FOOTBALL IS COMING HOME » The Players

The Brzeziner Sports Club

David Patrick Lane — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 11:14:12 +0000

Holocaust Memorial Day — a day to remember those who soon after never played or saw another football match.

“It is overtaken by the center forward who gives it, blitz-shnel, over to the right wing. He carries it all the way to the corner, centers it, and, with the power of a bomb, it is driven into the opponent’s net. A wild, triumphant shout rips out of hundreds of breasts. The match is really lost, but our honor is rescued.

The sun has finally gone down behind the meadows when the dense masses reach Nowe Miasto. A cool evening breeze caresses and cools the agitated crowd. The church bells have rung. Through the windows that blaze in shining purple from the setting sun is heard the sweetly sung nign of “God of Abraham”, a woman’s prayer marking the end of the Sabbath.

By the time the crowd reaches the marketplace, the first stars are already twinkling. Some go home, a number go to daven, the weekly mayrev; others go to the bar at Szotenberg’s, where, with a glass of beer or tea, they soberly analyze the lost match.”

Excerpt by Abe Rosenberg.

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90-minute Patriots Ward off Faction Replays

Peter Alegi — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 20:50:51 +0000

The Times (London), January 25, 2012

By Matthew Syed

It is no coincidence that Alex Salmond, the wily and rather combative leader of the SNP, is fighting to hold the referendum on Scottish independence in 2014. This, of course, is partly to do with the anniversary of the Battle of Bannock-burn, where the Scots gave the English a bit of a kicking in the First War of Scottish Independence.

But, perhaps even more significantly, it is also about the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow and a recognition that the patriotism that invariably surrounds great sporting occasions could lend the campaign for secession unstoppable momentum. No wonder David Cameron wants to hold the referendum early.

Few politicians, let alone sports fans, have failed to recognise the curious alchemy of events such as the Commonwealth Games, not to mention the Olympics and World Cup. It is not just the anthem-singing and the flag-waving, but a sense of unity that is conspicuous by its absence at just about any other time in national life – with the possible exception of a royal wedding.

We are divided by religion, by political affiliation, by cultural allegiance and by our attitudes to Simon Cowell but, when David Beckham is charging around against Greece, or Sally Gunnell is leaping around Montjuic, or Tim Henman is getting edgy against Pete Sampras in SW19, we are bound up in a shared national story. Look hard and you can almost see the pages moving.

In this sense the Africa Cup of Nations, which started at the weekend, is perhaps the most important sporting event in the world. Not in terms of the football, of course – although the European club stars who return home to represent their homelands lend stardust to an event that improves in quality with each incarnation – but rather in terms of the politics of identity. As the players of Niger and Libya and Equatorial Guinea cruise around the pitch, you can see history in the making.

The idea of nationhood, let alone a shared national story, may seem an intellectual and emotional absurdity in the con-text of post-colonial Africa. This is not just about the ambiguity of nation states that were created by generals drawing lines on maps, or even histories complicated by slavery, imperialism and the imposition of foreign ideology. It is also about a continent where ethnicity, language and custom create a criss-crossing set of identities that defy meaningful categorisation.

In Nigeria alone, who rather surprisingly did not qualify for the Africa Cup of Nations, there are 400 languages and a multitude of indigenous religions alongside Islam and Christianity. The broad groupings of Hausa and Fulani in the north and Yoruba and Igbo in the south conceal a far deeper and more complex set of identities that exist at the level of tribes and notional ethnicities. Even the British colonialists found it impossible to forge any sense of unity.

But this is where football – dramatically and possibly uniquely – changes everything. As John Obi Mikel and Yakubu Ayegbeni step on to the field of play, as they did at the 2010 World Cup finals, the citizenry undergo a metamorphosis familiar to the English, the Dutch, and other long-established nations. They are no longer Hausa or Igbo. They are no longer Fulani or Yoruba. They are Nigerians. As Peter Alegi puts it in African Soccerscapes, a marvellous book about the social history of football in Africa: “Africans are 90-minute patriots.”

Alegi’s thesis, which is as impressive as it is extensive, is that football was not only central to the liberation struggle of countries such as Algeria and Nigeria, but has become the central vehicle in the project of nationalism. “Football exerts magnetism on the disparate groupings in a way nothing else can match,” he says. “The divides come crashing down, whether you are urban or rural, rich or poor, Islamic or Christian. You are aware of an identity that might otherwise seem meaningless.”

