South Korea vs. Greece: The National Anthem Battle

Sadly, this has become the first Anthem DeathMatch that I’ve missed, due to my inability to wake up at 7:30 in the morning. Is it safe to call it a draw?

The Match

The visual clarity of the first World Cup™ I’ve seen in HD™ has led this display of football to be infinitely more painful than one could ever imagine. What does the future have in store for technologically enhanced sub-par entertainment?

The tie featured the Greek Neo-Classical style of football: perplexing length, enigmatic presentation (will they ever connect more than 2 passes?), and very tall players, all the while asking ominously profound questions of our ability to tolerate their style). It’s a repeat of 2004’s ultra-defensive and counterattacking side, only not very good at defense, and unable to actually counterattack.

Meanwhile, South Korea copes with its second straight World Cup without direct referee assitance. Their last World Cup began with an encouraging defeat of Togo, a draw with France, but a defeat to Alpine Powerhouse Switzerland that ensured currywurst would be their only World Cup consolation. They stay true to their style of massive capitalist production, but struggle to match the quality of the products they are competing with.

Nonetheless, the Greeks out-dismal the Koreans for a 2-0 final score in favor of the South Korea. To quote Scott Murray of the Guardian: “Though I didn’t think they’d have any chance of out-haplessing their 1994 squad, and they’re giving that a good go.”

Politically Correct Picks: South Korea vs. Greece

At first glance, a winner seems clear; the Greek way, once one of wisdom and intellect, has become one of overspending and shambolic recovery efforts, helping to plunge their neighbors into monetary uncertainty. Not to mention widespread accusations of state police brutality during the revolts in Athens in the past couple of years. Just when the Koreans appear set to win, an own-goal pops out of nowhere: the Korean animal rights issue (dog-b-q, anyone? not to mention all the YouTubes out there of Koreans serving still-alive animals) jumps into the forefront, hitting Western civilization where it most hurts: right in the puppies. Result: a draw.

Continuation of Sweetness and Light: Football as Popular Narrative

A couple of months ago, while covering Clarice Lispector’s Hour of the Star (1977) in my section of a Latin American Literature in Translation course at Duke University, I encouraged my students to grow uncomfortable with the way we view Latin America on the popular level.  We had just given Disney’s Good Neighbor Policy era Los tres caballeros (1945)  a much more critical viewing than, certainly, anyone in Post-WWII America ever imagined it would receive, and I wanted to draft off of our momentum.  Lispector’s work, like that of so many writers steeped in a hard ‘70s post-structuralism, predominantly revolves around the task of representation.  Our narrator, a comfortable middle class writer, spends the majority of the novel trying to capture an impoverished young girl, Macabea, always claiming that he is not sure if he is capable of getting her right.

The questions arise: Why is he so fascinated by her in the first place?  Does she exist as such, or is she simply a product of his fantasy?  Does he envy her in some way?

No doubt, Macabea seduces the narrator, though not erotically as much as pathetically.  Her dire situation is met with a brave face that the narrator cannot stomach, and he imagines countless people taking advantage of her, ranging from caddish men to state-paid doctors.  More interestingly, though, the uncomfortable read forces a confrontation with one of Brazil’s foundational myths: alegria, or “happiness/joy,” a refraction of Latin America’s ever-present Nobel Savage discourse coupled with an “ignorance is bliss” motif.

In class, Lispector’s probe led to a popular analysis of how the Brazilian national narrative continues to play out in contemporary global culture, where we analyzed videos from Nike’s Joga Bonito campaign from the 2006 World Cup.  The Nike sponsored adds played heavily off of the “ignorance is bliss” theme, depicting the Brazilian National Team in perma-smiles and constantly juggling the ball with carefully affected skill.  To an extent, in their highly produced videos, Nike was brave enough to do Rousseau one better.  For Nike, ignorance was artistry.

As we prepare for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, where, undoubtedly, we will be presented with the typical angle of Brazil as happier and therefore more technically skilled and therefore happier (repeating) narrative, these clips are worth another look.  As one add reminds us, Ronaldinho’s personalized shoe, one that according to Nike is imbued with childhood nostalgia for the old days of playing in the dirt, is even stamped with the word, “alegria.”

The myth of Brazilian artistry does not stand up to even the lightest of scrutiny, at least not to the mythical extent that Nike projects it.  And media frenzy and sportscaster bent aside, the Brazilian team does not do anything more impressive than Argentina, Spain, or dare we even say Holland.  But it is hard to imagine a successful shoe campaign with Holland international Robin van Persie set against Samba and sunshine; and “geluk” does not quite roll of the tongue like “alegria.”  But if the former French star, Eric Cantona, returns to the airwaves to facilitate our armchair anthropology this year, let’s be very wary of the narrative of the artistic savage, and even if they were as good as Nike would lead us to believe, in 2006 they looked sluggish most of the tournament and didn’t make it past the quarterfinals. Ole!

Joga Bonito

Joga Bonito 2

One week last February, potential members of the English national football team took us through a highly maudlin, yet entertaining, narrative arc. John Terry – England’s then captain – tacitly admitted to cheating on his wife with, feasible World Cup teammate, Wayne Bridge’s girlfriend. Bridge, in turn very publicly denied Terry a handshake at the beginning of a match between their two club teams, Man City and Chelsea, presumably communicating a message of “thanks but no thanks” to a position alongside Terry on the World Cup squad to English trainer Fabio Capello. And Ryan Shawcross of Sunderland cried on the pitch after breaking the leg of young Arsenal hopeful, Aaron Ramsey, the day before he, himself, was to be named as Bridge’s replacement on the national team. All the while, a slight, well-dressed, Portuguese man was preparing to go to London, where he would beat up on a team that he admitted to being his own and then, post-match, would make vague claims about being “the chosen one”.

