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What is fate? Fate is determined to be the idea that there can be a pre-determined path or order of events that can lead to certain outcomes...

Fate and Coincidence in Football

by illya mclellan (Columnist)

35

169 reads

Opinion

January 04, 2009


What is fate? Fate is determined to be the idea that there can be a pre-determined path or order of events that can lead to certain outcomes.

What is fate in football? Fate in football is mainly used in a past tense, as in, it was fate that guided the ball past the outstretched hand of the left back, he would have been sent off for a deliberate hand ball, but instead he stayed on the field and sent over the corner that his striker won the game with.

Fate is a funny thing.

Fateful happenings have led to the demise of managers and players the world over, since the beginning of football.

Or can these happenings be put down to the lottery of coincidence? Quite possibly, I say.

The idea of coincidence is less in keeping with the idea of fate in that it is based on the idea that at any moment anything can happen that can change an indeterminate amount of factors.

Look at something in the realm of coincidence which has now moved into the realm of legend and possibly into a place where people would have referred to it as a "fateful" happening.

Manchester United and their Munich air disaster is one of the most famous tragedies in football. I was lucky enough to recently catch an interview with the great Bobby Charlton (interviewed by Michael Parkinson), an English footballing legend and the definitive nice guy to boot.

He spoke of the accident and the trauma was obviously still with him, evident in his gestures and voice as he remembered the day and the events and how they transpired.

One of the most compelling things he said was that he was absolutely convinced that the only reason he and the other survivors had survived, was because they were in a certain type of plane, the Airspeed AS-57 Ambassador.

This particular type of aircraft was built in such a way that half of the passengers faced the other half, Charlton happened to be sitting in the seats facing to the rear of the aircraft and so his life was saved by this twist of fate.

Who was the designer of this aircraft and how had his proposed idea become a reality? Imagine the coincidental happenings that could possibly involved with that question. Was it a women? Were they from a military background? Whose design had been shelved in favour of this one? All coincidental happenings that became fateful in the aftermath.

This is where the ideas of fate and coincidence become blurry and it is able to be seen that "fate" is absolutely reliant on coincidence.

The coincidences of football, in fact, were in a certain way the reason that the young men who died on that fateful flight were even on it.

This is where fate in football starts to fly in all to directions and becomes almost too large a concept to document.

Imagine a certain player who was on that flight and the factors that transpired to put him on it.

Things such as the bounce of the ball on a certain pitch, the way his laces hit it when he ended up scoring the goal off the cross bar that first caused the Manchester United scout to look at him.

Or perhaps the Liverpool scout getting held up at the railway station on the way to the match to see him and the United one getting there first. The meal he had before the game!

The meal his opponent had before the game for that matter.

These are the things that can affect the turning of the worm, as the old saying goes, the things that lead to life before football and life beyond it.

Look at the way football is now, the thing it has become in the world we live in. Players who live lives beyond the possibility of their own imagination.

Players who but for a coincident or twist of fate end up somewhere completely different to another player that they may have apprenticed with who in turn ends up playing football for peanuts in some crazy backwater of the world.

I was lucky enough a couple of seasons back to play a few games against a former Feyenoord Rotterdam apprentice who ended up in New Zealand playing for a New Zealand national league side.

Some years after his National league stint had ended, he showed up in the opposing team I was to face in the regional premier competition I was playing in and was many years my senior at the time but still playing better football than many of us who were probably a twinkle in our mothers eye when he first kicked a ball.

The funniest and most crazy thing about the guy is that he came out to NZ for a holiday in the winter break of the European season. He was expected to return and take up a professional contract with Feyenoord.

He never did. He fell in love with New Zealand (and maybe a women from here as well) and ended up turning his back on European football for good.

It is of course easy to think that he was telling stories about how good he was and his standing at Feyenoord but he was actually so good when he played that you could see that he must have been some player in his youth. I mean, I saw the guy playing in his mid forties and he still had it, that certain special "it" that some players have.

I was always absolutely honoured to be called a footballer by the guy, because he apparently did not do it very often.

But these are the coincidences in the fateful happenings that lead us to the events of our lives.

It is a strange thing fate and football is a strange thing as well. But both are dependant on one another as humans are dependant on oxygen.

So remember as you take in that oxygen when you sit down to watch your team this weekend that you are about to witness the amalgamation of fateful coincidence and all of its twists and turns.

The mental state of the referee, the mental state of the players, the wing-beat of a seagull thousands of yards away altering the balls flight, into the back of your teams goal, as the man directly behind the goal watches his life savings go to a bookie who needed that money, to pay off a gangster who was going to cut off his little finger.

All of these things, these fateful things.

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35 comments Last one added 5 months ago — Leave a Comment

  1. Keith Griffin 6 months ago

    Love it! Especially the ending! What a strange little article! No offense, just totally different!

    Those damn seagulls are tyo blame for United's lack of goals this season! I know it!

