What Are We Fighting For? When Junior Soccer Gets Too Rough

Maybe it is just me being a dad, but I don’t know for the life of me why children would end up brawling at a soccer match? This recent article in The Daily Telegraph, told a terrible tale of two junior soccer teams in suburban Sydney engaging in an all in brawl…50 people to be exact. My personal opinion dictates that fear for ones life, and love for football are not intertwined. I think that whoever the players were who started the brawl had no love for soccer at all. Is it a symptom of what we see in global events such as The World Cup?

The article resonates a sad tale and something that occurred at the recent World Cup 2006. In the final, Zinedine Zidane of France attacked Matarazzo of Italy after a racist slur. What is happening in the wider world of football that has made professionals fall from grace? Do they not understand that their actions affect billions of young people across the globe…our children, their children? Professionalism, as I understand the term, relates to the act of committing yourself to a higher order, to engaging your skills and talents for the benefit of your peers and the wider world. Sometimes I think that FIFA Fair Play is mostly about marketing and publicity to cover up the hooliganism, fear and hatred the lies in the belly of global football. It’s gloss, at best.