By David Ross. Every four years conservatives go into nativist-moron mode. I’m not speaking of presidential politics but of World Cup politics, and of the favorite conservative meme that soccer is a subversive plot to deprive us of our precious bodily fluids (see here and here and here). Libertas, for one, loves soccer. Like a Max Ophuls tracking shot, it has a beautiful, hypnotic fluidity, in comparison to which American football is like a bumper-to-bumper mess on a Southern California freeway. Among conservative organs, only Powerline has blown the vuvuzela on behalf of soccer. Relatively bright bulbs, those Dartmouth-educated lawyers.
The present World Cup has been high entertainment due to the creeping parity in the world game and the amusing fallen souffle of the French team, though the tournament has not been long on individual genius. Argentina’s Lionel Messi, clearly the best player in the world, could not figure out how to integrate his talents, while the other big guns were probably a bit overrated to begin with. Argentine coach and former world superstar Diego Maradona offers a surprisingly subtle theory in explanation of the general fizzle. Breaking with p.c. cliché, he suggests that today’s stars are not too selfish, but not selfish enough. They have absorbed too much of the wussy zeitgeist, as it were, and lack the bravado and ego of the matador.
Hollywood, obviously, has had almost nothing to do with soccer, the unlikely Stallone/Michael Caine/Max von Sydow/Pele vehicle Victory (1981) aside. The international community has done only a little better. There is Steven Chow’s Shaolin Soccer (2001), which is good fun, and, of course, Bend It Like Beckham (2002). The latter introduced the alluring Keira Knightley, but on the other hand it gratuitously contributed to the global Beckham hype, which was only a little less embarrassing for humanity than the current craze for ‘Silly Bands.’
The real scandal, however, is that FIFA, the worldwide governing body of soccer, has made a complete hash of the World Cup video archive. You would expect FIFA immediately to commemorate each World Cup with a deluxe DVD package featuring every game and a raft of bonus material. Au contraire (pardon my French, Glenn). As if averse to making gobs of money and placating its global constituency, FIFA tends to release haphazard highlight films featuring either a rudimentary narrative of the tournament or – even worse – goal montages. You might as well take Beethoven symphonies and turn them into cell phone jingles – oh, wait, people actually do that. I do recall seeing one FIFA documentary – called, I believe, Going for Goal, about the 1974 World Cup – that had a melancholy moodiness and weird misty poetry about it, but generally these films are straightforward and add nothing to their subject matter.
I long ago saw the complete 1966 WC final match – England vs. Germany – on VHS, so these games must be available somewhere, somehow, but no amount of Googling turns them up. It’s always been an aspiration of mine to see the 1970 final match — Pele’s swan song — in its entirety. Can anyone point me in the right direction?
One film I’ve always found oddly stylish is Pele: The Master and his Method (available above), an instructional video that includes abundant, close-up footage of Pele (in his prime no less!) demonstrating basic techniques. The film is particularly winning in its patches of local color – the browned pitches and sandlots, the scrawny barefoot kids who take part in Pele’s drills, the bossa nova soundtrack. Any young soccer player will relish this video, just as I did, and take away from it not only sounder fundamentals, but also a certain romantic feel for Brazilian soccer.
[Editor’s Note: Mr. Ross is too modest to mention that he was the captain of Andover’s soccer team. LFM Editor Apuzzo recalls kicking the ball around with Mr. Ross in their collegiate days, and finding Mr. Ross quite nimble of foot.]
Posted on July 7th, 2010 at 10:42am.
I think it’s valid to like soccer and not be unpatriotic or un-American. It’s funny that this is even a debate in conservative circles. Millions of Americans play soccer (otherwise, where would the much-discussed “soccer mom” come from?), and yet now according to these conservatives soccer is dangerous and foreign? What are they so worried about?
Thanks for speaking the truth David. You’ll probably be raked over the coals for it, but someone needs to say it. Since when did being a conservative mean we couldn’t enjoy anything that the rest of the world enjoys without somehow being un-American? It’s just ridiculous.
David – I wouldn’t say this is all conservatives. Lots of conservatives like watching the World Cup and aren’t idiots. I do think you make an interesting point here though:
“Argentine coach and former world superstar Diego Maradona offers a surprisingly subtle theory in explanation of the general fizzle. Breaking with p.c. cliché, he suggests that today’s stars are not too selfish, but not selfish enough. They have absorbed too much of the wussy zeitgeist, as it were, and lack the bravado and ego of the matador.”
I’ve just finished watching Spain-Germany, and Spain, as good as it may be, certainly exemplifies the above tendency. The Spanish players seem unwilling to stoop to the vulgarism of actually kicking the ball on goal. Very frustrating to watch.
Definitely. I say that as a stopper who prefers a team with suffocating defence to flashy forwards. How many passes can Spain and Holland connect in their own halves? Find out this weekend!
The Spanish finally showed what they had today. It’s been a long time coming this tournament. They made the Germans look slow and passive today, and I didn’t think that could be done.
They have to sustain the soccer pundit industry somehow, I think.
Geez, people…get over yourselves. The reason most conservatives (like most Americans, for that matter) don’t like soccer is not because we think “soccer is a subversive plot to deprive us of our precious bodily fluids” (yikes!! over-dramatize much?). but because we find soccer’s “beautiful, hypnotic fluidity” to be more than a little boring. I find your use of the word “hypnotic” to describe soccer appropriate, “hypnotic” being another word for “sleep inducing” (“You are getting very sleepy….). I don’t have a particular problem with people preferring soccer to other, more popular, American sports, what I do have a problem with is the elitist attitude that soccer advocates affect. If you want to watch soccer, have at it, but please don’t look down on other folks who don’t share your rarefied tastes.
Rob, I’d like to respond here on David’s behalf. His post was actually in response to the extreme, over-the-top hostility currently peddled in conservative circles to this rather harmless and pleasant sport.
Then we get into a chicken-egg situation. What came first? The “over-the-top hostility” from conservatives or the “over-the-top” elitism from soccer aficionados? I think the former (though I disagree with your characterization) is a response to the latter, but you may disagree with my assessment.
It’s all cool, Rob. We appreciate your commenting. Personally I played football in high school – the American kind.