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    • illya mclellan 6 months ago

      glad you liked it, I could never take offence at my writing being called strange, I view it as a complement. haha, you know the one about the butterfly flapping its wings....that whole butterfly effect thing is brilliant, I love the idea of it, its magic.

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  2. Shyam Parthasarathi 6 months ago

    Very interesting.. but believe me illya, when the ref. makes decisions that go against your team when they shouldn't.. I don't know how to react - I certainly don't blame fate for such things!

    But yes, in a philosophical sense, I agree with you.. the world wouldn't be what it is today without certain things happening in a certain way at a certain point of time.. so there you go!

    Enjoyed the read!

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  3. Maire Ofeire 6 months ago

    Like it Illya - it certainly was a different typr of article good stuff

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  4. thomas moreland 6 months ago

    YUP MANY SMALL DECISIONS can alter time, space , and reality to a certain degree. Which train plane or trolley to catch, while someone plots to blow something up, and another blows a tire, and crashes his car, into the guy with the plans for destruction! LIFE IS ALL abour random occurences and how it affects us all, at one point or another. interesting article! thomas

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    • illya mclellan 6 months ago

      yeah that was what got me thinking about it, those small occurrences and decisions and how they balloon into larger occurrences in that domino sort of motion. thanks for reading Thomas.

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  5. Anthony Sanchez 6 months ago

    Great piece Illya. I don't believe in fate but I'm a firm believer in luck. The greatest player who ever lived is probably stacking shelves in a supermarket somewhere because a scout fancied a lie-in one saturday morning! POTD.

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    • illya mclellan 6 months ago

      hahaha, totally mate, that's it, exactly, those mad little coincidences that can alter anything. Cantona having an eye for the ladies perhaps? teeheehee, next thing he's down the road at United and Fergie says thank you very much.

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  6. Willie Gannon 6 months ago

    I'm not a big one for fate or coincidence, but something made me want to read this article...

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    • illya mclellan 6 months ago

      you must believe in some sort of order of events, I was of the mind it was either fate or coincidence, not sure what other reasons there could be for random occurrence. Destiny perhaps? Another high altitude theory, thanks for taking a look Willie.

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    • Willie Gannon 6 months ago

      Is fate the same as pre-determined? or pre-destination? If so, I knew I would read this article twice...

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  7. Yoosof Farah 6 months ago

    damn fate, made ashley young dive and made the referee give a penalty, which in turn then meant gillingham lost against aston villa 2-1. we could've got a replay!! at villa park!! which also would've been live on tv!!!

    anyway, great article illya. i'll be honest with you, the headline didn't interest me. i wasn't going to read this article but i clicked on it accidentally. i read a line in the middle, the one about the way the plane was designed and how bobby charlton believes that is why he survived. i was interested then, and i was so glad i read the whole article. great stuff, potd from me :)

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  8. Guido 6 months ago

    It's an interesting take on football. Reminds me of the butterfly effect, if that means anything to you.

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  9. Nathan Cicchini 6 months ago

    Deep man, Deep. An insight into your mind indeed. And of course also a great read!

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  10. Marzia Hazra 6 months ago

    No your typical sports article but I liked it ;) Good job

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    • illya mclellan 6 months ago

      thanks for taking a look Marzia, definitely not your typical sports piece but I was going for that, I have decided to diversify in a big way from now on, hopefully I will get another inspirational thought for the next in my strange series, hahha.

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  11. Saraswathi Siriginia 6 months ago

    Bravo!

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  12. Eric Gomez 6 months ago

    It's funny how a word can be so vague and yet so meaningful. Like you mention, this word gets tossed around plenty in football, and it's strange how hard it can be to pinpoint just what it is and what it means. Good stuff.

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    • illya mclellan 6 months ago

      cool, like a lot of words that are in common usage there is definitely more to them than the just the definition per phrase etc. thanks for reading.

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  13. Michelle Alves 6 months ago

    Very different from anything i've read in a while. You amaze me :)

    great work, really. Keep writing, and keep me updated with what you've written. Cheers

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    • illya mclellan 6 months ago

      thanks a lot Michelle, glad that it was something different from what you have read recently, will keep you posted, noticed you haven't written much since the cricket article....taking a break?

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    • Michelle Alves 6 months ago

      Not really. I'm still writing, but only to be read by the inside of my bed :P I'll come up with something soon , I guess. Not feeling too inspired right now.

      Although, the fergie vs rafa, battle of the managers going on right now has tickled the twisted part of my mind :)

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  14. Zahi Sahli 5 months ago

    very good read :)

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  15. John Louie Ramos 5 months ago

    Thumbs up!!

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  1. John Louie Ramos 5 months ago

    I mean two thumbs up!!

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  2. Charles Tabb 5 months ago

    Not sure if it makes sense, but this article made me think of a Guy Ritchie movie.

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