A Journey of Discovery in the Never-Ending Game
Football as chaos, beauty, and the uncovering of who we are.
Nothing about this article is based on fact. Perhaps there’s nothing in it that’s true or even of value to you, the reader. Still, I’m compelled to write these words. I’m not here to convince you or argue a point. These thoughts simply spilled out from my experiences, my thinking and observing. If you're seeking a how-to, today’s essay is not that. But there’s a chance it might lead to other thoughts or even actions. Then again, maybe not. I’m not entirely sure this is even about football. And yet, it’s also everything to do with football—and the life within it.
For most, football is about the professionals and the trials of earning a place in the highest ranks of the sport. We look to those few athletes and coaches as if they’ve been sprinkled with stardust, as if they hold the secret formula to walk the hallowed grounds of the game’s elite. These people, we believe, have figured it out. They’ve run through fire and emerged with something sacred. But football is for everyone. It teaches all who are ready or awake to its lessons. Each of us, in and around the game, holds the potential to discover our truest selves through it.
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Each week I write to support coaches and fans of the beautiful game to see beyond simply tactics and into the whole human experience that the game evokes. This is The Art of Football Project.
Past articles you might like:
César Luis Menotti: The Philosopher Who Coached with His Heart
He Told Me to F##k Off… So I Gave Him the Captain’s Armband
Paul Gascoigne: The Genius Who Couldn't Be Tamed
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There’s no required amount of time to be involved in football, nor any level that must be reached, in order to become fully alive to what the game offers. There are no chosen ones. No sacred moment from above that marks the beginning of the journey. If you’re awake and alive, you can be part of it. Perhaps even if you’re not aware that you are. I don’t know. I’m no longer trying to know. That, it seems, is part of my own journey.
The feelings tied to this kind of discovery are hard to pin down. You can compare them to climbing a mountain, sinking a long putt, returning an impossible serve, finishing a marathon, or composing a perfect chord progression, each one requiring you to be present, engaged, and in motion. The experience doesn’t depend on speed or outcome. It’s the act of doing that opens you to something more. And yet football, for me, holds a uniquely powerful frame. From the very beginning, you are with teammates. You face the difficulty of using your feet, not your more capable hands. Fans appear on the sidelines from your very first steps. And beyond all of that is a global consciousness, a shared language that transcends words. From dusty villages to towering stadiums, it connects people across the world.
This game—football—is an accelerator of learning. A vehicle for transformation. A space in which we discover who we are. If we are aware. But it always waits for us no matter how old our body becomes. It waits for you to awaken to its lessons.
Football: a journey of discovering.
There are more hydrogen molecules in a single drop of water than stars in the sky. How is this possible? From an early age, we try to organize and control. Everything in its place, a place for everything. Until life intervenes, suddenly and without warning. A child is born. A car crash changes everything. A sunset makes us stop and stare. An injury reshapes a season. A single moment in a game alters its course. How do these fit into the ordered lives we try so hard to maintain? What do they mean?
Football mirrors this same unpredictability. It is a galaxy of infinite stars, each moment like a snowflake—unique, impossible to replicate, yet part of something greater. The game presents itself in fragments, randomly and without pattern, asking us not to conquer but to respond. We attempt to clarify, then organize. And then a new moment arrives, asking us to start again. What if the first kick had gone forward instead of sideways? Would the entire game have shifted? Are the analysts seeing what the player saw? Or are they simply trying to organize the chaos after the fact?
Chaos, in its truest definition, is not disorder—it is a system so vast our minds cannot perceive its hidden logic. But colloquially, it frightens us. We call it noise. We call it confusion. And yet we step into it willingly, from coach to player, analyst to sport scientist, all of us immersed in the same swirling current. Each of us is at a different point in trying to tame it, to interpret it, to find form in the formless. This might just be the human disease, the need to simplify what was never meant to be simple.
I remember watching a Mexican team managed by a seasoned Brazilian coach. The match was uneventful, slow. The manager barely moved. Silent. Still. No shouting, no gesturing. With the game in stalemate, he stood, gave a few simple directions, perhaps to the fullback, and sat back down. Almost immediately, the team came to life, scoring four goals in a fluid burst of energy. The complex became simple in an instant. But that moment of clarity, I suspect, had taken him fifty years to reach.
They say it’s a team game. And yet, only individuals can improve. A team may become more cohesive, more connected, but one cannot make a team better in the same way one cannot make water more wet. It is the player who must struggle, refine, and grow—offering the team a chance to become more than the sum of its parts. It is one of football’s dualities: the collective and the individual coexisting, depending on one another. From the coach to the player, the analyst to the CEO, the groundskeeper to the assistant, no one is thinking only of the team. Everyone is considering their place inside of it—their role, their effort, their meaning. This shared yet silent struggle is what binds them. It is a deeply human experience.
When met with honesty, that struggle can yield results, some visible, some not. The scoreline might reflect it, or it might not. But the deeper impact is recorded elsewhere, in character, in resilience, in growth. On the scoreboard, yes. But also on the scorecard of life.
Wins and losses come and go. Mastery, however, remains. The pursuit of it drives us. Mastery of emotion. Mastery of striking a ball with precision. Of saying the right word at the right time. Of noticing details that might momentarily bring order to the chaos. And just as we glimpse it, the moment passes. The next one asks for our full attention.
Love and beauty are found in football's purest moments, when players and crowd become one. A transcendent experience. Something akin to seeing the top of a mountain range, or a baby's first step. Moments that can’t be measured but can be felt. Always personal. Always beyond language. Football is love. It is beauty, however you choose to define it. It doesn't need to be boxed in or explained. It must be lived. Felt. Shared. This is what brings us back to it, again and again. Like wiping tears from your partner’s face when they cry for no reason. We don’t need to understand. We just need to be present.
Complexity. Chaos. Infinite.
Inside these moments, inside the struggle, we begin to accept ourselves. We show up again tomorrow, open to what may come. We try to explain the difficult, even the impossible. Or we simply let it be what it is.
From the fire of competition, from our attempts to order the chaos, from our love for the game and the people inside it, from the roar of the arena or the quiet of a pitch at dusk, we are invited to awaken. We are invited to become more fully ourselves.
This is why football matters to me.
It is a never-ending journey of discovery.
It is a never-ending journey of becoming—me.
Thanks for reading,
Will
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