The sheer joy of football in Africa has been well documented, with youngsters kicking around bundles of paper tied together with a piece of string in every corner of the continent, from the urban ghettos to the remote rural plains. Villag-ers who live hundreds of kilometres off the electricity grid congregate around televisions powered by makeshift genera-tors to watch matches and celebrate the successes of local stars.

But football is at its most politically potent in the expression of an identity that was once redundant. As Eric Hobsbawm, the eminent Marxist historian, puts it: “The imagined community of millions seems more real as a team of 11 named people.”

Leaders in Africa, ever fearful of a descent into factional disputes and civil wars along tribal and ethnic lines, have seen the significance.

National symbolism, patriotic rhetoric and the entire arsenal of nationalistic propaganda are constructed around the teams. Many of the countries playing in the cup have even ditched foreign coaches, preferring indigenous alternatives to cement the idea of a national story, and repudiate a sense of colonial interference.

Of course, many Africa watchers have been struck by the apparent contradiction of self-confessedly tribal individuals, who are often scathing of the national government, becoming patriotic when a sporting event looms into view. But these ironies are rather familiar. It is no more (or less) paradoxical than a proud Englishman cheering for Team GB, or a Liv-erpudlian rooting for Team England. It is a curiosity of nationalism that we seem able to repudiate and appropriate iden-tities almost at will.

Perhaps that is the point.

Historians such as Hobsbawm argue that the idea of nationalism is in retreat, and that may be indeed true in the West. But the deeper question in Africa, where nationalism is still in its infancy, is whether football is leaving any long-term residue. Is the beautiful game helping to forge identities that will ultimately subvert local affiliations and reduce the risk of regional conflict, or will the influence prove to be ephemeral, lasting only until the final whistle at the end of any given match?

It is fascinating that Alegi is pessimistic. To go back to the example of Nigeria, he points to the conflict in the Niger delta, where a regional debate about environmental protection has spiralled into a conflict about the proceeds of indus-try. Those in the delta are not reaping the economic benefits of oil extraction, and they are not appeased by the idea of the money being used for the betterment of the “nation”.

“Ultimately, basic issues of economics and historic affiliation will trump the idea of nationhood,” Alegi says.

But in many ways the jury is still out. What is certain is that nationalism is central to the future of Africa in its widest sense, and football is central to the future of nationalism. That is why, regardless of the quality of the football, the Afri-ca Cup of Nations could scarcely be more significant.

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Spotlight on African Coaches: Part 2

Peter Alegi — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 13:22:04 +0000

Photo: Breakthrough Chiparamba girls football team, 20 July, 2011, Olympic Youth Development Center, Lusaka, Zambia. Courtesy of Hikabwa Chipande.

Training and Developing Coaches in Southern Africa: Licensing and Administration

By Hikabwa Decius Chipande

Football is the most popular sport in southern Africa but there are few qualified coaches at all levels. Prior to 2010 most top league clubs in southern Africa were coached by people without even a basic qualification.

One major problem is that Southern African countries have a haphazard approach to coach education. What had been happening until recently was that any person could come to the region, conduct a coaching course for a few days, and declare the participants as coaches with questionable certificates of limited value. It has been, therefore, very difficult to know the actual capabilities of local coaches and their qualifications because there had been no set benchmarks. South Africa is an exception in that it has the South African Qualification Authority (SAQA), although its effectiveness remains debatable.

Winds of change are blowing in the region. In the past three years two initiatives were developed to standardize and ensure the quality of coach education in southern African countries. Following the FIFA Financial Assistance Program (FAP), which was initiated by João Havelange and implemented by Sepp Blatter in 1998, CAF in 2009 took advantage of this financial assistance and started implementing the CAF Licensing System.

Under this system, CAF is financially supporting national associations to train coaches and upgrade their qualifications. The starting point is the CAF requirement that by 2012 all premier league coaches must hold a minimum of ‘C’ license. (The CAF coaching licensing system progresses from a ‘C’ to ‘A’ license and then to a Pro-license.) The confederation also directed each association to form a technical department with a technical director who is paid by funds from FAP to focus on “Football for All” and coach education.

