THE recent death of a soccer player has triggered a huge flood of tributes from around the world, not only from fellow soccer players but also from other athletes (from the world of tennis and snooker), as well as from journalists, US Presidents and singers.
A Brazilian journalist shared his experience interviewing Pele, stating: “To many football fans, and Brazilians in particular, the man born Edson Arantes do Nascimento was superhuman – simply the greatest player to ever kick a ball.”
Two other honors stand out for an intriguing reason. The first comes from current Brazil star striker Neymar, who wrote on Instagram: “Before Pele, football was just a sport. Pele changed everything.
He turned football into art, into entertainment. He gave a voice to the poor, to the black people.” [Elsewhere another Brazilian forward Romario once said that “Pele is a poet with his mouth shut.”] The second came from former US President Barack Obama who said: “Pele was one of the greatest people to ever play this beautiful game and as one of the most recognized athletes in the world he understood the power of sport to bring people together. ”
Both tributes recognized Pele’s influence on and off the field, but one described football as a sport and the other stated it was a game. This leads us to the question: is there a difference between play and sport? During the last holiday season, when families might not have been connected to the internet and television, they might have been involved in what were originally called “parlor games” like Charades, Consequences, or Pictionary.
Kids at parties (even adults, I think about it) can play games, while teens can also play board games or video games. Then there are game shows on TV and pub quizzes – games, not sports.
We can reasonably conclude that games are what’s played indoors and involve thinking and speaking, often depending on luck (and undoubtedly guesswork). Sport is seen as more physical, with more significant competition.
That may be all well and good, except when we mention the Olympics, which are very competitive (hidden behind the original credo: “The most important thing in the Olympics is not so much to win as it is to take part in it, just as important , to take part life is not the victory but the fight”). Can we say from them: “C’mon, it’s just a game?”
Interestingly, we use the phrase “stop playing games” to inspire people to stop messing around and start taking things seriously. So are sports serious while games are casual? And yet, in the classic poem Vitae Lampada by Sir Henry Newbolt, there is serious advice to encourage the reader: “Play it! Play up and play the game!”, both in the game and in life, which means that no matter what our circumstances are, we should stand by certain values and virtues (although sport suggests that winning is everything and values are unimportant).
Indeed, when people speak of the parallel between these activities and life, they are referring to the game of life, not the sport of life. Author Allan Rufus said, “Life is like a game of chess.
To win you have to move.” Jawaharlal Nehru wrote something similar: “Life is like a deck of cards. The hand you get is deterministic; The way you play it is free will.” Sir Henry Newbolt, quoted above, wrote in another poem that our task should be “to put matter above glory, play above prize to love’, and that might give us another hint – when we play sports and train, we should make sure that love is for the game itself, and not for prizes or fame.
Some have given some amusing definitions of the difference between games and sports. One explained that “a game becomes a sport when you have to pay for it”, while another proclaimed that the difference is that “you can smoke while playing, but not while playing sports”. Another proclaimed: “Sports is what the servants watch on TV; Wild is what you shoot!” Whatever the difference, the question is: what do we offer in our schools – games or sports?
Is it a game or a sport? The question might be like the saying, “Is it a bird? is it an airplane No, it’s Superman.” Described as superhuman, Pele was influential on and off the field. Here lies a key outcome for our children. Sport is just a game; life is more serious. So play on!
- Tim Middleton is a former international hockey player and school principal who currently serves as Executive Director of the Association of Trust Schools. Email: [email protected]
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