Philosophical Ergic busts stereotype of modern footballers
IVAN ERGIC is not quite Serbia’s answer to Joey Barton, but the former international midfielder, who won 11 caps and played at the 2006 World Cup in Germany, has made a post-football career move that is sure to interest the English game’s enfant terrible. A muchtravelled player, not unlike Barton, Ergic was born in Croatia, moved to Serbia and at 18 signed for Juventus, who loaned him to FC Basel.
After eight years in Switzerland, he moved to Bursaspor in Turkey and helped them win the league title. Earlier this year, aged 31, he retired, and took up his new job, as a poet and philosopher.
His first book of poetry, called ‘Bajronovski Junak’ (Byronic Hero) was recently published and he writes an irregular column for a Serbian newspaper. In it, he tackles issues in football such as mafia, corruption, male chauvinism, the corporate machinery behind sports and the alienation of fans and players in the modern game.
‘Unfortunately the stereotypes about footballers are usually true,’ said Ergic. ‘But you can’t say that they are stupid in general. I know many players who are very intelligent. But the fact that I wrote a poetry book doesn’t say anything about my intelligence, rather about my sensibility.
‘That professional players don’t have much time to do other things is just another myth. We have plenty of time, much more than an average worker with a more conventional job. It’s a different matter that most footballers spend their free time on Playstation, playing cards and other cultural trash.
‘I feel particularly privileged to have the time in which I can cultivate my personality. Time is the most precious commodity in the turbocapitalist dynamics of living. You need to use it right and develop your cultural, not merely vegetative, needs.’
ERGIC (pictured) says he has eschewed fiction writing and prefers to focus his reading on economic and global matters. He also wants to write a play, and an autobiography charting what he described as some incredible meetings when he was acting as his own agent.
‘That was a risk, but it was also interesting and fun,’ he said. ‘It was like a real-life satire. You meet so many incredible characters from petty thieves to those sorts of people who will openly threaten you and your family. I recorded lots of conversations.’
He was also pleased to leave Juventus. ‘I never wanted to go back to Juventus because right from the start I realized it was a semi-mafia club,’ he told Mozzasport.
When he was in demand as a footballer, Ergic chose where to play based on the city, rather than the sporting challenge on offer. That’s why he moved to Bursa in Turkey, but when the offers slowed down last summer, there was no interest from anywhere that appealed to him. Besides, the life of the intellectual was not compatible with his football career.
‘Mentally, I became increasingly distanced from football, and when you don’t put 100 per cent into it, it’s time to call it quits,’ he explained.
‘I would spend my nights reading or writing, and that’s not a suitable lifestyle for a professional footballer. I was still in good shape and some clubs wanted me, but I wanted to get the vibe of the city and the people before deciding if I should sign or not. I did that with Bursa previously and it turned out great. But none of these clubs felt like the right environment for me.’ The finances, or lack of them, in football, are another popular hobbyhorse for Ergic. ‘Lots of clubs these days have huge debts, which only shows how irrational the capitalist system is, how it allows you to live above your means.
‘There are billionaires in football who can buy everything and thus destroy the market logic. It’s not even about football anymore, rather about political economy. The solution is to change the whole system in which we live and abandon this capitalism which doesn’t rely on market rules, but on monopoly.
‘My goal is to pair theoretical criticism with personal experiences in sport to show that football is not a humane activity, as presented by the marketing and PR machinery, but a cruel business where both the fans and the players are being victimised.’
Ergic is now getting his revenge on the game for this victimisation.