Few could argue that things in football’s home country have not gotten weird. Even fewer could argue  with the fact that we are finding ways to entertain, and communicate with, ourselves through this medium that span well beyond the importance of the final score of a match or the current standings in league tables.

While the common perception of popular narrative’s evolution is that it shifted from oral culture to the written word with the invention of the Gutenberg Press and the later massification of literacy, and from the written word to new media with the popularization of the Internet and digital mediums, this column will create a forum for articles that point to football as a simultaneous medium of all of the above, as we preserve, and entertain ourselves with, classic, massive, and ludic tropes and themes through the global game.

A leading Australian social commentator and veteran foreign correspondent once observed that, having travelled the world, the only two constants are football and Coca-Cola. How ironic then, that even as Australia gears up for its second consecutive World Cup with a battle-hardened squad of players who earn their living in some of the best leagues in Europe and mounts a serious bid for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, in the eyes of the rest of the world, Australia is still seen to be as much of a heathen nation as America or New Zealand — an anomalous, Anglo-Celtic nation devoted to an obscure oval ball football code.

Like all myths, this one is based on impressionistic perceptions rather than reality. Several factors have contributed towards the making of this myth.

Firstly, the reputation of Australian association football (“football”) is, to an extent, an unintended victim of the well-deserved and outstanding success enjoyed, both on and off the field, by Australian Rugby Union from 1984 to 2003. Two World Cups, a Grand Slam of the Home Nations, regular Bledisloe Cup and Tri-Nations victories and a last-minute series win over the British and Irish Lions represent an astonishing return for a code which is only played in private schools in two of Australia’s six states, has no functioning national league of any description, zero live free-to-air television coverage (with the exception of international test matches in two out of six states) and three to four figure attendances for club matches.

According to almost every conceivable criterion — national player participation rate, national geographical spread, television coverage and revenue, and domestic club match crowd attendances — rugby union trails not one but three rival football codes: football, Australian Rules football (“AFL”) and rugby league. Indeed, the success enjoyed by Australian Rugby Union from 1984 to 2003 is more a testimony to the excellence of its administrators, than any reflection of the game’s actual popularity across the country. Consider the following statistics from the Australian government’s 2008 Exercise, Recreation and Sport Survey:

• the national participation rate for rugby league is 220,000;
• the national participation rate for rugby union is 149,000;
• the national participation rate for AFL is 488,000;
• the national participation rate for outdoor football is 856,000; and
• the national participation rate for indoor football is 384,000.

This period of sustained success, coupled with the poor performances of the Australian national football team (the “Socceroos“) in World Cup qualification up until 2006, has, understandably, created a lingering impression that Australia is a rugby union nation when, in truth, rugby union is not even the leading oval ball football code in Australia. Hailing from the largest of the four non-rugby states, I’ve always been bemused to be informed, on my travels, by people from all around the world (perhaps with the notable exception of south-east Asia where Australian footballers such as Tim Cahill, Harry Kewell and Lucas Neill have risen to prominence in recent times), that Australia is a “rugby nation”.

Secondly, over approximately the same period, the performance of the Socceroos in World Cup qualification could only be described as dire. After qualifying for the 1974 World Cup as rank outsiders (and not scoring a single goal or winning a single game during the tournament), the Socceroos failed to qualify for a single World Cup until 2006. Although this remarkable string of failures was undoubtedly partly of our own making (see the section below on the dysfunctional national governance structure), it was also caused, in no small part, by the disinterest of FIFA which, perhaps understandably, focused its attention on the raw, untapped talent of Africa, the economic growth markets of East Asia and the last great frontier of North America. Accordingly, Australia, a relative economic backwater with its measly population of 20 million was left isolated in every sense of the word — left to rot in the only FIFA confederation (Oceania) without a full World Cup berth. Instead, the winner of Oceania was put into a sudden death two-leg play-off with a team from another FIFA confederation for a full World Cup berth.

The problems with this system were manifold. Oceania essentially consisted of Australia plus a collection of rugby-mad Pacific micronations (such as Samoa and the Cook Islands) and rugby-mad New Zealand. This led to tragicomical results in Oceania qualification such as the Socceroos’ 31-0 victory over American Samoa on 11 April 2001, which meant that big European clubs were understandably reluctant to allow our best players to fly 24 hours (one-way) for Oceania qualifiers, for example, Messrs Kewell and Viduka, then at the peak of their powers for a Leeds United side rampant both at home and in Europe were notable absentees from the aforementioned fixture. This, in turn, meant that our first choice XI played precisely two live competitive matches once every four years in the form of a two-legged sudden death play-off against an opponent from another confederation whose battle-hardened first-choice XI had just been through a lengthy and competitive qualification process.

The criterion used by FIFA to select that opponent seemed to vary between almost every World Cup — FIFA’s sadistic indifference in this regard perhaps reached its zenith in the 80s and 90s when, in successive World Cup qualification play-offs, the Socceroos faced (and narrowly lost to) Souness and Dalglish’s Scotland (1985, the third-placed team from European Qualifying Group 7, managed by some young fellow named Alex Ferguson) and Maradona’s Argentina (1993, the second-placed team from South American Qualifying Group A). Needless to say, such obstacles never seemed to find their way into the qualification path of the United States of America.

