Soccer Politics / The Politics of Football

Since its founding in 1907, Al Ahly S.C. has been known as ‘the people’s club,’ representing resistance against the many forms of colonialism that have long plagued the African continent. Initially the first sporting club to allow Egyptians to join, Al Ahly remains the most popular of Egyptian teams, wearing to this day the red kits that honour the pre-colonial Egyptian flag.

It is no great surprise, then, that Al Ahly Ultras – officially founded by Mahmoud Ghandour in 2007 (who is reported to have died in Wednesday’s violent attacks) – were on the front lines of both the initial “#Jan25” uprising and the continuing movement intended to topple the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF). Egyptians inspired by Tunisia and over 30 years of corrupt governance have utilized every resistance tactic at their disposal, including the well-organized and nearly fearless ultras.

Ahlawy are not the only ultras to make up the first line of defense against police and the military – fans of the comparatively upper-class Cairene neighborhood Zamalek’s team, Al Ahly’s longtime rivals, have also defended the ongoing revolution with zeal. It is, in fact, the truce called by Zamalek after years of bitter rivalry with Ahly in the aftermath of the devastating Port Said riots this Wednesday that symbolizes much of the complexity surrounding what the international media has largely misidentified as a “football riot.”

What happened is still unclear, though this much is known: On Wednesday, after Al Masry beat Al Ahly 3-1, attackers armed with knives and clubs stormed the pitch. Whether the armed crowds were only Al Masry Ultras or not is still being debated – after all, why attack the spectators and team members of the losing squad? Several players – Egypt’s beloved philanthropist and supporter of the revolution Mohamed Aboutrika included – were injured as they rushed into their dressing rooms (Aboutrika, shaken by theattack, has since announced his retirement from football).

At least 73 people were killed (martyred, as many observers and mourners on Twitter, Facebook and the Egyptian blogosphere have noted), and many more injured. As those under attack – mostly Ahlawy, though this type of violence rarely leaves anyone untouched – attempted to leave, it was discovered that most of the exits were locked, and the stadium lights were shut off in the midst of the chaos.

The videos coming out of the Port Said stadium are horrendous. Such violence is not unheard of in the aftermath of football matches in Egypt (or anywhere in the world, for that matter), but it took even seasoned football announcers by complete surprise.

The Ultras in Egypt do not share the sometimes-fascist roots of their counterparts in Europe. Although politics also play an incredible role in the breakdown between fans of the various teams throughout Egypt, football had been frequently utilized by Mubarak’s regime as an attempt to distract citizens from their daily oppression, as well as stoke tensions between neighborhoods, cities, and nations. But this has not always been successful.

One of the many Ahly chants routinely heard at football matches is “Down, Down With the Junta Rule!” Last year I cited Dave Zirin in a short piece discussing Al Ahly’s political history on the media blog Africa Is A Country. Zirin’s observation that Egyptian football clubs and anti-government organizations “walked together in comfort” remains a reminder of why many Egyptians – myself, a product of four generations of Ahlawy included – do not for one moment believe this is “just” football fanaticism.

The video above displays clearly the riot-gear clad security forces doing nothing while Al Ahly’s players sprint to the relative safety of their dressing rooms. This is not the first time in the last year Egyptians have seen this happen. Recall that on 28 January of last year, many were paid and armed to attack protestors in Meydan Tahrir and other gathering areas.

Mubarak and his supporters not only used this as ‘proof’ that they were in the right, but also to allege that Egyptians were ‘not ready’ to lead themselves. This moment is clear in the minds of many at a moment when SCAF has echoed these same arguments in an attempt to retain power and maintain the Emergency Law that has been in place since 1980. SCAF now promises another ‘crackdown,’ though, as usual, it does not specify what particular entity will be targeted.

Al Ahly Ultras asserted in a public statement: “[SCAF] want to punish us and execute us for our participation in the revolution against suppression. Given this and the broader public rage directed at the military for protecting and serving only itself, we must expect that SCAF will be cracking down on the very people mourning the loss of life and continued absence of their liberty in Egypt. Indeed, the protests throughout the nation that immediately followed the riot turned into all-out battles between military police and ultras. As one interviewee warned The New York Times, “They turned the biggest fan base in the country against them.”

For more details and perspectives, please read James M. Dorsey’s articles on the Foreign Policy and Time websites, here and here, as well as Egyptian blogger Issandr El Amrani’s thoughts on the LRB blog.

Crossposted from Africa Is A Country.

Tags: Al Ahly, El Masry, Port Said, riot, SCAF, Tahrir, Zamalek

The headline in El País said it all: “The strike of champions.”

