I've fallen out of love with watching sports
...and I'm not totally sure why?
Right now, I should be sitting in Stamford Bridge Stadium, watching the Women’s Chelsea FC v Tottenham Hotspurs football match.
In a box, and everything. Like a fancy lady, y’know?
But instead, after listening attentively to a panel on women and sport preceding the match, I hitched my backpack on my shoulders and shuffled out of the room. I had been invited for a whole afternoon of activities, but instead I was heading home; a brown salmon swimming against the blue and white current surging towards the stadium.
(The crowd turning up to watch the match was exceptionally well behaved, by the way. Mostly families, young children and many, many girls. No shouting, yelling or drunk hooligan behaviour. You’d be excused for thinking everyone was filing into a school assembly hall, not a football match).
I couldn’t quite understand why I was giving up the opportunity to sit in a box seat for a Chelsea match. Sure, I’ve never liked Chelsea - I inherited Liverpool allegiance from my father after all, and all I’d ever heard about Chelsea from him was that their fans were skinheads and racists. There was a notorious group called the Chelsea Headhunters back in the day…
But my reticence to stay for the match wasn’t about Chelsea FC (though there is a worthwhile conversation to be had about how clubs are held accountable for fan behaviour beyond policy statements and fluffy sentiments). This reticence is something I have noticed in myself for a while. I’ve fallen out of love with sports.
I used to adore watching sports. Like, I scrapbooked every FIFA Men’s Football World Cup since I was 11. In 1998, when France won, not only do I remember watching the match but I was head to toe in blue, soccer ball pyjamas (which had a weird flap in the crotch because yes, it was a set of ‘boys’ pyjamas). Throughout my teens and twenties, I was committed to watching every single World Cup match. I almost did, except for that time in 2010. See, timezone differences meant in Australia, matches were often held in the middle of the night. I was such a grumpy sod during the day (sleep deprived from watching too many 1am and 3am matches) that my mother banned me from the telly for three nights in a row. Oh, you should have seen my fury!
But it wasn’t just football I loved. I have been an avid F1 fan and reporter for years, writing on the sport and traveling to multiple countries to follow the races. I’m the kinda gyal who strides into a crowded pub, fights her way to the front and yells at the screen as if the athletes can hear. I’ve never been the type for a physical fight outside a ring, but get me in a stadium or trackside and my language gets so colourful it puts rainbows to shame.
Sports; watching them, playing them, jostling over them, has always been my bag. Until, suddenly, it wasn’t.
I’ve been trying to pinpoint when this changed occurred. I knew I had been falling out of love with watching Formula 1 for a while, probably after the release of DRIVE TO SURVIVE season two. Season One I was all over, but by the time the second came around, I couldn’t bring myself to tune in. This was a gradual shift away from the sport that once had been my entire world, but I chalked it down to grief. I had tried to make it into F1, first as a driver, then an engineer, then as a broadcaster. Now all I could be was a fan? I couldn’t go from being so inside the tent, to the howling wind outside. It felt impossible. So I turned away.
But with football, the change was far more abrupt. I was obsessed with the Euros in 2021, gathering friends in Paris and watching matches in cafes and restaurants around the city. But in 2022, with the men’s World Cup in Qatar, I didn’t watch a single game.
Was I making a ‘statement’? Taking a ‘stand’ against all the human rights violations in the lead up to the competition?
Maybe. But I also knew that these critiques could not be untangled from orientalist and islamophobic attitudes from Western pundits and officials, either. It felt complicated, tricky. Political.
And perhaps in that, we have the answer.
For me, watching sports used to be an escape.
Everything in my life, from a very early age, has always been political. Divisions between communities were serious, fatal. Politics, in life, could not be treated lightly.
Divisions in sports could be just as fierce, but they felt… safer. The stakes were lower. Enjoyable. Fun, even.
But now, politics have caught up with the sports I used to love. And so, for me, these worlds are no longer havens from the political battles that define my every other realm.