Despite FIFA and CAF being deeply rooted in murky politics and dubious management practices, this new program has led to the training of hundreds of coaches in the past two years. In others words, it is a worthwhile initiative in terms of coaching and football development in the region.

The second initiative is from the Supreme Council for Sport in Africa (SCSA) Zone VI, an inter-governmental body in-charge of sports in southern Africa headed by the council of Ministers of Sports (cabinet members in their respective governments). The body had been pondering why southern Africa was performing poorly in African sports competitions, despite having the most organized regional sports body on the continent. SCSA Zone VI conducted a survey in 2007 to look at existing sports education systems in member states. The results were disappointing. Apart from South Africa, countries did not have any working system or framework for coach education. Given the limited financial capabilities of member states in the region, the council of ministers decided that the regional body in consultation with all sports stakeholders should develop an overall regional framework to provide common reference points for accreditation, recognition, and support of coaches.

Each country agreed and offered to make available the required financial resources to develop coach education in order to improve the quality of sports in the region. The program started in 2009 and it is in the process of harmonizing all existing frameworks to come up with a general framework. Most countries have fulfilled their commitment by providing the required resources. The project is linking up with the CAF licensing system and progressing quite well.

Two important factors have continued hampering the development of local football: sport politics and infighting in governing bodies. At regional level, despite agreements being signed between the regional sports bodies such as SCSA Zone VI and Confederations of Southern African Olympic Committees (COSANOC), there are ongoing conflicts over who is in charge of sports in the region. At national level, the Ministries of Sports (or Departments of Sports) are not always pulling together with National Sports Councils/Commissions (NSC). The NSCs are often fighting with National Olympic Committees over power and control of national sports associations/federations. In the latter bodies, power struggles and mishandling of scarce material resources are a constant problem.

In most southern African countries government officials covet recognition and influence in football circles because governments pay for most of the national teams’ expenses. This tendency is strongly resisted by football associations who only want financial support from government. Any attempt to influence decisions over how football money should be spent can be translated into government interference in football administration, which would violate FIFA policy and trigger sanctions. Within football associations, bitter feuds are common, especially over the appointment of national team coaches, the selection of national team players, and over who has the overall mandate of managing the game in each country. Now that a licensing system is finally in place and starting to make a positive impact in southern Africa, football politics continue to drain energy and take focus away from coach education and development.

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Memories of a Subbuteo Player

Peter Alegi — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 03:16:02 +0000

After many, many years, I recently played Subbuteo again. It was such a blast that I’m starting a series of posts on the world’s greatest football game ever invented. My older brother, who taught me how to play, kicks off.

By Daniel Alegi

Rome, Italy, Christmas 1973: I finally got Subbuteo, the new English game everyone was talking about. It was the “Continental” set (see photo below); the box said the name was pronounced “sub-BEW-teo.” 20,000 lire ($15) got you a green cloth pitch, two white floodlights 13 inches high with 9-volt batteries, two plastic goals with brown nets, two balls, two goalies with a handle-rod and two teams in white shorts: one with red shirts, the other with blue.

“Italy – Russia!” I said. “Como-Varese!” said my brother from the height of his 18 months’ seniority. Their kits are almost identical, but would you rather make your debut in the Christmas snow at Moscow’s Lenin Stadium or in a Serie B derby in the Po Valley fog? Our first flicks were backed by our grandfather in the armchair snoring away. Cloth pitch on the carpet, improvised rules. Then during lunch dad stood up and stepped on everything (how could he miss a 4.5ft x 3ft pitch?). On the ground lay decapitated, amputated, crushed players. Only six survived this massacre, one of them a goalkeeper. And so with this ill-fated 1973 debut, played with only one goal, Subbuteo entered our house forever.

The “Club Calcio in Miniatura Subbuteo” (Cicms) was among the first Subbuteo clubs in our neighborhood. My older brother was the chairman, a neighbor who played with his legendary Red Star Belgrade and I were the other members. Later some more friends joined. The green cloth went from the floor to a plywood board on trestles. We played with the small, orange ball, the one the “professionals” used, or so we thought.