As of Friday, August 12, the AFE (Spanish Footballers’ Association) union resolved to strike for at least the first two matchdays of the Spanish professional football season.

Their reason is  a crisis in Spanish football related to the credit bust that, thus far, has left at least 200 players in First and Second Divisions owed €50 million in wages.

Furthermore, the players are standing against the increasing incidence of their colleagues’ wage payments being delayed, sometimes for months. What’s more, they are demanding stricter oversight from Spanish football governing bodies to prevent such situations from occurring.

The way they see it, Spanish football should be looking more in the way of countries such as Holland or Germany, where club team spending is much more controlled. They even point to the Premier League, where a team like Portsmouth, declared insolvent, is punished with relegation.

In contrast, in Spain football teams have been juridically ignored regarding their spending and labor practices. To highlight the situation: Zaragoza owes its players millions from last season, yet have already signed eight new players, one of whom cost €8.6 million. Players, bound to contracts, are unable to escape the situation, and, furthermore, since there are no legal provisions to punish the nonpaying clubs, are forced to stay on since they haven’t been paid and their only hopes of getting payed are by staying put.

While many have mocked the idea of football players being slaves, one can also understand the bad positions that teams often put players in. Imagine, a young man gives up his schooling with the idea of being a professional footballer. He does so with the idea of building a career, and focusing every bit of energy on it. Yet the shelf life of an average player is shorter every season; the reality is that football is only a solid career until one’s early thirties, when the body gives out.

At this point, the situation for Spanish players is such that there is no guarantee that they will even get the financial benefits of that career. What’s more, the boom in the Spanish football industry, parallel to the boom in the economy firmly tied to real estate speculation and excessive spending, has seen teams spending exorbitant sums on players–many of them quite bad–from all over the world. The past 15-20 years have seen a global expansion in the game–via TV rights and merchandising–that has favored cosmopolitan teams with universal appeal.

Now, with the burst of the bubble and the drastic slashing of banking credit (not to mention the possibility of increased regulation), many teams are beginning to look like sinking ships. Very expensive ships with no life rafts.

What’s more, since credit has dried, very few teams are able to get any, and we could have guessed that those with that luxury are Real Madrid and Barcelona. Both teams continue to sign players left and right, paying high wages and enjoying the profits of their all-encompassing appeal in every corner of the world.

In many ways, it’s becoming a two-horse race; a look at revenues in Spain, compared to similar charts for league titles in the last ten years, shows that there is one Real Madrid, one Barcelona, and a field full of also-rans.

In a Spain (and a Europe) in which the common people are being forced to swallow “austerity measures” (cuts to social spending and increased taxes), that makes the idea of the football business somewhat more ridiculous. While small and medium businesses in Spain, still a strong economic force, are finding their credit to be cut, they see a sector of the Spanish economy not bound to the same basic rules. Solvency, spending what one can afford to pay, paying one’s employees.

And yet, the press, while highlighting the strike (though not so much its financial implications), still warms up to the idea of the start of the new season, not to mention the Fabregas saga. The nationalistic Madrid-based papers (especially AS and Marca), as well as the Catalan dailies (such as Sport),  have also given these lastly mentioned stories much more prominent attention.

At the same time, as the 15-m movement against the austerity measures continues to be vociferous in Spain, El Pais also featured an article about former Sporting Gijón footballer Javi Poves, who quit the sport for “ethical reasons,” motivated by his anarchist political beliefs.

The 15-m, short for “15th of May,” protestors have been staging nonviolent protests since May against what they view as governmental and corporate irresponsibility in the economic crisis. They demand, among other things, accountability and the upholding of workers’ rights.

And interesting bedfellows the two groups, footballers and protestors make, at least in terms of our discussion here. As the football season approaches once again, so do we get closer to finding more about the true depths and consequences of the global economic crisis. Football, more than ever, parades the fantasy that all is well, that the world is in order, and that the best team wins, again and again.

On June 7^th, the Spanish national team played the second of two international friendlies in the Americas. The first was an energetic 4-0 victory over the United States in Boston; the second, in Caracas, another dominating win against the Venezuelan team.

The match was noteworthy in contrast to the previous set of friendlies played by Spain since the World Cup.

In a maneuver of perhaps unconfident foresight, the Spanish federation (RFEF) scheduled three friendly matches against Mexico, Argentina, and Portugal—all of them being played as the visiting team.

Needless to say, the World Cup triumph was a physically and mentally exhausting effort for the Spanish players in 2010. Coming off a big win in Euro 2008 as well, there was the inevitable sense after the 2010 win that the team had won all there was to win.  Indeed, they did win all that they could that mattered to them (they didn’t win the 2009 Confederations Cup—a tournament criticized by clubs and pundits as being an unnecessary intrusion on the summer before a World Cup).