Even when the Socceroos were gifted a relatively easy opponent, such as Iran (the second-placed team from Asian Qualifying Group A) in 1997, the Football Gods seemed to conspire against the Socceroos in scarcely believable fashion. After a 17-year old Harry Kewell gave Australia a precious away goal in the first leg 1-1 draw in front of a hostile crowd of 128,000 in Tehran, the Socceroos were cruising in the home leg at 2-0 up after 48 minutes having wasted a hatful of chances. Then, disaster struck as notorious serial pest Peter Hore invaded the pitch and cut down one of the goal nets. The subsequent five minute delay allowed Iran to regroup and changed the entire momentum of the match. The Australian players themselves seemed spooked by the unexpected interruption just as they were approaching their Everest in front of an expectant home crowd of 85,000 in the nation’s greatest sporting cathedral. After the restart, Iran scored in the 71^st minute to make it 2-1; panic set in and, almost inevitably, like a nightmarish quadrennial self-fulfilling prophecy, the Socceroos fell again at the final hurdle as Iran quickly scored once more to make it 2-2 and deservedly went through on the away goals rule.

Nonetheless, it cannot be denied that the institutionalised incompetence of Australia’s football administrators over the same period was as significant a cause as bad luck of Australia’s abysmal World Cup qualification results. Although the full extent of this incompetence cannot be catalogued in a single article, a few of the more notorious examples will suffice to give the reader an appreciation of its breadth and depth:

1. The absence of a cohesive, fully-professional and profitable national league — the self-defeatingly-titled-National Soccer League (“NSL“) featured semi-professionals plying their trade alongside full-time professionals and suffered from small crowds, ethnically-based clubs and, perhaps worst of all in the modern age, the absence of anything resembling a lucrative television contract to both fund the game and keep it at the forefront of the public consciousness.
2. When administrators were given the opportunity to choose a venue for a World Cup qualifier, they could be reliably counted on to pick the most hospitable venue for our visiting opponents. For example, in 1985, when the Socceroos were forced to play-off against Souness and Dalglish’s Scotland for a World Cup place, our learned administrators chose to play the home leg in Melbourne (the southern-most and coldest of all the major mainland cities whose climate most resembles that of Britain), rather than a northern city such as Brisbane where temperatures in excess of 30 degrees Celsius would have been guaranteed to greet the Scotsmen arriving in Australia from a Glasgow December.
3. The absence of experienced, international-class managers for the national team left us tactically exposed at play-off time. For example, the 1985 play-off against Scotland pitted Alex Ferguson against Frank Arok. The latter was a solid manager whose previous management experiences were in the Australian domestic league and at the small Yugoslavian clubs FK Novi Sad and FK Vojvodina. The former had already led Aberdeen to the Scottish league title and the European Cup Winner’s Cup (defeating Bayern Munich en route to the final where they comprehensively outplayed Real Madrid to win 2-1).
4. The absence of a cohesive national coaching structure unified from youth to senior level by a strategic vision, meant that our players were denied the technical skills and tactical awareness which our European and South American opponents took for granted. Young Australian footballers were confronted by independent, competing associations not only between states, but in some instances, within states, each with different football philosophies and political priorities. Little wonder then, that there was no unified national coaching framework teaching touch, movement, passing and vision from a young age. Those outstanding players we did produce succeeded in spite of, not because of, our domestic coaching system, as they headed overseas from their early teenage years in order to develop the aforementioned necessary skills and knowledge. The likes of Bresciano, Grella and Vieri went to Italy, Kewell headed to England, and Viduka went to Croatia. This talent drain often resulted in a promising Australian player choosing to represent the European country which they had departed to in order to further their footballing education. The most well-known example of this is Christian Vieri, who left European journalists at the 1998 World Cup utterly befuddled when he named legendary Australian cricket captain Allan Border as his boyhood sporting hero. Indeed, the young Vieri was so cricket-focused that his Australian football club youth coach had to “devis[e] a [football] version of cricket to animate Christian’s youthful interest in the round-ball game.”[1]
5. The factors set out above in (1) and (4) and below meant that, unsurprisingly, many promising young footballers chose to pursue other sports professionally. For example, whilst in England, the Neville brothers, both talented junior cricketers, opted for football, in Australia, the Waugh twins, who both starred for their state as junior footballers, opted for cricket. No tougher a critic than the late, great former Australian football captain Johnny Warren wrote in The Sydney Morning Herald in 1983: “I have not seen a better goal this year than the one scored by East Hills High School’s Stephen Waugh in the Commonwealth Bank Cup at Mt Druitt Town Soccer centre last Wednesday evening. It was a goal of which the legendary Franz Beckenbauer would have been proud.”

By the time the Socceroos failed yet again to qualify for the World Cup in 2002, falling in a sudden death play-off to Uruguay, the fifth-placed South American team, Australia’s World Cup qualification drought was approaching its third decade. An entire generation of Australians, myself included, had grown up without having seen an Australian team play at a World Cup.

Australian football fans had become so mired in a deep and everlasting pessimism that, when it was revealed in 2002 in Johnny Warren’s autobiography that the qualification drought may have been caused by the curse of an African witch doctor, nary an eyebrow was raised. The story goes that when the Socceroos travelled to Mozambique in 1970 to play a World Cup qualifier against the nation then known as Rhodesia, they employed the services of a local witch doctor to curse their opponents. The Socceroos duly went on to record a 3-1 win. Unfortunately, the Australian players could not stump up the £1000 which the witch doctor demanded for his rather effective services and he, somewhat understandably, cursed the team from the former convict colony with his powerful magics.

