Football and the way it makes the world smile
For me, having had severe anxiety, football is my safe place. The security blanket that protects me from my worries. It’s as if it flips a switch in my brain, putting everything apart from football on hold.
Football, like lots of things, during these strange last 18 months, went on pause for a while but with the Euros and Copa América up and running, we can say welcome back football, we’ve missed you.
Football is our security blanket, something we can hold onto, an emotional refuge and an escape from anything that worries us. Football builds social interaction between people of all ages and boosts our well-being through its unending adrenaline rush, healing any internal divisions within nations and families.
Euro ‘2020’ and La Copa América are here, delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, tournaments that feel long overdue and therefore all the more special to football fans across the globe. Football tournaments like these are integral to communities, uniting us in a shared identity of supporting our nation, painting ourselves and decorating our neighbourhoods in our nation’s colours.
As well as bringing emotional value, there are large economic boosts to economies of all nations through broadcasting rights and prizes for progressing and participating in the tournaments. UEFA Euro 2020 is being held across the continent for the first time in the competition’s 60-year history, with 11 host cities in all.
Host city Dublin commissioned a report that revealed hosting just 4 games would generate 106 million to the nation, boosting local communities. In Britain, experts expect the tournament will inject 1 Billion pounds into pandemic-ravaged economies. A much-needed boost for embattled high streets limping from social distancing rules and months spent in lockdown.
More importantly, it is the social benefit that sport brings that makes it more than just a sport, a hobby, but something that defies description in the ways it makes the world smile.
Charities and foundations such as the Rio Ferdinand Foundation take pride in creating opportunities for young people. Opportunities can be wide-ranging, and can be as simple as ensuring small impoverished communities can have access to places to watch matches, allowing young people to see their role models play in front of crowds, inspiring ambition and determination to be like their heroes. Football opens up new pathways to employability, this may be enabling unemployed youths to volunteer in venues that broadcast the matches being played.
Due to the Euro 2020 Grants Programme set out by the Mayor of London, there are projects and community events set out all across London such as sporting schemes and arranged community football training sessions allowing young people to play the game they watch their heroes play and try and emulate them whilst having fun with their friends.
The love for football is unending. An estimated four billion people – half of the world’s population – would consider themselves fans of football, while 270 million people play the sport globally. Due to the audience in the professional game, it also provides a stage to campaign for social change such as acts like taking the knee throughout the premier league season’s Kick It Out Campaign and in the Euro 2020 tournament, and the recent social media boycott by premier league clubs, to make a statement against social inequality.
Football has undisputed uniting powers and for that, we must thank Football as it continues to inspire generation after generation because, without football, too many happy moments would be erased from our lives.
By Bromley Academy U16 Arthur Hammond