Sven, the strange power of football and maybe even the meaning of life | Football

IIt is the 85th minute of a top match between Melbourne University Bohemians and our opponents, Barnstoneworth: 2-2, the penultimate match of the season. A point in their favour – identical records, but their goal difference is much better.

I show up for a throw, slightly miscontrol him under pressure and throw him forward somewhere. “Shit your pants, mate,” their center-mid announces. Jet black, medium-length curly hair, I estimate him to be about 20 years younger than me.

To be honest, it was a terrible move. I wanted to explain that I hadn’t played a full 90 in five years, that my toddler had been awake since 4.50am, that I had remnants of plantar fasciitis in my left foot, a missing meniscus in my left knee and tendinopathy in my left groin that meant every step had been painful all afternoon – and despite that, I’d had fewer operations than most of my team-mates – and, frankly, his team of lithe twenty- and thirty-somethings should have been out of the picture against a team down to 10 men, the centre-backs of which were a combined 110 years old.

Unfortunately there wasn’t enough time to get it all out before he sprinted onto the pitch and I turned around like an oil tanker to trudge after him again. He and she were really good and quite decent, all things considered. It ended 2-2 – Barnstoneworth had the lead this weekend. On another day we would have won comfortably – although that day would have been sometime in 2007.

There are many readers and listeners who find comparisons between park football and the elite level ridiculous – and who are only too happy to tell me so. But when I saw the excellent documentary about Sven-Göran Eriksson the day after he died, I felt the connection all too real.

Football gave him his identity and sense of belonging. It took this man from the forests of West Sweden to Portugal, Italy, England and North Korea via Meadow Lane, of course. Sven has lived far more lives than I ever will – both on and off the pitch – but when you boil the game down to what it really is – a roundabout business trying to get between two posts – it is truly extraordinary that it defines and perhaps controls so many of us in a way that is almost impossible to explain to those who don’t care.

I think the same goes for all activities. Cricket, jousting, K-pop, remote controlled trucks driving on sand (my son watches quite a bit of this on YouTube) – we all want to belong somewhere. Most of us don’t really choose where we ultimately belong. It’s just given to us, by a mother or a father or a buddy.

Perhaps you’re reading a midlife crisis playing out in real time. Forgive me – you’ve probably been skimming the football pages trying to figure out who Angel Gomes is, rather than whether your existence has any meaning.

But I was still physically broken from the game when I sat down to watch Sven. In the final minutes I had bodychecked the aforementioned central midfielder when he broke through – the perfect professional foul. Complained to the referee, shoulder to shoulder. The reality was that it was his shoulder, it was my chest – at that moment I felt like every bone in my upper body had broken like a frozen lake on a spring day or a cartoon character from Loony Tunes – crack-crack-crack-crack-crack, turn to the camera and break into a thousand pieces.

Maybe I was more susceptible to a little existential angst than usual, but there was no way I could watch a dying man talk about all the decisions in his life without wondering what the point was.

In Simon Hattenstone’s excellent article after Sven’s death, he noted that when he spoke to him, Sven had just watched five Olympic football matches in a row. There’s a wonderful moment in the documentary where Sven takes a dig at Sol Campbell for England, who were conceding a 5-1 opening match in Munich. “Shit. Absolute shit! It was too easy. Sol Campbell was too slow. 100kg. You couldn’t expect him to be fast.”

I don’t know how you fill your days when you don’t have many; five football games feels like a lot. But it was probably a comfort – to get lost in this part of life that you’ve been lost in for so long.

And sometimes getting lost feels like a really important thing to be able to do. Being utterly bewildered by a referee who cards your striker as he’s being lifted in ACL-induced agony onto a battered stretcher that looks like it was last unfolded in a World War I hospital. Time stands still as your number 10 fires a net wide from 50 yards with the keeper on his line. At that moment, that’s all you can think about.

And then you stop and realise that it’s not the game that gives it meaning. It’s the friendships, the relationships, the memories. And whatever your involvement with football is, that’s as true for you and me as it is for Sven or Tord Grip or David Beckham or anyone else.

So here I sit, perhaps hoping to be seen as some sort of sophisticated, versatile and critically acclaimed thinker, when in reality I’m just staring at the Football Victoria Metropolitan League 6 North-West table and hoping this groin injury will be over by Sunday.

I wonder how much time is wasted by parkclloggers studying amateur league tables during the season. How many WhatsApps to the boss from players proposing a starting XI they happen to be in. Maybe wasted isn’t the right word.

Sven was so open about his flaws – none of us are perfect. I conjured an article from this game, but I probably shouldn’t have played it – I left my pregnant wife at home with an abscess behind a wisdom tooth and a toddler to look after. But – and this looks pathetic when I read it back – I won the man of the match award, as if that’s some kind of justification.

We all know that our time is limited. Sven dealt with the knowledge of how limited we are with extraordinary dignity, and he let us in. “Take care of yourself, and take care of your life, and live it.” It may sound cliché, but sometimes a cliché works. It feels like good advice.