The World Cup is a chance for non-sports fans like me to embrace the beautifully inconsequential game.
Myke Bartlett
What joy it is to invest deeply into how well a nation you've never heard of moves a ball around a field.
If you're not a football fan, it's possible your life online has suddenly become quite alienating. Friends who may once have seemed sensible, sensitive, even artistic, have been inexplicably converted into people who name-drop wingers and centre backs and post about staying up late to watch Côte d'Ivoire play Ecuador.
All I can say is, don't fight it.
I was once like you. How I mocked grown men – and occasionally women – on TV panel shows, discussing football like it mattered. Talking about sport with the same intensity philosophers might debate existence (or Star Wars fans the latest film).
Having unexpectedly sporty children has changed me. I understand now the appeal and importance of sport is that it doesn't matter. Sport is something into which we can invest our most intense passion and emotion, in 90-minute instalments, without it having any real effect on our broader lives.
In that light, the World Cup has arrived at just the right time. As the news cycle doom-spirals us all into oblivion, what a joy it is to be consumed by something trivial for a few weeks. So let's put aside our usual tribalism and invest deeply in how well a nation we've never heard of can move a 23cm ball from one end of a field to the other, without drifting offside. If only every international conflict could be resolved so quickly and entertainingly.
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You may worry you don't know where to start. The truth is, it's not really important who's playing. Even a newbie can become invested in a game in 30 seconds. Pick a team whose jersey you admire. Choose the player with the best hair. Or indulge in a spot of patriotism and back your home side. It really doesn't matter.
Even the quality of play barely matters. A bad game can be just as entertaining as the best. I've coached kids sport games where the passion, drama and intensity would rival that of a Champions League final.
Our brains, it seems, are wired for competition. For some of us, politics becomes a kind of sport. That can lead to misery. In football, we have the comfort of rules. There are limits. No doubt the world would be in a much better place if certain leaders could be red-carded.
But it's not competition that makes the beautiful game so beautiful. It's cooperation. Teamwork. The fast passes that generate a goal. The tight defence rescuing a loose shot. The moments of physical poetry where talented people connect with other talented people to defy the odds.
That cooperation extends outside the game, because, like it or not, for the next few weeks we are all living in the World Cup community. Your level of engagement is down to you, but I have fond memories of how the last Women's World Cup opened up conversations that would never have existed with someone on the bus, a grumpy bloke at the dog park or the owner of our local bottle shop. Suddenly everyone is talking to each other. I had forgotten what it was like to share things with strangers.
There are arguments for bread, not circuses. For us to stay angry about injustices and spend every waking moment tracking global issues we are, for a large part, powerless to address. But even the most committed of us is likely aware of the need for a safe space. We all need a little corner of the world where the big things are, however briefly, invisible. There is a reason so many of us re-watch our favourite films and TV shows.
But those are happy places we visit alone. There aren't many places left where we still meet en masse. Much of pop culture has become a solitary pursuit – we so rarely watch the same television at the same time or listen to the same music. Football is a place that brings us all together.
There is a sense that we are living in divided times, sealed off in silos and echo chambers. Occasionally, something joyful and pointless will seep through the cracks. For the next few weeks, let's get together to celebrate the extreme highs and extreme lows of something supremely unimportant. Football doesn't matter and, right now, that makes it more important than ever.
Myke Bartlett is a writer and critic
