Football is temporarily irrelevant but it will be there to guide us through the recovery

THESE are strange, dark and deeply troubling times and the speed in which our lives have been turned upside-down by a pervasive and invisible danger alarms. 

A little over two weeks ago Manchester City were at Wembley and Blues in their thousands hugged and drank, celebrating a victory that mattered to their very marrow. Now, even a mere mention of a club or player feels entirely inconsequential as the beautiful game is made redundant in crisis; placed on hiatus until it matters again once more.

And it will. It will matter and infinitely more so than we can presently envisage; illuminating the shadows and inspiring and exciting, offering hope, nourishment and, above all else, entertainment. It will be our North Star again along with being an endless source of chastening disappointment.  We will soon enough rescale the euphoric heights in triumph and kick the proverbial cat in defeat, and tweet passionately about FFP and VAR, acronyms that suddenly feel as archaic as CCCP on a red shirt in some far-off, sweltering World Cup.

Just not for the time being. Football feels small and frivolous with our welfare and way of life under threat and where so recently it was a fantastical Oz now it is an ordinary man behind a curtain who hasn't properly washed his hands.

Miss you xox

#ManCity pic.twitter.com/JFYSPU33XW

— Manchester City (@ManCity) March 15, 2020

This past surreal week has brought much discussion about where football resides in the great scheme of things with two famous quotes recycled many times over. Diminished to a silly sport amidst the very real fear and very real panic that the Coronavirus outbreak has unleashed the Shankly line about life and death has been prevalent; the one the great man would surely have come to regret had he known how often in the future people would assume it was said in all sincerity.

Then, as football briefly kicked and thrashed against inevitability; attempting the impossible of riding out this indiscriminate cataclysm, some tried to justify the continued hosting of games by going down the bread and circuses route. Football was, they said, chiming Arrigo Sacchi’s observation, the most important of the unimportant things in life. In truth, in better times the game holds its own somewhere between the two. It pales meaningless to tragedy, as we have witnessed before. But unimportant? Unimportant?

Football’s key role in our national recovery as both it and us eventually emerge from self-isolation will be evidenced in the months to come as it has been evidenced before. As peacetime followed six years of bloody world war attendances in the late-forties boomed, with the public’s appetite for the game insatiable and this was so because going to a match is a communal joy that celebrates the best and worst of life and the best and worst of ourselves. It unites and it divides. It invigorates and it infuriates.

Your team playing their team; that team playing this team: it’s a bond between strangers. It’s the glue between friends. It’s an emotional link between father and son who otherwise would be aliens to one another. Great goals are sewn into the rich tapestry of our lives. Moments endure. Grudges fester. Through a child’s eyes a stadium is a giant, secular cathedral; in adulthood it’s an escape, from the banalities and seemingly constant, debilitating demands of life. It is impossible to say which is more affirming. It’s probably a score-draw.

Wait what?! How did I let that @21lva finish slip my mind?! UNREAL!

#ManCity pic.twitter.com/415k6gjcfV

— Manchester City (@ManCity) March 15, 2020

Then there’s the sheer privilege of watching David Silva. The joy of schadenfreude. The dread of a derby. The dusty programmes in the attic that do not simply prompt memories – that comes nowhere close to doing them justice. Those games remain alive because they’re alive in us; forever a part of who and what they formed.

I once wrote in these pages about how Manchester City rescued me from the long clutches of depression and prior to publication I was scared, fearing I’d exposed myself too much; isolated myself from the crowd. Then the replies came in, countless of them from City fans and Evertonians and Burnley supporters and Reds of both denominations. All saying that they too had been sustained through tortuous periods by their allegiance, an allegiance that gave them hope and an identity and a purpose.

Football is currently being dismantled and put away in a box and in its absence we turn to YouTube and nostalgia. Chicken soup of the soul. But it will return and it will greatly matter again. Rivalries will matter again. The form of left-backs and the quality of half-time pies will matter again. Even the thoughts of Paul Merson will matter again, to a degree.

And when it does by God we will be ready for it all, embracing every unimportant element, first united, then divided. As it should be.