The Ugly Truth About the Beautiful Game
The philosopher Roger Scruton once wrote that people become conservative as they experience loss; the sense of passing, of dying and death. Loss gives them a love of things as they are, a desire to hold, to protect, to conserve—even if all attempts to do so come too late.
I thought of this recently when I found myself in the absurd situation of feeling sad that a multimillionaire French soccer player had decided against joining the world’s most successful club. Why did I care that Kylian Mbappé had decided to stay with Paris Saint-Germain rather than sign a contract with Real Madrid, a club I do not support or even particularly like (and that is in fact playing against my favorite team, Liverpool, in the biggest game in world soccer today)?
Because his decision signaled the end of something, and with it came an understanding of that something’s passing. That thing was the old hierarchy, the romance and glory, of
