At the end of it all, football doesn’t care. It is an ugly, grinding maw that extracts what it needs and then shits out the rest, like a digestive system fed by money and repugnance.
Players, clubs, reputations, everything goes in and out comes the waste in an ugly process participated in by clubs, media outlets that are the mouthpieces of those clubs, people who prop themselves up as arbiters of various things, and the supporters that latch on like cuttlefish, seeking affirmation in reflected glory. They don’t really know what to think until someone tells them — this player is good, no matter what he does, that player is bad, no matter what he does.
That maw doesn’t know what to do with things that aren’t black and white. A hamstring injury is black or white. But mental illness is also an injury, just as debilitating, just as significant to a player’s health and well-being. But the maw mostly doesn’t really give a shit about that.
Ronald Araujo is braver than any of the people slashing and lashing at him for what he has done, which is to say, essentially, “This is too much, and I am struggling.” He is injured.
People are, of course, using that to sharpen their long knives, to say things such as, “Better off without him,” or “Leave my club,” or “He hasn’t been the same defender anyhow.” It is all done so casually, tossing a player off and aside, then flushing him and his career down the toilet.
Football, that giant, ugly thing that is only infrequently as beautiful and joyful as we like to delude ourselves into thinking it is on the regular, doesn’t care. It shapes how people are thought about by what it says about them.
What is important to know is that mental health issues are related to a great many things, from internal chemistry to susceptibility to things being said and how those things are shaped. Some people don’t care what others say about them, don’t care about the effects of their actions, athletic sociopaths in a way. For others, it matters. They care. Football and a supporter base, a media mass, doesn’t care about any of that as they shape and define what a player is and how he is perceived, without thinking for an instant about the effect on the player and what that might mean.
Many years ago, working the newsroom overnight shift that was one to nine a.m., the phone rang. At that time of the day it was usually people looking to settle a bar bet. On this night it was a young man, wheelchair-bound after an auto accident. He was considering suicide because in his view he had gone from being a hard-working, healthy young man married to a wonderful woman to a useless bum that people had to push around because he couldn’t do anything.
We talked for hours, for most of my shift as we got into how and why he felt that way. He didn’t do it. It was the whisper stream, the people who acted compassionate to his face but said and did things behind his back that stripped away kindness and dignity, that came to define how he felt about himself.
The call ended with him resolving to talk to his wife, talk to his family, deal with the world in a way that allowed him to find space in it. And for days after that I would check the medical examiner’s report for his name. That it never showed up provided some solace even as I could never have any idea about the anguish that made a complete stranger put his life, essentially, in the hands of another stranger at the other end of a phone line.
What people say defines us, like it or not. People are vexed about it on social media when they shouldn’t be. Why? Because it matters to them. Ronald Araujo is, in the eyes of the shit production system that is the Barcelona entorno, a bum. He is stupid, reckless, a red card machine that lets his team down time and again in big matches. He is the reason for the Champions League exits of the past two years. He can’t play a high line, can’t work an offside trap, can’t pass, can’t do anything. Big accounts define him as someone who needs to leave so that he can “find a club that suits his style.”
None of that is true. None of it. But it has become true, has become what Araujo is because his reputation and perception have been shaped. A more favored player in the exact same situation, with the same outcome and the system shapes it differently. “How can the ref make that call,” or “What a soft call at such an important moment.”
Dembele is a bum whose lifestyle led to his being injured all the time. Another player is, “That’s rough luck, I hope his luck changes so that he can become as great as we all know that he can.”
What shapes those situations? The maw.
Ronald Araujo has played his leonine heart out for FC Barcelona, time after time, match after match. There was a time when he was lauded for that quality, that fire, that effort. But since the PSG red card, a bang-bang play that terminated in a soft red, he has become a different player, shaped by those who define such things. He has become a bum, a wastrel, a mess.
We don’t pay attention to structures unless they benefit us. We don’t note that his best years were when he had a functioning midfield and the fullbacks were much better. Because that isn’t part of the game, unless it is for chosen players.
Some players have the luxury of being victims of a system, the “Once x or y changes we will see the full magnificence,” then x or y changes and they are the same player and another excuse comes into play. They are the lucky ones. Players such as Araujo aren’t in that cadre.
What makes it worse is how Twitter, the predominant metaverse of football discussion, functions. Blue ticks are paid for engagement, and you don’t get engagement by bucking trends, by saying what people don’t want to hear. Engagement is money. So he’s a bum. And big accounts are influential because they are big accounts. So it escalates. Ter Stegen is likened to a “terrorist,” Rakitic is even worse. And on it goes, because it has to.
No care, no time is spent wondering what all of that is doing to the player because they are the pawns, the property that is ours to be played with, used and abused as we see fit. We see, hear and read about the deleterious effects that social media, the whisperstream has on ordinary people — the depression, the suicides — and we think, “These players are getting millions. They can take it.” And on it goes.
It takes an immense person to own their frailty, precisely because of that system that will take that admission, spit on it and smear the player with that detritus. But Araujo is brave, extremely brave, for doing that. And his passion and love for the club should never be questioned, even more so because he has said, “I have something preventing me from being my best for my club. I need to fix this.”
The club, the coaching staff, the players are backing him 100 percent because they understand. They have likely struggled with the exact same thing, whether it’s depression around a spate of injuries and wondering if you will be the same again, or a run of bad results that people blame you for. People in the game understand. Araujo, in the arms of the club, will be fine.
It’s the outsiders that need to do a mirror check. People have no idea what they are doing to other people. None. Want to say a player had a bad match? That’s part of the analysis. When it goes beyond that, it’s ugly and cruel. What Tweet is the last straw? People don’t know, nor do they care because social media isn’t social at all. It is fundamentally anti-social in the way it dehumanizes. It’s a bunch of avatars and to hell with them.
Everything about that is wrong. And pretty much everything about the way social media barrages the unfavored is wrong. It’s also potentially harmful. Nothing about any of this will make anyone less horrible, which is the real shame of it all. It should, but it won’t.
Andre Gomes had his issues, and the way he was treated at Everton was beautiful and reassuring. Bojan Krkic had his issues, and we didn’t know about them until long after, but the revelations from those struggles put a lot into perspective. Who else is struggling, and how much do we care?
After all, these players are only the goals they score, the championships they help win, the goals they prevent, the amount to which they allow us to bathe in the glory they created. They aren’t human, so why should anyone care?
Ronald Araujo will come back from this, and when he comes out of the other end, my personal view is that whatever player he is becomes secondary to the human that he will be. Because that is how it is supposed to be.
When a player is injured, people Tweet “anims” even though it’s empty, this thing they are supposed to do. When a player has a different kind of injury, there is no “anims.” There should be. Araujo is injured. Not physically, but nonetheless impeded from giving his absolute best for the club by a physical condition. He deserves and should get our complete support, respect and yes, admiration.