There is no truth in the goals

How sport from the method of self -affirmation has turned into a confrontation space

Despite the scandal in FIFA, the construction of stadiums for the 2018 World Cup is in full swing, Samara, March 2015

The well-known aphorism “War is a continuation of politics by other means” in relation to today's Russia should be reformed: here and now the war for some reason always becomes a continuation of sports. The enchanting victory over the Dutch in the quarterfinals of the European Football Championship 2008 was followed by an operation to “force peace” in South Ossetia (which, in turn, began on the opening day of the Olympics in Beijing); The Olympic Games in Sochi almost without a respite continued the invasion of Crimea and the conflict in the Donbass. It would be stupid to directly withdraw military victories from the victories of sports-but there is definitely some symbolic connection. For official propaganda of the 2000s, the success in sports was the main evidence that Russia was “rising from the knees”, and the right to hold the Olympiad and the football championship of the world was perceived as an unconditional evidence of international recognition. By the mid-2010s, the sport from the method of self-affirmation turned into a confrontation space, the victory of the hockey team over the Americans is immediately translated into the language of geopolitical confrontation-they say, they “devoted Obama”; The Sochi Olympiad is surrounded by a conspiracy of the dark forces, which first denigrate it with anti -corruption revelations, and then completely arrange a massacre on the Maidan and Grushevsky Street during the games; The football champion-2018 three years before the start is at the center of the international scandal: hiding behind the same struggle with corruption, the world backstage is trying to take away our future stadiums-and possibly future victories.
Specialist experts are trying to explain that the investigations in FIFA are not directed against the championship in Russia, that the ugliness with the choice of countries-the hosts of the world championships have been going on at least from the beginning of the century, that the most egregious Corruption Rosad was discovered in the Federation of Central and North America-but their championship is closer to the body, the news about the investigation in FIF The extension of the sanctions and military preparations of NATO countries, and for some reason it is in the context of the championship in Russia that the words “boycott” and “transfer” flash, even write: FIFA has a secret plan to transfer the championship from Russia to Qatar-as if they received their own honestly!

Judging by the public reaction to news from Zurich, the prospect that Russia can take the world championship, in addition to natural resentment, it also causes poorly hidden relief: right now, at the height of the crisis, during the war, at the peak of confrontation with the West, well, what else can there be a festival of sports. He will swim the money from the budget, for the sake of several weeks of fun, they will press pensioners again and undergo doctors, and then the stadiums will stand empty years. Well, then Putin’s mutual and passionate love with international sports officials has long been suspicious, and that somewhere (albeit not in Moscow, but a little west), they finally pressed a large-scale julier that traded in their administrative resource-this is somehow invigorating. Let justice triumph, the thief sits in prison, and the championship hold the most worthy (and not those who gave more on the paw).
And somewhere in this place the coming (quite possible) triumph of justice gives an misfire. Yes, we are for everything to be according to the law - but all the countries (and all the organizers of the championships), and Joseph Blatter with his unclean methods, did not Putin invented these muddy lobbying games? Yes, we do not want to build meaningless sports facilities - but in addition to the stadiums there will be roads, airports, stations, in the end, new fields for children? Yes, strengthening the country's prestige through hockey victories or holding a football championship is a sign of not the best taste and a century before last, but this is the paradox: that ten years ago could only serve as a reason for the most primitive scholar-patriotism, today is a symbolic connection-one of the few, working at a public and nationwide level, with an open global global level-with an open global level. The world. Even the notorious Eurovision contest in 2015 suddenly begins to refute the propaganda myths - all these stories about the Geyropo mired in debauchery, where they hate Russia fiercely. What can we say about the global sports festival, where crowds of fans from all continents come together - such a thing works by nature to destroy mutual hostility and suspicion. Let someone need this championship to confirm their own steepness-but for people from different cities of the country this is just a holiday, and not the one in which we rejoice in our own especiallyness and separateness, but connecting us with the whole world. The next threatening to us in connection with the Championship of sanctions and boycotts perfectly fit into the logic of the new Cold War - but this particular championship could be a great reason to stop the war.

Photo: Igor Chernikov/Kommersant