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Comment by baxtr | Hacker News Reader

In that sense FIFA is the world’s most successful peace organization funneling national violence into sports

"Football is war" - Rinus "The General" Michels.

For the non-soccer fans: Michels was the trainer who invented the Total Football playstyle and was named coach of the century by FIFA in 1999[0]. Although I just learned from Wikipedia that the above quote is taken out of context, I always thought it was an insightful one: football is ritual warfare. And as the article suggests, we're probably better off for its existence, because those tribal instincts are still in our DNA, and they need to come out one way or the other.

And I say that as someone who really dislikes football, partially because of the tribalism.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rinus_Michels

I don't think there's any particularly good reason to believe that giving tribalism an outlet through sports is healthy. It might as well be that giving tribalism an outlet leads to more tribalism. Kind of like how expressing emotional anger might make you angrier[0]

[0] https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102344...

Play-fighting is different from real fighting, though.

Yeah people don't die. But there's a chance that energy gets dispensed through other forms. I mean there is so much money in sports. There is so much money in just exerting dominance. So much to gain. Notoriety. Plus, I can't even begin to imagine the mental destruction that goes on in these players. Depression, Ego Inflation to the point of psychosis. Why can't we transcend domination and go back to play?

We had games for that for ever. We can't get gladiators anymore so we have football, races and ring fights.

"Panem et circenses" is hardly a new concept.

Gladiators are 2000 years old, moreover, they didn't represent anyone.

And 'international sports' don't really go back that far, surprisingly.

The 'oldest currently active international sports competition' is actually the annual hockey game between the Royal Military College (Canada), and Westpoint - or so I'm told. There are arguments for America's cup, but that's a different kind of representation. Those are 1870's vs. 1850's respectively.

So it's really kind of a new thing, and Olympics, World Cup, Commonwealth Games are definitely created in part to build fraternity and collegiately between nations etc..

I think it's also fair to question the term 'violence' because maybe it's really a matter of 'competition' at a physical, visceral level, i.e. 'dominance'. But it's a good point.

> Gladiators are 2000 years old

My point, exactly.

> they didn't represent anyone.

Of course their did. People had their favorites. Community had champions.

Besides, 11 people representing a country is just a ploy to entertain people. There is zero level of relationship between the players and the rest country.

Anyway, the point is moot. It doesn't change the basis of the mechanism: entertaining the mass so that they divert they aggressiveness.

> Besides, 11 people representing a country is just a ploy to entertain people. There is zero level of relationship between the players and the rest country.

Aside from the legal requirement that they be citizens of the country they play for, and that once a player represents his country in a competitive match, they are bound to represent that same country for the rest of their lives, barring some extraordinary situation where the country itself breaks up or ceases to exist.

Artificial requirements to make the illusion of a connection stronger.

I think your assertion that people who were born and grew up in the same country bear 0 resemblance goes against a lot of modern statistics.

They do but not more or less than footballers, bakers or your neighboor. There is nothing special about football except the idea that it's special.

I really don’t see what makes the concept of national football teams any more artificial than the concept of nations in the first place.

I don't think anyone would disagree with you there.

> There is zero level of relationship between the players and the rest country.

Oh I so dare you to go to Brazil and say Neymar doesn't matter. Actually, don't, I don't want to be (indirectly) responsible for your maiming...

Yes, it's very efficient mechanism to control the population.

People have a strong illusion their connection is real

To make my point plainer, who are you to say it isn't?

"who are you" implies I should have some special status to give my opinion.

But the fact remains that they don't run after the ball themself. They don't make any effort in this competition. They don't even have any personnal relationship with the players.

I don't deny it's fun.

You should have fun.

But it's no more real than a movie.

We are all connected.

But we are connected to some much more than others.

See: mother + newborn.

Do you remember coming out of your mother's vagina?

Is that relevant?

The gladiators might not, but the chariot racers in the Hippodrome did have teams/factions, with fans loyal to each: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chariot_racing

That said, you're right that it wasn't "international", but then again "nations" themselves aren't that old.

If the Romans were smart, they would have had Gladiators and Racers actually representative of provinces.

Or better yet, invent football and do the same.

Nationalism didn't exist at the time, but ethnocentrism certainly did :)

> but then again "nations" themselves aren't that old.

Nations are, nationalism and nation-states (which are different but related phenomena) aren't.

No, the whole concept of national identity is very recent, starting from early 1800s for some parts of Europe. Longer than that you had tribal factions or regional identities and that is it.

How was the unified Greek state different if you don’t mind me asking?

which era are you refering to? ancient greece was not a unified state. the common denominator what the city. Athenians were clearly not considering themselves like belonging to the same group as Spartans.

> No, the whole concept of national identity is very recent

No, it's not, though some current national identities are. The idea of Israel as a nation (distinct from either a state or regional identity), for instance, is at least as old as the Old Testament.

Chariot teams were very politicized in ancient Rome and very much represented people and ideas.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/blue-versus-green-roc...