I’m not saying it should be any different. These changes are vital, required moves. Politics should catch up, indeed, these realms weren’t ever actual havens, I just closed my mind off from the politics, accepted their status quo, surrendered to the injustice. Maybe at some level, I thought it was okay if I did that, if I looked away from the inequity of it all, because at the end of the day, it was only a game. Right?
(Have I been delusional for wanting my sports and my politics served up separately?)
As I sat in the audience for the panel today, I wondered if we would one day think of this moment - when the interest in women’s football reached a tipping point - the same way we consider Western historical moments like suffrage, women being allowed into university, being allowed to work after marriage. The moment when women in sport began the process of getting what they should have always had, equitable and just treatment.
It would be pretty cool, wouldn’t it? If that was what we were seeing?
I hope it is. And I hope, with the change, maybe I will find a way back to loving these games.
Because I miss it. I miss the burst of adrenaline in my chest as I watch a striker take their shot in the final seconds of a match. The intensity of feeling during a penalty shoot out, the depths of sorrow when victory is snatched from outstretched fingers. There’s so much human emotion in watching sport that I don’t get from theatre, or TV, or even live music. There’s something primal in it. And I miss it.
One day, inshallah.
Have you fallen in or out of love with watching sports? Would love to hear more about your experiences below!
Now, for this week’s recommendations…
Must read article on Sudan and war
If you only read one thing on Sudan, please make it this. It’s a written interview with Magdi el Gizouli, a Sudanese scholar in political economy and intellectual history. For example below, he answers a question about neoliberalism and the militia in Sudan.
Neoliberalism does not just have a role, it is the logic central to this entire argument. The RSF itself is a neoliberal army. It is the privatized version of an army in the third world, in a rural periphery. If Margaret Thatcher were to create an army in rural Sudan, it would be the RSF. It functions as a corporate structure; it is led by a single family and is not answerable to anybody. There is no way of controlling or challenging the demands or decisions of the RSF leader. Here, the market system creates new commodities and sells them, even when no market previously existed. The narcotics the RSF sells, crystal meth for example, are a completely novel commodity in the Sudanese market. The need for narcotics is a creation of the market system.
The Lit-est Sudanese Playlist Ever
The Guardian recently shared this piece on Sudanese keyboard player Jantra. His tunes are incredible, a mix of regional and classic Sudanese vibes with synthesized sounds and a bunch of other music words I don’t understand. Just…have a listen, and be whisked away. SO GOOD! Mashallah. Making music from a warzone, yknow.
A World in Common: Contemporary African Photography
If you’re in London between now and January, I definitely recommend checking out the Tate Modern’s new exhibition on contemporary African photography. Some incredible and profound work, but it was especially cool to personally know at least two of the artists displayed, including South-Sudanese-Australian Atong Atem! If you can’t see it in person, click on the link here as there are exhibition books also available for purchase.
Thank you, as always for reading and supporting my work. Your comments from last week’s piece were thought provoking and generous, and made me so glad for the community we are building here. Big shout out to new paid subscribers: Lucy and Doreen! As a freelancer of almost a decade, income from this newsletter makes the world of difference, and every little bit counts. If you feel like you have the capacity to support my work, do consider upgrading to a paid subscription.
I shall leave you with an enjoyable tiktok… for all those finishing Top Boy Season 4 and wanting to speak like a roadman:
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Until next week inshallah,
Yassmin
Must say it was kinda cool to see the black gentleman amid the scary chealsea headhunter mob. Would love to hear his story!
I loved reading this - MashAllah you write so well and poetically! Sport is such an amazing space to escape. However for me, as a Muslim women, seeing Muslim players was extra amazing. I’m a Man Utd fan by heart, and seeing Amrabat play so well, after what Morocco had gone through, and the success Morocco had during the WC, amplified my love for sport and my appreciation for Islam and Muslim players. Similarly, Kareem Abdul Jabbar has been such an inspiration to see how he bridges all these values and yet played at such a high value!