When I was a teenager, I was fond of soccer as a beautiful, dramatic presentation, as a good or bad manifestation of a human creative idea. Since the moment when this wonderful game started to be compared with gambling, when doubts emerged that the results of the game, anyhow, can be predicted by the bookmakers, and that people making business on this fanaticism have the chance to make money, my interest in football plummeted.
It’s true, even then, in the 70s, it was often talked about that this-or-that team or a player has “sold the game”, that this-or-that judge is corrupt, and so on. I guess they were such cases. But, to build a mythology around it and live with it, I was denying and still do.
Yesterday, I was happy with the victory of our team playing with Bulgarian team, primarily because the subsequent theory of conspiracy was thus disclaimed, claiming that as if our team, under our roof, is “selling the game” because of some “bookmaking games”. It is interesting that our minds are always going to some kind of “dark forces”, when we do not have anything to explain.
But, how else we can behave if we lose the game to Malta in Yerevan, and then hosted, we win Denmark and the Czech Republic. Here is how: First, we must accept that there might be coincidences in life, and particularly in sports (ball, as they say, is round), there might be psychological barriers invisible for a regular eye, after all, the gaps of the players and coaches play their role. In short, when you encounter any unexplainable phenomenon, it is not necessarily for you to see a conspiracy, your enemies’ wizardry, sinister, and other tactics of black magic in it.
In Eric-Emmanuel Schmidt’s “The Gospel according to Pilate” novel, the Governor of Judaea, analyzing the facts of Christ’s Crucifixion and Resurrection, during his “investigation”, started to suspect everyone in turn, up to Herod, in the plot. As long as Pilate did not believe in the Resurrection of the Lord, he was trying to make great efforts to find a rational explanation, but he could not. And, eventually, in the novel, although he did not become a Christian, but admits that there is an inconceivable.
Indeed, there are many inconceivable in our life. But, we live in a real, and not a magic world.
Aram Abrahamyan
