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The world is terrible and I want to use football to escape but what if football isn’t an escape?
Entering this summer, I was dreading an extended period of time without Liverpool football to pour my energies into. Luckily, the World Cup was around and though I found myself in the difficult situation of feeling relieved at the US National Team failing to qualify for the tournament due both to members of the team openly supporting racist immigration policy and the fact that the US has essentially hit fast-forward on the spiral into over fascism, I welcomed the reprieve. Football, you see, functions for me as it does for many people: a fun obsession that can distract us from the every day mundanities or the unforeseen sorrows or the steaming collapse of an empire that stole from your people while still exacting a final price on you in its death gasp. Football is perfect for all of these distractions and more!
But it increasingly became difficult for me to even view this edition of the Copa Mundial as a a distraction for myriad reasons. Some of it was due to poor choice of phrasing for marketing purposes, like the “England’s good at conquering” spot that made the rounds during the opening week of the tournament. My colleague at TLO, Ritika Bhasker, wrote a fantastic piece reflecting on this for Unusual Efforts which you can read here.
Another part of it, though, is that the political realities for immigrants in America - especially those from nations that would comprise the global south - are so dire. I wrote approximately a month ago in this same space that America was in the midst of a fascist administration and it was precisely in that time - at the start of the World Cup group matches - that I was processing news of families being separated at the US-Mexico border, with children as young as infants being pulled from parents and places in detention facilities. I was processing this while watching teams from South America being cheered on and discussed by white American punditry on the television and white Americans on Twitter. I was processing this while holding onto my then-8 month old daughter and trying figure out what this all meant.
This past Sunday, France won its second World Cup trophy, marking the end of the tournament as well as the final time in which Liverpool FC coverage would share any space with footballing concerns that aren’t directly related with the club itself. But as the French team celebrated its achievements and the nation celebrated its sporting heroes, I couldn’t help but think about how that win necessarily pushes up against the idea that politics and sport can be separated cleanly.
The bulk of the French National Team are either immigrants or the children of immigrants, with many members touting roots to former French colonies like Nigeria, Cameroon, and Algeria. Which is worthwhile because these players are now necessarily wrestling with a reality in which their contributions as immigrant people of color to bringing France a new accolade stands in contrast to the ways in which the French people and government have consistently fought to make their presence in France insecure to say the least.
That paradox: being the hero in a nation that values your labor but refuses to engage with your whole humanity isn’t new. But it is another stark reminder of how people of color and immigrants are viewed in America and Europe as commodities. How we are lauded for what we can contribute to national honors of the national rate of production, but when we deign to seek better treatment or to have equal access to services or to simply exist outside of cages and without the threat of deportation, we are met with contempt.
For many fans, football can serve as a distraction. But for people like me - and especially for athletes of color in majority white leagues/nations - there is no ability for us to completely dissociate from how our bodies are politicized. Immediately after France’s win, videos went viral of French President Emmanuel Macron celebrating with these Sons of France as champions. Meanwhile, in recent years, the French public has attempted to ban burqas and pushed to refuse entry to refugees in the name of maintaining “national identity.”
I think about this French Team now and reflect on what that means to fans of Liverpool Football Club with new football a mere few weeks away. What it means for a fandom that is steeped in political imagery and language that recalls the ways in which the community of Liverpool were often forced to fend for themselves by a government that abandoned them. What it means especially for foreign fans of the club, those in America, that may not recognize the underlying socialist undertones of Shankly’s team-first quotes, the renditions of “Working Class Hero” that sometimes ring the park, and for a people that always identified first as Scousers.
Liverpool is a port city and the cosmopolitan nature of the town was shaped by that openness to the world. The football that has been on display has also always had an influence that looked different from the rest of England. One that had a pulse on the continent and elsewhere.
Liverpool Football Club is a global club who’ve had the likes of Mo Salah, Fernando Torres, Roberto Firmino, Sadio Mane, and Emre Can among their roster of players. Non-English, and in the case of Mane, Salah, and Emre, Muslim players of color. The club, like the town, always had an air that looked beyond itself and is befitting of a club that claims a global fanbase.
I think about those players - Can, Mané, and Salah - praying ahead of matches, palms upturned. Or Salah, kneeling towards Mecca in tribute after one of his goals. And I think about an American fandom that likely has some overlap between supporters of a ban barring travelers from mostly Muslim-majority nations, and supporters of players like Mané and Salah. I wonder if those people recognize the ways in which their support runs in conflict to supporting these players. How evading politics like the Muslim Ban only serves to dehumanize these wonderful players. How the implication is that one will tolerate a Muslim, a foreigner, a non-white person so long as they can contribute to putting Liverpool back on their fucking perch.
I think about what that must mean about how they feel about people like me.
Immigrants to America - or anywhere - are generally only seeking to find peace, security, and more opportunity. No person generally willingly uproots their entire life and forsakes familiar faces, familiar tongues, familiar smells, and familiar tastes on a whim. Usually, the forces driving one to pick up stakes are stronger than the ones tying you down and that’s what wins. It isn’t nefarious mathematics but a rather common and practical one: I can better survive elsewhere, so elsewhere is where I go.
The families of the French National Team and footballers like Salah or Firmino have made the same determination. And advocating for policies that will see them receiving equal protections under the law - or allow them to live in places without the threat of government agents jack booting into their homes - is consistent with supporting them as footballers. It honors their sacrifice and contribution to the footballing history of the club to ensure that they do not have to live with the added anxieties of how their family members will be treated by their neighbors. It is a worldview that finally reconciles supporting the player with supporting the human in the shirt.
Football’s growth as we’ve entered the age of real-time video streaming of games held across the world is exponential. I increasingly spot more Liverpool fans in Southern California as a result and I often wonder how many even know of the club’s political roots. I wonder how many of these people are cheering for Salah with one breath, while advocating for policy that would ensure that we could never have an American Salah. Or who hold a world few that could not even conceptualize someone like Salah being labeled American.
I write this piece a week following the release of news that the American government has refused to give citizenship to undocumented veterans and has also moved to begin de-naturalizing citizens. I do not have a criminal record, but my work in an area of dissent makes me fearful for my own status as a naturalized citizen. While I always knew that with an administration like this that employs people like Stephen Miller this reality was always likely, it does not undo the anxiety that my existence in America is suddenly a lot less stable now than it was a month ago. And even then, it already felt wobbly as I watched our government rip children from their parents and saw people try to justify this behavior.
Liverpool football on the offing will, hopefully, be a bit of a distraction. But I also hope that people will engage in new ways how their own political beliefs necessarily have real world consequences that would likely impact their favorite players. Yes, Salah is a mega rich superstar but backing a racist regime that would ban Muslims would certainly affect him. I genuinely hope that this coming season might bring with it a realization that even as many might secretly wish that I might stop obsessing about all this race stuff, that American racism isn’t quite done obsessing with me. And so I can’t quite leave all of it behind. I hope that this season sparks a real understanding of how politics is more than just an abstraction for marginalized people. And that, maybe, we’d all love to stop talking about it, too.
But there is power in the talking to slow things down. There is power in the talking to bring a bit of relief. There is power in the talking to find others who see us fully. There is power in the talking to remind us that we don’t walk alone.
Source: liverpooloffside.sbnation.com
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