I used to feel my twin sons were too into football. It swallowed vast amounts of their time, emotions and friendships. As Parisians, they support France, and one of them once admitted to my wife that the best moment of his life had been Kylian Mbappé’s second goal against Argentina at the World Cup 2018. He paused and apologised: “I mean, it’s not like I had a baby or got married. Or got a scholarship.”
As a former monomaniac child sports nut myself, I worried. But I don’t any more. I’ve come to feel that, in our atomised era, sport is a relatively healthy obsession. It helps kids enjoy rather than hate their bodies. It keeps them off social media and video games, a bit. And it gives males, in particular, a connection to others that has grown too rare.
Fresh evidence comes from a survey by More in Common, an NGO that fights polarisation. Partnering with Fox Sports, it surveyed more than 5,200 American adults and found that strong sports fans were more likely to seek connections across political divides, to support democracy and to pursue a plethora of civic actions, such as giving to charity, donating blood and voting in local elections.