By 2002, the problems with the governance of Australian football had become so severe that the federal government, even one led by a socially conservative, Wallabies-tracksuit-wearing, 1950s romantic of Anglo-Celtic extract, had no choice but to commission a comprehensive report which, unsurprisingly, recommended radical surgery to every level of the game’s administration. On 2 September 2002, the Federal Minister for Sport announced the terms of reference for a review into the governance and management structures of football in Australia to be conducted by an independent Review Committee. The Committee, chaired by David Crawford, delivered its final report, titled Report of the Independent Soccer Review Committee into the Structure, Governance and Management of Soccer in Australia (the “Crawford Report”), on 7 April 2003. The Executive Summary of the Crawford Report explained:

The Committee was made aware that over the past two decades, soccer in Australia has found itself addressing a series of crises evidenced more recently by: a) severe financial problems (members equity of Soccer Australia was a negative $2.6 million at 30 June 2002); b) reduced staffing levels; c) political infighting; d) lack of strategic direction and planning; and e) mixed results on the field in the international arena.

The Crawford Report exposed the byzantine structure of Australian football governance with organisations actively competing against one another in some states in the administration and staging of football. For example, New South Wales, the most populous state in Australia, was home to no less than three competing governing bodies — the Northern New South Wales Soccer Federation, the New South Wales Amateur Soccer Federation and the New South Wales Soccer Federation. The Committee consulted extensively with, and received submissions from, a broad cross-section of the Australian football community and published stakeholder comments in Appendix D of the Crawford Report. Pejorative permutations of the word “political” (examples include “politically driven”, “petty politics”, “political manoeuvrings”, “political agendas” and “Machiavellian politics”) appear no less than 25 times in Appendix D. The lengthy list of reforms recommended by the Committee ranged from the self-evident to the drastic:

• creating a unified and streamlined voting mechanism which gives fair representation to all members of the Australian football community;
• appointing a new, independent board;
• appointing an appropriately qualified CEO;
• separating the national league from the structure of the national administrative body so that the former operates as a separate entity; and
• immediately replacing the incompetent incumbent board with an interim board composed of Frank Lowy, Ron Walker and John Singleton.

Frank Lowy, apart from being a passionate Australian football fan of Jewish-Czechoslovakian-Hungarian descent, is the executive chairman and co-founder of the world-famous Westfield Group — the Australian corporate behemoth whose ubiquitous shopping centres dot the landscape in Australia, New Zealand, the UK and the US.

In short, the changes worked. After little more than two years on the job, the new board, chaired by Mr Lowy himself had:

• secured the on-field management services of Guus Hiddink to successfully pilot Australia to World Cup qualification for the first time in 32 years (cue the streamers — literally);[2]
• secured the off-field management services of John O’Neill (the merchant banker responsible for Australian rugby’s astonishing off-field success) to turn around Australian football commercially and financially;
• successfully launched a brand-new, fully-televised, professional national league; and
• perhaps most crucially of all, secured Australia’s entry into the Asian Football Confederation with its precious 4.5 World Cup places and highly competitive two-stage qualification process.

At a broader social level, the Lowy-led board has been able to finally demolish the largest hurdle to the game’s ascendance to its rightful place as Australia’s undisputed number one football code — the perception that the game was riven by ethnic fighting, which led to its marginalisation in the eyes of many in the broader Australian community. For example, in his autobiography, the legendary Australian cricket captain Steve Waugh, a superbly-talented junior footballer before choosing cricket as his professional career, recalled:[3]

Talent-wise, soccer was probably the sport where I was most gifted, but in the end it gave way to my real passion [of cricket]. …

In many parts of Australia in the 1970s and ‘80s soccer was known as “wog ball” or a game for “pansies”, but I only ever saw it as a fantastic team sport, even if many clubs and organisations were ethnic-based and -influenced. Travelling interstate with the NSW Under 15 side was a huge honour and a pretty fair achievement considering I was only 13, but with my youth came unfamiliar territory. I wasn’t used to not being the star, or to not knowing anyone else in the squad. Whether it was intentional or not, I was left alone, without any friends and feeling totally isolated from the other guys, who all seemed to know each other well. Being Anglo-Saxon was a major hindrance, because I couldn’t speak Greek or Italian or whatever language was the basis for their conversations. I kept to myself and played as well as I could, but there was something missing — my heart wasn’t totally in it. I didn’t feel an attachment to the team and no one made an effort to ease the apprehension and uneasiness I felt as an unfamiliar face. It wounded me. I didn’t want to ever again feel so isolated and unwanted in a team environment and I didn’t want to see it happen to anyone else, either.

In Australian English, the colloquial term “wog” refers to a person of southern European extraction, typically Italian or Greek, and “pansy” refers an unmanly, physically weak and sportingly inept male. Following the Second World War, the Australian government relaxed its White Australia policy which had, up to that point, largely prevented non-Anglo-Celtic immigration through the disingenuous use of restrictions such as a dictation test, which allowed for the exclusion of non-Anglo-Celtic applicants by requiring them to pass a written test in any language (not necessarily English) nominated by an immigration officer. Consequently, Australia received a flood of immigrants from Italy and Greece and other parts of continental Europe who brought with them a love of football.

Similarly, the late, great former Australian football captain Johnny Warren titled his autobiography Sheilas, Wogs and Pooftas in reference to the widely-held perception of those who chose football over the full contact football codes of rugby union, rugby league or AFL. “Sheila” is Australian slang for woman and “poofta” is an Australian profanity for a homosexual.

