are happening now, whereas Mladic's were many years ago;
- It is easier to discuss sport than it is to discuss human suffering;
- The investment, both of money and aspiration, in worldwide sport may be greater than the interest in war-crimes' justice;
- In harsh times we would rather be distracted than confronted;
- In sheer numbers, the outcome of Blatter's trials will probably affect more people than the outcome of Mladic's.
To say that this will happen is not to say that it should. Beautiful or not, football is only a game. And yet we live in an age where the grotesque payments made to footballers can turn them into a kind of demi-god. Their fans transgress borders and ethnicities, and demonstrate the kind of fierce loyalty for which many nations would be grateful. They cheer when their heroes triumph, weep when they fail, and as often as not turn a blind eye when they misbehave.
Years ago C.S Lewis wrote that we could 'never love people too much, only love God too little'. There is nothing wrong with the passionate loyalty which our sporting heroes attract in itself. However, when we place them on pedestals of impossibly huge proportions, or find ourselves caring more about their plight on the pitch than the plight of others off it, we need to ask some serious questions.
Christians should be praying for justice to be done in both these stories. And whilst they are at it, they might like to slip in a small prayer for the redirection of some of football's absurd financial resources to other needs. It can't hurt, can it?
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