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As we approach the two-month mark of having no live soccer to watch, I don’t think I’m alone when I say I really want the beautiful game to return as quickly — and safely — as possible.
For seven weeks, the only football we’ve been able to watch falls into two categories: replays of old matches and folks playing the FIFA video game.
While it can be fun and enlightening to return to classic matches years or even decades later, you lose one of the most enjoyable aspects of watching live sports: the uncertainty of what will happen.
That leaves FIFA and eSports to really get that live sports fix.
And I’m fucking sick of watching pro footballers playing FIFA.
As leagues across the world suspended play amid the novel coronavirus pandemic, clubs quickly joined together to create their own eSports leagues, streaming their players competing in FIFA tournaments and promoting the matches as if they were the real deal.
It was kinda cool, at first.
I love FIFA. I’ve been playing the series for 25 years; I enjoy playing with and against others, either online or in person. I’ll watch the pros play on Twitch from time to time and keep up with the meta of the game offline. I follow the big FIFA tournaments to see who’s on top this year.
But I just cannot bring myself to give a damn about actual professional IRL footballers playing FIFA.
I’ve tried to get into these impromptu FIFA tournaments going on around the globe. I’ve attempted to watch guys like Liverpool’s Trent Alexander-Arnold and Wolves’ Diogo Jota — who won the ePremier League trophy — do battle on the virtual pitch. I’ve wanted so badly to enjoy this one modicum of live football.
Due to technical difficulties, today’s final match of the ePremier League Invitational between James Maddison and Callum Wilson has been postponed#ePremierLeague https://t.co/UbOiAUDDFm
— Premier League (@premierleague) May 5, 2020
It’s nothing against eSports.
I’ve been an avid video gamer since the original Mario on the NES. I’ve devoted just as much of my life to video games as I have to soccer. Most my life, if I wasn’t outside playing soccer, I was inside playing video games, everything from NHL ’94 and EverQuest to The Last of Us and The Witcher. I recently plowed through Final Fantasy VII Remake and have been playing Slay the Spire as meditation to take my mind off the pandemic.
I enjoy eSports. I get no small measure of joy every time I see video games being played on TV, whether it’s League of Legends, EVO or Overwatch. I don’t play Dota 2, but I’m enamored by The International. I enjoy watching others play video games. I used to watch my friend Drew play X-COM on the original PlayStation (those load times were horrendous); now I’ll load up a YouTube video of the folks at Giant Bomb checking out a new game.
But when it comes watching pro footballers playing FIFA, I can’t last more than a few minutes before I have to turn it off.
Perhaps it’s just the fact that these guys, while decent at the game, aren’t the best of the best. This is no better than watching pro eSports athletes play soccer in real life. Who wants to watch a sport that doesn’t feature the best players in the world? Well, I do, when it comes to college football and basketball.
Perhaps it’s the fact I’m watching these guys play with controllers in their hands instead of balls at their feet, a not-so-subtle reminder that times are not as they once were. It’s like watching reruns of The Office and reminiscing about how we used to work in the same building as our coworkers. It’s a symbol of what we’ve lost.
Maybe I, like many of you, have simply tuned out from soccer altogether. With no actual new soccer to focus on, it seems unnecessary to give any fucks about anything that might be happening in virtual football.
Soccer has long been a religion for me. Even when I’m not working covering the sport for a living, I always have a game on, whether it’s waking up early for an Arsenal match or folding laundry while MLS plays in the background (the ideal way to watch MLS, really).
But the last seven weeks have completely changed my habits. I don’t wake up and look at my phone to see who’s playing today or who won last night’s late match/this morning’s early match. I don’t have a Serie A game on mute while I call my parents on Sunday afternoons. I don’t annoy my partner with a constant stream of soccer on the TV.
And whenever I do tune in to something like the ePremier League, I’m reminded of how football has disappeared so quickly, so violently from all our lives.
Soccer is, of course, a wildly unnecessary endeavor. While the world is in crisis, people are focused on far more important things, such as the rising death toll or how they’ll pay rent after losing their job.
But, as is often said, football is the most important of the unimportant things.
Recently, author/YouTuber John Green, a devoted Liverpool fan, spoke about how he’s been coping with the loss of sports. He’s turned to marble racing (oddly exciting), competitive Tetris (oddly not exciting) and watching old sporting events, like the 2012 Italian Cup final. Green quoted a William Carlos Williams poem about how we humans revel in the things that have no end, save beauty. The poem refers to baseball but could easily refer to any sport that is, technically, unnecessary.
Watching pro footballers playing FIFA, I find no beauty. Only a stark reminder of everything we’ve lost and everything we long for to return.