The Lowy-led board has been able to substantially demolish this perception by sweeping away the old byzantine governance structure (which gave scope for ethnic rivalries), creating a new national league with no ethnically-based clubs, improving policing and crowd management at matches, providing the unifying effect of World Cup qualification and, above all, supplying professional and competent off-field governance and management — as one would expect from men such as Lowy and O’Neill.

So there you have it. Perhaps the one unequivocally good deed done by a neo-conservative government responsible for systematically distorting public funding of secondary and tertiary education, politicising the public service, falsely accusing boat people of throwing their children overboard, cosying up to President George W Bush, signing Australia up to the Coalition of the Willing, refusing to sign the Kyoto Protocol and frittering away budget surpluses (remember those?) on pork barrelling and electioneering — they single-handedly saved Australian football.

Looking ahead, this article concludes on an optimistic note. On 6 June 2009, Australia (along with Japan, South Korea and the Netherlands) became one of the first teams to qualify for the 2010 World Cup, drawing 0-0 with Qatar in Doha to wrap up qualification without conceding a single goal and with two matches left to play. Australia eventually finished top of Asian Qualifying Group A, with 6 wins and 2 draws from our 8 matches and a full 5 points clear of second-placed Asian powerhouse Japan. The Socceroos’ manager Pim Verbeek demonstrated tremendous strategic and tactical nous and instilled the side with the kind of match-hardness and professionalism needed to successfully navigate a multi-year two-stage qualification process played out in conditions as varied as the desert heat of Tashkent to the February chill of Saitama City. Verbeek, quite rightly, adopted a pragmatic attitude to qualification, prioritising results over aesthetics. Accordingly, he primarily used a defensive 4-2-3-1 formation both home and away, deploying two defensive central midfielders in front of the back four and just the beanpole striker Josh Kennedy up front. This formation was not only well-suited to the nature of the qualification process but the resources Verbeek had at his disposal — whilst he was blessed with an abundance of wealth in midfield, the cupboard up front has been a bit bare since Viduka retired; and, unlike most of the teams they were facing, the Socceroos possessed the tactical discipline (acquired by playing at the highest level in Europe) necessary to effectively utilise the formation.

Nonetheless, it is hoped that Verbeek, being the rational Dutchman that he is, will modify his tactics to the different demands of tournament play. Put simply, wins are required to progress in tournaments whereas away draws are more than adequate in qualification. The main victim of the defensive 4-2-3-1 formation used during qualification is the very man who could hold the key to our success in South Africa — former Celtic striker Scott McDonald. A classic fox-in-the-box goal poacher, McDonald thrives playing alongside a big target man such as Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink at Celtic. However, during qualification, when selected, he was nearly always required to play alone up front which meant that, despite scoring 65 goals in 126 appearances for Celtic (including crucial strikes against the likes of Manchester United and AC Milan in the Champions League), he has yet to score for the Socceroos. Hopefully, Verbeek will switch to a more offensive 4-4-2 formation in South Africa, with McDonald playing alongside Kennedy up front and a rejuvenated Harry Kewell and Brett Emerton on the wings.

Fortunately, unlike 2006, our ever-faithful friend the FIFA lottery was kind enough not to place us in the Group of Death; rather, it merely placed us in the Group of Enhanced Interrogation Techniques containing Germany, Ghana and Serbia.

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[1] http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/06/07/1022982768397.html

[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZdbW7PSPGk&feature=related

[3] Steve Waugh, Out of My Comfort Zone: The Autobiography (2005) 24–5.

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As the big countdown ticks away, less than 100 days before the World Cup, perhaps Africa’s strongest team, Ivory Coast, is still without a coach. An article in the Zimbabwean brings up the state of African football and its reliance on foreign coaches.

In Cote D’Ivoire, the disgruntled Vahid Halilhodžić was unceremoniously dispensed with following an unsuccessful run at the African Cup of Nations (despite having lost only one match during his two-year tenure). Similarly, Nigeria rid themselves of Shaibu Amodu after only getting 3rd place in the same tournament. He was axed in late February and replaced with Lars Lagerbeck, a Swedish coach whose most recent claim to fame is failure to qualify for the 2010 World Cup with Sweden.

The appointment of Lagerbeck was quite a prize for not being able to qualify with his original team, and he now has the task of ingratiating himself to the players and learning up on Nigerian football in the 90-odd days that he has before the tournament starts. Lagerbeck replaced a Nigerian coach who would have been the only other African coach in South Africa (besides Algeria’s Rabah Saadane).

Whoever inherits the Ivory Coast (latest word is that Dutch “miracle-worker” Guus Hiddink is poised to get the job) gets the privilege of coaching one of the world’s most talented squads, bursting with ability, speed, power, and efficiency at every corner: Didier Drogba, Yaya Touré, Kolo Touré, Didier Zokora, Emanuel Eboué, Salomon Kalou, and so on, without having to actually do any work in qualifying. Common sense tells me that an Ivorian coach is not in the running.

South Africa has chosen a similar path, re-hiring Carlos Alberto Pareira (Brazilian; you might remember him from the World’s Most Boring World Cup Final [TM] [1994] or as the Man Who Could Make A Team with Romario, Ronaldo, and Bebeto into a Side-Passing Snore-Fest [R]. Also known as Coach of Oil-Rich World Cup Whipping Boys [Kuwait 82, United Arab Emirates 90, Saudi Arabia '98 aka "Fired During the World Cup"]. And most recently known as Man Who Can Make Even Brazil Look Bad [Brazil, 2006]). Interestingly, he was coach of South Africa previously, and quit, citing family reasons (though it is hard to ignore the fact that he did not do anything worth noting in his brief stint with them). Perhaps he needs to fund that vacation home (I’m guessing it won’t be in Ivory Coast).

