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Gandalf Grey
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Soccer in a league of its own to bring out the best in nations
By Pierre Tristam
Created May 22 2007 - 8:20am
Tomorrow night in Athens, Liverpool and AC Milan, two of Europe's best
soccer teams, will square off in the Champions League final -- the Super
Bowl of European football. What are an American-owned team from England and
a team from Italy, owned by an occasionally corrupt and recurrent Italian
prime minister, doing in Greece, and why should anyone this side of the
Atlantic care? Europe's experience answers both questions.
The Champions League is an unusual concept in sports. It takes the top three
or four best soccer clubs from a couple of dozen countries in Europe,
randomly splits them into eight divisions, then squares them off in a league
of their own over the course of a season in addition to the clubs' regular
games back home. The teams and their fans crisscross the continent during
the eight months of competition, replicating the atmosphere of the World Cup
or the Olympics without limiting the advantages to one city or one country.
As a sporting and business event, the Champions League is a huge success,
filling stadiums, shooting up television ratings and filling clubs' coffers.
But it's also a cultural and political benefit to Europe, adding cohesion
between nations in a continent best known, for two millennia before the end
of World War II, for its astounding lust for savagery. A peaceful, civilized
Europe is a recent phenomenon (and a precarious one, as the Balkan wars
reminded us in the 1990s).
The European Union in its various incarnations since 1957 has done a lot to
ensure that stability. As odd as this may sound, soccer and year-long
competitions like the Champions League play a useful role. Proximity breeds
familiarity, compromise, accommodation. No European (Britons included) is
ever allowed the illusion of thinking his country a cultural or political
island. Sports in general and soccer in particular do their part to force
interaction.
In comparison, the United States -- a nation that prides itself on being the
epicenter of globalism and communication -- remains painfully ignorant about
its neighbors. Canada doesn't register in most Americans' consciousness.
Mexico is every immigration issue's punching bag. The Caribbean islands are
a bunch of hotel rooms and Central and Latin America might as well be in
Antarctica. True, most Americans couldn't be bothered with Nebraska (or any
of the 49 states and 5,000-odd counties not their own). But it'd be worse
without the linkages of sports. Imagine the cultural (and eventually the
business) benefits of Champions League-like linkages across North and South
America. Starting any kind of discussion involving soccer in the United
States is a lost cause. But this could apply to baseball, which doesn't
provoke gag reflexes in the heartland and is played throughout the
hemisphere.
The capacity of sports to bring nations together can be overblown. The
Olympics are orgies of nationalism on an international stage: Flags loom
bigger than athletes. Soccer's World Cup is only a little less orgiastic as
the players' star power sometimes transcends jersey colors. And no history
of violence will ever be complete without a fat chapter on soccer's
contribution. Police forces still don riot gear whenever Turkey and Greece
have a match or wherever in Europe English fans roam. Catholic-Protestant
sectarianism in Scottish soccer has all the rabidity (if little of the
blood) of Sunni-Shiite sectarianism. The first burst of violence between
Croats and Serbs flared at a 1990 soccer match between the two sides. At a
soccer match in Syria in March 2004, one side of the stands was full of
Kurds chanting "We will sacrifice our lives for Bush" while Arab fans on the
opposite side brandished praise for Saddam Hussein. They brawled. Days of
bloody riots spread to other cities and were violently put down by Syrian
police. Final toll: 36 dead. Riot police anywhere south of the U.S.-Mexico
border love it when Team USA visits: They get overtime.
And yet it would be ridiculous to deny the power of sports to bring people
together just because on some occasions fans live up to the origin of their
name (fanatics). It's inexplicable that a nation so hung up on sports and so
enamored of misnomers like the "World Series" wouldn't see the opportunity
in routinely living up to those cross-border concepts, as Europe has, with
all the attendant benefits of cultural interaction and, of course, more
chances to show off local chauvinism. It won't bring peace in our time. It
might be an interesting way of discovering that countries north and south of
American borders exist as more than annexes to America's needs and
appendices of its neglect.