Thus, the friendlies, played towards the beginning of the 2010-2011 season, had a sense of unimportance about them, which was projected by the players. With the Barcelona-Real Madrid clásico only a short time into the season, and with a heated race between the two teams for first place, it was clear that the minds of the professionals were on competition rather than exhibition.

While tying with Mexico, Spain was drubbed by both Argentina and Portugal in contests that were much more important for the teams that had something to prove. And yet, their opposition was still contemplating the wake of the World Cup victory.

While attention was moved to the eternal Real Madrid-Barcelona rivalry, in the previous months, the national team had overtaken all other news, even displacing the spiraling economic disaster and relegating it to less important spaces on cover pages.

This came at a time when tensions between the Spanish government and the opposition, the democratic subjects and their bureaucratic democracy, were approaching boiling points due to the economic agony of Spain. In the days surrounding the Cup, the chords of disunion were chiming in various regions, especially with the polemic of the Catalan constitution (which curiously featured then-Barcelona president Joan Laporta as a provocative spokesperson for the cause).

Of course, the Catalan independence cause continues to be a thorn in the paw of Spanish constitutional democrats who wish to maintain the union despite certain liberties granted to the autonomies. If anything, because of Catalunya’s deeply rooted capitalist heavyweights, who loom in the background as potential financiers of a functional breakaway state. This, in contrast to Basque nationalism, to name the other notable example, which has seen the continuous efforts of the Spanish state to associate the most ardent nationalists with the terrorist movement, from kale borroka street violence to the coffers of ETA.

As such, the Spanish media’s rhetoric, despite the constant association of Basque freedom and terror, conveys a greater sense of fear about Catalunya’s claims’ legitimacy. The question that Catalanism promotes is one that goes directly to the core of the political system: can democracy oppress itself?

On July 26^th, Catalunya banned bullfighting, a gesture largely (and understandably) regarded as provocative by the national press in Spain. In the end, though, in the national media, the more enduring images were focused on the national football team, a far better sell in a football-charged nation than images of Catalans celebrating their gesture of difference and defiance.

Ironically, this championship football team had a most Catalan backbone, combined with a solid pillar of their Real Madrid rivals. The style of their play, however, was a direct product of the Barcelona school; a brand of total football in which all players press hard, in which possession is used as defense, and in which creativity is employed with controlled artistry to attack the other team.

The World Cup celebrations, enjoyed by millions of people all over Spain, were treated to the image of Spanish players such as Puyol and Xavi wearing their Catalan flag, their senyera, on the field after the match. In the post-game jubilation, even Queen Sofia was compelled to break all known protocol and go directly to the dressing room to shake the players’ hands.

As the surprised protagonists of the grueling match with Holland exchanged greetings with Her Royal Highness, Carles Puyol—a Barcelona captain and symbol of the made-in-Catalunya philosophy of the team—emerged from the shower clutching nothing but a towel to his waist. Desperately holding on to it with his left hand, he extended his right when the Queen offered him her hand.

Almost a year later, the friendlies now forgotten and a team still basking in World Cup glory, not to mention Barcelona’s success in Europe (they won the Champions’ League—the most prestigious European tournament of football for clubs), the two against the USA and Venezuela came, at the end of the 2010-2011 season.

Over a month earlier, during a 4 week period in which Real Madrid and Barcelona played each other four times (in the Spanish Cup final, the Champions’ League semis, and the Spanish league), the sports press in Spain, most notably the nationalist Marca and AS, became obsessed with whether the tensions between players from the two teams would affect the selección. The series of clásicos was marked by clashes between Spanish teammates—in one match Madrid’s Arbeloa stomped on Barça’s Pedro—as well as insinuations and accusations from both sides.

However, the season having finished, the successful friendlies seemed to erase any of that tension between Spain’s players. Interestingly, Del Bosque used one of the games to hand Barcelona’s Victor Valdés—one of the nationalist sports press’s favorite targets for anti-Madrid accusations—his second start for the team, relegating perennial starter Iker Casillas to a substitute appearance. In that same match, two Athletic Club Bilbao players started as well,  in addition to a total of 5 Barcelona players and two from Madrid.

With the backdrop of the national “15-M” sit-ins—the acampadas, camp-outs in most Spanish cities protesting the political state of Spain in the economic crisis—the Spanish team’s performance was a symbolic moment of synthesis in which the “different” Spains came together to a successful end. In Barcelona, on the eve of the Champions’ League final, Catalonian state police—the Mossos D’Esquadra—violently beat the peaceful protestors, who refused to move from the Plaça de Catalunya.