In July of 2009, Cameroon appointed perhaps the most interesting of the [actual] coaches so far mentioned, Frenchman Paul Le Guen, who played a major role in turning Olympique Lyon into a dynasty in French football. He established a reputation at Lyon for good football with resources far smaller than those at other European top clubs. Furthermore, he coached a number of immensely talented players (many of them African) and helped springboard their careers at bigger clubs.

In comparison, Ghana go WAAAAAY back with coach Milovan Rajevac, who has been with them since all the way back in 2008. Amazingly, he did not get the axe despite coming in 2nd place at the African Cup of Nations.

We shall see in the coming days how the Hiddink acquisition pans out (no doubt some interesting transactions will be taking place, considering he is still under contract with the Russian Federation). In all of this, it is a tad disheartening to see the reliance on coaches that apparently have had little or nothing to do with a nation’s football. In some cases, a coach might have a past triumph under his belt (as in Pareira), but in others (especially Lagerbeck) one wonders whether getting a mere European name is better than finding a true match for a national team’s football.

The idea of the foreign coach has been slowly adopted even outside of Africa; even England have turned to the [zzzzzz] Swede Sven Goran Eriksson and in 2010 will be lead by Italian Fabio Capello (Italian for “Fabulous Hair”). In 2004, Greece won the European Championship with a German coach, Otto Rehhagel . Though now that you think about it, there haven’t been all that many foreign coaches at the world stage with such success.

originally posted at the Soccer Politics blog

An article by Jonathan Wilson in the Guardian today asks an interesting question for those of us who grew up in an era in which West African football was the realm of skilled artists such as Abedi Pele, George Weah, Roger Milla, and exciting teams like the “original” Nigerian Super Eagles who played swashbuckling, imaginative football. In a piece that starts out by discussing Egypt’s tactical formation (very interesting as well), he goes on to ask:

So where have Africa’s creators gone?

That then raises the issue of where the creators have gone; why west Africa has, in a generation, not produced a player like Jay-Jay Okocha or Abedi Pele. Okocha blames the attempt to impose discipline and adopt a “European model”, but that has not prevented European nations from producing gifted creators. Manchester United’s scout in Africa, Tom Vernon, who runs an academy in the hills above Accra, suggests that the fault lies partly with European clubs, who tend to have what he terms “the Papa Bouba Diop template” in mind. The African players who have succeeded in Europe in the past have usually been big and robust, and so clubs look only for something similar. Players called up by European clubs at a young age develop faster and have a higher profile, and so it is they who make it into the national team.

Indeed, a superficial survey of some of the West African players in leagues like the Premier or the Primera División of Spain will confirm this tendency; robust, very physical, big players often placed into combative roles. Think Essien and Mikel at Chelsea, Toure Yaya and Keita at Barcelona, Abou Diaby and Song at Arsenal, M. Diarra at Real Madrid, and so on. Even African players, like Drogba at Chelsea, who play in other positions seem destined to rely on their athleticism and power; in very few instances do you see a “creator” or creative midfielder from Africa.

Of course, fans of football are no strangers to stereotyping, often of racial nature, when it comes to players at the international and club level. In England, there are stereotypes of what nationalities will succeed and which ones won’t. In England and Spain, there is an obsession with West African hard-working midfielders, yet there are few Italians (though you will find West Africans in Italy). You see a crop of Brazilians in Spain yet they are seen as difficult to adapt to England. And so on and so on.

The idea, though, becomes interesting when one starts to wonder to what extent such ideas influence the way a team thinks of itself. There is no doubt that racism towards West Africa (and elsewhere) exists, that European clubs are looking for their “Makelele” or other player willing to do the unglamorous, slavish dirty work so that their starlets may thrive. But how does this affect the way a national team, for example, envisions its own football?

Manchester United’s scout, quoted in the article, readily admits that players in these African national teams are often in a hierarchy related to who plays abroad and where. When you have such an economic force as European club football drawing up players from Africa to play in roles determined by the European footballing imagination, what impact is that going to have on the national teams?

The scout, Tom Vernon, goes on to speculate that the way kids play on the street in Ghana might have something to do with it, as in his opinion playing on tiny pitches forces them to “play through the middle” and sacrifice creative wing play. Of course, anyone familiar with Brazilian football, to cite just one example, can write that off as nonsense. In Brazil, one can witness football being played just about anywhere there is flat ground, regardless of space. The greatest players from there have hailed from inner-city squatter ghettos where space is at a premium; it is precisely that lack of space that is a driving impetus for imagination and creativity.

In the case of Brazil, these players seem to transform when they put on their yellow jersey to be a part of the seleção; while the commentators during this upcoming World Cup might talk about the Brazilian footballing blood in their veins, I would say to think about the culture built into the minds of these players. Players of diverse racial backgrounds who are playing under the idea of being Brazilian, in a culture that deifies anything related to the supposed jogo bonito, the Brazilian “beautiful game.”

Naturally, anyone who has witnessed football under Dunga, especially in ‘94, knows that the Brazilian national game can be anything but beautiful, and that their best results are the fruit of grim determination, discipline, physicality, and efficiency even more than artistry. The Brazilian team of today emphasizes this even more clearly, as Dunga coaches them into South Africa.