Official tournaments followed, the first in a church basement in Piazza Verbano. Four tables in a row; referees, briefcases, the air of true professionalism. We play with the large ball, what the Cicms called “beginner”, and in silence. Experienced players made their Subbuteo figures slide—miraculously—in a straight line. Ours curved around defenders to get to the ball, but could not slide smoothly across the pitch. Losing by substantial margins taught us the importance of “treating” the bases with furniture polish. This had a radical impact on our game. Suddenly we could kiss the ball with a flick from the defensive back line and then be able to shoot at goal with two touches. A wonderful discovery! The names of our teachers were Filacchione and Di Politica. Their Subbuteo was definitely not a miniature version of football: the teams often had white jerseys, no numbers. No one looked at the number of the goalscorer, as we did in our friendly competitions at home. This sport was for adults.

The Italian champion that year was Stefano Beverini from Genoa (at right, vs Mike Dent, 1975?). Almost 30 years old, beard (it was the 70s!), he appeared in the Italian Subbuteo national team jersey in the official Parodi catalog. He traveled around the country by train to show off his perfect chip shots and long-distance flicks in lobbies of luxury hotels. I went to the Hotel Parco dei Principi to see this phenom who had come in third at the 1974 Subbuteo World Cup. But there were way too many people there and the table was too far away. On TV that evening they showed two goals he scored from free kicks expertly chipped over the wall. Very difficult. Beautiful stuff.

Our neighborhood club slowly declined. We continued using the small ball because the goals seemed more spectacular that way. Our bases were rough and repainted whereas Beverini and other “pros” used exclusively white bases. My younger brother, Peter, began to play. We made some of our own rules, which was fun but distanced us from top-flight tournament play. (This was typical as Subbuteo rules were often changed ad hoc.)

Freshman year in high school, my classmate Rossi and I began using silicone-based Nugget polish to “treat” our teams in hotly contested after-school matches at his house. Our game exploded. We made our guys slide the length of the pitch to connect with the ball, a move that became my specialty. Our tactical formation featured seven defenders in a straight line, a Maginot Line that the attack was forced to “unlock” by quickening the pace and provoking the defense into a “back” violation (the defensive blocker collides with the attacker before the latter touches the ball). We went to Zorzi’s place for the first time: he was a Subbuteo professional and a collector of “Playboy.” We played doubles (2 v 2), 15 minutes halves, Zorzi and I against Rossi and Piscitelli. We played close and quick: 3-0 to us. Zorzi was surprised: “You guys are good; are you coming to the regionals?”

“Guerin Subbuteo” tournament (named after its sponsor — Guerin Sportivo, Italy’s oldest football weekly): in a huge toy shop near my grandmother’s house. 100 participants, 20 tables, anxious mothers, and the smell of furniture polish. I was playing with my new Hamburg side, freshly painted: blue shirts and light pink bases, white numbers. Not great for chip shots, but precise for long-range flicks. I won all my matches without conceding a goal (11-0, 8-0, 5-0 etc..) and earned a spot in the quarter-finals against . . . Zorzi. With the crowd on my side, I gave battle but lacking in experience I lost 1-0 in extra time. OSL (Organizzazione Subbuteo Lazio) and ASR (Associazione Subbuteo Roma) — the two best clubs in the city — both recruited me, promising various benefits and sponsorships. I joined OSL simply because I needed a club closer than ASR, which was way out in the Portuense area.

During a hiatus in 1981, when I went to the US as an exchange student, Rossi wrote to tell me of Zorzi’s tragic death, run over by a speeding car in Viale Parioli. After returning to Rome I resumed my life on the green cloth. I began to play with Max Marcaccini, another classmate, who reignited the pleasure of playing for pure fun. We ate lunch daily at his grandmother’s, and then played the English League, the Italian Cup final, and so on.

I kept playing competitively and my OSL teammates taught me skills like the secret art of goalkeeping: looking at the index finger of your opponent, not the ball. Pascoli always wanted to bet on our games. Once I won his Arsenal team with white bases that had once belonged to Scaletti, a top-ranked player. The bases were larger than average, making it more difficult for the opponent to attack; the plastic was more dense, making chip shots virtually unstoppable. This particular Arsenal probably came from those rumored “manufacturing defects” that one had to scavenge for in the shops.

I started digging through the Subbuteo team boxes at the old lady’s shop in Piazza Vescovio, searching for deformed white bases (you could not modify the bases, but it was acceptable to use variants of the factory products). The collection of trophies at mom’s house grew before our eyes.