Their reason for the police charge was to clear the plaza in anticipation of a possible celebration by Barcelona fans; the official story was that the acampadas posed a public safety risk in such a situation, especially as the need was seen to “clean” the plaza of objects that could be used as weapons by Barça fans.

Nonetheless, the actions of the Catalonian state police unwittingly served to echo what would happen with the Spanish national team friendly matches, becoming an unlikely statement of unity with the Spanish political establishment in the face of popular discontent. Similarly, the national team’s success played out the powerful symbolism of the football narrative, painting an image of unity and imperial dominance in the Americas.

This, an image strikingly at odds with the internal, structural realities of both Spanish football and the democratic state. In the recent nationwide municipal elections of the 22^nd of May, the ruling socialist party, the PSOE, was dealt a severe blow as the traditionally conservative PP gained major ground all over Spain, and in many cities where the PSOE was well-grounded. At the same time, abstention was on the rise and a focus of the national news media, while in the Basque Country, nationalist party Bildu—claimed by its critics to be directly linked to ETA via its outlawed political wing—had an astonishing turnout, taking second in the voting overall, despite having been banned and subsequently reinstated only days before.

And in two football matches across the Atlantic, La Roja played as a squad oblivious to this, almost incredulous in its own effortlessness in thrashing their less adept rivals.

There were several interesting reports this week about the fact that some of the best organized and most effective groups involved in the protests in Egypt came from what some saw as a surprising place: football fan groups. As a report on Gawker noted: “When asked about the role of political groups in organizing protests, prominent Egyptian blogger Alaa abd El-Fatah told Al Jazeera . . . : “The ultras – the football fan associations – have played a more significant role than any political group on the ground at this moment.” The article particularly highlights the supporters of the Al Ahly (“The National”), which was founded in 1907 and served as a site for resistance to British colonial rule.

The Football Scholars Forum has links to several good articles and a radio piece by David Goldblatt.

And David Zirin penned a very good comment about this at Sports Illustrated.

In fact for those who know the history of the region, the connection should come as no surprise: football has long sustained political resistance in the region: not only in Egypt but in Algeria, where it played a vital role in the nationalist movements that led to independence. What perhaps makes this connection somewhat invisible, or illegible, is the broader notion — one sustained both by many forms of sport media as well as by those who critique sport — that fandom is somehow apolitical, or even the antithesis of politics. These reports, however, should be a reminder that football associations have long been, and continue to be, significant civic institutions with the capacity, on occasion, to participate in political change.

The official institutions governing football, meanwhile, now face the question of whether the U.S.-Egypt match scheduled for February 9th should in fact be played. So far it has not been cancelled, and one blogger has argued that the failure to cancel the match is a reflection of the broader “muddled” U.S. policy. This too, raises an interesting question: who do these teams represent? Does the Egyptian team stand for the crumbling Egyptian government, or for those in the streets demanding the departure of Mubarak? And who does the U.S. team stand for, in the midst of our (remarkably limp) engagement with one of the most dramatic democratic movements in recent years? 

This all is a reminder of the central role that football can play in constituting the political imagination, as well as shaping political action. Dictatorships succeed by investing an entire national space with their power and their symbols. They insist that they constitute the nation, standing as it’s only true representative. They seek to eliminate any alternative to their regime by rendering such alternatives unimaginable. But football also channels hopes and ideas of particular communities and nations, one that because of it’s theatrical and symbolic power — as well as the fact that it can seem to be simply apolitical, an escape rather than a challenge — is remarkably resilient in such contexts. The Egyptian football team stands for the nation just as Mubarak does, but without the police state. It’s heroes seem like they might be you and me. And when a crowd forms around them, it becomes a kind of alternative national community that, at least during some fleeting moments, can imagine something new into existence.

In the midst of the brewing crisis over the election in Haiti, I’m taking solace in small, containable observations. Jude Celestin, the ruling party candidate who now stands accused by twelve other candidates of having carried out fraud at the polls today, made a shrewd choice in his campaign colors. As Emily Troutman noted in a pre-election article on the candidates, the green and white of his posters and shirts are the same as those of the Brazilian national team. Which means a huge swath of the Haitian population already had a shirt ready to wear if they wanted to go to a rally for Celestin. To top it off, his number — the one voters were to check if they chose him — was none other than #10.  You can see musician Gasman Couleur sporting his Brazil #10 shirt at a Celestin rally (photo from Haitianbeatz.com).

