[R-G] How to Watch the World Cup: Politics and War by Other Means

[Anthony Fenton]

How to Watch the World Cup

Politics and War by Other Means

By Tony Karon

I have a pretty good idea where Osama bin Laden will be on June 14 --  
and June 19, and again on June 23. Not his exact location, but it's a  
safe bet he'll be in front of a TV tuned in to Saudi Arabia's World  
Cup soccer matches with, respectively, Tunisia, Ukraine, and Spain.  
Legend has it that soccer is one of bin Laden's guilty pleasures.  
He's unlikely to miss the spectacle of the men from the land of the  
Prophet taking on the infidels of al-Andalus. He probably has a soft  
spot for Tunisia too, that country being the only one on record thus  
far to see one of its professional soccer players attempt to join al  
Qaeda's martyrs.

Nor will bin Laden be alone among America's enemies in spending June  
engrossed in the quadrennial spectacle of the World Cup, staged this  
time in Germany. Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmedinajad has even  
threatened to show up if Iran progresses beyond the first round.  
Seeking to burnish his populist credentials at home, Ahmedinajad  
recently allowed himself to be photographed in sweats kicking a ball  
around with the Iranian team during a training session. You can bet  
Kim Jong-il will watch, too, even though it is South Korea that  
represents his nation's hopes this year.

President Bush may give the event a miss -- one can only wonder what  
he would make of a game in which the U.S. has a negligible chance of  
being world champion; for Americans with qualms about their country's  
imperial role, by contrast, supporting the plucky and rather well- 
liked outsiders of Team USA is an opportunity for guilt-free  
patriotic fervor. But you can be sure that Bush allies like Tony  
Blair, Angela Merkel, Jacques Chirac, Junichiro Koizumi, and Silvio  
Berlusconi (who actually owns AC Milan, one of Italy's top teams)  
will watch their countries' every game.

No global event commands anything close to the attention paid the  
World Cup on all five continents. As many as 3 billion people are  
expected to watch some of it on TV, while 250 million more will  
cluster around radios to follow every play. Having caught the 1974  
and 1978 tournaments by radio from a South Africa without TV  
coverage, I can sympathize with the TV-less Angolans, Togoans,  
Ghanaians, and Ivoirians of today. (I took in the live drama via the  
BBC on short-wave, then waited two weeks for the visuals, courtesy of  
the White House Hotel, a Cape Town brothel that was diversifying its  
revenue stream by showing imported pirate videos of the games.)

The billions who tune into the World Cup are watching a game that, at  
the highest level, largely negates all advantages of social class or  
even physical stature -- the combination of speed, skill, imagination  
and organization required to prevail is a great leveler. But at the  
World Cup, soccer is far more than a game.

"What do they of cricket know who only cricket know," wrote the  
legendary Trinidadian historian and socialist CLR James, insisting  
that the spectacle of men in white flannels on a grassy oval engaged  
in a five-day contest of bat and ball, with strictly observed breaks  
for lunch and afternoon tea, could only be properly understood in the  
context of the political and cultural conflicts of the British  
Empire. If James had lived long enough to see the national team of  
his beloved Trinidad qualify for the elite 32 teams that will contest  
the 2006 World Cup, he'd surely have made the same point about soccer  
(even if, like most of humanity, he'd have called it "football").

James recognized sport as a ritualized combat, matching only war in  
its ability to channel national passions. Those passions are tied,  
for better or worse, to an almost mythic connection fans make between  
their team and their national narrative -- when facing Germany,  
English fans routinely chant lines like: "Two World Wars and one  
World Cup" (linking their defeats of Germany on the battlefield and  
the soccer field).

As James saw it, playing cricket matches against England offered its  
former colonial subjects, at least ritually, a chance to demolish the  
claims of cultural superiority through which the British had for so  
long rationalized imperial rule. So, too, soccer: The roar heard  
across the Irish Diaspora when the Republic of Ireland team scores  
against England expresses a passion that long predates the game of  
soccer -- the more jingoistic among the English fans respond with  
bloodcurdling anti-IRA songs. Millions of Africans walked a little  
taller that summer's day four years ago when Senegal beat its former  
colonial master, France, then the reigning world champion.

James also noted the tendency of colonized peoples to develop their  
own idiom of play, evolving styles based on their skills and patterns  
of social organization that tended to confound the colonizer even  
while playing within his rules.

