Simon Kuper: Soccer Explains Nothing
[Simon Kuper is a Financial Times journalist and coauthor of Soccernomics.]
...[T]he World Cup used to be a festival of geopolitics. The tournament began in 1930, just as fascism was getting going. Then, after a decent interruption for World War II, the World Cup resumed in an era of hysterical nationalism. Postwar European countries still nursed resentments -- chiefly, against Germany -- that came out on the turf. Meanwhile, Latin American countries were often still experimenting with fascism or hypernationalism, sometimes both. When the Africans entered the tournament in the 1970s, their regimes also often sought to milk soccer for national status (or a chance to give their former colonial occupier an athletic beating).
During these decades, geopolitics gave the World Cup spice. And similarly, the World Cup spiced up politics. In 1969, El Salvador and Honduras actually fought a "Soccer War" after playing three keenly disputed qualifying games for the next year's tournament. For many European countries, the game that truly mattered was the one against West Germany. The Dutch defeat to the Germans in the final in 1974 was certainly Holland's worst sporting trauma. One Dutch midfielder, Wim van Hanegem, had lost his father, 10-year-old brother, and six other van Hanegems to a wartime bombing of the family's home village. And the lyrics of Three Lions, the unofficial anthem of English soccer, is mostly about defeats to Germany....
...[I]n the 1982 cup, Polish fans under Soviet rule carried a banner to the Poland-USSR game reading only "Solidarnosc," a reference to the Polish trade union that had been banned after the Soviet declaration of martial law six months earlier. Sweetly, Poland won that game. To paraphrase the famous but apochrophal quote by Holland's coach, Rinus Michels, "Football is war."...
No longer. And certanily not in South Africa. Few foreign fans flew down for the tournament, but many of those who did came from new soccer countries, short on ancient bitter rivalries. Fans of opposing teams sat happily side by side in the stands, blowing vuvuzelas in unison (if not in harmony), often after having swapped scarves. When the TV cameras lit upon them, they waved like starry-eyed fans at the NBA All-Star game.
The World Cup has gone from nationalist frenzy to universal carnival, a sort of cheesy "We Are the World" video brought to life. Nobody seems to hate Germany anymore, and anyway, the country had the most multicultural team in the tournament. There were barely any colonial occupiers playing (a U.S.-Afghanistan game would have been interesting but the Afghans have never yet played a World Cup). The only crazed hypernationalist state represented at all was North Korea. Pyongyang reportedly sent Chinese people to South Africa to pose as North Korean fans, but aside from that, barely a peep was heard from the Hermit Kingdom, especially after it lost 7-0 to Portugal. No country exited this World Cup crying conspiracy....
It seems that the main geopolitical significance of the World Cup now lies in the logistics of organizing it. The soccer is just for fun (although in truth most of the games were dull). The World Cup no longer means much. And that's a relief.
Read entire article at Foreign Policy
...[T]he World Cup used to be a festival of geopolitics. The tournament began in 1930, just as fascism was getting going. Then, after a decent interruption for World War II, the World Cup resumed in an era of hysterical nationalism. Postwar European countries still nursed resentments -- chiefly, against Germany -- that came out on the turf. Meanwhile, Latin American countries were often still experimenting with fascism or hypernationalism, sometimes both. When the Africans entered the tournament in the 1970s, their regimes also often sought to milk soccer for national status (or a chance to give their former colonial occupier an athletic beating).
During these decades, geopolitics gave the World Cup spice. And similarly, the World Cup spiced up politics. In 1969, El Salvador and Honduras actually fought a "Soccer War" after playing three keenly disputed qualifying games for the next year's tournament. For many European countries, the game that truly mattered was the one against West Germany. The Dutch defeat to the Germans in the final in 1974 was certainly Holland's worst sporting trauma. One Dutch midfielder, Wim van Hanegem, had lost his father, 10-year-old brother, and six other van Hanegems to a wartime bombing of the family's home village. And the lyrics of Three Lions, the unofficial anthem of English soccer, is mostly about defeats to Germany....
...[I]n the 1982 cup, Polish fans under Soviet rule carried a banner to the Poland-USSR game reading only "Solidarnosc," a reference to the Polish trade union that had been banned after the Soviet declaration of martial law six months earlier. Sweetly, Poland won that game. To paraphrase the famous but apochrophal quote by Holland's coach, Rinus Michels, "Football is war."...
No longer. And certanily not in South Africa. Few foreign fans flew down for the tournament, but many of those who did came from new soccer countries, short on ancient bitter rivalries. Fans of opposing teams sat happily side by side in the stands, blowing vuvuzelas in unison (if not in harmony), often after having swapped scarves. When the TV cameras lit upon them, they waved like starry-eyed fans at the NBA All-Star game.
The World Cup has gone from nationalist frenzy to universal carnival, a sort of cheesy "We Are the World" video brought to life. Nobody seems to hate Germany anymore, and anyway, the country had the most multicultural team in the tournament. There were barely any colonial occupiers playing (a U.S.-Afghanistan game would have been interesting but the Afghans have never yet played a World Cup). The only crazed hypernationalist state represented at all was North Korea. Pyongyang reportedly sent Chinese people to South Africa to pose as North Korean fans, but aside from that, barely a peep was heard from the Hermit Kingdom, especially after it lost 7-0 to Portugal. No country exited this World Cup crying conspiracy....
It seems that the main geopolitical significance of the World Cup now lies in the logistics of organizing it. The soccer is just for fun (although in truth most of the games were dull). The World Cup no longer means much. And that's a relief.