Politics and football don't mix.

The words of Ruud Gullit, “Politics and football don’t mix,” carry a warning born of experience and of sorrow. Football, the game beloved by millions, is meant to be a field where nations, classes, and peoples may meet in shared passion. It is the arena of skill, unity, and joy, where a goal scored binds strangers together in a single cheer. Politics, by contrast, is the art of division and contention, of power sought and power lost. To mix the two is to stain the purity of play with the bitterness of rivalry, turning the dance of sport into a battlefield of ideology.

History bears witness to this truth. Recall the 1970 “Football War” between El Salvador and Honduras, when a series of matches, instead of uniting two peoples, inflamed their tensions. Violence erupted, lives were lost, and what should have been a celebration of sport became the spark of bloodshed. Here we see Gullit’s wisdom: when political hatred invades the pitch, the beauty of the game is destroyed, and the ball itself becomes a weapon of enmity.

Even in more subtle ways, politics has bent football to its purposes. In Mussolini’s Italy of the 1930s, victories in the World Cup were not merely triumphs of athletic skill but were trumpeted as proof of fascist superiority. The athletes became pawns, their glory stolen by the state. Thus, football ceased to be the joy of the people and became instead the banner of a regime. The laughter of fans was drowned by propaganda, and the love of the game was shackled to ideology.

Yet, the true spirit of football is the opposite of politics. It unites where politics divides. In the World Cup of 1998, France lifted the trophy with a team of many races and backgrounds—Zidane of Algerian descent, Thuram of Guadeloupe, Desailly from Ghana. For a moment, the divisions of society were dissolved, and the stadium became a temple of brotherhood. This is football’s highest calling: to remind us that humanity can stand together, not as enemies, but as players in the same game.

So let the children of the future remember: keep politics from corrupting the sacred joy of play. Guard the game as a gift that transcends tribe and tongue. For when men and women gather to watch a ball roll upon the grass, they gather as one people, united not by ideology but by wonder. And in that moment, they taste a glimpse of harmony greater than any decree of kings or parliaments.