Albert Camus, philosopher-goalkeeper, saw football as a metaphor for life. The beautiful game also was about destiny, winning and losing, joy and despair. Such contrasting emotions will be felt in equal measure by Old Firm fans today when the domestic football season reaches one of the most exciting climaxes in the game's long history. The winning side and its army will be ecstatic; the losers distraught. Rangers will either take the league title for a record-busting tenth consecutive year or Celtic will finally deliver their fans the trophy they have coveted for so long. Today's matches have beguiled even non-football fans, among them the declining number of women who have no time for the game. But even the most ardent fan would have to admit that Bill Shankly's aphorism about football being more important than life and death was hyperbolic.
Yet Glasgow's business leaders have detected an irritability and insomnia-induced tiredness among their employees whose minds have been on another matter this week. The city's Chamber of Commerce has even asked bosses to be gentle with emotionally-frazzled staff returning to work after the weekend's defining events. And if anyone still doubts the pull of football they should recall that Scottish Office staff are being allowed to finish early on June 10 to enable them to watch Scotland's opening World Cup encounter with Brazil. Football is enjoying a worldwide boom fuelled by satellite and terrestrial television money and big business sponsorship. It is also cool, thanks largely to Nick Hornby's over-rated writing on the subject. He wrote that to support a team was to make a lifelong commitment, a not particularly insightful observation in itself but an ironic comment on our times in which
one marriage in three ends in divorce.
For many, football lightens the gloom of a dull life, offers the emotional and social drifter an identity, and provokes genuine (mostly law-abiding) enthusiasm. Despite the great cost involved in following a team and buying its merchandise, the obscenely inflated salaries ''top'' players earn, and the alienation of boards of directors and stars from the ordinary fan, football still provokes a fierce loyalty. Look no further for it than Glasgow today, a city whose South Side and East End will be at fever pitch and which will itself be febrile when the two lots of fans, who still feed on stadium bigotry, converge on its centre in the early evening. To the winners will go the spoils of victory; to the losers we trust (no doubt piously) sporting commiserations; to the city our fervent hope that no blood will be spilt.
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