I met Mancini in Naples: he painted teams with insane details. My 1982-83 Juventus had players with Puma, Adidas, and Patrick shoes; Boniek wore his good-luck necklace, Gentile had curly hair, Bonini’s was blond. My beloved Fluminense (red and green stripes, with heavy yellow bases) was jaw-droppingly fantastic. These were the only two teams I used in those years.

Afternoon “workouts” with OSL consisted of games in little rooms with grannies sitting silently in the hallways knitting, family dinners, and kids outside playing soccer. I religiously logged every game in a special notebook: date, place, type of competition (friendly, tournament, etc.), score, and opponent (with updated record vs. that opponent). I practiced to improve the weakest aspects of my game: the chip shot and goalkeeping. By this time my older brother had long abandoned Subbuteo, but my younger brother (by 5 years), Peter, had become very good in the under 16 category. When he kept his cool and did not protest, he won official tournaments and traveled with me by train to Terni, Ancona, Pescara, Milan, to Veneto and often Liguria for nationals.

Genoa, National Championships. Palazzo dello Sport, the city’s indoor arena, with American football being played in the main arena (with cheerleaders) and Subbuteo in the main concourse. Peter, Lazio region junior champion, lost to the Italian champion, a younger boy from Calabria. Lacking in fair play, he walked away in disgust. Too bad. As for me, I was drawn in a mediocre group in the first round, but lost against the Umbria champion who also accused me of having parried a shot with my hand. I finished seventh. The evenings were nights out in Caricamento, the gritty area around Genoa’s harbor, eating pizza and chasing girls. On the long train ride back to Rome, Presutti taught me how to solve Rubik’s Cube.

1982. I qualified again for the national championships in Alassio, near Genoa. As luck would have it, the Italian national team was doing its pre-World Cup camp there, so we were able to take pictures with the future World champs. Zoff, Oriali, and Marini came by to congratulate us. I qualified for the second round, despite losing 3-8 against Renzo Frignani, the Subbuteo world champion. Against Ogno from Cagliari I collapsed in the final two minutes: from 2-1 to 2-3; arguing with the referee was not my style, but the “back” he awarded against me was ridiculous. Ogno took advantage and chipped me to draw level. A minute later he put the dagger in. Having failed to qualify for the semi-final, I won the final for 7th place, again. Frignani earned another Italian title. The following month he also won the world title in Barcelona. His secret was to mark the ball more closely, without ever committing a “back” and never allowing the attack to advance in a straight line against his dynamic defense.

The following year, in the Italian Cup (a club competition with a format similar to the Davis Cup in tennis), my teammate Fabrizio Sonnino, tired of the crowd’s anti-Semitic comments, broke someone’s nose. We left there and then, having already won enough matches to qualify for the final in Rome. In the semifinal we met Frignani’s club from Reggio Emilia and that was that. We claimed third place. The gym where we played was really small and cramped, the organization had become a bit haphazard.

In another tournament I had to deal with an opponent who used a modified goalie rod that featured a welded extension cord that fit snugly at the intersection of the crossbar and post! I lost to the trickster in the finals, taking home yet another small trophy and continued to update my log book (with well over 1,000 games). Subbuteo was the only true sport for me. In September 1983, I left for four years of college in America, and my brother Peter carried on the family tradition for a while, until he too moved on.

(“Memories of a Subbuteo Player” is adapted from a piece published in GiocArea, June 1998. Translated by Peter Alegi. My thanks to Andrea Angiolino for sending the original article.)

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Luis Suarez kicks it with the Kids in Kimberley

David Patrick Lane — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 02:16:01 +0000

Luis Suarez has been banned for 8 games in the English Premier League for the alleged racist abuse of Patrice Evra. The nature of the exchange between Luis Suarez and Patrice Evra has not yet been disclosed. Luis Suarez is appealing. Here is a brief reminder of a less well known contribution Luis Suarez made to the World Cup in South Africa. A post on Luis Suarez will follow once details of the accusation against Suarez have been released by the English FA.

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Private US Soccer Archive Acquires Rare Film Collection

Peter Alegi — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 14:49:28 +0000

Stryker-Indigo New York, a private multi-media film and print production company, has announced the acquisition of a major collection of 1950s-1960s 8mm and 16mm soccer films.

The film footage, featuring both university and international teams playing in American cities, contains rare home movie images of the history of the game in the United States. For example, there is footage of the first leg of the 1961 U.S. Open Cup Final between United Scots of Los Angeles and Ukrainian Nationals of Philadelphia at Rancho La Cienega Stadium in LA (now Jackie Robinson Stadium).

