The media and money have made women’s football on everyone’s lips. It is not for less. A group of tenacious girls have managed in less than eight years to be at the top of the world in that sport. It doesn’t matter if they win the final or lose it. What they have done in an absolutely masculine environment, brutally competitive, is a feat that deserves everyone’s admiration.
But before this media explosion of football played by women arrived, success had come in handball, basketball, athletics, badminton, tennis, canoeing, gymnastics, judo, water polo or swimming. The same can be said of men’s sport since the ADO plan was approved in 1987 for the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. From then on, Spanish sport in general, which was bizarre but with outstanding individual exceptions, came to be among the first in the world in both team and personal competitions. World champions in basketball, soccer, water polo, handball, golf, tennis, various athletic events mark a history of more than thirty years in which our country has managed to become a world power that, although it is not reflected in the medal table of the Olympics due to the number of minority competitions admitted, it does do so in the most followed and popular sports on the planet. And that has not happened by magic, by divine prize or by the propitious alignment of the stars, but is the result of strong investments in the preparation of athletes, of magnificent planning to obtain the desired results and of careful attention media that far exceeds that provided to any other area of human development. We live in the entertainment society, also in the competitive society, both issues have been decisive when it comes to investing in and attending to sport.
Competitiveness in one of the cornerstones of the capitalist system, staying above others is the most prominent feature of human behavior
Entertainment has millions of people hooked on the media and social networks awaiting the result of the athlete on duty, people who perceive their triumphs and failures as their own, who are happy when victory is on their side and who wither when defeat happens. . On the one hand, it is the fruit of an alienated society that heals its frustrations with the triumphs of its idols; on the other, it is a natural escape from a generally monotonous and unrewarding life: Identifying with a team, with an athlete, establishing the fullest personal satisfaction in those who rise to the top of the ladder day by day is a spiritual form of happiness in the one in which the protagonist takes the money and the laurels and the follower the joy and joy of a victory that would not have been possible without his unconditional support. On the other side of the issue, there is competition, competitiveness, you have to sacrifice, push yourself to the limit to be among the best even though thousands of applicants fall along the way, even if you have to give up your health and your future to win. vital. One only has to see the atrocities that Rafa Nadal has done, crippled in all the joints of his body, to reach the top and stay there. Competitiveness in one of the cornerstones of the capitalist system, staying above the rest is the most prominent feature of human behavior since religions were invented and it was said that some would go above and others below. Faced with competitiveness, which brings with it predation, exploitation and exclusion, is cooperation, which does not generate victims and fosters the greatest social triumphs. But we have not reached that stage that will mean the greatest evolutionary leap for Humanity, that moment in which people run and play for pleasure attending to those who cannot take it anymore, that territory in which researchers from all countries help each other to find effective remedy for a disease and not to obtain a patent, that place where personal triumph will be the one that contributes the most to social well-being.
Meanwhile, we know that victorious sport entertains, raises the spirits of citizens and puts countries on the front page of the global media, it is, therefore, an excellent means of patriotic publicity. However, it contributes little to the increase in GDP, to the development of a critical and creative spirit, to laying the foundations of material and spiritual progress. That corresponds to the knowledge society in advanced countries.
The first division soccer teams will spend around four billion euros this year, Barcelona and Real Madrid half. Most of the budget is used to pay super-millionaire players, with very little going to the rest of the workers or to job creation. That is to say, the big soccer teams spend astronomical amounts of money to pay a few workers so that they enter the caste of luxury and waste. While this happens in an area dedicated exclusively to entertainment, leisure, and gaming, the total number of Spanish public universities spent less than five billion euros last year, which indicates that they spend as much on Rodrigo, Vinicius, Gabi or Pedri as in the training of all Spanish university students, who, like it or not, will be in charge of running the country, inventing, managing and seeking a better society for all.
The comparison is embarrassing and embarrassing, especially if we take into account what each of these groups contribute to the country or the importance of their activity. It is likely that many think that one thing has nothing to do with the other since soccer teams are private entities that are nourished by the contributions of their partners, which is not entirely true since they obtain a multitude of aids, privileges and perks of public entities and in their presidential boxes many contractors and subcontractors are tied. In addition, even if it were so, it shows without a doubt what the order of priorities is. The plans to promote elite sport have been resoundingly successful, so much so that they have placed our country in the first places in the world. On the contrary, despite the increases in recent years, the budgets for universities and research continue to be meager if we compare them with countries such as Canada, the United States, Germany or Sweden. It is evident that when the time comes we could do without spending on football and other sports because life is not about it, but it is clear that if we are not capable of investing more in knowledge than in kicking or slapping a ball, we will be left behind, a little more each year until our survival as a developed country becomes unfeasible. Knowledge, research and culture need an ADO plan, a planning as perfectly designed as the one that was applied to sports in its time, with the certainty that if it is done with the same effort it will bring us more satisfaction in a few years than the many that sports competitions have given us.
2023-08-16 16:40:48
#sport #knowledge
