Football is football

It has caused some scandal that Sabadell goalkeeper Diego Fuoli celebrated his team's promotion to the Second Division by singing, from the balcony of Sabadell City Hall, an insulting chant against Pedro Sánchez, chanted by some of the supporters in the square. The controversy is not fully understood: Fuoli and the singing fans were in the typical atmosphere so characteristic of football: celebration, relaxation, communion, healthy camaraderie, team spirit, shared enthusiasm, and a little – nothing, barely a spark – of spirits, narcotics, and testosterone. All without malice, naturally, because football does not understand politics. Football, as is well known, is the most important of unimportant things (a big smile on the face of whoever repeats this cliché).Fuoli's songs –which, curiously, are those of the Spanish right and far-right, but this is also a coincidence– are perfectly consistent with the general tone of most non-strictly sports news coming from football, and, what's more, in all its categories. From parents who encourage their children to kill the opponent or assault the referee (or who boastmastegots with other parents) in school or children's tournaments to players, fans, and management of high-level competitions who display unacceptable behavior both on and off the field, the parade of role models for young people is constant. Examples: Raúl Asencio (Real Madrid, prosecuted for two counts of invasion of privacy), Álvaro Aguado (exRCD Espanyol, processed for sexual assault), Santi Mina (ex Valencia CF, convicted of sexual abuse), Dani Alves (ex-Barça, for rape: convicted, imprisoned and finally acquitted). The list of rapists and sexual aggressors in the world of football could fill the length of a handful of articles like this one. The list of tax evasions and fraud would fill the entire newspaper. Alves, by the way, once out of prison has become an evangelical preacher, an honest way to spread the divine word. Messi visited Trump last March and they took some photos, both smiling. In Paris, the celebration of PSG's Champions League ended in street chaos, three deaths and nearly 800 arrests. FIFA and its president Gianni Infantino's complicity with totalitarian regimes, petrodictatorships, and – once again – Trump is blatant to the point of obscenity. These are the kind of news usually related to football (not to other sports, or not as much), often dismissed with a few jokes and some routine comments.We are all grown up and rather difficult to shock, and for that very reason, since the daily and obsessive nagging about football must be inevitable (due to the masses of money and people it moves, not the interest of the game itself), let's at least save ourselves the exclamations every time a footballer, a fan, or a director goes off the rails or directly commits a crime. Football is like that, indeed.