No new striker, too many injuries, too intense – the supposed fatal flaws in Mikel Arteta’s team ignore their consistent successOne of the problems with sport, imported from heartwarming mid-90s books about Man Feelings and their attendant movie adaptations featuring Colin Farrell looking sad in a hoodie, is the idea that football in particular has something to tell us about life. In many ways this is correct. It’s just that the things football has to tell us are not always good or helpful.For example, the concept of the zero-sum game. It’s not a zero-sum game. People say this a lot now, often in the context of some reductive and binary argument, the kind of internet shouting match where there can be only one winner, that for one party to succeed it must necessarily be bad for everyone else, without nuance or shared benefits and burdens. Grownups are always insisting that it’s not a zero-sum game. Continue reading...
The article questions the negativity surrounding Arsenal potentially finishing second for a third consecutive season, arguing it would be a consistent success, and points out that football, unlike life, is often a zero-sum game where only winning matters.
