The Sociopolitical Significance of One Very Clumsy Soccer Match
On a bright spring afternoon in Glasgow, the blood ran picturesquely down our goalkeeper’s neck. He’d accidentally snagged one of his earrings in the net and torn open his left earlobe. Really he should have gone straight to the hospital, but such was the level of commitment inspired by this football match—Scotland’s Writers versus England’s Writers—that he stayed standing tall between the sticks. We were on Astroturf in a sports complex, being watched by tens and tens of fans or, as they preferred to be known, family members. And though later in the evening both teams would gather together for good-natured readings of Gaelic and Ukrainian poetry and crime fiction and candid essays about our mental health, in this moment nothing mattered more than seeing each other lose.
