The importance of being benched: soccer, contingency and re-enchantment

This essay argues that soccer still possesses the capacity to re-enchant the world. First, it delineates an evolutionary model of soccer history - a wave model - different to the nostalgics' linear version of soccer history. Second, it argues that soccer can be considered a secular strategy of re-enchantment due to four reasons: soccer is not only agon (competition) but also arete (striving for excellence and beauty); the mental zone of both player and spectator is related to Kant's idea of aesthetic experience as presupposing what he calls 'disinterestedness'; soccer stadiums are places of secular sacrality; and soccer is determined by its high degree of contingency, but since instrumental reason and reduction of contingency are part and parcel of modern day soccer, it shall further be argued that the bench - due to it being the very embodiment of contingency - embodies a potentially enchanting countermove to the scientification of soccer.