Does Professional Football Equal to Amateur Stupidity?

A guest post by Gustavo Jalife

In Esse Est Percipi (1967), a short story Jorge Luis Borges wrote with his friend and writing partner, Adolfo Bioy Casares, we read that football has fully entered into the realm of the show business. While physical stadiums are long gone and their ruins are just a curiosity for tourists and passers-by, the games have become virtual entities.

As a result of this metamorphosis, easily duped crowds follow imaginary games on TV and the radio without questioning their reality. A character in the short story points out that the last time a football match was played in Buenos Aires was on 24 June 1937. From that exact moment on, football and other sports have belonged to the genre of drama, performed by a professional announcer in a booth and by actors on the playing field wearing jerseys and shorts before TV cameras.