For the African teams in South Africa in 99 days, success will be a measure of how well they can overcome the typecast images of themselves that dominate their football history. It will be a test of how this idea of hard-working journeymen playing on chaotic, disorganized African teams can be overturned and how new ideas can be formed. To the extent that these are external, cultural ideas, accumulated and enforced through the brutal economics of football, one can say that it will take something truly special to pull it off.

And yet, from time to time we see teams overcome the burden of history to change the course of their destiny. Most recently Spain, in 2008, overcame the “perennial overachievers” tag to capture their first senior international triumph in 44 years. Last summer, the USA very nearly pulled off a worldwide shockwave by going up 2-0 against feared and revered Brazil in the Confederations’ Cup final, before falling victim to their own tactical naïveté (though the second American goal will live long in my memory as perhaps the finest counterattacking goal I’ve ever seen).

For many (myself included), the first African World Cup will be a fascinating stage on which some of the dominant myths of international football could well be overturned. I, for one, wonder if it will be a time for players like Essien and Toure Yaya to break their shackles as huffing-and-puffing defensive midfielders and play to their true potential as creative, imaginative geniuses that I know they can be.

originally published at the Soccer Politics blog

In Germany, some things haven’t changed. Despite the commercialization of the global game, players’ multi-million Euro contracts, and the increasing importance of clubs as global brands, to Germans, their national team is something that remains sacred beyond these factors. As I experienced first-hand during the last World Cup, nationalism is never as widespread and accepted in Germany as it is when the national team is playing. Suddenly, it was okay for people to carry flags, including on their cars, and be patriotic, something most Germans usually do with a reluctant embarrassment that almost naturally comes along with even a minor degree of historical awareness.

This high standing enjoyed by the national team is explained by its history. Indeed, its impact on German post-war history cannot be underestimated. The 1954 upset win in the final over Hungary gave a country under reconstruction something to identify with, and titles have followed in roughly a 20-year rhythm since. Expectations for South Africa are correspondingly high.

As a result, the high degree of popular identification with the team allows the German team and staff to prepare for the World Cup in ways unheard of in other countries. With the support of most Bundesliga coaches and teams (Bayern’s Louis van Gaal continues to be the noteworthy exception) behind a unified preparation plan for South Africa, Bundestrainer Jogi Löw is able to gather his candidates for national team workouts and tests during the week, while they return to their clubs on the weekends. Following all possible German stereotypes, no detail is left unplanned. By the end of a press conference with the team staff it appears as if those World Cup matches would not even have to be played anymore.

A 30-player strong selection met last week to absolve a preliminary fitness test for the World Cup. Their data was meticulously evaluated and a decision was made to add some new younger players to the team. It is January! Yet, some players have already been told that they will not be able to participate in the World Cup, notably Thorsten Frings. Additionally, it has been announced that the decision on the goalkeeper position (much more competitive than usual with Rene Adler, Manuel Neuer, Tim Wiese, and Jörg Butt all in good form) will be made before the friendly with Argentina on March 3.

However, some things have changed. The performance-based screening of candidates introduced by Jürgen Klinsmann before the last World Cup has led to a youthful renewal of the national team. This time, it is very likely that along with the youth there will arrive an even stronger emphasis on players whose names you would not necessarily have expected to see on the back of a German jersey in the past. This is a visible result of the post-war immigration influx, which has diversified the historically homogeneous German population to the point where every fifth German citizen now has what is referred to in the German media as a Migrationshintergrund (literally: a migratory background).

Regarding the national team, Jerome Boateng, Serdar Tasci, Sami Khedira, and Mesut Özil are all young players (22 or younger; these guys make Lukas Podolski look like a veteran) who are strong candidates for a final squad which is likely to also include players like Mario Gomez and Kevin Kuranyi. Even Lukas Podolski and Miroslav Klose were born in Poland. In short, the kind of nationalism developing around this team will be interesting to observe.

A successful articulation of national pride associated with the Nationalmannschaft, and we can be sure there will be lots of attempts, would almost have to be framed as a celebration of diversity. However, taking into account the necessarily exclusive character of any nationalist expression, the question then becomes how the German fan would differentiate his identifying myth from those of other nations. Around what attributes would this demarcation be articulated? For example, will there be a need to create a non-diverse ‘other’, from, let’s say, Serbia, Australia or even Ghana (Germany’s opponents in Group play)?

To say the least, German expression of support for the team will almost certainly be more inclusive and tolerant than it has been in the past, when TV commentators routinely emphasized so-called ‘typical German virtues’ , such as superior physical strength and mental focus, as key factors for victories over other teams. Even if the occasional neo-Nazi fan, who you still encounter with some regularity in stadiums and at public viewing events, chooses to use his remaining brain cells to cheer on Bastian Schweinsteiger and Per Mertesacker, it will be difficult for him to ignore the abilities of the ‘other ‘ Germans.

As the world prepares for what may be considered the most cosmopolitan World Cup in the tournament’s 80-year history, to be hosted by South Africa from mid-June to mid-July, no shortage of praise has been heaped upon the international game as a bellwether for better times.

The game’s political supporters are not without their strong points, and the fact that Africa will host its first ever tournament as a hopeful sign of the continent’s development may have some validity.  Many of the Premiership’s stars from the league’s strongest teams, themselves powerful international brands, are African.  With the Premiership providing a tight race atop the tables in the midseason, everyone is scratching their heads, wondering what will happen to the league’s most successful teams as they attempt to make do without stars such as Didier Drogba, Kolo Toure, Salomon Kalou, Emmanuel Adebayor and Alex Song as they return to Africa to represent their countries in the African Cup of Nations.  Fans wait with bated breath to see if Chelsea will maintain its narrow lead in the tables without Drogba, arguably the league’s most virtuosic scorer, and how Arsenal will cope without its key African players on the back line.  Indeed, with the departure of African players from the Premiership in the middle of the season, there is a departure, in part, of the Premiership itself.