Basically, it was as if Celestin was trying to channel the spirit of Pelé. It doesn’t seem, for now, to have really worked. One of Celestin’s rivals, meanwhile, the singer Michel Martelly, has opted for a bright pink as his campaign color, as Emily Troutman also notes. (Her tweets from Haiti have been extremely informative today.) Which prompted one of the few humorous tweets to come out about Haiti today, which hoped that if Martelly wins he won’t change the red and blue of Haiti’s flag to pink and red. In a pre-election rally, meanwhile, Martelly taunted Celestin, suggesting maybe he was bad luck for Brazil. “You’ve seen Celestin’s posters, right? Green and yellow? That’s probably why Brazil keeps losing.”

There was, until this morning, cautious optimism that the election would go ahead relatively smoothly. Now, with candidates calling for an annulment of the election and demonstrations tomorrow and the electoral commission declaring the election is valid, it’s unclear what is going to transpire this week. But we are likely heading into a serious political crisis of accusation and counter-accusation, perhaps worse. I’ll offer one half-joking hope: maybe the fact that there is a Real Madrid-Barcelona match (El Clasico) is being played tomorrow will cool things down a bit? The game is always a major draw in Haiti, as Laura Wagner reported here last Spring.

Moments like this leave me wishing politics was a little more like football where — for all the drama, inscrutability, tragedy, and unfairness — there at are least some rules, and you know that at some point the game will end.

Recent news reports from South America indicate that the coach of Chile’s national team, Marcelo Bielsa, will be leaving his post with immediacy.  To the casual observer, this comes as a shock.  Bielsa has been credited with restoring discipline and professionalism to a national soccer association known more in recent years for scandal than for footballing feat.  Chile’s positive performance in the World Cup, though terminated in an emphatic loss to Brazil, confirmed a national soccer renaissance, accompanied by the flourishing of local talent like Alexis Sánchez, Humerto Suazo, Matías Fernández, Gary Medel, and others.  Having spearheaded this project, the former Argentine national team coach Bielsa has come to enjoy wide celebrity in Chile.

Instrumental in the hiring of the Marcelo Bielsa and the resurrection of Chilean soccer has been Harold Mayne Nicholls, until today the president of the Chilean soccer federation (ANFP).  Mayne Nicholls has argued passionately for the equitable distribution of television funds among all first-division clubs.  Other recent institutional prerogatives include obliging clubs to invest in youth development rather than focus solely on player exportation, and ensuring clubs’ financial contributions to league infrastructures.  These measures have placed him in opposition to the presidents of almost all major Chilean club teams.  According to an article published by journalist Ezequiel Fernández Moores in the Argentine daily La Nación*, almost all major Chilean clubs are now owned by conservative businessmen or corporate groups who vehemently oppose the policies of Mayne Nicholls.  The recent ascendancy in Chilean soccer of Spanish businessman Jorge Segovia, whom club presidents have marketed as a replacement for Mayne Nicholls, is seen by many as engineered by recently elected President of Chile Sebastián Piñera, who according to Fernández Moores maintains major stock holdings in the Chilean giant Colo Colo.  For their part, club presidents see in Segovia and Piñera sympathizers dedicated to the deregulation of Chilean soccer, allies who will free clubs from the financial obligations described earlier–not least of which is the assurance that television deal profits go exclusively to Chile’s biggest clubs.  In Chile’s national association, as in many others, it is first-division club presidents who vote in and remove the association head.  Their threats to depose Mayne Nicholls came to fruition this week.

A surprising twist came with Marcelo Bielsa’s vow to resign as national team coach were Mayne Nicholls to be sacked.  “I’m friend to no league official, but Mayne Nicholls and I share an ideology,” he said in a two-hour press conference yesterday.  “It’s impossible for me to work with Mr. Segovia.”  True to his word, when earlier today the council of club presidents dismissed Mayne Nicholls to replace him with Segovia, Bielsa reiterated his intention to quit.  Even more surprising was the willingness of club presidents to do away with, perhaps, the most popular soccer coach in the history of Chile.  The crowds protesting Segovia’s election in downtown Santiago and the demonstrations of support outside the association training grounds where Bielsa makes his home have failed to sway the decision to elect Segovia.  So have the 80%+ approval rates Bielsa commands in political-style surveys (themselves a reflection of his cultural importance).

As in Argentina, on display here are not only institutional decisions that appear linked to the highest levels of national government.  We see also reflected in Chilean soccer the country’s wider political dilemma: to adhere to or challenge an economic, political, and social system that–successful though it has been–has its roots in the Dirty War and the dictatorship of Pinochet.  Backed by the majority of Chileans, Bielsa and Mayne Nicholls–hardly icons of the left–chose their path.   Recently elected by his own Chilean majority and enjoying record approval ratings in the wake of the magnificent mining rescue, Piñera and his friends at the ANFP have too.

