With the Euro2008 and the South American World Cup 2010 Qualifiers in full swing this weekend, the By The Fault Weekend Reader looks at the sport of football (soccer in the United States). Americans fail to understand the game, and that’s unfortunate because football is one of the world’s great unifying forces. Part of the reason I think is that in Europe and in Latin America, one is born into a family and into a soccer club. I have changed my religion. I am still loyal to my clubs. It is in the blood. That experience can be found in American sports with certain teams such as the Boston Red Sox, the Chicago Cubs, the New York Football Giants and the Green Bay Packers in particular. New York City until the 1950s with its three professional baseball clubs is perhaps the most anagolous situation. There was a class element as to which team you supported. The Dodgers in Brooklyn were definitely a working-class team before the move to Los Angeles.
Here’s a look at football and politics.
It’s In the Blood
This is an intro to a documentary about football and politics in England as a neighborhood transitions.
Boca Juniors versus River Plate
Boca Juniors is a working class team and the team of Italian immigrants to Argentina. River Plate is an elite team. Here is some of the affection that they don’t have for each other. Boca fans are known as “La Doce” or the twelth. Boca’s fans are legendary. While all footballers are a bit crazy come game time, La Doca are a realm apart. I went to a game in La Bombonera (and I root for River) but this game was against Estudiantes and I had a blast. I learned all their songs and they didn’t mind having a Colombian in their midst because one of their best players, el Chico Serna, was a Colombian. Boca Juniors has won more South American championships than any other club. River has won more Argentine titles.
River Plate is the uptown team and they play at Monumental in Buenos Aires. While I root for River in Argentina, Boca has better songs.
Once Caldas
It is no doubt the greatest upset in South American club history. In 2004, Once Caldas, the team from the small city of Manizales in Colombia’s coffee-growing region won the continental title, Copa Libertadores by beating Boca Juniors of Buenos Aires, the most storied club in South America. Once Caldas was just the second Colombian club to win the title though the other Atlético Nacional de Medellín has won the title twice. Manizales is a city of 500,000 people, Buenos Aires a city of 3 million and over 12 million in the metro Buenos Aires area. You can imagine the delerium.
Football and Globalization
The distant U.S. attitude about soccer suggests a deeper truth about world politics and America’s relationship to the world. The US has chosen to isolate itself in many areas from the rest of world and that distance perhaps leads to a chasm between the United States and the world. The US doesn’t understand football, the world doesn’t understand the United States. The argument from The Globalist.
Spaniards Prefer Football to Sex
A recent poll of Spaniards found that Spaniards prefer watching La Liga to sex. The poll from May 25, 2008 is in the UK Guardian.
Football in Spain — The Nationalism of its Regions
There are five major languages spoken in Spain. Castillian is the largest of these but the others have speakers in the millions. After the Spanish Civil War, Franco attempted to corral the use of regional tongues and impose Castillian on the other regions. With the dictatorship hard and heavy, regional languages and nationalism found their greatest inspiration on the pitch. Every time el Barça took the field, it carried the aspirations of the Catalanes, Celta the hopes of the Gallegos, Valencia the dreams of Valencianos while Racing Santander and Atletico Bilbao took up the Basque cause. Here’s more on Spain’s football divide from Center Holds It.
The website in English for my favourite Spanish team, FC Barcelona.