According to the Stryker-Indigo web site, its Futbol Heritage Archive houses nearly 9,000 historic photographs, slides, newspaper clippings, postcards, trophies, jerseys and artifacts. Following the closure of the US Soccer Hall of Fame in Oneonta, NY, researchers have lost access to an archive of more than 80,000 items, including the North American Soccer League archive and the 1994 World Cup archive. It is hoped that private collections such as Stryker-Indigo’s film footage will be made accessible to soccer researchers and aficionados so that the history and culture of the game can be properly recorded and disseminated.

***

Thanks to David Wallace for inspiring me to write this post.

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Spotlight on African Coaches

Editor — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 13:00:04 +0000

Editor’s Note: This post begins a multi-part series on African coaches.

Continuing with Pitso is Regressing

Guest Post by Mohlomi Maubane

SOWETO, SOUTH AFRICA — In a recent issue of Kick Off, South Africa’s leading soccer magazine, Editor Richard Maguire argued against firing Bafana Bafana coach Pitso Mosimane (in photo above). Pitso, of course, is singularly responsible for South Africa’s embarrassing failure to qualify for the 2012 African Nations Cup finals (aka The Comedy in Nelspruit). I have been collecting Kickoff since high school. As a magazine, it expects vision, competence and innovation from every member of the South African football fraternity; hence the editorial vouching for Pitso to stay on as Bafana Bafana coach was surprising.

The crux of Maguire’s argument is that Mosimane should remain in charge for the sake of continuity. I say there should not have even been a beginning. Mosimane’s coaching success has been overblown. At club level, he led well-endowed Supersport United to five cup finals, losing three, and at national team level he was an assistant coach during a mediocre run from 2006 to 2010, when Bafana sunk to 90th in the FIFA World Rankings.

The ridiculous manner in which South Africa failed to qualify for the 2012 African Nations Cup finals showed Mosimane to be as unprofessional as his employers. How can a national coach fail to read or grasp competition rules? This is a man who thinks of himself as a “modern” coach always in step with the latest developments in the world game. Perhaps common sense is not part of the curriculum of the courses Mosimane often brags of attending. And for all his supposed keeping abreast with the latest trends in the game, Mosimane’s idea of “global football” is confined to the English Premier League and La Liga.

SAFA appointed Pitso Mosimane as Bafana Bafana coach soon after the 2010 World Cup. At the time, there was talk of the dawn of a new era in South African football. In truth, there was the usual lack of specific detail on how to make this new epoch come about. Instead, SAFA officials spoke at length about Vision 2014, Bafana Bafana’s campaign to qualify for the World Cup in Brazil. The seven other national teams under SAFA’s auspices were left unmentioned. Now, a year after the Vision 2014 was unveiled, we are a joke in the football world.

More than anyone else, it was Mosimane’s job to ensure Bafana qualified for 2012. He was entrusted with the troops and should have known the rules of engagement. When he was introduced as the new Bafana coach after the World Cup, Mosimane was his typical pompous self, saying he did not expect favors from anyone, he knew his mandate, and that he wanted to be judged by the results. Here are the Nations Cup results: 2 wins, 3 draws, and 1 loss, 4 goals scored, 2 against. Having failed to qualify, his story has now changed. In his first press conference after the Comedy in Nelspruit, Mosimane had the audacity to say he did not fail because South Africa finished top of their group! That Bafana actually failed to qualify was in the past; it was time to move on, he said.

Indeed it is time to move on, and perhaps it is best to do so with a coach who reads and understands the rule book; one whose trophies and coaching acumen supersede his chest-thumping bravado. Pitso Mosimane has been in the national structures for more than five years and South African football would not be served well by a continuation of his underachievement.

If Mosimane were a football journalist and wanted to write for Kick Off, I suspect Maguire would send him away with the disdain he probably feels when the magazine has to document yet another SAFA cock-up.

