An embarrassing conversation with Real Betis' Hector Bellerin: Climate, elitism and why more players aren't speaking up

“Football, with each passing day is more about the margins, where we can make more money, and less about the people who support it, and the people who make football really great. It is becoming more elitist every day”, he says Hector Bellerinwith calm conviction.

“It's definitely hard to see the game take away from some of the reasons you love it. I just finished reading Fever pitching by Nick Hornby, a book I wanted to read for a long time to see what football was like for the fans back then, and how they lived it. And he finished writing this in 1991, and already since then, you see a huge difference with all these different competitions and decisions that are clearly taken only for margins and money, you see how far away from what once. was.”

It seems enough to say that in the half hour we have with Bellerin, he is asked only once about what he does on the pitch, rather than his actions off it, or what he thinks about the general direction of the game. It's not that Bellerin doesn't have a wide variety of football experiences to fill a book or two himself; Arsene Wenger's Arsenal, winning a Copa del Rey on penalties with Real Betis, beating Arsenal with Sporting CP, being part of what looks like Xavi Hernandez's only Liga title. Yet everyone seems happy with their answers. It's just that normally you don't have someone of his stature who is as compelling and willing to address topics that usually send press officers running for safety.

The Real Betis they are perfectly happy to put Bellerin. Questions that can be sharp for someone else, topics often perceived as treacherous for a footballer, he navigates with enough ease to make you forget who he is.

The activist is a bit strong, it is a word that has been soaked with an element of mistrust and a kind of aggressiveness that is not suitable just to promote a cause. Of course, it does not have a place in the dressing room of Bellerin, who always looks fit, and cared for cool. Currently dealing with how Bellerin talks about the climate crisis, mental health, football as a wider game, and more than anything else, the people, there is no doubt that he is actively asking for change. There is nuance, there is empathy, there is perspective on issues that are regularly condensed into a two-dimensional point of view. Although I find a lot of this kind of thing.

“They only tell footballers to 'watch football' when they do something that is not masculine. When they play Playstation, when they drive fast cars, when we get drunk, there is nothing to say. But when we we do things, when Borja (Iglesias) painted his nails, or when I go to a fashion show, that's when they question us. That's when they say it affects our football.”

“It's something to think about. And when we get away from football, and we don't respect that standard that so many people hold on us, it's something I ask myself often, and it makes me angry.”

Everyday life for Bellerin means practicing what he preaches in Spain's most religious region, Andalusia. Come to shine, and he often does in Seville, he will be on his bike to train and around the city. Come rain, it will be on public transport. The 28-year-old says it takes him months to decide whether to buy something new, deliberating which option is the most sustainable, if he can avoid buying another, putting a greener lifestyle into “every decision he makes I did.”

“I'm not the one who has the answers,” he assures, however. “It needs to come from the organizations at the top, and it's something that not only in football, it can't just fall on the clubs and the players, we can't decide how we travel, we just go where the manager of the team says. us. And we should be us as players and fans, to ask for that and for them to put the resources available to make that change. It has to come from the top, but it has to be completely, and it's not about pointing the finger to whoever has to make a change, it has to happen slowly and together, organically.”

He may not be the one with the answers, but he certainly asks the right questions. Bellerin seems to want to hold power to account, and his voice is certainly in use, but it is not the norm. The aforementioned Iglesias painted his nails in support of the LGBTQIA + community, and his teammate Aitor Ruibal responds to homophobic comments that he and Iglesias received online for bringing purses to a wedding. When in the whole world there was an uproar against the former president of the RFEF Luis Rubiales, 80 footballers said that they would not return to Spain while he was there, and only. a male Spanish footballer risked something – Iglesias.

I know how much power footballers have to sanitize the image of dictatorial regimes, like an international Hollywood meets cubism facelift, why are there so few footballers willing to attack their face for good causes?

“This is a question I ask myself all the time. Football clubs have always wanted to protect the players, especially in the past. You know what we heard, we don't talk about politics, just focus on your football, which I understand a point, or with young players, but as we grow older and mature, we are all able to express our opinions and It is important to exercise this influence that we have, and not only football players, can be artists or anyone who it has an influence on the rest.”

“Here we have a group of players who had difficult conversations, with our teammates, we had unpleasant conversations among ourselves, we wanted to learn. I think that many people, especially men, are sometimes afraid to talk about these things, because they are afraid of being called hypocrites. Maybe in the past we had different opinions, because of the way we were raised or educated, and the people who don't want to change are the ones who find it very easy to point the finger, and they call you a hypocrite. . Because you were one way a couple of years ago, you can't be a different person now.”

Free from shame or self-important redemption, Bellerin is happy to admit that he too was a different person. His interest in fashion was not sustainable in the past. Where things get tricky is that maybe he's implying that the world would rather you didn't care about your actions, rather than change who you are. i am – in itself a flawed concept, but also compatible with boxy thinking.

“The Internet today is very quick to cancel people, it is not very accepting of mistakes, and when you live in a society that does not accept mistakes, this is perhaps one of the keys. It would be a good thing if we will be able to have these conversations even if we don't think the same way, which every day becomes a little more difficult.”

Those awkward conversations, those changes, are something that Betis and Bellerin specialize in. He worked with his girlfriend Elena by going to schools and using football as a channel to encourage children to talk about their emotions. The Real Betis Foundation also works closely with Bellerin, and has more than 100 initiatives, projects and programs to its name. That goes from providing environmentally friendly transportation to fans traveling to the games, to sustainable use of water in their facilities, to literally having Joaquin plant trees.

Where the kernel of… Maturity if you want, or perhaps human intelligence fits better, where it shines in Bellerin is in his approach to changes, to the conversation itself, regardless of the topic.

“When you try to change things too quickly, which have been done for a long time, sometimes they stop because it is not an organic change”, he says emphasizing that the change, cannot be just basic, or simply imposed from above , but it must be a collective convergence.

I just feel sensible that he should have the last words.

“One of the greenest things we can do is to vote. Voting is one of the things we can do because it means putting someone in power who will put those green initiatives in place, because sometimes as consumers we can they feel guilty, but it's also the state and the big companies that pollute. the most, and they make us feel bad, so we have a great opportunity every time we vote to put our community first.”

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