Shaqiri, the crying cat

This article will be like a soccer match: a chat with no real beginning or end, with a draw, written for the good supporters, the ones who are aggressive, who destroy entire cities with violence and beer; the supporters, therefore, that you'd rather see at your neighbor's than at home.

Voltaire observed that the Roman Senate poured the people's anger on foreign countries rather than on itself. The same is true of soccer, which channels all the frustrations and daily hatred that the match allows supporters to express by taking the place of the warrior on the green turf, with invective and shouts of delight.

And all the while, the cat cries. He's crying because he's all alone. Just like those posters you see all over Switzerland, claiming to «exchange husbands for good care». I don't know exactly what it's all about; I suspect it's an advert for an adulterous dating site. Perhaps time will tell.

Well, the cat's alone, the wife's alone, the kids' alone. Is this the solidarity effect of soccer? I think so. If people have the gods they deserve, they also have the sports they deserve and, more rightly, the teams they deserve. Apparently, Mr Shaqiri (or maybe it's someone else, I don't know), is ready to leave our national team. We're not reliving Marignano.

Or maybe it does, actually. It's astonishing to see the extent to which soccer crystallizes age-old antagonisms, with national anthems, presidents on the spot, and aggression towards other supporters. Sport is said to soften morals. In any case, it contains tensions within a codified framework, and provides an outlet for popular vindictiveness, while feeding Qatar's sheikhs. Which is all the more astonishing when most of the players are not necessarily representative of the country they are defending. But that's not the point: you don't know why you hate the other person, you just hate them, you honk your horn, you go to sleep happy and you have sweet dreams.

I said that sport contains tensions within a codified framework. It would therefore be worrying to see these tensions exacerbated, not only within the confines of the soccer stadium, but also in the so-called «fan zones». Strangely enough, it's the Russians and the English who have proved problematic during this Euro. A symbol of the turmoil shaking these two countries? At a time of Brexit, let's at least savor the bitter consolation that the English shouldn't cause any more problems in the future. Perhaps there won't even be a Euro at all. On the other hand, we'll be sure to stay away from England-Wales, England-Scotland or England-Ireland.

Whether the cat laughs or the cat cries, whether Shaqiri wins or Shaqiri loses, you'd rightly say, doesn't really matter - it's the whim of a peaceful Europe, and of Europeans who can still afford such entertainment. In the end, let's hope that the cat continues to cry because it's all alone at home, or all alone on the mat, rather than crying because it's starving or because its master has gone to war.

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