Further updates to come.

Photos from La Tercera

*Cancha Llena is La Nación‘s sports section, included in the paper but marketed as a stand-alone publication.

“The Chilean Way,” published in Cancha Llena on November 2 by Ezequiel Fernández Moores.

Tags: Chile, News

Presidential interest in national soccer is nothing new to us.  With so much popular will and attention fixated on national teams, national soccer has long been mixed with executive politicking.  The recent World Cup has illustrated this phenomenon more clearly than ever, with notable presidential “arbitrations” occurring in the French, Nigerian, and North Korean football associations in the wake of poor tournament performances.

In few countries, however, have the connections between national soccer and the national government been as politically charged as they are in Argentina.  Rarely has any head of state so vocally and explicitly endorsed the national team coach as Argentina’s Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.  Diego Maradona’s recent departure from the national team has only served to elicit new affirmations of executive support for him and for the continuation of his tenure as national team coach.

The connections between the Kirchners¹ and Maradona, while mostly symbolic, are multifaceted.  For the Kirchners, who have been associated with Peronism’s left wing since the early 70s, Diego has always seemed a likely ally.  Maradona has cultivated years-long friendships with left-leaning figureheads like Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez and Evo Morales.  With his prominent Che Guevara tattoo and his anti-imperialist discourse thrown into the mix, Maradona’s ideological orientation has made him a sympathetic figure for the Argentine and the global left.  While Maradona has never campaigned publicly for the Kirchners, he has repeatedly voiced his support for their social and economic objectives.

Perhaps Maradona’s most significant connection to the Kirchners has been his recent endorsement of their “Fútbol Para Todos” broadcasting deal.  In 2009 the Asociación del Fútbol Argentino (AFA) moved to sell the broadcasting rights for Argentine league games, then under contract with the media giant Grupo Clarín, to the Argentine national government.  Named “Fútbol Para Todos” (“Soccer for Everyone”), this $150-million move has allowed all top-flight Argentine league games to be broadcast on public television rather than cable and on-demand.² Denounced by some as a cynical political agreement between the Kirchners and AFA president Julio Humberto Grondona, Fútbol Para Todos served—rather unexpectedly—to hitch the fortunes of the AFA to a most polemic star: the Kirchner-Fernánadez administration.  Because the political decisions of the Kirchners have in recent years produced a polarizing effect in Argentina, many Argentines view the Kirchner-AFA-Maradona axis with deep suspicion.

Certain sectors of the Argentine media have had a central role in rallying public opinion against the Kirchners.  In the immediate wake of Fútbol Para Todos, political criticism of the Fernández administration in the various arms of Grupo Clarín media reached a crescendo from which it has yet to descend.  Simultaneously, Clarín’s powerful sports media—which includes the influential sports daily Olé, the sports channel TyC Sports, and the sports section of the widely-read Clarín newspaper—heightened their criticism of Maradona, the AFA, and the Argentine national team.  Indeed, among Maradona’s many critics during his two-year stint as coach are the reporters and sports writers for Grupo Clarín media outlets, whose comments have been among the most caustic and unrelenting.  Argentina’s emphatic World Cup exit against Germany last month served to rekindle the flames of vilification that had been burning bright during Argentina’s fraught qualifying campaign. And as Argentina continues to be polarized along social and political lines, the AFA—with or without Maradona—will continue to be at the center of a heated political battle that goes all the way to the top.  To be continued…

¹ The husband of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Néstor Kirchner, preceded her as president and continues to be a highly influential political figure.

² Grupo Clarín, for its part, essentially found itself forcibly stripped of its broadcasting rights and has sued the AFA for breach of contract.

Tags: Argentina, Maradona, Soccer Politics

The Bouncing Babes of Univision

In this past month of World Cup football, I have seen my facebook stream lit up by “friends” claiming that they are loving to watch coverage in Spanish. In many cases, these friends speak Spanish as a second language; I even have friends who don’t speak Spanish well at all, yet watch the Spanish coverage because they claim it is more dramatic.

It always strikes me that American football/soccer fans always seem to be drawn in by the aura of American Spanish-language channel coverage of the sport.

The perspective of this type of fan looks down upon the English-speaking coverage one finds in the USA. Typically, the formula goes as follows: a dry, serious, and knowledgeable British announcer, plus one American with some (often tenuous) connection to the world of soccer.

