When my colleague and graduate of Leeds
Met, Ebenezer
Owusu-Addo,
read my last blog post, he emailed me and said “what
will your next blog be on – health promotion and the world cup?!” Eben is
Assistant Research Fellow at the Bureau of Integrated Rural Development, Kwame
Nkrumah University of Science & Technology in Kumasi, Ghana, and like many
of us, is a football fan. So this one’s
for you, Eben!
Initially I thought that the world cup doesn’t have
much to do with health promotion, but I like a challenge, so I've been thinking about it. And of course, the
world cup is important and I’m
writing this on the same glorious day in 1966 that England beat Germany 4-2. I
watched it alone as a child, in a cavernous room in a castle whilst on holiday
with my family and it remains one of the best sporting events of my life, and
that of many other people. This was only 21 years after the end of the Second World
War and victory over Germany is always sweeter than that over any other nation.
Here start the problems – what’s the line between national pride in
achievement, and nationalism?
Now, in my view there are lots more important and
pertinent issues than football and the world cup. I’d like to mention a few
before returning to the main theme. To start with, over 1000 Palestinians have
been killed in the last three weeks by the action against Hamas by Israel.
Children and women have been the largest part of these deaths; about 50
Israelis have lost their lives, mainly military personnel. There seems to be no
end to the violence there and no solutions; I wept again at seeing the images
of children in hospital in Gaza, aware that they would become the next
generation of angry young people. And there’s the downing of Malaysia Airlines
flight MH17, again bringing heart-rending scenes of parents who have lost their
children. Right now we are commemorating a random act of violence a hundred
years ago that led to the First World War; even if flight MH17 was accidently
shot down, it’s the kind of thing that has the potential to shatter peace on a
global scale. How many times have we heard “Never Again”?
From a professional point of view, (and knowing that
all lives are of equal worth), one death that struck me, of those killed on
flight MH17, was Professor Joep Lange. He was the Dutch doctor and specialist
in infectious disease whose work developed antiretroviral therapy. ARTs are now
saving millions of lives throughout the world, making HIV a manageable disease
as long as these drugs remain available. He worked tirelessly to make sure the
drugs were available throughout
poorer countries from the 1990s. He was a founder of the Amsterdam Institute
for Global Health and Development, and had started to take on a series of other
major issues, such as health care financing. He has been described as having a
heart of gold and a strong sense of humour, a highly intelligent and cultured
man. He was 59 and surely had many more years of life to enjoy and many more
ways to contribute to improving health. One senseless death among so many.
Back to football. Yes I enjoyed the world
cup. Yes of course I wanted Ghana to win. Being an academic, where our job is
to be critical, it’s often the case that you feel split – you can simply enjoy
an amazing spectacle, young men showing extraordinary skill, the excitement of
a competition, plus the feeling that you are joining in with everyone else. On
the other hand, you are aware of the deeper level of analysis that’s required,
aware that along with everyone else, you are watching a spectacle that has
something to do with ‘bread and circuses’. There are of course, many who ignore
it all completely, and there are those who live and breathe football. We know
that heart attacks rise during important televised matches (and there were a
few points in the world cup where one might have been concerned about the state
of Angela Merkel’s arteries) – there are fans and there are ‘fanatics’. Seeing the anguish and tears on Brazilian
faces as they were thrashed 7-1 by Germany; the frenzied fist pumping from
managers, the breakdowns (such as Neymar’s) at having to retire injured all
would lead anyone to ponder on how healthy this was. To be so overwrought – is
it healthy that it matters this much? China has reported a number of deaths related
to nervous exhaustion due to so many people rearranging their sleep and work
around the awkward time differences of Brazil. The fouls, let alone Luis
Suarez’s use of his teeth show how important it is to win at any cost, and it’s
one of the reasons why one of the matches I enjoyed most was that between the USA
and Belgium – played impeccably, with good grace and hardly any nasty physical
contact. There were of course lots of great moments too. Columbia’s team dance
was a joy. At the end, the crown went to a country with not only the best team
– which they were – but also to a country that can afford the resources and
have a well organized machine to produce such a team. Could a resource-poor country such as Costa
Rica or Ghana ever get to the final? Does football demonstrate the global
inequalities that are so evident in every other aspect of life?
