Life on football’s terms
Or football on life’s terms
This past weekend, issiaga Sylla’s mother passed away before his club Montpellier were due to play Nantes. He chose to play the game anyway.
I don’t think going on with life regardless of the circumstances is the ideal, but life does go on. Regardless of the circumstances, life will and has always gone on. The only thing in our control is how we react and try to move forward from these moments.
What Issiaga Sylla has had to do is something that barring some truly miraculous luck is something that must be done by all of us, accepting the passing of a loved one. It requires a level of bravery that most people do not know that they have until it has been done. To show that bravery for a football match that might look rather inconsequential is for me where the true strength lies and where the link between sports and emotion come together best. Please excuse the rather ham-fisted analogy as I compare the range of emotions that one experiences in two vastly different experiences.
As life goes on week to week so does football
After a crushing loss, the footballing world does not stop, not for a moment, there is the post-game dissection, a few speeches, (interviews) and then we roll on to the next game and thereafter onto the next week, and in that next week the team that lost must forget entirely about what has come before and be present in the game that is currently being played. The challenge of the new week does not keep in mind what came the week before, it stands before you barely acknowledging what has come before it, it requires that you are present. If you are not, that game and that week will pass you by and you will have lost again because you didn’t show up when you could have won.
Amid a relegation battle a team and its fans must believe that they will pick up points “soon” or “eventually” not because they’ve seen it recently, not because the next game is any easier, they must believe it simply because they “have to”. Football and sports in general force you to channel optimism where there is none. To hope for a win that you do not believe to be possible. To aim for a result that you have not once achieved before. To continue immediately after you’ve lost.
To experience the death of a loved one is something that has been said to make time stand still, and yet we see it so frequently in sports that time does not stand still, minutes, hours, weeks after footballers have lost loved ones or even after we have lost the footballers themselves, the show goes on and they perform as if the loss has not occurred, one would have to assume that sports acts as a form of escapism not just for those watching but also for those partaking.
Frank Lampard on the 30th of April in 2008 played against Liverpool in a Champions League semi-final a week after his mother had passed and scored a goal that ultimately took Chelsea to their first ever Champions League final, not only that but he also went on to score in that same final. If ever there was a picture of a man on the precipice of heaven and hell it would be him in that moment, to be grieving and celebrating simultaneously, living life on football’s terms, to play despite where he was emotionally, or maybe because of where he was emotionally, to have something else to be doing while he was grieving, nobody would have held it against him if he felt unable to play.
Yet he did, whether it brought him any peace at all only he will know, but that moment, and the news about Issiaga Sylla are moments that I will never forget.
So, this piece exists almost entirely as a piece aimed at bringing some level of comfort to all those who have recently lost someone, or if you’ve ever lost someone. The difficult parts of that experience are not the first few days, but almost always the days after where you are expected to continue when there is no part of you that wants to, but you do anyway. It requires a level of strength you don’t know you have until you’re doing it, and even then, I don’t think the feeling of loss makes anyone feel strong. But what else could you call it when you show up against the force of everything including yourself making it feel like you really shouldn’t. May Issiaga Sylla’s mother rest in peace.
