How To Watch The World Cup

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

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

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

No global event commands anything close to the attention paid the World Cupon all five continents. As many as 3 billion people are expected to watch someof it on TV, while 250 million more will cluster around radios to follow everyplay. Having caught the 1974 and 1978 tournaments by radio from a South Africawithout 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 onshort-wave, then waited two weeks for the visuals, courtesy of the White HouseHotel, a Cape Town brothel that was diversifying its revenue stream by showingimported pirate videos of the games.)

The billions who tune into the World Cup are watching a game that, at thehighest level, largely negates all advantages of social class or even physicalstature -- the combination of speed, skill, imagination and organizationrequired to prevail is a great leveler. But at the World Cup, soccer is far morethan a game.

"What do they of cricket know who only cricket know," wrote thelegendary Trinidadian historian and socialist CLRJames, insisting that the spectacle of men in white flannels on a grassyoval engaged in a five-day contest of bat and ball, with strictly observedbreaks for lunch and afternoon tea, could only be properly understood in thecontext of the political and cultural conflicts of the British Empire. If Jameshad lived long enough to see the national team of his beloved Trinidad qualifyfor the elite 32 teams that will contest the 2006 World Cup, he'd surely havemade the same point about soccer (even if, like most of humanity, he'd havecalled it "football").

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

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

James also noted the tendency of colonized peoples to develop their own idiomof play, evolving styles based on their skills and patterns of socialorganization that tended to confound the colonizer even while playing within hisrules.

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

The German game epitomizes the industrialized West: physical power,relentless drive, unshakable organization and a machine-like efficiency inpunishing opponents' mistakes. It's a kind of Blitzkrieg -- the modernGerman game, as SimonKuper has noted, had its roots in Nazi sports culture and the militaristicvirtues it lionized -- that overwhelms opponents with physical power on theground and in the air, often winning "ugly" by a single goal. Thebest-known German players of the past half century have been goalkeepers, fieldcommanders in defense and midfield, as well as clinical if artless goal-poachingforwards. There has never been a Pelé on the German team; in Brazil, bycontrast, each year brings a new crop of awesomely talented teenagers from the favelaswhose audacious skill and flair inevitably anoints them as "the next Pelé."

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

When Ronaldinho, currently rated the greatest player in the world, spottedthe English goalkeeper David Seaman two yards off the goal line in their 2002World Cup clash, he unleashed a 40-yard free kick that looped over Seaman'soutstretched gloves, wickedly dipping and curling into the top corner ofEngland's goal. So thunderstruck were the English TV commentators that theyinsisted the strike was a fluke, a pass that went fortuitously awry. It's forsuch 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'sprofessional club leagues -- housing almost all of the world's leading players-- create nearly year-round the sort of spectacle for a global-satellite TVaudience once restricted to the World Cup. In many developing countries today(including Brazil), ever fewer people attend domestic league games, reservingtheir soccer time religiously for TV broadcasts of the top European leagueswhere they're more likely to see the best players from their own countries.

Today, a match in London between Arsenal and Manchester United involvesplayers from Latin America, much of West Africa, the Arab world, northern,southern, and eastern Europe, and Asia. The global TV audience it attracts isgood 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 insouthern Iraq to encounter a Mehdi Army militiaman sporting the shirt ofArsenal, the soldier's "local" London team – a jersey that he andhis mates might wear on a night out back home to signify a kind of tribalidentity. But there's nothing "local" about Arsenal anymore: When itplayed Real Madrid earlier this year in the Champion's League, there were onlytwo Englishmen on the field, both playing for the Spanish side.

With this rapid globalization of the "local" game comes ahomogenization of styles: England, today, has one or two players who like to runat 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, thattraditional European demolition man whose job is simply to break up oppositionattacks and win the ball for his more creative teammates.

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

This fusing of different styles has been accelerated by the migration ofcoaches as well as players. Last season, the coaches of the top five clubs inEngland's Premier League were Portuguese, Scottish, Spanish, French, and Dutch.Three Dutch coaches are bringing non-Dutch teams to the World Cup; most Africanteams are coached by Frenchmen and Germans, the English team by a Swede, andPortugal 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 increasinglycosmopolitan makeup. Thanks to postwar economic migrations into Europe fromformer colonies, many of the best players available to a European national teamare second- and even third-generation immigrants. France fields a team in whichall but one, sometimes two, players are of African or Arab origin. The racistpolitician Jean Marie Le Pen actually complained in 1998 that the World Cupwinners were "not a real French team." Some English fans are moreaccepting of their cosmopolitan fate, as reflected in one of their chants thatextols Britain's new national cuisine: "And we all love vindaloo..."