The formula has varied slightly over the years, though in 2010, ESPN has stuck faithfully to it, adding in color commentary in the postgame, pregame, and halftime slots. This year, the coverage has been particularly good, featuring analysis from such legends of football as Steve McManaman and Jürgen Klinsman, and some current figures such as Wigan coach Roberto Martínez.

While I am occasionally annoyed by the (virtually inevitable) stream of stereotyping, clichés, and general lack of knowledge of the commentators (Alexi Lalas is often guilty of this, in my opinion), I am overall pleased with how far football coverage has come in the US since I was younger.

When I was little (we are talking up to the mid-90′s), it was literally impossible to watch many tournaments such as the Copa América, the European Nations’ Cup, or the Champions’ League. By the time I was a teenager, we were luck to live near a bar in Arlington, Virginia named Summer’s that had a ridiculously expensive satellite system (one of only two in the nation, they claimed). There we were able to watch Euro ’96 and many other contests, surrounded by a packed restaurant full of fanatics in their team colors.

With the steady growth of Spanish-language television in the USA, soccer became more and more present. At the beginning, the Spanish-language commentary seemed infused with a true sense of passion enhanced by the novelty of it. Not that the sport was new to the audience, but rather that the means of communicating it was new (a Spanish-language channel in an English-speaking country) and the audience was increasingly new.

These early commentators were best represented by the legendary (and aptly-named) Andrés Cantor (we could call him Singing Andrew), whose extraordinarily long “GoooooooooooooooOOOOOOOOOooooool” cry became legend, especially in contrast to the dry “gringo” commentating on the ’94 World Cup. Cantor became symbolic of the “Latin passion” for football, though by 1998 he appeared to me as a caricature of himself, the kind that might sing an opera for the most meaningless goals and appear clownishly disconnected from the drama of the game.

This World Cup, I have been watching much of Univisión, mostly because I get the best digital cable signal from their channel to record matches. Regrettably, I find the commentary to be much like this clownified version of the original Cantor: theatrically-inclined blathering that often does more to distract than it does to enhance the match.

What’s more, this year’s coverage features the illustrious José Luis Chilavert, no stranger to violence and controversy in his day. The instigator of many an on-field brawl, his commentating has been along similar lines.

Among other things, he has slandered not only referees, but the nations they come from–his verbal assault against Guatemalan Carlos Batres was an insult to the entire national of Guatemala, as he dismissed their referee as a disgrace to the game, claiming he does not even come from a place that knows a thing about soccer.

In another rant, the Paraguayan went on a stunning (and unexpected) tirade justifying one of his other famous incidents, in which he doused Brazilian fullback Roberto Carlos with a generous spray of his phlegm. “Chila” claimed that Roberto Carlos had called him an indio (an Indian, ie. indigenous American) after the win, “as if he were a blond-haired, blue-eyed German.” The surprising explanation from the Paraguayan seems to reveal a certain disdain for Roberto Carlos’s own racial “composition,” insinuating that the fact that the Brazilian is of a “lower” race would make it more contemptible to insult his own race.

This is not to justify Roberto Carlos’s provocation, but considering that indio is a word tossed around pickup games like a water bottle where I play (mostly with Mexican and Central American immigrant players), the response of Chilavert is telling regarding the idea that the Spanish-speaking world is somehow magically united. Ironically, the same commentator, talking about the possibility of a Spain-Holland final, voiced his attitude towards Spain: “I was in Spain for a few years as a player, and all I can say is that the Spanish treat Latin American players badly… they are all racist.” Moments before, his co-commentators had said they were going for Spain, being the last Spanish-speaking country in the tournament.

We could immediately pounce on the sublime ignorance of his statement–not that there is no racism in Spain; we could certainly find examples of racism anywhere in the world. There is the obvious mistake of turning racism around and perpetuating it: to that tune, many of the Univisión forums feature posts from Latin Americans who are defending the Spanish based on their experiences there.

Even more, we could speak about how, in voicing his support for Holland, Chilavert is utterly unaware of their own very “rich” history of colonialism. Even in football terms, Holland have always had great black players, yet even in the national team racial division has been fingered as a principal reason for their failures–in the past, such great players as the mythical Clarence Seedorf and Edgar Davids have spoken about tensions divided along “color” lines. Let’s not even get into Holland’s own sociopolitical issues with racism. And that’s not to mention that word Apartheid, a direct result of Dutch colonialism and institutionalized racism that so disgracefully defined 20th century South Africa. Perhaps Chilavert would do to lift his head from out of his book of rage.