You mentioned Olympics but you missed out on the original Olympics which were very much all about that international (sort of as they were city-states) competition with a truce set up to allow for a relatively safe event.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Olympic_Games

Travel is something of a prerequisite of international sporting events. So, 1870's is very early in that context as people simply moved around less.

That said, medieval jousting for example had what amounted to a multi national sports. It's just the nations where tiny.

>The 'oldest currently active international sports competition' is actually the annual hockey game between the Royal Military College (Canada), and Westpoint - or so I'm told.

International cricket pre-dates that. The first official international was between Canada and the United States in 1844, with 10 - 20,000 spectators. The K.A. Auty Cup is still played from time to time.

Perhaps a case could be made for cricket helping prevent nuclear war, as India and Pakistan manage to play each other in the various forms of cricket, though there isn't any love lost between the fans.

There were times when India or Pakistan lost, people would burn cities in madness.

I guess we have civilized quite a bit.

>burn cities in madness

Yeah that never happened.

> 'international sports' don't really go back that far, surprisingly

That's absurd. Google "Olympic games" and then Google "peloponnesian war".

Yes, there were a few 'games' some time ago, but in the context of history it's nothing.

Ongoing international games as we understand them are a new phenom, dating back to the mid 19th century, and then only a few games.

The modern Olympics are not that old.

There were almost no such games for most of antiquity until late into the Enlightenment.

Again, that's absurd.

The ancient Greek Olympic games lasted for close to 1200 years. Unless your definition of ongoing is longer than that, I think they qualify.

The ancient Olympics carried a truce enforced by Zeus, unless your definition of international doesn't include "independent political entities who engaged in war" I think they qualify.

Medieval jousting and single combat had international tournaments for hundreds of years. From before The Hundred Years War in the 1300's through to the 1600's at which point the events started morphing into what would be recognised as modern equestrian sports.

This isn't that crazy of a concept, to me. FIFA does achieve rather stunning results, given its breadth.

Though I do hear about conspiracies involving fixed games and about FIFA corruption from time to time, I imagine that they've done a lot more good for the world recently than the UN has.

Edit:

Sports are in general associated with some meaningful global events. The Olympics recently demonstrated this fact w/r/t North Korea.

I imagine that they've done a lot more good for the world recently than the UN has

No, they have not! I am not sure by what metric one can compare FIFA and the United Nations, but I don't think you you are familiar with the breadth of the UN's work. Selected achievements from their results page [1]:

-Every year we mobilize about $7 billion in humanitarian aid to help people affected by emergencies.

-Every year we assist over 34 million refugees and others fleeing war, famine and persecution.

-We vaccinate 40% of the world’s children, saving 2 million lives a year.

-In 2011 the UN will provide food to around 90 million people in 73 countries.

-In the past few years, the UN has expanded legal international rights to indigenous peoples, people with disabilities, migrants and their families.

FIFA is merely better at marketing...

[1]http://www.un.org/en/strengtheningtheun/results.shtml

The U.N. is way better at marketing than FIFA could ever dream of being. You’re assuming that all those things would not have been done if the UN didn’t exist. The good things done by the U.N. are a consequence of its funders. If the UN had never been founded other organisations would have been to do the jobs the UN does now. If the UN collapsed tomorrow the associated humanitarian organisations would rebrand and continue.

The UN is clearly the better marketer, because it needs to work much harder to justify its ongoing "good" for the world.

I wonder if FIFA has ever been discovered to be running hugely corrupt wings like UN's WIPA which keeps trying to stuff some form of ACTA/SOPA/PIPA down our throats.

I wonder if FIFA has been found to ever profit from the rape and sexual abuse of minors. Minors, who descend from some of the most war-torn and horrific places on Earth.

7 billion annually and look how little they get done each year. Capitalism is much more responsible for Africa's and Asia's escape from poverty than the UN is - and that's a rather low bar.

I laugh at the idea that the UN, and not the charities they force to go through them, is responsible for saving 2 million lives per year. I wonder how many millions they let die each year.

In terms of global politics, FIFA is rather benevolent and yet they foster ongoing positive international relations benefits. The UN is, at best, malevolent, and I am dubious that their positives outweigh their enormous negatives, not to mention their negative externalities.

> I wonder if FIFA has ever been discovered to be running hugely corrupt wings, like…

Surely, surely you’re joking?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_FIFA_corruption_case

That is an entire Wikipedia page about a corruption case only involving tax evasion , following an investigation by the IRS.

This is the FIFA , which decided, completely non corrupt of course, that Qatar is the best place to host a World Cup. Some people follow through on this anecdote with reasons as to why that’s a worse place to do so than actual Hell, but I prefer to prompt you to sit back a moment and think about that. Qatar. Forget about Russia: Qatar. For a sporting match. In summer. Qatar.

For context, these were the final bids for 2022: South Korea, Qatar, Japan, Australia, U.S.A.

Qatar.

FIFA is not corrupt? Sepp “football is politics” Blatter’s FIFA?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sepp_Blatter

Surely you’re joking?

I remain unconvinced that FIFA has done more damage to the world than the UN. The kind of corruption written about here is child’s play compared to what atrocities the UN have committed.

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