If I Kiss The Head of Fabien Barthez, We’ll Win – And Other Lies We Tell Ourselves

Superstition. The one thing we – players, managers, fans – all have in common.

Photo: sporlab on Unsplash

I’m an atheist six days out of seven.

Come match day, I’m clutching my tea like a rosary and whispering to the gods of football.

I drink from the right mug. I don’t wear that shirt. I do everything in exactly the same order as last time we won. I’ve got patterns. Portents. A deep conviction that if I sit on the wrong bit of sofa, we’ll concede before half-time. If it worked once, it will work again.

Superstition and football go hand in hand – like bad refereeing decisions and bratwurst.

Doesn’t matter if it’s the UCL or a Sunday league down the park. Everyone has a ritual or two. Players. Fans. Ball boys. The guy in the kebab shop who closes early when his team’s losing. Football turns rational people into twitchy, ritual-bound disciples.

Kolo Touré refusing to walk onto the pitch unless he was last. Laurent Blanc kissing Fabien Barthez’s bald head before every match. Trapattoni bringing holy water to games. Raymond Domenech ending Robert Pires’ international career because he didn’t want a Scorpio on his team.

Half of all football fans admit to superstitious behaviour. Among players, the number’s even higher. No surprises there.

Science calls it a coping mechanism. In high-stress environments like competitive sport, rituals help manage anxiety and focus. Some studies even say it boosts performance. The placebo in full effect.

Luis Suarez and his wristband. John Terry always choosing the same seat on the bus. Toni Kroos wearing the same worn-out boots forever.

Here’s the thing: players might benefit from that placebo. Fans? We’ve got no business pretending what mug we use has any impact on a late equaliser.

And yet here we are. Even I, who doesn’t believe in homeopathy, astrology, or any other esoteric twaddle, will be standing there, praying, before our striker takes that penalty.

I know it doesn’t work. But in the context of football, I stick with it.

Why?

Maybe we’re all just trying to feel like we matter. Like we’re not just passengers on a careening bus with no brakes and too much emotional baggage. Our chants affect not only the atmosphere but can boost player performance, that we know.

But our lucky briefs? Pure nonsense. We know it. And still, we put them on again. We believe. It’s so engrained in our culture, even brands jump on the bandwagon.

We also have our collective nonsense. Because nothing can connect us to each other like an entirely nonsensical tradition. In fact, I believe the community aspect of football rituals might just be the most important factor. Take the Poznań – City fans turning their backs and bouncing in unison. Started during a Europa League match against Lech Poznań in 2010. It was silly. It was brilliant. And it stuck. A weird little collective superstition born out of nothing but vibes.

Pre-game moments can become rituals, too. When I still lived in Bielefeld with a season ticket, we always met up at Siegfriedplatz for a beer or two. Then we walked down the road to the stadium together. Then we took our places on the terraces. Then we partook in the pre-game ceremonies. Just like everybody else. Nothing special. But if we did anything just slightly differently, it felt off. Collective superstition born out of nothing but vibes.

The Magic Mug

It’s not just what we do, either. It’s what we notice. Human brains love patterns, even when they’re bollocks. Team loses in the special kit? Never wear that kit again. Keeper shaves his beard and lets in four? Ban razors. You see a pattern, you follow it. Hello, new matchday tradition.

Is it irrational? Yes¹. Is that bad? No, not necessarily.

Football isn’t logical. That’s why we love it. It’s 90 minutes of hope, heartbreak, chaos and catharsis. The thrill of not knowing. If you want certainty, go read a spreadsheet. Football’s for the romantics, the masochists, the ones who feel things and keep coming back for more.²

But amidst the unpredictability, we want to have the feeling that maybe, just maybe, we can bend time and space. The illusion of it, at least. A tiny moment where we believe our presence, our ritual, our mug, might somehow shift the odds. That maybe, just maybe, we can do something to help that ball over the line.

It makes more sense if you think about football culture as a pseudo-religious concept. Faith against all odds. A belief system rooted in hope, conviction, and tribalism. Centered around weekly rituals. Superstition at its core.

There’s no football without superstition. And there’s nothing wrong about it. Harmless fun, mostly. For fans, it’s pure copium. For players, it might be a placebo.

Of course, even placebos fail.

Two years ago, Bielefeld were in the relegation zone of the 2. Bundesliga. The team was in shambles. The coach out of ideas.

In desperation, the club’s Feng Shui shaman apparently tried a few tricks: Rumor has it there was a chakra sculpture in the locker room, buckets of water lined up by the pitch, a big red button everyone had to press before kick-off.

We went down anyway.

We listen and we don’t judge. All’s fair in love and Abstiegskampf.

The sculpture’s probably in storage now. The buckets gone.

But every new player brings a new ritual. Every new manager, a new belief system. Every fan, a new little superstition, a pre-game ritual passed on from parent to child, from fan to their community.

Because that’s the beauty of it: it doesn’t have to work every time.

It just has to work once.

1. And no. Superstition aside, rituals have a well-documented function. For example, for neurodivergent people like myself, rituals and routine are important wellbeing tools, and this is true for many neurotypical folk as well.

2. I believe this is one of the reasons many of us hate VAR. It takes all of that out of the equation.