The last World Cup final pitted Brazil against Germany, teams that  
represent global North-South polar opposites in the way the game is  
played. As Muhammad Ali was celebrated not just for his unique skills  
in the ring but for his iconic resistance to the racial order, so the  
universal popularity of Brazil is based not only on its exquisitely  
poetic style -- the "Joga Bonito" (beautiful game) -- but also on its  
role as a proxy representative of the Global South.

The German game epitomizes the industrialized West: physical power,  
relentless drive, unshakable organization and a machine-like  
efficiency in punishing opponents' mistakes. It's a kind of  
Blitzkrieg -- the modern German game, as Simon Kuper has noted, had  
its roots in Nazi sports culture and the militaristic virtues it  
lionized -- that overwhelms opponents with physical power on the  
ground and in the air, often winning "ugly" by a single goal. The  
best-known German players of the past half century have been  
goalkeepers, field commanders in defense and midfield, as well as  
clinical if artless goal-poaching forwards. There has never been a  
Pelé on the German team; in Brazil, by contrast, each year brings a  
new crop of awesomely talented teenagers from the favelas whose  
audacious skill and flair inevitably anoints them as "the next Pelé."

Brazil's style is more akin to advanced guerrilla warfare in which  
the insurgents have the momentum and the confidence. They combine  
impossible skill with breathtaking audacity and guile, an ability to  
shoot from great distances and apply boot to ball in a manner that  
improbably "bends" its trajectory. The telepathy with which they are  
able to anticipate each other's movements allows them to dazzle both  
the opposition and the crowd with the fluidity of their passing  
movements and their propensity for doing the unexpected. The  
adversary literally never knows where the next attack will come from,  
or what it will be. And the smiles of the Brazilians, even in crucial  
games, tell you that they're enjoying themselves. On the field,  
you'll rarely see a German player smile.

When Ronaldinho, currently rated the greatest player in the world,  
spotted the English goalkeeper David Seaman two yards off the goal  
line in their 2002 World Cup clash, he unleashed a 40-yard free kick  
that looped over Seaman's outstretched gloves, wickedly dipping and  
curling into the top corner of England's goal. So thunderstruck were  
the English TV commentators that they insisted the strike was a  
fluke, a pass that went fortuitously awry. It's for such moments that  
the soccer fans of the Global South live.

Globalizing the Local Game

National idioms of play may, however, be on the wane, as Europe's  
professional club leagues -- housing almost all of the world's  
leading players -- create nearly year-round the sort of spectacle for  
a global-satellite TV audience once restricted to the World Cup. In  
many developing countries today (including Brazil), ever fewer people  
attend domestic league games, reserving their soccer time religiously  
for TV broadcasts of the top European leagues where they're more  
likely to see the best players from their own countries.

Today, a match in London between Arsenal and Manchester United  
involves players from Latin America, much of West Africa, the Arab  
world, northern, southern, and eastern Europe, and Asia. The global  
TV audience it attracts is good news for the marketers of players'  
jerseys and other soccer paraphernalia, even if it's a tad bizarre  
for a British army squaddie patrolling Basra in southern Iraq to  
encounter a Mehdi Army militiaman sporting the shirt of Arsenal, the  
soldier's "local" London team – a jersey that he and his mates might  
wear on a night out back home to signify a kind of tribal identity.  
But there's nothing "local" about Arsenal anymore: When it played  
Real Madrid earlier this year in the Champion's League, there were  
only two Englishmen on the field, both playing for the Spanish side.

With this rapid globalization of the "local" game comes a  
homogenization of styles: England, today, has one or two players who  
like to run at the defense with the ball at their feet and can bend a  
shot from 40 yards; Brazil now plays with one or two "holding"  
midfielders, that traditional European demolition man whose job is  
simply to break up opposition attacks and win the ball for his more  
creative teammates.

By some estimates, there are now more than 4,000 Brazilians playing  
professional soccer abroad, which is why Brazil's starting lineup in  
Germany will consist entirely of European-based players. (Indeed,  
Brazil could probably field two teams for the tournament, each of  
which would feature many of Europe's leading club players.) Germany's  
squad, by contrast, is almost entirely home grown, although even in  
the German league, many of the leading lights are Brazilian imports.

