The recent outrageous accusations of bribery and match-fixing in football at the highest level have cast a very dark shadow over this noble global game.

Sepp Blatter’s successor, who will have to deal with unprecedented allegations of massive and systematic corruption in FIFA, should be the first to initiate a motion to revise the method of voting, based on world rankings and seniority. It seems absurd that Germany or Brazil should have the same number of votes as Gibraltar.

Furthermore, FIFA is still in time to reallocate the World Cup finals of 2018 in Russia and 2022 in Qatar if there is enough evidence of bribery or illicit donations of any kind.

However, it has to be realised that, in spite of its intrinsic values, sport, by its very nature, is riddled with a sharp dualism expressed as the beauty and the beast syndrome. The stark reality of this was particularly evident on the day of the recent English FA Cup final shown on our national channel when we were regaled with a magnificent spectacle of football and tradition in front of 90,000 spectators at the new Wembley Stadium in London. Soon after this feast of colour and splendour, this channel presented beastly encounters seemingly reminiscent of the bloody Roman arenas. These sham and spurious parodies have, unfortunately, alienated our youths from indulging in the ancient Olympic discipline of greco-Roman wrestling, a modern Olympic sport event since 1896. When people start laughing at a sport, that sport is doomed.

This dualism and paradox of sport is not a present-day phenomenon. The founder of the modern Olympic Games was fully aware of these contradictions over a century ago when he sounded a word of warning in his memoirs Le Respect Mutuel remarking that sport can be the best or worst of things occasioning the most noble passions or the most vile. He pointed out that sport can develop impartiality and the feeling of honour; it can be chivalrous or corrupt, vile and bestial; one can use it to consolidate peace or to prepare for war. Pierre de Coubertin founded the International Olympic Academy in the heart of Ancient Olympia specifically as he prophesised the extraordinary development of sport in the 20th century and underlined the importance of sports education at all levels.

An air of cynicism is clouding our previous beliefs in the most pervasive activity in the world

Unfortunately, but understandably, sport this century has become a victim of its own success. Rightly or wrongly sport mirrors society and sport is as good or as bad as the society in which it is practised.

So, can we conclude that sport has become an anachronism. Has it outlived its purpose? Who is sick: sport or society?

Maybe there are no clear-cut answers to these questions but unless we analyse the problems plaguing the whole sports movement, unless we are more aware of the inherent nature of sport, unless we update in our schools and colleges our sports education methodology, we should be compared to present-day Neros, fiddling while Rome burns.

The recent negative events in the local and international sports arenas compel me once again to point out the stark realities... because sport is passing through a most difficult period. Its credibility is at stake, its values are being questioned, its moral fibre is sadly threatened.

Understandably, there is a feeling that the age of innocence is truly over and an air of cynicism is among us clouding our previous beliefs in the most pervasive activity in the world.

Sadly and suddenly, the values we have dearly attached to sport have become too burdensome, too anomalous, too paradoxical in high performance sport. Perhaps we may take some consolation in the thought that, throughout history, mankind has never succeeded in complying completely with the rules of morality... and sport is no exception.

There will always be a few individuals who will succumb to the least temptation, who are not prepared to toe the line.

The dualism of sport is intrinsically linked with its nature in terms of the agony and the ecstasy, beauty and the beast, or the angel and the devil. It is incumbent on us all to realise that there is no end to this dualism and to become fully aware that “sport is full of violence and tenderness, joy and despair, beauty and repulsiveness, order and disorder. The ecstasy of the peak performance must be accepted with the awareness that, sooner or later, one will also be the goat. Cheers are inevitably followed by boos, the sweet wine of victory followed by the bitter gall of defeat” (Synder and Spreitzer).

In these poetic lines lies the beauty of sport and let no accusations, however grave, alienate us from one of the most noble activities that have graced the 20th and 21st centuries. In spite of all the recent scandals that have tainted football, I proudly echo, with my head held high, the pregnant words of Russian poet Yuri Yevtuchenko: “Just because dirty, greedy hands have stained the flag-pole, it does not mean that the message on the flag is wrong.”

Lino Bugeja is a former lecturer at the International Olympic Academy.

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