Bono was quick to pick up on Africa’s growing influence in both the game and the global psyche in a recent NY Times op-ed piece, where he noted that the tournament would usher in a decade of Africa, in a symbolic gesture that, in a similar way in which with the opening of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, the United States passed the torch of history to China, the opening of the Cup in Cape Town would cover over hundreds of years of colonial wounds as we all stare bravely into the global future.

And yet, these arguments overwrite the real political problems that surround the global game.  Football is, no doubt, positive as a referent that allows cultures around the world to dialogue but not if it gives way to the misrepresentation of the reality of global politics.

Friday morning, 8 January, 2010, Togo’s national team was ambushed by the separatist group, Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda, while traveling by bus through Angola, the Cup of Nations host country.  Two team officials and the team’s bus driver were killed in the attack.

Pessimists will argue that the incident preemptively mars Africa’s first World Cup.  Optimists will note that Angola and South Africa do not even share a border and have very different political infrastructures.  Realists, however, will surmise that the game, even if it is the world’s best symbolic hope, does not provide enough substance to overwrite the geopolitical trauma experienced in many post-colonial spaces.  While football may cause ebbs in national and regional histories, moments of unprecedented tans-cultural camaraderie and  ebullience amongst its followers, it does not lead to political stability in itself.

Some argue that the investment that hosting the tournament brings is a success story before the tournament even begins.  Yet, R.W. Johnson, in a piece on the politics surrounding the developmental side of the World Cup in South Africa published in the London Review of Books last month, points to the underbelly of investment: “The city had also wanted originally to locate the stadium in a black or Coloured area, both in order to encourage investment and jobs and to make it easier for the poor to attend matches. This immediately went out the window when the Fifa inspection team, headed by Franz Beckenbauer, visited Cape Town. One of the criteria they laid down was that the stadium should have ‘fine mountain views’. The team toured the poor areas, assumed the city had to be joking about choosing anywhere so obviously ugly and unsafe, and plumped for Green Point, an affluent white area with fine sea and mountain views and many good restaurants.”

Arguments can be made that in plucking a handful of players from the soccer farms in African and Latin American countries, just as Fifa plucks idyllic spaces to frame the game in its host countries, football is ascribing to a politics of underdevelopment.  And apologists such as Bono grease the wheels of the symbolic machine.

I am looking forward to both the African Cup of Nations and the World Cup as much as anyone and also believe that an international game, especially one with the intricate poetics and beauty of football, is still great for the world.  But let’s approach it with sobriety.  Cosmopolitan entertainment should not be confused with global panacea.  And theorists should be critical of arguments that say otherwise.

As Togo’s national team traveled through Angola this weekend, they took with them the borders of the global game.  In no way can the interaction at that border be interpreted as an embracing inclusivity.

While FIFA has not announced officially what exactly the set-up for the draw proceedings will be, the names of the countries to be placed in each one of the 4 different pots for the draw are widely circulating on the web.  

Most likely the draw will proceed the following way: Pot 1 contains all the seeded teams and South Africa, the host nation. Pot 2 contains all the European teams, Pot 3 contains the South American and African teams, and Pot 4 the rest. No group will be allowed to contain more than two teams from Europe and no more than one team from any other continent.

So just in time for the big event on Friday, here is my Mock Draw for the 2010 World Cup according to the above-mentioned format:

 

 

Group A:

South Africa

Slovenia

Uruguay

New Zealand

As always, FIFA needs to make sure that the host nation advances to the next round. Job well done, Sepp Blatter!

Group B:

Brazil

Denmark

Ghana

Japan

Globalization in a box. This group will be sure to give the famously friendly Danish travelers a full-blown cultural experience.  Get ready for a love fest. These countries are simply too far apart to hate each other.

Group C:

Spain

Portugal

Chile

Mexico

Salsa! If Group 2 was the Peace Group, this is war! A good way for Spain to prove they really deserve winning their first World Cup (and owning more of Latin America than Portugal)

Group D:

Italy

Greece

Paraguay

North Korea

 The catenaccio group. None of these teams plays with more than one striker, accordingly all games will end 0-0. Because of FIFA’s inability to stage a four-team playoff there will be an unprecedented 4-way coin flip contest that sees North Korea and Italy go through. The day after the event, photos of Berlusconi and Kim Jong-Ill meeting at Berlusconi’s villa in Italy appear in Italian newspapers.

 Group E:

Germany

Slovakia

Nigeria

Honduras

 Germany always gets the average beatable opponents for the Group Stages. This year won’t be any different.

 Group F:

Argentina

Serbia

Cameroon

Australia

 Maradona loses to Cameroon (again) as Argentina are eliminated. A week later, he accepts an offer to coach Cuba in their quest for World Cup glory in 2014.

 Group G:

England

Holland

Ivory Coast

USA

 Since all rumors printed in the Daily Mail eventually turn out to be facts, England gets their group of death. (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-1229246/REVEALED-The-World-Cup-draw-pots-England-Cristiano-Ronaldo-Didier-Drogba.html)

 Group H:

France

Switzerland

Algeria

South Korea

 After French draws against Switzerland and South Korea (Deja-vu is French after all), the result of the last match day is a street party in Marseille, after Algeria eliminates France. Random Irish tourists join the celebration.