All this leads to the question of whether
football is real life or whether it
mimics real life. Is football a mirror on the world or a parallel universe? In
my view it’s the former, which is why the campaigns to stamp out racism,
homophobia and sexism in sport are so important. Health promotion is first and
foremost about all people being able to live freely as themselves and to
achieve their potential. There are still
no openly gay male players at the top levels. Football is all about looking at
young men – the women’s game gets little TV coverage. The football world seems to be deeply sexist
and homophobic and whilst black people and other minorities are becoming well represented
on the pitch, they are not at more senior management levels. There’s been controversy
recently in scientific and media discussions trying to understand why so many black
people make great athletes, particular Jamaicans, with a theory regarding the
genetic selection caused by the Atlantic slave trade. I don’t know enough about
the details to discuss it, but it’s plausible. My colleague at Leeds Met,
Professor Kevin Hylton, has used critical race theory to explore racism and
sport, the subject of his inaugural lecture. See:
In Iran, women are banned from watching
football alongside men, so they have been watching it in defiance of the
authorities, in mixed cafes.
So the football pitch demonstrates
‘personal politics’ as well as politics at the highest level. Football is a means of demonstrating ‘soft
power’; Germany certainly is the dominant European power, and you have to hand
it to them – they are such an accomplished nation. There’s a reason why I drive
a German-made car! And of course it’s great to see those countries that are not
party to the seats of power doing well in such a tournament, and in so doing,
challenging the global order, even if in a not very significant way.
Globalization has led to increasing
diasporas, meaning that the followers of particular nations may be found all
over the globe – Mexico’s victory against Croatia was celebrated wildly in Californian
streets and that of Algeria moving into the second round was cheered on city
streets all over France. The fact that so many players from all around the
world play in the English premier league has been linked to the poor
performance of the England team, as it means that not enough English players
get exposure at these highest levels, undermining the formation of a solid
national team, and also the dominance of the premier league has led some clubs
to want to limit players’ involvement (and potential for injury) outside club
games. These seem to be excuses to me, but certainly if we want examples of
globalization, we need look no further than football.
I use the example of the obscene level of footballers’
salaries to demonstrate the huge inequity in income in the UK; I’m saddened by
the takeover of what started as a working class game by big business. This has
happened to such an extent that many now feel that the beautiful game has been
poisoned – by corruption, political interference, bribery and fixing – whether
that is of the location for future world cups or of individual matches. I’ve
written in this blog before about the appalling conditions facing the migrant
labourers working on the stadia in Qatar, and since then there have of course
been widespread allegations of corruption in how Qatar was awarded the world
cup. The international body, FIFA
increasingly looks like a corrupt oligarchy operating in a secret world.
As in football, as in life – the world cup
illustrates key health promotion values in that we can use it to point out
inequalities, power, oppression and discrimination. Sport of course is often
used to promote health, in encouraging individuals to become more active. We
can see the Tour de France effect on cycling in Britain, and even before that,
the number of people cycling once a week in the last six months in the UK had
grown to 2.1 million. Whilst the figures for people getting involved in sport
are generally on the increase, the numbers playing football once a week have
fallen in the last 12 months, and falls are particularly prominent in working class
areas. See:
Sport is also implicated in social capital;
locally organized football and other sports clubs are often used as one measure
of this important concept. See the book
Nicholson, M. and Hoye, R (2008) Sport and Social Capital, Taylor and Francis
for a thorough overview of the role of sport in participation, social
engagement and social capital.
The World Cup in Brazil cost $11 billion.
It led to all sorts of protests from ‘ordinary’ Brazilians when so many in Brazil
live in poverty. Peaceful protest and social
action are part of our repertoire of activities to create meaningful social change
for a healthier world – but sometimes I’m not optimistic.
