I’ve always wondered why footballers (young men, many single, most childless) drive such disproportionately large cars. The reason, in short, for this automotive gigantism that affects them to such an extent that the first thing many do when they sign each renewal is purchase a vehicle that is larger than the previous one until they end up driving a tank. It was something I didn’t understand, until one of them, a young First Division player, proposed the theory to me, with his words, not with this expression, that the thing about the car and the soccer players is a kind of rite of passage. He explained that when one arrives at a locker room, or has a new and more important role in the booth, one feels obliged to comply with a series of traditions and codes in the process of showing oneself as part of the group and consolidating one’s status. The huge or extravagant car and the ostentation of luxury would be part of that process. If one comes by bicycle or with his old utility vehicle, he would only be showing a difference, distancing himself from the totality, defining himself in appearances compared to others. The big car on the soccer team’s campus would, then, be something like the tie on the board of directors or the cigarette on the lips of the rebellious teenager: a symbol of belonging to a community, a way of saying “hey, admit me.” “I am one of you.”
The question seems trivial, but it is not so trivial. Let’s think that soccer players are an example of early success in life and, therefore, a behavioral model for many young people who are still building their own value system. How can you change towards more sustainable habits if your idols convey the idea that you have not succeeded if you do not burn gasoline by the gallon? But I don’t want to go there. The example of the car helps me to show why sometimes the way the locker rooms operate is the reason why the world of football appears stagnant in terms of values (climate change would be one of them) and it is so difficult to mobilize it.
This week the news emerged that Manchester United players decided not to wear a jacket in support of the LGTBIQ+ community before a match because their teammate Noussair Mazraoui refused to do so, citing his religious beliefs. The club also released a statement supporting the defender, arguing that players “have the right to give their own opinions, especially regarding their faith, and these may sometimes be different from those of the club.” We will agree that it is fascinating that faith is highlighted as a stronghold of personal values in a world, that of football, in which political positions are prohibited, even when they refer to human rights.
But let’s not go there either. The point is that the statement from United, a club with a turnover of 700 million euros per year, supports and tries to justify the decision of a dressing room that is in turn the result of the sum of the whims of just one more player. the unwritten internal code that the template must always appear joined to the outside. I don’t know what conversations took place in the booth, whether there were tensions when deciding, but they don’t really matter either. The final result is an example that those dressing codes that apparently reflect values inherent to football such as solidarity and equality are sometimes in practice obstacles to the evolution of clubs and the world of football itself towards more humane and fair. Let us think in this sense about the resistance that has faced the eradication of certain behaviors and languages or causes such as the right to mental health.
Here is a paradox: solidarity with the group, an inherent value in team sports, becomes a double-edged sword. Codes that foster cohesion, group loyalty, and belonging also function as barriers to social change. If football wants to be more than a mere spectacle, if it wants to continue being the people’s game and embrace values of inclusion, diversity and sustainability, it will have to change a lot of its dynamics, including the power of the locker room as a nucleus of resistance to social changes. . And there is a real challenge: finding a way to break the inertia without breaking the team spirit.
