A Dangerous Friend

For better or worse, anger is as much a part of football as the creative corruptibility of the game’s administrators, inclement midweek nights in Stoke-on-Trent and the consistent outscoring of Emile Heskey at international level by Latin American goalkeepers. Whether through Roy Keane’s on-pitch nod to Edmond Dantès in the 2001 Manchester derby at Old Trafford or the submersion of Twitterspace beneath a hormonal torrent of adolescent fury, football allows wrath – which often masquerades under the guise of ‘passion’ – to be manifested amongst its players, fans, and officials with a raw, unbridled fervour that might otherwise go unexpressed. As one of the more powerful – yet unstable – emotions, the exhibition of wrath on and off the pitch is an unavoidable consequence of human nature. It’s symptomatic of how we are, and football is merely an outlet through which many choose to articulate anger – and indeed the wider spectrum of emotion. Though anger is not always a bad thing – particularly with regard to sporting contest – it’s a state of mind that’s hard to control, a fuse burning down towards detonation that some find more difficult to extinguish than others. It can be channelled into something positive, but can also ‘go off’, a fact which is often made evident by certain events that surround the sport. 

Wrath is not inherent to the actual game of football. Sports like boxing or rugby require a clinical, focused brutality that football does not. In contrast to these sports, physical confrontation is a secondary aspect of the game; even for those on the Bowyer end of the belligerence scale, the primary emphasis is on technical proficiency – hack all you want, you won’t rise to the top unless you can also kick a ball about a bit. In football, then, anger and aggression must be harnessed, employed in combination with an adequate level of skill. While some compensate for a lack of the latter with copious amounts of the former, even the supremely talented – whether consciously or not – may find their ability appended by a certain level of anger. 

But, is this really such a bad thing?

Physiologically, sport and anger go hand in hand. It can be a stimulant, a motivator, and a tool through which the human mind can focus more clearly on specific tasks. Essentially, anger is a chemical process, a response that triggers a number of automated reactions within our bodies, both in physical and psychological terms. Outwardly, this drives us to make loud noises, to attempt to appear larger, and to bare our teeth and stare, all of which is geared to intimidate – something that will resonate with those familiar with the eyelid-stretching, shoulder-haunching bombast of the likes of Gennaro Gattuso and Eric Cantona. Internally, our adrenaline and noradrenaline levels increase, and both our heart rate and blood pressure rise. We become more optimistic, less prone to self-doubt; dangers don’t appear so dangerous and risks seem less risky. We gain more assurance in our endeavours, and to some extent lose our fear of failure. When angry, we simply don’t think about the negatives. Superficially, this seems like an ideal mindset to bring into a football match. 

Anger, then, can enhance our physicality, encourage us to put our heads where our brain tells us it really shouldn’t be put – like anywhere near Ryan Shawcross in an aerial duel – or provide the courage that an imaginative player needs in order to attempt a piece of creative flair. Perhaps this can, to some extent, explain the proverbial ‘nasty streak’ associated with many of the world’s greatest footballers. Players like Zinedine Zidane and Luis Suárez manage their aggression in a way that augments their talent, but are as a result more exposed to the consequences of anger. For footballers like this, the burning fuse doesn’t always get put out. Often, the cost of their submission to anger has been steep, as was the case with the infamous Zidane head-butt in the 2006 World Cup Final, a brutal act that hammered home the fine margin between artistic bellicosity and violence. This was not the blurrily tame soft-focus nudge-nod favoured by the modern football ‘hardman’, but rather the forceful expression of a man allowing his wrath a few instants of total free reign. 

A sad reality of football, however, is that anger is rarely limited to the players. Rage is as frequently seen off the pitch as on it, whether in the stands or elsewhere. In that regard, two striking incidents spring to mind. In 2007, according to police reports, a young man named Uroš Mišić used a flare to assault Nebojša Trajković, a plain-clothed officer who was – for whatever reason – amongst the fans at a Red Star Belgrade home match. At one point, Trajković – who was repeatedly punched, kicked and pelted with missiles before eventually managing to scramble over a fence to safety – produced a gun and pointed it both at the fans and into the sky. Charged with attempted murder, Mišić was sentenced to ten years in prison. 

Though the Mišić episode was graphic in its callousness, an event that occurred in July of 1994 shows us that when it comes to football, wrath is not something contained by the walls of a stadium. On the second day of that month, Andrés Escobar was shot dead in the car park of a Medellín night club. Ten days previously, Escobar had conceded an own goal that eventually served to eliminate his team from the World Cup in the USA. The prevailing belief is that Escobar was executed on behalf of cartels upset at losing large amounts of money on account of Colombia’s early exit from the tournament. Escobar’s death is a stark illustration of the danger of our instinct to bring anger into the sporting arena; for his killers, revenge was the only apt repayment for the defender’s ‘sins’ on the field. Escobar paid with his life for an error in a football match, a fact that serves as an indictment of humanity’s vulnerability to wrath and a striking argument in favour of the need to minimise its presence in sport. 

That assault, imprisonment, and ultimately the murder of a human being can be the direct result of a sporting encounter is both a potent indicator of the destructive nature of anger and a reminder of the instability of this emotion. It affects players, fans, managers, referees and pretty much everyone associated with football. Though some have the self-control to channel anger and use it to push the limits of their physicality, psychology, and technique, others do not, as illustrated by the above cases. A dangerous friend, anger can spill over from being an enhancement to performance and a necessary ingredient in the stew that is the sporting mindset, to a treacherously errant force desirous of retribution and capable of inflicting pain, ending careers, and even ruining lives.

This article was first published in Pickles Magazine