What has been the most significant moment in postmodern football – if by “postmodern” we mean this often disheartening and at times corrupted millennium? What was your most brilliant instant? If we narrow the field to the last 25 years, the options are plentiful. It’s an era defined by two iconic players —whose names we all know— perhaps the classic 3-4 match in 2014 where both shone? We might also recall Liverpool’s epic comeback against Milan in 2005, or the thrilling Argentina-France World Cup final that ended 3-3. And, of course, from a purely personal perspective, the modest Grimsby’s (English 4th Division) penalty shootout victory in this season’s Carabao Cup against Manchester United. As a loyal Grimsby supporter for six decades, that achievement moved me to tears on my sofa in Donosti, even though the penalty shootout itself sent my blood pressure soaring to Everest heights.
Ultimately, football distributes its joys subjectively. In a world of infinite possibilities, even Torredonjimeno’s fifth goal against Loja CD in the Andalusian 1st Regional league in 1976 could have been a peak moment for someone, bless their heart. We can’t dictate what others cherish. Whatever gives you that dopamine rush is yours to keep. However, I’d venture to suggest that among the vast range of potential answers to this question, one candidate truly stands out…
We rewind to the 77th minute of April 29, 2012, at one of football’s least glamorous stadiums, Vallecas in Madrid. Hosts Rayo Vallecano, everyone’s favorite “Robin Hood” team, were being overrun by wealthy Barcelona, losing 0-4 at that moment. Dani Alves, then still unburdened by legal woes, whipped in a cross from the right. Thiago, surging in behind the diminutive Messi, headed the ball somewhat clumsily but effectively into a corner of Rayo’s net. This happened directly in front of the vibrant Bukanero fans, with their hammer-and-sickle badges and Che Guevara berets gleaming in the late afternoon sun. The score was now 0-5. However, instead of returning to the center circle, Thiago trotted towards the Rayo fans and saluted Alves, the cross provider. The two then decided to perform a little dance to celebrate their rather scrappy goal. The match would eventually end in a humiliating 0-7. It was then that the “heavy metal” captain Carles Puyol, sensing the imminent collapse of the home side but wanting to preserve some respect for them, ran towards Thiago and Alves, pushing both back towards the center circle, ending the antics like an irritable teacher breaking up a playground fight.
This episode remains one of football’s great moments, if not the greatest, depending on one’s current perspective, with the ignoble practice of “shithousery” seemingly at an all-time high. Perhaps there will always be a Puyol —a “Liam Neeson” of football who will save your daughter from wretched kidnappers, risking his life to restore your faith— precisely at that perilous moment when it was about to abandon you. Jonathan Liew last week penned an excellent article in The Guardian titled “Football’s converging moral panics hold up a mirror to our fractured world”.
In his article, Liew expands the focus beyond the widespread populist discontent with VAR, offering a broader view of our disillusionment with “Infantino-brand” football. In this model, everyone seems to matter except the customer; ex-footballers queue up to become commentators only to bore us with their trivial bar-room camaraderie, and the owners of Manchester United display the intercultural sensitivity of a bunch of carrots. Or, even worse, as Liew describes it: “…tired men growl morosely with forked tongues into sponsored microphones: buried by a game they despise and yet are handsomely paid to comment on.”
For Liew, it’s less about nostalgia and more about a profound sense of displacement, as if we’re starting to despise the product but find ourselves unable to discard it, unable to escape. For old-timers like me, raised on an earlier model, my nostalgia might turn me into an embarrassing, outdated meme. Do I care? Remembering Bobby Charlton flattening his iconic side-parting, Anasagasti-style, before celebrating a goal with a simple handshake, the creaking turnstiles, and the pipe smoke perfuming the egalitarian feeling of it all… still, there was a sense that it belonged to you somehow – that it was yours, and that your investment in it wasn’t a pretext, a building constructed so some Swiss jerk could hand over his “Balls Trophy” to Dr. Strangelove.
However, the days of Bobby Charlton and the distinguished, slick-haired gentlemen won’t return. And while I accept that, I reserve the right to lament the loss of a certain kind of moderation — of something akin to sportsmanship. It seems we’re in a permanent state of exasperation when football was supposed to be an escape from all that. Wasn’t the bi-weekly trip to the stadium a way to forget domestic and external problems, a 90-minute existential Houdini act, a way to ultimately escape oneself? Of course, it was. But as Liew argues in an exquisite paragraph, it should be even more so today:
“We live in a world increasingly defined by instability and madness. It’s utterly discombobulating. A man in a red baseball cap sits in a room assassinating foreign leaders like he’s playing a video game. Children die and nobody cares. You don’t know if that photo is real. You don’t know if that news actually happened. You seem to spend half your life inputting six-digit authentication codes. The YouTube video you want to watch comes with 50 seconds of unskippable ads. Football used to be our refuge.”
Refuge? Now we are forced to wait five eternal minutes for VAR to decide that, in fact, it wasn’t a penalty. We pay increasingly exorbitant fees to watch ridiculously overpaid individuals who, in the real world, most would end up as dubious real estate agents. Big teams increasingly insist on an aura of entitlement, as if a spot in the Champions League were some kind of right granted by historical circumstance and tradition. A BBC headline last week asked: “Is Tottenham too big to go down?” Hell no!
And the list of transgressions continues. Players throw themselves to the ground with increasing drama, like stuntmen auditioning, while impunity reigns. If VAR were to focus its attention on this poor practice, which it could easily do, then perhaps there might be some prospect of a moral resurgence —less sense of displacement and powerlessness— but one has the feeling it won’t happen. There will be no Carles Puyol riding his white horse, his heavy-metal mane flowing in the napalm wind, machine-gunning the forests of outright “shithousery.” We will swallow it and pay our dues, because we are programmed to do so. We cannot escape the weekly dose of dopamine, rigorously administered since childhood. It is what it is.
Perhaps Jonathan Liew overlooked this point in his otherwise excellent article. Because what are we looking for, if not simply a small dose of dignity from time to time? There’s nothing inherently wrong with being competitive or wanting to win; however, the optics are misaligned, the balance has shifted, and the ship has sunk. An army of Carles Puyols couldn’t take us back to an ideal world that never truly existed, but perhaps we are reaching such a saturation point of “shithousery” that some teams will decide to stop it. Hopefully. Some teams will win matches and be the first to shake their opponents’ hands. Some coaches will insist on fair play and impose fines for diving. Gianni Infantino will retreat back under the rock he crawled out from, to be replaced by someone less driven by the pursuit of spoils and complacency with autocrats. Something good could emerge from the mire.
That is what I hope for, because far from the pompous fields of the major leagues, the emotional investment of sixty years supporting Grimsby Town, and thirty-five with Real Sociedad, has taught me to rebel against the extinction of this particular light, in the twilight of my days.
Puyol for FIFA President — now!
Phil Ball, March 7, 2026