As soccer increasingly grows into an industry, various forces and interests begin to enter and even fight over this realm. The football industry promises not only jobs and fame, but also political and economic benefits.
By
Idi Subandy Ibrahim
·5 minutes read
AFP/KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV
Policemen stand near FIFA World Cup signs outside the Main Media Center (MMC) in Doha on November 3, 2022, ahead of the Qatar 2022 FIFA World Cup football tournament.
The grand global football event is in sight. The Qatar 2022 World Cup finals will begin on Sunday, 20 November, until the final for the championship on 18 December 2022. The 2022 World Cup presents 32 teams, 8 groups and 64 matches. The opening match brings host Qatar against Ecuador at the Al Bayt Stadium.
Various controversies accompanied Qatar's selection and preparations to host the 2022 World Cup, ranging from issues of corruption, discrimination against groups with different sexual orientations and disregard for the rights of immigrant workers to doubts over Qatar's ability to host the world’s biggest football party.
The various protests and controversies that are likely to continue to emerge, both on and off the stadium green, show that the World Cup will continue to make headlines because the history of football has always been closely linked to politics and the economy.
As soccer increasingly grows into an industry, various forces and interests begin to enter and even fight over this realm. The football industry promises not only jobs and fame, but also political and economic benefits. Who does not feel interested?
The World Cup is one side of the path of massive nationalist mobilization, when the imagination of awareness of national identity can be exploited to achieve goals that are not in line with sportsmanship that is built from sports competition.
Have not fascist political leaders like Hitler or Mussolini long realized the emotional and propaganda power of football and the World Cup? The World Cup is one side of the path of massive nationalist mobilization, when the imagination of awareness of national identity can be exploited to achieve goals that are not in line with sportsmanship that is built from sports competition.
Observing the development of football in the country in the last two decades shows that the football arena has increasingly had political and industrial dimensions rather than cultural ones.
On the one hand, we see the controversy after the Kanjuruhan human tragedy, which killed at least 135 people, shows that football has a political dimension and involves deep mass emotions. Even though President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo has shown empathy by going directly to the location of the tragedy and providing directions for solutions, the strong impression of the political-economy interests of some parties behind the incident shows a contradiction in the poor attitude of fairness that is even taught in sports culture.
On the other hand, football is also becoming an increasingly fashionable sport! Some football players get a higher status as celebrity; some become commercial stars, such as celebrities in the entertainment world. All are made possible by the development of television, leisure and the football industry itself!
AFP/JEWEL SAMAD
A man rides a bicycle past a restaurant adorned with FIFA World Cup playing countries flags in a market area in Doha on November 3, 2022, ahead of the Qatar 2022 FIFA World Cup football tournament.
Television has brought the emotion of football into the living room and now into the hands of social media users. Football emotions fill the free time of fans, mostly young boys, now also girls, who are united by fan communities that have emerged in a number of areas.
The large number of football fans are hungry for stars and idol teams. They are a major force in the football industry: ticket buyers, collectors of jerseys and club attributes. Given this potential, large corporations are competing to place advertisements that form the basis of the football industry. Football fans can be managed to become a community force. Apart from being an economic force, at certain moments they can even be used as a core supporter of political power.
When football becomes an industry and a political stage, we can observe how the development of the "popularization" of football is always intertwined with the "elitisization" or "politicization" of football. Football as the property of the common people has started to become the stage of the elite. It is almost similar to dangdut (a genre of Indonesian folk music).
Popular culture
The World Cup event has a deeper political dimension than almost any other sporting event. But thinking only from a political and economic perspective forgets the fact that the World Cup is also a cultural event. Football is part of popular culture expression.
French literary-theorist Roland Barthes pondered the philosophical question: What is sport?
Inspired by seeing sport as popular culture, French literary-theorist Roland Barthes pondered the philosophical question: What is sport?
For Barthes, a sport such as football is a spectacle that serves a primary social function as theater did in ancient times, gathering the people of a city or nation in a shared experience.
Is not witnessing the diverse styles of expression of spectators and teams from 32 countries with backgrounds of race, skin and culture, which are largely different at the World Cup, a "shared experience" of football as a global cultural event?
On the one hand, football describes the richness of the expression of each team's game. The coach's strategy becomes a kind of poetic meditation on the game, which is translated by the players in the stadium field as "theater". Just like how patterns of attack and defense are built in the context of different opponents, it can be a hallmark of the culture, playing the soccer team of a nation.
AFP/GIUSEPPE CACACE
People walk past FIFA World Cup banners at a beach in Doha on November 3, 2022, ahead of the Qatar 2022 FIFA World Cup football tournament.
On the other hand, the game of football also symbolizes how to build teamwork beyond the selfishness of individual players so that football becomes a mirror of how "society works and even civilization works", to use the words of the famous former football coach, Vince Lombardi.
Can the Qatar World Cup bring the imagination of global humanity to the realization that in fact we have much more in common as humans than the differences that often arise due to misunderstandings between cultures?
The problem is, politics and economics often distract us from the allure of football as a multicultural spectacle that might be able to unite our humanity in the midst of differences, hostilities and even wars that threaten the world of the 21st century.
KOMPAS/MOHAMMAD HILMI FAIQ
Idi Subandy Ibrahim
IDI SUBANDY IBRAHIM, Culture, Media and Communications researcher. Postgraduate lecturer at Pasundan University.
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