Sven, the strange power of football and maybe even the meaning of life

It’s the 85th minute of a top-of-the-table clash between the Melbourne University Bohemians and our opponents, Barnstoneworth: 2-2, the penultimate game of the season. A point favours them – identical records but their goal difference is wildly superior.

I show for a throw, slightly mis-control it under pressure and lump it somewhere upfield. “Shit yourself there, mate,” announces their centre-mid. Jet black mid-length curly hair, I’d put him about 20 years my junior.

To be fair to him, it was a terrible touch. I wanted to explain that I hadn’t played a full 90 in about five years, that my toddler had been up since 4.50am, that I had the remnants of plantar fasciitis in my left foot, no meniscus in my left knee, and tendinopathy in my left groin which meant every step had been painful all afternoon – and despite that I’d had less remedial surgery than most of my teammates – and frankly, his team of lithe 20- and 30-somethings really should be out of sight against a side down to 10 men whose starting centre-backs had a combined age of 110.

Sadly there wasn’t quite the time to get it all out before he’d sprinted upfield and I’d turned like an oil tanker to lumber after him again. He, and they, were really quite good, and pretty pleasant all things considered. It finished 2-2 – advantage Barnstoneworth going into this weekend. On a different day we would have won easily – although that day would have had to be in about 2007.

There are many readers and listeners who find comparisons between park football and the elite level ridiculous – and are not slow to tell me. But watching the excellent Sven-Göran Eriksson documentary the day after he died, I felt the link all too real.

Football gave him his identity and sense of belonging. It took this man from the woods of western Sweden to Portugal, Italy, England and North Korea via Meadow Lane, obviously. Sven lived many more lives than I ever will – both on and off the pitch – but when you strip back the game to what it actually is – trying to get a round thing between two posts – it is really extraordinary that it defines, and perhaps controls, so many of us in a way that is virtually impossible to articulate to those who don’t care for it.

I guess the same can be said of all pursuits. Cricket, jousting, K-pop, remote-control lorries driving on sand (my son watches a fair bit of this on YouTube) – we all just want to belong. Most of us don’t really choose the thing we end up belonging to. It’s just bestowed upon us, by a mum or a dad or a mate.

Perhaps you’re reading a mid-life crisis happening in real time. Forgive me – you probably turned to the football pages to find out who Angel Gomes is, rather than whether your existence has any meaning.

But I was still physically broken from the game when I sat down to watch Sven. In the final minutes I’d body-checked the aforementioned centre-mid as he burst through – the perfect professional foul. Complained to the referee, shoulder to shoulder. The reality was that it was his shoulder, it was my chest – at which point it felt like every bone in my upper body had broken like an icy lake on a spring day or a loony tunes cartoon character – crack-crack-crack-crack-crack, turn to camera, and shatter into a thousand pieces.

View image in fullscreen Sven-Goran Eriksson at one of his former clubs, Lazio, who he led to a Serie A title in 2000. Photograph: DeFodi Images/Getty Images

So maybe I was more susceptible to a little bit of existential angst than normal, but I found it impossible to watch a dying man talking about all the decisions in his life without questioning the point of it all.

In Simon Hattenstone’s excellent article after Sven’s death he noted how when he’d spoken to him, Sven had just watched five Olympic football matches in a row. There’s a lovely moment in the documentary where Sven digs out Sol Campbell for England conceding the opener in the 5-1 in Munich. “Shit. Absolutely shit! It was too easy. Sol Campbell was too slow. 100kg. You couldn’t expect him to be quick.”

I don’t know how you’re meant to fill your days when you don’t have many; five football matches feels like a lot. But it was probably a comfort – to get lost in this part of life that you’ve been lost in for so long.

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And getting lost sometimes feels like such an important thing to be able to do. Totally consumed with bewilderment by a referee booking your centre-forward as he is being lifted in ACL-induced agony on to a threadbare stretcher that looks as if it was last unfolded in a first world war hospital. Time standing still as your No 10 chips one just wide from 50 yards with the keeper off his line. For that moment it is the only thing in your mind.

And then you stop and realise it isn’t the game that brings meaning to it. It’s the friendships, the relationships, the memories. And whatever your involvement with football that is as true for you and me as it is for Sven or Tord Grip or David Beckham or whoever.

So here I am, perhaps hoping to be viewed as some kind of urbane multi-faceted critically acclaimed thinker when in reality I’m just staring at the Football Victoria Metropolitan League 6 North-West table, and hoping this groin strain clears up by Sunday.

I wonder how much time is wasted by park cloggers studying amateur league tables through the season. How many WhatsApps to the gaffer from players suggesting a starting XI that just happens to include them. Maybe wasted isn’t the right word.

Sven was so open about his flaws – none of us are perfect. I conjured an article out of this game, but I probably shouldn’t have played – I left my pregnant wife at home with an abscess behind a wisdom tooth and a toddler to look after. But – and this looks pathetic as I read it back – I won man of the match, like it’s some kind of justification.

We all know our time is limited. Sven coped with knowing just how limited with extraordinary dignity, and he let us in. “Take care of yourself, and take care of your life, and live it.” It might sound cliched, but sometimes cliche works. It feels like good advice.

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