The world soccer authority FIFA allows players to play for the country oftheir citizenship or the one of their origins. This creates oddities: Dakar-bornPatrick Vieira marshals France's midfield, while Paris-born Khalilou Fadigastars for Senegal. In addition, the ability of emerging players to makeprofessional migrations seeking fame and fortune sometimes tempts soccerfederations to recruit for the national team by fast-tracking the citizenship ofpromising players. In recent weeks, a Dutch effort to expedite the citizenshipprocess for Ivoirian striker Salomon Kalou fell afoul of that country's newchill on immigration.

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

Although many of the stars of almost every domestic league from Russiawestward are from the African Diaspora (which includes Brazil), an astonishinglevel of racism persists among fans and even coaches at the highest levels ofthe game. Ukraine coach Oleg Blokhin, for example, bemoaned the globalization ofhis domestic league thus: "The more Ukrainians there are playing in thenational league, the more examples there are for the young generation. Let themlearn 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 tellingstriker Jose Antonio Reyes that he was better than his French Arsenal teammateThierry Henry. Except Aragones didn't say Henry's name, he said, "thatblack shit." A few days later, he insisted that there was nothing racistabout 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 thegypsy by telling him he was better than the black."

In many European stadiums, today, black players are targeted for racial abusein the form of ape noises and bananas thrown from the stands. In fact, the WorldCup offers a range of opportunities for the racist xenophobes in the ranks ofmany countries' "ultra" football fans -- those who go to games notonly to support their side in a ritual of combat, but to seek actual combatagainst the ultras of the other side. For years, England's games were a rallyingand brawling point for the racist far right. They nonetheless looked positivelytame when compared with the Serbian ultras originally grouped around the fanclub of Red Star Belgrade. Under their leader Arkan,they became the core of the notorious "Tiger" militia accused by theHague War Crimes Tribunal of some of the most brutal "ethniccleansing" violence in Bosnia from 1991 to 1993.

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

Branding the Game

Although the "national narrative" that binds fans to their teams isopen to progressive or reactionary appropriation, it's not the game's drivingforce any more. Soccer, today, is a multibillion-dollar global industry whosepower centers are transnational corporations -- the moneyed clubs of Europewhose financial well-being depends on the ability of their "brand" tosell merchandise from Baghdad to Beijing. Manchester United may be based in acity whose prosperity has declined with that of the British textile industry,but most of the young men sporting its jersey from Gaza to Guangdong wouldundoubtedly struggle to locate the home of "their" team on a map. Andit's a safe bet that the Ecuadorian busboy and the Bangkok cab driver wearingthe 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 theirManchester United jerseys and don England's colors during the World Cup, butmost of their team's stars will actually be playing against England inthe shirts of Holland, Portugal, Argentina, Serbia, and France. For ManchesterUnited's management, however, having their stars represent any nation's team isa problem. Wayne Rooney, United's star striker, for example, is being raced backto fitness from a broken foot because England's hopes depend on him. Should heaggravate the injury playing in the World Cup, Manchester United -- which paidclose to $40 million to sign Rooney -- could suffer potentially huge financiallosses once the league season resumes in September.

That's why Manchester United and 17 other top clubs in Europe are agitatingto be given a share of the revenues generated by the World Cup. They argue thatit is their "assets" who are generating the revenue, at great risk tothe clubs that hold their contracts. As the employers of most of the world'sbest players, soccer's collective corporate management has considerable leveragein challengingthe 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 itsteams stands to make them billions of dollars in revenues. Nike has anadvantage, sponsoring Team Brazil as it does, as well as Holland, Portugal,Mexico, South Korea, and the USA among others. Adidas holds its own withGermany, France, Spain, Argentina, Japan and Trinidad (whose shirts will nodoubt become a nightclub standard, and have already been adopted as the fetishof choice by Scottish fans whose own team failed to qualify). Puma sponsorsmostly outsiders like Cote d'Ivoire and Iran, although Italy remains a crediblecontender.

Adidas could, however, be said to have the killer advantage. It supplies thetournament ball, whose appeal crosses all affiliations.