The Only Winning Move

You can’t, I suppose, have a giant sporting event without a requisite amount of nonsense. The link goes to an article entitled “Anti-Racist Film a Big Success.”

Apparently, an organization called FARE (Football Against Racism in Europe) has gotten permission to play a short anti-racist PSA before and after each Euro2008 event. It’s called “Different Languages - One Goal: No to Racism” and runs 30seconds long.

30 seconds to change the world. Yeah, right guys. With an atom bomb, maybe, but a video? A particularly mundane video, at that. Apparently what it shows is - hold your breath, kids - the emotions of fans of various backgrounds before a goal is scored, culminating in wild celebrations all for the purpose of showing (yes, this is an actual quote from the director) “the word ‘goal’ to be universal.” Wow - who knew? So you’re saying … give me a second, this is a difficult concept for me … that people of ALL RACES are happy when their home team scores a goal? It’s like a revelation.

Even more ridiculous is their interpretation of “different backgrounds.”

The casting process was swift but ensured a true ‘mix’ of people, both trained actors and raw hopefuls were used and a range of backgrounds represented. Buche explained: “Everything in the film is symbolic. Romanian actors represented eastern Europe, we used Dutch actors as a reference to colonial times, and Turkish actors were involved to signify their omnipresence throughout many parts of Europe at this point in time.”

So out of all of Europe’s many national and ethnic groups, we managed to get a whopping … three of them … to put in an appearance. Better still, Romania of all places is meant to represent Eastern Europe, even though it considers itself Latin rather than Slavic, The Netherlands represents colonialism, even though it’s France that regularly raids its former colonies for national team players, and Turkey, which isn’t even in Europe, is featured but mysteriously doesn’t represent colonialism, even though it too was a colonial power (and once colonized Romania, one hastens to add). Guess I’ll have to just trust them that this is “representative.”

What I’m more interested in is where I can find even a single person who thinks that people from different backgrounds experience different emotions on seeing their team score? Is Europe really this goofy? Surely the fact that all these countries bother to participate in EuroCup in the first place is evidence enough that they’re basically similar when it comes to soccer?

If there’s anything that should concern us it’s how they’re similar rather than that they’re similar. Without seeing the team each group is cheering for on the screen, we somehow know that the Turks are for Turkey, the Dutch are for Holland, the Romanians for Romania, etc. The great unifying thing about “football” is that it brings out everyone’s inner tribesman. Sure, some of the more dedicated fans can appreciate good play no matter which team it’s coming from, but the overwhelming majority of the cheering spectators know just enough about the rules to recognize when it’s time to wave their flag. If you want to fight racism in soccer, maybe what you should be doing instead is reminding everyone that it’s just a game - that Turkey is still a shitty place to live even if exactly 11 of its citizens manage to kick a regulation ball through a regulation net under regulation specifications more times than 11 citizens of an “opposing” country.

The truth is that the whole premise behind Euro is nationalistic. If it were really all about watching soccer, then Euro would just be the Champions League. The fact that there are national teams and citizenship requirements on players makes the whole affair unavoidably “racist,” or at least tribal. No 30-second ad makes up for that.

My question is, so what if it’s nationalistic? I thought the whole point of these events was to give people a safe outlet for flag-waving? Better to do it over a soccer ball than on a battle field - wasn’t that the idea? Better to fight over something like soccer that has nothing to do with reality than for real stakes, right? In some important sense it defeats the whole purpose of EuroCup to complain about racism. If you’re that dedicated to making sure everyone knows we all bleed red, as it were, then why not campaign against the very idea of national teams?

Indeed, the fact that they’re not doing just that demonstrates to me that the people behind this video know that Euro is harmless. Perhaps they have their own racist and nationalist demons to overcome, but most soccer fans don’t. There’s a tribal gene in all of us, Euro is a fun way to let it out, but humans are complex creatures, and for the most part we know which instincts are appropriate to indulge when. Euro is a time for indulging my atavistic tribal leanings (Go Germany!), and as long as I keep it confined to the pitch, no harm no foul. What Euro is NOT a time for is sanctimonious, empty preaching about invented issues. So pack up your PC bullshit and take it home and let me watch soccer in peace.

My favorite part of the article, though, is the assertion that this video is “making a huge impact.” By what measure, one wonders? The giant “Raceometer” in Brussels that measures tolerance was hovering at 7.5 until the video aired, at which point it shot up to 7.7 in under 30 seconds? Give me a goram break. There is no evidence anywhere that this video is doing anything other than annoying people. If it serves any purpose whatever, it’s probably just as a nice buffer zone for bartenders to get their tabbooks in order before the main event starts.  That’s something we accomplished just as nicely with the national anthem in the past…

So today Guus Hiddink, who is Dutch, is leading the Russian Team against - who else? - the Dutch in Euro 2008. Here’s some related fantasizing about rewriting the rules so that national coaches have to be citizens of the countries they coach.

For my part, I’ll say it does seem sort of contradictory to enforce this requirement on players but not coaches. Of course we could be consistent by loosening the requirements for players, which are arguably being circumvented anyway. But that’s obviously out of the question: the concept of a national team is meaningless is the players aren’t nationals of the country they represent.

So why doesn’t this apply to managers? Well, actually, in my experience it does. I watched a lot of dampened enthusiasm for England in World Cup 2002 owing to good ol’ Sven. He was a good coach, he fit the team well and clearly helped them, but you always got the impression from the England fans that they would rather have seen one of their own at the helm. Hiddink himself was an easy target in Korea leading up to that tournament. Sure, that all changed after that first victory dance (the first in the video) got spalshed all over Korean TV. Hiddink became a national hero, and enjoys, if I’m not mistaken, free flights on Korean Air and Koreana, and free taxi rides in Seoul for the rest of his life as a result. It’s telling, I think, that Hiddink is the first foreigner to be offered honorary South Korean citizenship (who would touch THAT with a ten-foot pole, I wonder?). See, victory is sweet and all, but it’s just not the same if it’s not one of your own behind the wheel. If Hiddink isn’t Korean, we’ll make him Korean … kind of thing.

The question, of course, it whether it should be made official for managers. I’m agnostic. On the one hand, there’s everything I just said. National teams in soccer lose their meaning the more they’re not national but inter-national. We’d hit a reductio ad absurdum if we let players be from whereever without holding citizenship, obviously, but there’s a price in fan loyalty to be paid for a foreign coach as well. What works OK for football nobodies like Australia and South Korea (and arguably not really in South Korea - see the discussion of Hiddink’s citizenship offer above) would be a disaster for a country like Germany (which has never had a foreign manager), I’m sure. On the other hand, coaches have a tougher time of it than players. There’s plenty of spots for players to qualify for, but being a national team coach is a much more demanding hurdle. There’s really only the one position per country, after all. More than that, it seems we’d be missing something without the “Hiddink factor” in places like South Korea. They had it in them for that 4th place finish - but absolutely no one in the world knew it until Hiddink showed up and whipped them into shape. It’s one thing to have good players, but I fear that a lot of potentially good teams might not really get to show their colors without the right man at the helm, and we the soccer fans would miss out on a lot of good games as a result. International soccer would suffer for it.

So I don’t really care. I suppose I take a “good for thee, not for me” attitude. Let the rules stay as they are, but I want only American coaches coaching the US team if we can help it. Yeah, yeah, I know we’ve had a LOT of foreigners on our roster in the past, but Soccer is only now finding its niche in this country. Like many US fans, I date it from the Arena era, giving us a clean record here - at least in my fantasy world. Let’s keep it that way.