Football: When the sport is much more than life and death

Belgium fans cheering their team in a past match. [Photo/Courtesy]

Would fans lay down their lives for football? Bill Shankly, the legendary football player and Liverpool manager, once famously said he was “disappointed” with the idea that the sport was a matter of life and death. “I can assure you,” he said, “it is much, much more important than that.”

It was a Scotsman’s dry wit, meant to both mock and at the same time recognise the passionate tribalism – for the club, for the national side – of many fans. If policy makers and commentators think tribalism is over, the millions – billions – of members of the huge world football community know it is not. For them, group identity is the stuff, and the staff, of life. And in the nearly 60 years since Shankly cracked the joke, it has only become more intense.