Art & Football Again

Returning today to both the notion of the living of ‘the life aesthetic’, attuned to experiencing art any- & everywhere it may occur, & also to a theme touched-upon last summer, this time as related to the concept of artistic influence, which last night might be claimed to have extended so far as to have proved decisive in the outcome of a football match, no less. The occasion was the UEFA Cup semi-final 2nd leg between SV Hamburg & their North German near-neighbours Werder Bremen, which began with the hosts holding a 1-0 advantage from the 1st leg in Bremen.
Early in the proceedings, Hamburg scored & extended their overall lead to 2-0, before Werder rallied to score twice themselves, leaving both the match - by now deep into its second half - & the tie delicately poised as it approached its conclusion.
It was at this point that art took a hand. With the football travelling towards the Hamburg goal line, accompanied by a player from that team & effectively under his control, intending to pass it to a team-mate, it came into contact with an obstacle that had at some time during the evening been throw onto the pitch, namely a ball of scrunched-up paper, in the manner of Martin Creed’s ‘Work No. 88: A sheet of A4 paper crumpled into a ball’.
This collision of spherical objects caused the football to significantly alter its trajectory, ricocheting in an upwards direction & wrong-footing the player, bobbling from his shin & thence over the goal line to result in a corner kick to Werder from which, once taken, they subsequently scored another goal, their third on the night &, crucially for the outcome of the tie, at their opponent’s venue for, although Hamburg were yet to recover one goal of their deficit in the tense & frenetic few moments before the match’s denouement, thus squaring the aggregate score at 3-3, this third ‘away goal’ for Bremen (comparing favourably with Hamburg’s solitary effort on their opponent’s turf, of course) determined that it would be they who progressed to the cup final under the competition’s rules that dictate such a deciding factor in the event of a tie.


Werder Bremen's Frank Baumann (right) celebrates his deciding goal with Claudio Pizarro

Thus it might well be said with conviction that the intervention of the paper ball was critical in deciding the result of the match & consequently the semi-final tie - a victory for art (after the fashion, anyway) in the context of a sporting occasion, courtesy of a goal assist by Martin Creed, at least via his influence upon a supporter!