In our column “Green space” Oliver Fritsch, Christof Siemes, Stephan Reich and Christian Spiller alternately write about the world of football and the world of football. This article is part of TIME on the weekendissue 51/2025.
About two weeks ago I accompanied Frankfurter Eintracht to the game FC Barcelonaand before the game I hung around the stadium for a bit. The Camp Nou was open again for the first time in a long time and 40,000 people made the pilgrimage to the game. At an intersection, the police stopped people so that the Eintracht team bus could drive onto the site.
There was an eerie hustle and bustle, voices, chants and police announcements coming from everywhere. When the stadium gate closed behind the bus, the police gave a signal and the hundreds of people started moving again. It was as if a raging river had been briefly stopped before the water began to flow again. As if the rotation of the world had slowed down for a few seconds. The traffic lights glowed green and red, the police cars glowed blue, someone set off fireworks that burst colorfully in the sky. And all these colors were reflected on the faces of the many people who were now walking along, talking to each other, laughing, singing. I saw this moment, really, in slow motion.
I experienced something magical, something special, especially because I saw the same thing in all of these faces. Whatever differentiated these many people from each other, however different their lives might be, in Barcelona or in Frankfurt; however they look at the world, who they are, what defines them, where they go, where they come from; I always saw hope in their faces. It was an hour before kick-off, the contours of the game were becoming clearer on the horizon, and every one of these people probably thought they were there blissfully. There was a soft anticipation over the people, 40,000 pumping hearts looking forward to a game, or in other words, a possible variant of this game that they hoped would happen. I stopped in the middle of this once again raging river and, as you can tell, I was genuinely moved.
Probably also because I had noticed something in the previous days: Nobody around me speaks confidently about 2026 shortly before the turn of the year. Nobody is particularly hopeful about the coming year, nobody says: This will be my year, this will be our time. Nobody believes that everything will be better in 2026. The opposite is the case. The future just seems to me to be something that needs to be managed. Something that will be difficult and yes, perhaps even painful either way, but in any case.
Maybe I’m wrong, maybe many people feel differently, I sincerely hope so. But I don’t see much reason for excessive optimism either. The planet is burning down and we will no longer achieve our climate goals. Soon artificial intelligence will eat up all of our jobs because a few windy tech bros want it that way. There is still war in Europe, not to mention the many other conflicts further afield in the world. In the USA, Donald Trump is transforming his country into an autocracy. And in Germany, the AfD gets a quarter of the vote. It can really make you feel scared and anxious.
A visit to FC Barcelona is a strange experience. The audience takes every decision, no matter how unimportant, personally; whistling a free kick against Barça or even giving a throw-in for the opponent is like an insult. People get out of their seats, freak out, scream and curse and forget each other. I found it unpleasant in the stadium. But then I thought: How nice to have something in your life that, when you look at it more closely, isn’t that important, but for 90 minutes it’s the most important thing of all.
Most of the people who hugged each other in celebration after the 2-1 win have probably been going to their club since they were children. To remain loyal to the club of your heart, continue to football Going is always a way to stay in touch with yourself. A lifeline back to a time that was simpler, more innocent for most people. In which perhaps all the distortions of the world, all the anger, all the fear, didn’t seem so great, not so invincible. Football can still offer that today: 90 minutes of sweet oblivion. Vacation from the world. A safe space.
Is that naive? Probably. And of course it doesn’t apply anywhere where the circumstances are actually really bad. FC Barcelona is perhaps not the best example: a megalomaniac super club with 2.6 billion euros in debt and a lot of dirt on their hands. But it is what it is, says love, and so does football. The hope in these people’s eyes was perhaps for time, and it was only focused on a football game. But she was real.
I don’t really believe in New Year’s resolutions, but that evening in Barcelona I decided: I want to look to the future with the same hope, the same joyful anticipation with which I look at every football game. I want to think: This is going to be great. Or at least: It will be okay. There wasn’t much going for Eintracht in Barcelona, but even though they lost 2-1, they played a good game. The SGE even led 1-0, Ellyes Skhiri missed the 2-0. Who knows how it would have turned out then.
In the second half, Barça turned the game around within four minutes. I sat in the stands and longed for the game to end again. For 90 minutes I suffered, wished, conjured up the future, imagined a volte of the game that only football can achieve.
She didn’t enter. But hoping for it felt good.