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Socrates of Brazil is Gone

Peter Alegi — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 16:30:19 +0000

Barcelona, 5 July 1982: Paolo Rossi had just headed in an Antonio Cabrini cross to put us up 1-0 against Brazil in the last game of the second group stage of the 1982 World Cup. My friend Fabio and I, football-obsessed youngsters, sat wide-eyed on the floor of an impossibly crowded living room in a relative’s home outside Pesaro, in the hills of the Marche region of Italy. A few days before we had been part of a spontaneous street carnival with tens of thousands of fellow Romans celebrating our victory against Maradona’s Argentina. Rossi’s goal suddenly made a miracle possible: beat Brazil and earn a place in the semifinals.

Five minutes later, a Brazilian Doctor made an incision that surgically removed the optimism of hope. Socrates, we knew from watching Corinthians games on Teleroma 56 (a local station), had a penchant for embarrassing defenders with graceful pivots on the ball and elegant heel passes. To say nothing of goalkeepers humiliated by his swerving free kicks and shots from impossible angles.

That hot July afternoon on the pitch of Español’s Sarria Stadium, Socrates received the ball in midfield, carried, dished it off to Zico and continued his run forward. With the outside of his right foot, Zico quickly sliced a delightful pass to a streaking Socrates in the box. Socrates took a simple touch and appeared to be running out of room on the right side of the 6-yard box. Where most players would square the ball back into the middle of the box for a teammate to run on and strike at goal, Socrates instead took a precise near-post shot that faked Dino Zoff out of his shorts: 1-1. No! He didn’t just do that?! Watch it here. (Italy went on to win the game 3-2 and the World Cup.)

After the 1982 tournament, Corinthians traded Socrates to Fiorentina so we got to appreciate the fullness of this grandiose footballer for many years. Even Juve fans like me, whose contempt for La Viola is unrestrained, became fond of “Tacco d’Oro” — the Golden Heel — the tall, lanky, bearded midfielder with the long curly hair who added so much spectacle to Serie A in the age of Maradona, Platini, and Falcao.

A decade later, I found myself still learning from Socrates but in a completely different context. While teaching one of the first undergraduate courses on soccer ever taught in an American university, my students and I discussed Socrates’s role in Corinthians Democracy, a movement that helped propel democratic change in Brazil in the early 1980s. How many professional athletes would threaten to retire, as Socrates did in 1982, if a conservative businessman were to take the reins of a popular team?

So it was with profound sadness that I learned of Socrates’s passing at the age of 57. The official cause of death was “septic shock from an intestinal infection” according to a São Paulo hospital statement. Like Garrincha, Brazil’s most loved footballer, Socrates was an alcoholic. The rum-like cachaça had become his vital fluid. As Socrates candidly put it in an interview: “This country drinks more cachaça than any other in the world, and it seems like I myself drink it all.” We all battle our demons.

As the South Africans say, “Hamba kahle” brother Socrates. Your love of the game and commitment to social justice will never be forgotten.

Suggested reading:

Matthew Shirts, “Socrates, Corinthians, and Questions of Democracy and Citizenship,” in Joseph Arbena, ed., Sport and Society in Latin America: Diffusion, Dependency, and the Rise of Mass Culture (New York: Greenwood Press, 1988), pp. 97-112.

Simon Romero’s poignant obituary of Socrates in the New York Times is here.

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“Playing the Game”

Editor — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 19:30:59 +0000

“Playing the Game” by Sophie Alegi

Chests heave
Legs run
Tendons work
Bones stretch and pull
Muscles bulge
Brains flash in a spark of neurons
Sweat drips.
The defender tears a tendon trying to steal the ball.
The midfielder blows past a defender in a flash of speed.
And the forward collects the ball and shoots.
The goalie stretches all of her fibers to catch the ball.
But it slams into the net.

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Fútbol in the Classroom

Peter Alegi — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 14:47:16 +0000

The Football Scholars Forum — an online community of scholars that discusses serious fútbol scholarship — convenes on Wednesday, November 9, at 2pm EST (-5 GMT) for a session on “Soccer in the Classroom.”

Several scholars will make short presentations about university football courses in various disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. Course syllabi have been pre-circulated on the website.

Among the questions to be discussed: How can teaching a course or unit on soccer expand or contribute to disciplinary knowledge? What are the challenges and opportunities of teaching a fútbol class filled with everyone from fantasy soccer geeks to soccer neophytes? How can students apply what they learn in a football course outside the classroom? Interested participants can join the conversation via Skype by contacting Alex Galarza.

In related news, FSF is to be featured in a poster session at HASTAC 2011, a conference on digital scholarly communication at the University of Michigan in December.

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