This fusing of different styles has been accelerated by the migration  
of coaches as well as players. Last season, the coaches of the top  
five clubs in England's Premier League were Portuguese, Scottish,  
Spanish, French, and Dutch. Three Dutch coaches are bringing non- 
Dutch teams to the World Cup; most African teams are coached by  
Frenchmen and Germans, the English team by a Swede, and Portugal by a  
Brazilian.

Kicking People, not Balls

Despite the urge of fans to invoke national mythologies from a  
distant past, many European national teams now reflect the  
continent's increasingly cosmopolitan makeup. Thanks to postwar  
economic migrations into Europe from former colonies, many of the  
best players available to a European national team are second- and  
even third-generation immigrants. France fields a team in which all  
but one, sometimes two, players are of African or Arab origin. The  
racist politician Jean Marie Le Pen actually complained in 1998 that  
the World Cup winners were "not a real French team." Some English  
fans are more accepting of their cosmopolitan fate, as reflected in  
one of their chants that extols Britain's new national cuisine: "And  
we all love vindaloo..."

The world soccer authority FIFA allows players to play for the  
country of their citizenship or the one of their origins. This  
creates oddities: Dakar-born Patrick Vieira marshals France's  
midfield, while Paris-born Khalilou Fadiga stars for Senegal. In  
addition, the ability of emerging players to make professional  
migrations seeking fame and fortune sometimes tempts soccer  
federations to recruit for the national team by fast-tracking the  
citizenship of promising players. In recent weeks, a Dutch effort to  
expedite the citizenship process for Ivoirian striker Salomon Kalou  
fell afoul of that country's new chill on immigration.

If it had succeeded, Kalou would have been in the bizarre position of  
playing against an Ivory Coast team that happens to include his  
brother, Bonaventure. Meanwhile, the luckiest Brazilian going to  
Germany is surely Francileudo Dos Santos, a France-based striker who  
wouldn't even come in tenth among contenders for his position on the  
Brazilian team; but fast-tracked into instant citizenship by Tunisia,  
he is now that country's leading goal-scorer. (Hopefully he will have  
learned to avoid offending the fans of his adopted country, as he did  
two years ago by draping himself in the Brazilian flag to celebrate  
victory.)

Although many of the stars of almost every domestic league from  
Russia westward are from the African Diaspora (which includes  
Brazil), an astonishing level of racism persists among fans and even  
coaches at the highest levels of the game. Ukraine coach Oleg  
Blokhin, for example, bemoaned the globalization of his domestic  
league thus: "The more Ukrainians there are playing in the national  
league, the more examples there are for the young generation. Let  
them learn from [our players] and not some zumba-bumba whom they took  
off a tree, gave two bananas and now he plays in the Ukrainian league.''

Then there was the Spanish team's coach, Luis Aragones, caught on TV  
telling striker Jose Antonio Reyes that he was better than his French  
Arsenal teammate Thierry Henry. Except Aragones didn't say Henry's  
name, he said, "that black shit." A few days later, he insisted that  
there was nothing racist about the remark: "Reyes is ethnically a  
gypsy," said Aragones. "I have got a lot of gypsy and black friends.  
All I did was to motivate the gypsy by telling him he was better than  
the black."

In many European stadiums, today, black players are targeted for  
racial abuse in the form of ape noises and bananas thrown from the  
stands. In fact, the World Cup offers a range of opportunities for  
the racist xenophobes in the ranks of many countries' "ultra"  
football fans -- those who go to games not only to support their side  
in a ritual of combat, but to seek actual combat against the ultras  
of the other side. For years, England's games were a rallying and  
brawling point for the racist far right. They nonetheless looked  
positively tame when compared with the Serbian ultras originally  
grouped around the fan club of Red Star Belgrade. Under their leader  
Arkan, they became the core of the notorious "Tiger" militia accused  
by the Hague War Crimes Tribunal of some of the most brutal "ethnic  
cleansing" violence in Bosnia from 1991 to 1993.

As Europe confronts the challenge of integrating millions of  
immigrants on whose labor the survival of their welfare economies  
depend, soccer matches increasingly become the avenue for a political  
ritual of a different type -- channeling rampant racism. Not without  
reason do German authorities fear that the country's resurgent neo- 
Nazis will use the World Cup as an opportunity to announce their  
presence to a watching world. If they do, they will have plenty of  
allies in the "ultras" of Serbia, Poland, Italy and even England.