More importantly, the presence of such a quasi-populist character as Chilavert truly is can be traced to the network’s idea of finding some idyllic “Latino” medium to appeal to its supposedly unified audience. Take the character of Chilavert, long outspoken figure of footballing counter-culture, self-proclaimed defender of the oppressed football nations, and herald him as a symbol of “nuestro fútbol.” Step one in upholstering an already loosely-defined identity.

The next step in the formula which has most gotten my attention has been the peddling of sexual ideals via the Univisión World Cup coverage.  Some of it is “universal”, ie, the constant shots of ostensibly attractive women in the crowd, which we could counter with the obvious: endless shots of ostensibly attractive “alpha males” (how many close-ups of every Cristiano Ronaldo expressions are there in comparison to the trademark grimaces of Carles Puyol). These kinds of things are, of course, a part of global marketing culture, not unique to the network.

Of more interest (or concern?) is the exclusive coverage that Univisión provides a myriad of scantily clad (usually in short shorts and cutoff team shirts), skinny, large-busted women, whose only job appears to be bouncing up and down and wiggling while screaming meaningless cheers without ever trying to say anything intelligible. Without fail, this comes before, after, and during every game.

For a channel that purports to be a voice for all Spanish-speakers (all of their award shows use the word Nuestro/a in some way, implying that this is our, the viewers’ award), I am quickly alienated by this “coverage” of the sport that I love. It is not to say that the women are unattractive, or repulsive, or even necessarily degrading themselves by bouncing during the World Cup on Univisión.

It is more a sense of alienation of message. Am I supposed to be, in some way, turned on by these women? Should I revel in their self-expression, their liberation from loose-fitting clothing (not to mention the incessant jumping)? Should I, as a Spanish speaker, or Hispanic, or Latino, be jumping up and down with them, joining in their fake fútbol-joy Or am I too uptight to enjoy “quality entertainment?”

In the end, I can only conclude that such coverage of soccer, coming from such a channel, can only be for those who may less the true fans, and more those who are looking for an identity represented by Chilavert, by the pantomime blathering of the announcers, by the bouncing women, by the feeling that this is ours and not theirs (they, I supposed, are the non Spanish-speaking other). I realize I am not one of them, and find myself regretting that I do not have a more comprehensive cable package; my inner self begs me as I watch the World Cup: ¡en inglés, por favor, por Dios!

Tags: AlexiLalas, AndrésCantor, Chilavert, ESPN, futbol, latino, mundial, RobertoMartínez, soccer, spanish, SteveMcManaman, Univision, WorldCup

Video: World Cup 2010: Into Africa – Goal Diggers | The Daily Show | Comedy Central

A brilliant piece on the “First African World Cup!”

Tags: dailyshow, southafrica, WorldCup

World Cup 2010: Raymond Domenech fails to take blame for France fiasco | Football | guardian.co.uk

This article from the Guardian highlights the extent to which the French football crisis is becoming one of international proportions, now being taken up at the highest levels of the French government.

At first glance, one might think: why should politicians have any role in talking to a football coach?

To begin with, the coach, in the end, amounts to a sort of indirect government appointee. France, like most nations, has a federation of sport that oversees association sports in general. In most cases, heads of football federations are appointed by the federations of sport, whose heads are in turn appointed by ruling political parties.

Perhaps even more importantly, the Domenech crisis is bringing to the forefront the role of football in creating a national image that has repercussions not just politically, but economically and socially. The French are now struggling to cope with a backlash stemming from this “tarnishing of the French image.”

One did not have to look far to see the impacts of the unprecedented discord and ultimate failure of the French team. From Facebook to the printed news to ESPN, the headlines orbited around the idea of the spoiled, whining French who put their egos before the team.

While Domenech may have been a horrifically bad manager (and he was), what got the attention of the world was the attitude of the players, performing (or not) on the biggest stage in the world. The extraoirdinary airing of the French dirty laundry will go a long way to create overwhelmingly negative images of France throughout the world. We don’t need to list all of the bad stereotypes that will be vastly reinforced by this whole incident, but one can imagine the repercussions, whether it be in marketing or even day-to-day identity creation.

In the end, however, Domenech will be only a scapegoat, held responsible for the actions of many, as well as his own. As Laurent Dubois shows in his book, ’98 was an opportunity in which a positive ideal of Frenchhood could be presented, despite its detractors. While it did not last forever, one would be hard-pressed to deny its impact on the national imagination and how it continues to endure. With this latest, disastrous chapter in French football history, one would hope that things are fixed as quickly as possible in order to restore the lustre on a global image that has been more than slightly tarnished.

Tags: Domenech, France, WorldCup