Does the Almighty Care About Football?
I've seen people praying over football clubs, it made me think.
My parents are devout Christians, so my brother and I spent countless hours in church during our formational years.
If there are seven days every week, at least three included participating in various happenings. Sunday morning service. Sunday night service. Tuesday night prayer meetings. Wednesday night youth service. Revival meetings Thursday and Friday night. Evangelising Saturday afternoon.
Sunday was expected. Wednesday was tailored for kids, and revival meetings offered the chance to explore church grounds unattended. Of them all, Tuesday night prayer meetings were the least fun. It was the most boring but presented as essential. An opportunity to get closer to God. As I said, my parents are devout, so I would be there.
Every day there was service, people would write prayer requests and place them in small wicker baskets, which were emptied into one large wicker basket. I remember the paper being pink, and placed inside the bulletins everyone received when they entered.
With my parents’ direction, I wrote prayer requests on occasion. Prayer for children is like writing to Santa Claus. I would ask God for a PlayStation, a basketball hoop, a big television, more money, good grades; anything an 11 or 12-year-old would want, I’d write down and hope God would answer. A common request was for the University of North Carolina and the Toronto Raptors to win whatever game they were playing. My relationship with Chelsea was in its infancy, but they would also get prayers.
On Tuesdays, adults (I knew them as “prayer warriors”) would come together and pray for themselves, each other, and the church body as a whole. They would lay hands on—or stretch out their arms towards—the big wicker basket that had grown over the week, and request God show the congregation healing, financial prosperity, blessings, mercy, and salvation.
As I remember, the requests weren’t individually read aloud. They were between the anonymous writer and God. The prayer warriors brought their collective intensity together and asked for divine intervention, a where-two-or-three-are-gathered vibe. My requests would have read like a shopping list, or like an actual person named Chelsea was in trouble. Thankfully I was spared the embarrassment.
At a certain point, your parents’ faith doesn’t carry over. You decide for yourself how influential religion will be throughout your life. I’m not a devout anything as it stands. I’m not prepared to claim that nothing exists. Atheism often feels like another religion, so I’m careful to avoid that label. Agnostic is closer to my feeling, but still falls short.
I live as close to a principled life as I can—those principles largely shaped by my upbringing—but some things cemented in religion don’t sit right; I go my own way in those instances.
Prayer is an interesting balance. If the house was shaking violently, if there was turbulence on a plane, or if something was happening health wise, my mind goes back to those pink pieces of paper. My neural pathways are programmed to call upon God. The rational mind does its best to create order, but in times when order can’t be found, there is a place to run.
While navigating my place religiously and culturally, I noticed was how often religion converged with sports. Nicknames of teams—be they Red Devils, Blue Devils, Sun Devils, Demon Deacons, Saints, or Quakers—began to stand out. Valparaiso University in Indiana changed its name from the Crusaders to the Beacons two years ago (something many teams who used the mascot have done) due to the “negative connotation and violence associated with the Crusader imagery,” according to the university.
A blatant example is the “Hail Mary” pass in American football. Taken from Catholicism, the play is called in late-clock situations. If a team is desperate for points and positioned correctly, they throw up a prayer and hope their team makes a catch. I suppose “Ave Maria” was too Latin to stick, but “Hail Mary” is perfectly named for the situation, and best exemplifies the tendency to blend religious beliefs and sports.
“Cross and inshallah” has come to mean something similar in football [inshallah meaning "if God wills" in Arabic]. It describes a team who play the ball wide, spam crosses into the box, and hope for headed chances or chaos leading to goalscoring opportunities. It has gone beyond the Arabic language and its Islamic origins. I’m confident some people use “cross and inshallah” who don’t know what inshallah means, but understand it contextually.
Sport is an escape. For some measure of hours it allows the mind to be consumed with something other than the proverbial rat race. That consuming nature can turn into an obsession. If one wants an edge, calling on the supernatural is an efficient way depending on their belief system; prayer becomes the means by which one petitions for their team.
Those inside the stadium bring their energy, their trumpet, their drum, their voice, their sign, their flag, their flare(s), or anything to create an advantage. What can the fan outside the stadium do? That is my main interest in prayer: How those miles away use what they can—their relationship with the Almighty—to display fidelity and hopefully alter the match positively.
I often reference Heaven having an email account and prayers on sports going into the spam folder. Matters of famine, drought, sickness, disaster, and violence enter the inbox.
Calling upstairs over the Manchester City vs. West Ham United result seems trivial to the point of spam. If you ask me, God wouldn’t care about football. He would care about the people watching and playing. If one were to pray for the health and well-being of the players, that makes sense, but helping your team play better, I’m not convinced. No footballer prayed harder in my memory than David Luiz, and it is impossible [citation required] the prayers coming from Germany outnumbered the prayers coming from Brazil at the 2014 World Cup, yet the score in their semi-final was Germany 5-0 Brazil after 29 minutes.
Ultimately, it’s beneficial if prayer has no influence on sporting events. The same clubs would win every season. Manchester United is Earth’s most popular Premier League club. It follows they therefore have the most people willing to pray for their eventual success. They haven’t won the league since 2013. Did God change addresses 10 years ago, or did Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement alter history? The natural is easier than the supernatural here.
Real Madrid are the only club I jokingly entertain as blessed. Everyone else is battling by themselves. Five Champions League wins in nine years verges on miraculous, and how they won the trophy last season—I don’t know what to say. It’s hard to explain without those neural pathways pointing to divine assistance. As my father would tell me when I asked questions: “You can ask about that when you get to Heaven.”
If I get there, it will be on a long list. 🎯
Great read. The Johan Cruyff quote comes to mind- something about him questioning prayer in the context of sports. It was along the lines of "I don't believe in God. I see people on both teams praying before the game. If everybody's prayers were answered, there wouldn't ever be a winner".
Made me think, what makes one think their prayer was answered in favour of the other players/everybody involved with a club and prays for the betterment of their club. 😂