Branding the Game

Although the "national narrative" that binds fans to their teams is  
open to progressive or reactionary appropriation, it's not the game's  
driving force any more. Soccer, today, is a multibillion-dollar  
global industry whose power centers are transnational corporations --  
the moneyed clubs of Europe whose financial well-being depends on the  
ability of their "brand" to sell merchandise from Baghdad to Beijing.  
Manchester United may be based in a city whose prosperity has  
declined with that of the British textile industry, but most of the  
young men sporting its jersey from Gaza to Guangdong would  
undoubtedly struggle to locate the home of "their" team on a map. And  
it's a safe bet that the Ecuadorian busboy and the Bangkok cab driver  
wearing the blue and red jersey of Barcelona are blissfully unaware  
of "their" team's centrality to Catalan nationalism.

Local icons have become global brands. Mancunians might put away  
their Manchester United jerseys and don England's colors during the  
World Cup, but most of their team's stars will actually be playing  
against England in the shirts of Holland, Portugal, Argentina,  
Serbia, and France. For Manchester United's management, however,  
having their stars represent any nation's team is a problem. Wayne  
Rooney, United's star striker, for example, is being raced back to  
fitness from a broken foot because England's hopes depend on him.  
Should he aggravate the injury playing in the World Cup, Manchester  
United -- which paid close to $40 million to sign Rooney -- could  
suffer potentially huge financial losses once the league season  
resumes in September.

That's why Manchester United and 17 other top clubs in Europe are  
agitating to be given a share of the revenues generated by the World  
Cup. They argue that it is their "assets" who are generating the  
revenue, at great risk to the clubs that hold their contracts. As the  
employers of most of the world's best players, soccer's collective  
corporate management has considerable leverage in challenging the  
sovereignty of national federations in the organization of the game.

No such problem exists for the other major corporate interest in the  
game, the makers of equipment and apparel. Their sponsorship of the  
World Cup and its teams stands to make them billions of dollars in  
revenues. Nike has an advantage, sponsoring Team Brazil as it does,  
as well as Holland, Portugal, Mexico, South Korea, and the USA among  
others. Adidas holds its own with Germany, France, Spain, Argentina,  
Japan and Trinidad (whose shirts will no doubt become a nightclub  
standard, and have already been adopted as the fetish of choice by  
Scottish fans whose own team failed to qualify). Puma sponsors mostly  
outsiders like Cote d'Ivoire and Iran, although Italy remains a  
credible contender.

Adidas could, however, be said to have the killer advantage. It  
supplies the tournament ball, whose appeal crosses all affiliations.  
Having already sold 10 million World Cup balls, and expecting another  
5 million to bounce out of the stores by year's end, they could rack  
up close to a billion dollars in sales simply by catering to the  
desire of the rest of us to kick the "same" ball the stars do.

 From contemporary geopolitical and cultural conflicts (or their  
historic echoes) to the impact of globalization, the World Cup offers  
a real-time snapshot of the state of our world. This summer, when  
Portugal plays Angola or England meets Trinidad, colonial history  
won't be forgotten among the fans of the formerly colonized. Whenever  
England has played Argentina in the past 24 years, the fans of both  
countries have been asked to relive the Falklands/Malvinas War -- and  
I'd be surprised if World War II memories escape a mention when  
Australia plays Japan. Yet, the game will also be infused with  
contemporary political drama, should fate decree that the USA meets  
Iran.

Sometimes more than just a game, the World Cup nonetheless remains a  
contest whose outcome is never certain. Winners are still determined  
by an alchemy of balletics and poetics, skill and cooperation,  
athleticism and sheer luck. Orchestrating the movement of a ball and  
eleven players across the field with such rapidity would be hard  
enough, even without eleven other players trying to disrupt them. The  
power relations that prevail in the real world count for little in  
those 90 minutes of play -- and, no matter how fierce the "combat,"  
at game's end, in a time-honored World Cup ritual, players from both  
sides exchange shirts in a mark of respect and friendship. A  
snapshot, then, not only of a world in conflict, but also of the  
possibilities of resolution by means other than war.


http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=89345