Wouldn’t we make a little too much about footballers? Latest example: the magnificent documentary trilogy Beckenbauer, the last emperor on Arte. Answer: no. The proof below. The editorial by Thibaud Leplat.
Can a footballer save a nation? We often exaggerate, it’s true. We pretend to believe that a guy who hits triples on the weekend can solve our existential problems. Despite the love and admiration we have for Mbappé or Shevchenko, Football can do nothing and the heroes become anonymous again on the Eastern Front. At the start of the war in Ukraine, I remember the photos of these proud Ukrainian champions defending themselves against the Russian invader. Since then, 487 of them have died. The tanks were not silent. No, sport does not change the world. Let’s stop lying, once and for all.
Another hypothesis to explain our gullibility: we pretend to believe to give ourselves courage. Because deep down we know very well that footballers are no match for great scientists, great politicians, great writers. A footballer has no work. No new ideas about the world. Any statement implying the contrary is, at best, naivety, at worst, cynicism. Conclusion we all agree, no one waited for Michel Platini to make Europe or Zinedine Zidane to take the lead on the Algerian war.
Deschamps, Platini, Leonidas
I watched the Arte documentary on Franz Beckenbauer with suspicion (by the way, why are Arte football docs always the best?). And, surprise, rather than academically taking up the Kaiser’s career in detail, the director, Torsten Körner, attempts an interesting allegory: telling the second part of the German twentieth century from the figure of its most eminent footballer. From the contrition of the 50s, through modernization in the 70s then the European turning point and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the reunification crowned by victory in the World Cup the following year: everything in this film, gives the figure of Beckenbauer the status of a symbol.
Few match extracts, but Platini to praise the exterior of the Bavarian master’s foot, Deschamps to expose his natural hierarchy between “leaders”, “neutrals” and “followers”. Artists, too, intellectuals to say how Beckenbauer’s grace, the elegance of his aristocratic bearing, his taste for elsewhere had transformed him into the vanguard of German resurrection. The peaceful irruption of German flags gathered around the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin to celebrate the 1990 world title can almost bring a tear. A great European people had just been reborn peacefully and made Beckenbauer its leader in the order of passions. Implacable.
Along the way, we must therefore revise our initial hypothesis. Yes, footballers are grandiose figures. But they don’t win any wars and in 1000 years, when the World Cups no longer exist, who will still remember Beckenbauer? Will he find a place in the pantheon of forgotten athletes alongside Milon of Crotone, Leonidas of Rhodes or Melagomos of Caria? No.
Break-in hero
The sports hero is not a hero of a novel either. Rastignac, Edmond Dantès, Jean Valjean represent ambition, revenge, courage. The sporting hero is only flesh, he says nothing, presents no idea greater than himself. In a body that has become an object of worship, it is too incarnate (caroin Latin, the flesh) to offer something other than a selfish and perishable performance. Where then does the flesh of certain men begin to speak so loudly? How do sporting performances suddenly seem to contribute to major historical shifts? The fact is that, heroes by breaking in, athletes change the world without wanting to.
Of course, football players are not historical figures. As such, they do not deserve any statues on city center roundabouts. That said, if their posterity is only involuntary (what does Lineker weigh compared to Churchill?) their notoriety says something about the times in which it occurs. If football is a “mirror of the times” as is trumpeted everywhere (before asking for subsidies) it is not because it reflects society, but rather because it forces it to think. Football, basically, is a language (like dance, like music, like love). It is a set of signs that express meaning. His lexicon is made up of gestures and intentions. Its incomparable metaphorical power is born from this original simplicity: everyone talks about football without ever having played it.
With us, there is no theory, you just have to see to believe. Believing, seeing Beckenbauer control the ball in his area, that being German is not another way of renouncing elegance. Believing that one has every right to disobey unjust orders (passing with the outside of the foot rather than the inside) if the end is praiseworthy (speeding up the game). Believing that in sport you always have the right to start again.
