>>47527542the entire concept misses the point. the pokemon sits on the bench and cheers the football players, it doesn't play the fucking game.
it's a consequence of the shitty vision masuda introduced for the series after tajiri left, where the entire world is a pokemon theme park and you cannot live or breathe but for pokeballs on either side of you
the original vision for the series still had areas of its world where pokemon were the focus, but you could tell it was still a world where money ruled the world at the end of the day and the emphasis the world placed on pokemon was actually quite similar to the emphasis the real world places on sports - disproportionate, but hardly master of your day to day life
elements of this wax and wane in the series. you can look at the agency of the main character in the games – HMs help involve the use of pokemon in the overworld, but replacing the bicycle with a riding pokemon or a bike magically possessed by a rotom again pushes you more to this world where if it wasn't for pokemon, humanity would apparently fall apart for lack of anything to do
you could honestly take it as gen 8 retconned the idea of human athletic sports in the pokemon world. not that the series has canon anymore so the idea of 'retconning' is superfluous, but the longer this franchise goes on the less the humans in it have anything to do other than be obsessed with pokemon