_______
--
NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
available to advance understanding of
political, human rights, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. I
believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson
By Pierre Tristam
Created May 22 2007 - 8:20am
Tomorrow night in Athens, Liverpool and AC Milan, two of Europe's best
soccer teams, will square off in the Champions League final -- the Super
Bowl of European football. What are an American-owned team from England and
a team from Italy, owned by an occasionally corrupt and recurrent Italian
prime minister, doing in Greece, and why should anyone this side of the
Atlantic care? Europe's experience answers both questions.
The Champions League is an unusual concept in sports. It takes the top three
or four best soccer clubs from a couple of dozen countries in Europe,
randomly splits them into eight divisions, then squares them off in a league
of their own over the course of a season in addition to the clubs' regular
games back home. The teams and their fans crisscross the continent during
the eight months of competition, replicating the atmosphere of the World Cup
or the Olympics without limiting the advantages to one city or one country.
As a sporting and business event, the Champions League is a huge success,
filling stadiums, shooting up television ratings and filling clubs' coffers.
But it's also a cultural and political benefit to Europe, adding cohesion
between nations in a continent best known, for two millennia before the end
of World War II, for its astounding lust for savagery. A peaceful, civilized
Europe is a recent phenomenon (and a precarious one, as the Balkan wars
reminded us in the 1990s).
The European Union in its various incarnations since 1957 has done a lot to
ensure that stability. As odd as this may sound, soccer and year-long
competitions like the Champions League play a useful role. Proximity breeds
familiarity, compromise, accommodation. No European (Britons included) is
ever allowed the illusion of thinking his country a cultural or political
island. Sports in general and soccer in particular do their part to force
interaction.
In comparison, the United States -- a nation that prides itself on being the
epicenter of globalism and communication -- remains painfully ignorant about
its neighbors. Canada doesn't register in most Americans' consciousness.
Mexico is every immigration issue's punching bag. The Caribbean islands are
a bunch of hotel rooms and Central and Latin America might as well be in
Antarctica. True, most Americans couldn't be bothered with Nebraska (or any
of the 49 states and 5,000-odd counties not their own). But it'd be worse
without the linkages of sports. Imagine the cultural (and eventually the
business) benefits of Champions League-like linkages across North and South
America. Starting any kind of discussion involving soccer in the United
States is a lost cause. But this could apply to baseball, which doesn't
provoke gag reflexes in the heartland and is played throughout the
hemisphere.
The capacity of sports to bring nations together can be overblown. The
Olympics are orgies of nationalism on an international stage: Flags loom
bigger than athletes. Soccer's World Cup is only a little less orgiastic as
the players' star power sometimes transcends jersey colors. And no history
of violence will ever be complete without a fat chapter on soccer's
contribution. Police forces still don riot gear whenever Turkey and Greece
have a match or wherever in Europe English fans roam. Catholic-Protestant
sectarianism in Scottish soccer has all the rabidity (if little of the
blood) of Sunni-Shiite sectarianism. The first burst of violence between
Croats and Serbs flared at a 1990 soccer match between the two sides. At a
soccer match in Syria in March 2004, one side of the stands was full of
Kurds chanting "We will sacrifice our lives for Bush" while Arab fans on the
opposite side brandished praise for Saddam Hussein. They brawled. Days of
bloody riots spread to other cities and were violently put down by Syrian
police. Final toll: 36 dead. Riot police anywhere south of the U.S.-Mexico
border love it when Team USA visits: They get overtime.
And yet it would be ridiculous to deny the power of sports to bring people
together just because on some occasions fans live up to the origin of their
name (fanatics). It's inexplicable that a nation so hung up on sports and so
enamored of misnomers like the "World Series" wouldn't see the opportunity
in routinely living up to those cross-border concepts, as Europe has, with
all the attendant benefits of cultural interaction and, of course, more
chances to show off local chauvinism. It won't bring peace in our time. It
might be an interesting way of discovering that countries north and south of
American borders exist as more than annexes to America's needs and
appendices of its neglect.
_______
--
NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
available to advance understanding of
political, human rights, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. I
believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson