Here's to Football in 2022 and a year of chaos and beauty

Before the start of the new year, let's take a look at the last one.

Dec 31, 2022

Emi Martinez divides opinion as Argentina goalkeeper does X-rated celebration after winning World Cup Golden Glove | The Sun

How do you start a reflective piece about football in 2022?

It’s a question I mulled over for much longer than I should have, but it’s been a hard year to sum up in just a few words.

When I started this newsletter back in July, it was just a medium on which I hoped to share my thoughts on football to a few hundred people at most and maybe present them as an example of my work for job applications.

Now I sit here typing, with the knowledge that over 1000 of the people reading this chose to subscribe, and for that, I’m incredibly thankful, but I’m also grateful to those of you who click on these links when you see them and read what I have to say.

I also hit over 12k followers on Twitter, which I never got around to thanking people for (mainly because at the time I was under fire from a rather annoyed group of Ronaldo fans), so if you follow me there, thanks for that as well.

And with that I think I’ve procrastinated long enough, so let’s get back to the matter at hand.

You’ve clicked on this article today to read about football and review the rollercoaster of a year that was 2022. So how do we do that in a concise way that allows you to finish your afternoon brew and get back to watching the New Years’ games?

Well, I think I can sum up football in 2022 with one phrase:

“Sometimes there’s beauty in the chaos”

Now that may sound like a 14-year-old girl’s Tumblr post from 2013, but bear with me, I know where I’m going with this (I think).

If you follow me on Twitter, you know that as a football fan, I love chaos. As long as Manchester United, England or a team I like aren’t involved, I always root for the most outlandish and unexpected outcome.

I’m the evil hooded Kermit whispering in every sensible football fan’s ear, '‘But wouldn’t it be funny if they just lost?"

Every story would be worse if you could always predict the ending; sometimes you’ve just got to pray for a little bit of madness.

In a lot of ways, just wanting the underdog to win is just hoping for the most chaotic resolution. Seeing a team that has no business defeating their Goliath, do just that despite everyone expecting them not to, gives me great satisfaction.

When Morocco overcame all the odds and reached the semi-final of the World Cup and teams like Germany, Spain, Brazil and Portugal all crashed out much earlier than expected, I got my wish.

We had it in the individual matches, Japan beating Germany and Saudi Arabia triumphing against eventual winners Argentina, but this was a greater narrative.

Many cried out and asked ‘Wouldn’t it be better if we had all the best teams playing each other?’ The answer was no (since by beating them Morocco had proved they were actually one of the best teams).

Chaos reigned, but if you looked closely you could see the roots of something truly beautiful.

The Moroccan team became not only heroes in their own country but for the whole of Africa. They were showing how far the continent had come while also acting as inspiration for where they eventually could be.

But when they exited the competition the chaos was not over, as we saw in the final between Lionel Messi’s Argentina and Kylian Mbappe’s France.

For 75 minutes of the game, France looked like a shadow of themselves, but then led by a mercurial Mbappe, they came to life.

Mbappe scored one, then two, then three goals becoming only the second player ever to score a hat trick in a World Cup final…

… Unfortunately, he would also become the first to score a hat-trick and end up on the losing side as Argentina took the game to penalties and were victorious at the end of it.

Mbappe had confirmed himself as one of the all-time greats in the competition before he reached the age of 24 but had missed out on the trophy he truly craved.

Now, this wouldn’t be a great point if I only talked about a competition that happened in the final two months of the year let’s rewind a bit and talk about Real Madrid’s Champions League run.

There are going to be a few groups of fans who wince here. As I said one of the requirements for my own enjoyment of chaos is I need to not have an investment in it (So as a United fan talking about the later stages of the Champions League that is a pretty safe bet… sigh).

Real Madrid’s Champions League win in the 2021/22 season is one the most unexplainable sporting feats I think I’ve ever had the pleasure of watching.

It’s not that they had a bad team and were, therefore, the underdogs. They had an incredibly good one but unlike most top teams who looked to control chaos and minimise its effect, they harnessed it and used it to their advantage.

Whenever they looked down for the count, they rallied and found something inside themselves like the protagonist from every shonen anime you’ve ever seen.

It seemed like they were going behind on purpose to just make it fun for themselves, that’s how much they believed in their hustle and grind.

From being 2-0 down to Paris Saint Germain, to winning 3-2 on aggregate thanks to a hat-trick from Karim Benzema.

From nearly crashing out against Chelsea, to Rodrygo and then Benzema saving them again, with the latter scoring a 96th winner.

And of course, we can all remember Rodrygos’s 2-minute double salvo in extra time to see them through against Manchester City.

The final was a much uglier affair with Real Madrid winning 1-0 against Liverpool despite Jurgen Klopp’s side being overwhelmingly the better side, but I think at this point Ancelotti’s men had wracked up enough style points to let them off with it.

No matter how high the odds were stacked against them, by the end it seemed inevitable that they would find a way to come back and win. They somehow flipped probability on its head.

A chaotic journey with a beautiful conclusion.

Now I could continue painting you a tapestry of footballing disorder, but we both know you don’t have the time for another 2000 words along these lines, so let’s do a quickfire round of some of my favourite instances of mayhem over the past 12 months:

Salernitana went from the brink of extinction on New Year’s Day, to finding a new owner and inexplicably staying in the Serie A with the lowest-ever points total of 31. Chaos.
Manchester City went 2-0 down on the final day of the season and nearly handed Liverpool the Premier League title, but then they fully turned it around in the second half. Chaos.
The Lionesses defeated Norway 8-0, recording the biggest win in the history of the Women’s European Championships and confirming themselves as favourites for the tournament. Chaos.
The three minutes in the World Cup where both Spain and Germany were going out while Japan and Costa Rica progressed. Chaos.
Anything Darwin Nunez does on a football pitch. Chaos.

Emiliano Martinez was pictured celebrating his golden glove award by holding it to his crotch despite Qatar’s best efforts to manufacture their own perfect immortalisation of the event. Chaos.
And finally a recent one, Wout Faes scored two own goals to make Liverpool the first Premier League side to win from a losing position without scoring a goal themselves. Chaos.

I could list more examples, but I think my point is clear; 2022 showed why chaos is important for the beautiful game. It’s the ying to its yang, creating a perfectly balanced spectacle for fans to enjoy.

Juanma Lillo may have approached the topic of modern-day football and its obsession with removing disorder from the game with the anger of a man who’s just been woken up by a car alarm at 4 am, but I am going to take a much softer approach.

Yes, over longer periods, the status quo wins out 99% of the time. Just as every result can’t play out exactly as you’d expect, the reverse is also true. The improbable is called that because that’s what it is, an unexpected occurrence that happens irregularly.

But, it still can happen, and that’s what makes football special.

The moments of madness in 2022 showed that the game hasn’t been ruined. In fact, I think this year showed better than any that the football we love and crave is still very much alive.

It can still shock and surprise us; incite emotions and personal investment that no other spectacle can, and that’s because even when the result seems obvious and plain, there is still the smallest part of us that goes ‘wouldn’t it be beautiful if we saw some chaos.’

So with that, I say, here’s to 2023, I hope it’s a year that is less chaotic off the pitch (and outside of football) but continues to be just as chaotic on it.

Played on Paper

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