The newscast opened with two stark stories: a tragedy of 125 lives lost at Kanjuruhan stadium in Malang, Indonesia, and a climactic election day in Brazil featuring Lula and Bolsonaro. The football clubs Arema and Persebaya Surabaya faced off in a match that became a symbol far beyond sport, echoing the broader political divide between Brazil’s Labor Party and the Liberal Party.
Football has long been a mirror of society, especially in places where it dominates as a shared spectacle. It isn’t merely about the fans, the diehards clutching their loyalties, or the rowdy voices at the bar. It’s about ordinary citizens who dedicate roughly 100 minutes a week to the ritual of shouting, cheering, and letting emotion run ahead of reason. That emotional allegiance, once privately tolerated in the mid-twentieth century, has become a loud, colorful signifier of identity. The more primal and passionate the energy, the more it seems to define the crowd. When this fervor spills into religion, it becomes easy to ride the wave of last-minute polarization into politics. Parents teach their children to bark in the stadium, to cry at a parade, to shout out in political debates, and to vote out of anger. When they don’t, someone else’s parent might fill the role in a media outlet, chasing attention with images, narratives, and merchandise.
You don’t need a catalyst to polarize a large crowd. In the Indonesian stadium, opposing fans were absent, leaving a volatile environment that turned fatal as the stampede unfolded. The tragedy crushes the sense of scoring a goal against the opposing side and leaves a hollow ache that lingers far beyond the final whistle.
In Brazil, social inequality and the election results highlight how much emotion can shape political choices, often trumping policy details or pragmatic budgets. The realm of governance, for many voters, is less about measured analysis and more about a felt sense of belonging, status, and promise. Emotions cannot be fully controlled by the state, even when officials try to steer outcomes with slogans and slogans alone. Without a stable economic ladder and a consistent social safety net, voters often anchor themselves in intangible values and narratives that feel more immediate than sober fiscal planning. The moment of doubt between political polarization and football is powerful, and it can be amplified by media cultures that encourage predictable, performative stances. When Jair Bolsonaro urged his followers to vote in pajamas, wearing the national team jersey, it wasn’t just a joke. It was a demonstration of how symbol and ritual can become political leverage, turning everyday attire into a political signal that travels quickly through networks and feeds into a larger climate of emotion-based decision making.
Across borders, the pattern holds. In many places where sports are woven into national storytelling, fans carry extemporaneous expressions of identity into every arena of public life. The stadium becomes a classroom for behavioral cues, and the bar becomes a forum for rumor and resonance. The lines between sportsmanship, loyalty, and political conviction blur as people adopt public personas that reflect what they want others to see. This convergence creates moments where a goal-scored celebration can morph into a national moment of pride or grievance, and where a political message announced in a stadium echo chamber finds a receptive audience on social feeds and in coffeehouse conversations. The challenge for policymakers and platform operators is to recognize that emotions are real forces. They can animate civic engagement and participation, but they can also distort judgment when not balanced by clear information and accountable leadership.
What does this mean for governance and public discourse? It means attention must shift toward understanding how social and economic disparities are felt in everyday life and how those feelings color vote choices, policy expectations, and trust in institutions. It means acknowledging that fans, voters, and citizens respond to stories, symbols, and rituals just as much as to data or policy detail. It means designing communication that respects the intensity of feeling while inviting constructive dialogue, critical thinking, and empathy across divides. And it means recognizing when media ecosystems are amplifying fevered takes at the expense of nuance, while also valuing the power of sport to unite, teach teamwork, and model resilience in the face of tragedy. In a world where a single image can travel from a stadium to a ballot box in minutes, credibility, accountability, and clarity are more important than ever. The balance between passion and reason must be guarded not by censorship but by responsible storytelling, transparent leadership, and inclusive conversations that invite participation from diverse communities, preserving the humanity at the core of both sport and democracy.