Looking for the good football

🎆​ A tale for the new year

I’m still trying to wrap my head around how people here in the northern hemisphere muster the energy to dream big and set bold intentions for the new year when it’s freezing cold and the sun taps out before dinner. It’s not coming naturally this time. Instead, I’m learning to ease into the newness and ambition that January inspires, rather than diving head-first straight into it.

And all of this has been true for me when it comes to football too.

Because here we are again: I’ve lost my faith in the game.

Maybe I expected too much from 2024—the centenary year of my dearest football club, Copa America, the Olympics, and so much more. Instead, I ended it with my team relegated and their women’s team abruptly shut down in the name of “cutting costs.” To be honest, I was still catching my breath after the Ballon d’Or debacle—a stark reminder of how unprepared, biased, or absent most voices in sport are when it comes to discussing racism.

Somewhere in that stretch of colder, shorter, and bad football days, I felt the fire—the passion to watch, read, and write about it—flicker out. The truth is, when you subtract the fleeting highs of sublime joy and add up all the stuff we dislike, football can start to feel like Groundhog Day.

But 2024 was also the year I discovered a newfound love for Barça Femení and, with it, Women’s Football. It woke up emotions that had been quietly hibernating in my heart. Feeling close to a team that is mine, like I’m truly part of it, standing in a stadium that feels like home—I hadn’t realized how much I missed that until it was back.

The Champions League final gave me a rush I hadn’t felt in ages. Then, the Brazilian Women’s national team stunned everyone with an unforgettable run at the Olympics. I do not remember what it was like to be pleasantly surprised by my national team.

Women’s Football opened up a whole new world for me.

In 2024, I also saw this little corner grow in ways I hadn’t imagined. I connected with incredible people, worked with amazing clients, and fully submerged myself in the waters of the good football—waters I’d only just dipped my toes into not so long ago.

This network, this community of people, is creating new horizons for those who already love the good football—and for those who are still to discover and love it.

Football is so big that it surpasses our capacity to embrace and transform its totality. But that’s also what makes it possible for us to build, live, and experience a football that is good beyond its own limits. Inevitably, this tension can leave us feeling hopeless.

Over the holidays, as I took time to rest, think, be quiet (hence my absence here), and reflect on all of this and more, the wisdom of Frederick Buechner, an author who has been a good companion to me lately, came to my mind. His words compelled me to find the goodness, the joy, the extraordinary in the mundane moments of daily life, in what’s already here, right in front of us.

“You enter the extraordinary by way of the ordinary.” - Frederick Buechner

What I’m coming to realize is that the good football isn’t some utopia we’re working to see fulfilled and whole one distant day. It’s already here—something we can notice, embrace, and even squeeze out of the mess and dullness of it all.

It’s here, in the moments when I take my friends to watch another friend play with Barça Athletic, and we chant silly things to cheer him on. Or when my friends send me a gift from the FIFA museum that made them think of me, along with a sweet and encouraging card. Or when someone reads something I’ve written here and tells me how it resonated with them. Or when my friends—who don’t even like football—sign up, read, and share my stuff. Or when my new friend Josep, whom I met at my favorite bookshop, sits down at my table to talk about Barça Femení on his way out.

The good football is also here when I get my analog photos developed and find gems like this one. A snapshot from a Barça Femení game, of course.

Sure, the good football is about the big, world-changing, revolutionary things, and we all want to see that. But maybe not all our efforts will compound into something that grand. Still, they can have a real, life-size impact. Maybe some of the goodest of the good football will be created and experienced in the smallest moments. And it’s these moments that will remind us, and help us rediscover, our love for this silly, phenomenal game.

I’m still hoping for big changes in this new year. But I’m also hoping that this platform will be a space where we can experience the good football together, even in the smallest ways. Through content that isn’t clutter, ideas exchanged, and connections made. And leaving room for the good surprises that might come too.

What about you? What are you hoping for in 2025, and what are the smallest ways in which you’ve built and experienced the good football lately?

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THE GOOD LINKS

📷​ This kit and this photoshoot.

🥹​ This reel that made me tear up (also the new Bad Bunny album).

📝​ These tips on how to navigate the DEI debate, by Hayley | Director @ HTVB.

✈️ Everything about this.

🤤​ I will be accepting these as gifts if someone feels like it’s the right thing to do.

​👏​ These excellent news from Crystal Palace.

❤️‍🩹​ This story about how football unites us even in the hardest times.

🐶​ This poor little guy, who could teach professional ballers a lesson on discipline, lol.

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