Peter Hitchens, Is Football A Pagan Cult?

I care about quite a few things, rather a lot, as readers of this site will know. Is it just an individual thing that I find the whole thing laughable, and actually quite want the English football team to lose, if only to bring home to these fanatics that this country is in fact in decline, and that its decay cannot be stopped by winning a football game - and that our inability to win tournaments in games we invented is a sign of that decline?

I am almost permanently furious that they can rush on to the streets to show 'patriotism' over a football game, but appear unmoved by the theft of our national independence, the rape of our countryside, the destruction of our culture and all the many real and lasting ways in which this country daily loses the Real World Cup of Nationhood.

Is it because I am one of the last living survivors of the public school era of compulsory sport and of semi-compulsory enthusiasm for it ('Stop slacking, get out there on the touchline and support your house, Hitchens!')

Perhaps it is, but if so, am I really worse than they are. I have marched in huge demonstrations and dissolved myself in crowds, and increasingly I regret having done so. I now prefer not to surrender to mass feelings, which are almost always wrong. More importantly, why do they care?

I do think a lot of people get pleasure from feeling they belong to something bigger than themselves. I also think there is a special satisfaction to be got from rituals, from unified chanting, and from the emotions of crowds.

The huge football stadiums of the 21st century are the pagan temples of today, in which we can take part in ceremonies of hero-worship, sing what pass for hymns, feel as one with our fellow-creatures and, if the thing is properly conducted, walk away afterwards with a feeling that life has been enhanced in some mysterious way.

People even wear special clothing for these occasions, the extraordinarily strange habit of dressing up in footballers' kit, with the name and number of a favourite player displayed on the torso.

I am told (but would like to know more) that the atmosphere and the pattern of major football matches is quite similar to those which would have been found at the great festivals of sacrifice which were held before enormous crowds in the temples of Ancient Greece and Rome.

If our civilisation were to be overcome by a volcanic disaster,as was Pompeii (which Heaven forfend), what would the archaeologists of 4010 make of football, if they had nothing to go on apart from the perfectly-preserved remains of the fans?

I think they would conclude that it had a religious purpose.