The Volokh Conspiracy

An Englishman makes a confession: He prefers American football to soccer.

In its energy and complexity, football captures the spirit of America better than any other cultural creation on this continent, and I don’t mean because it features long breaks in which advertisers get to sell beer and treatments for erectile dysfunction. It sits at the intersection of pioneering aggression and impossibly complex strategic planning. It is a collision of Hobbes and Locke; violent, primal force tempered by the most complex set of rules, regulations, procedures and systems ever conceived in an athletic framework.

Soccer is called the beautiful game. But football is chess, played with real pieces that try to knock each other’s brains out. It doesn’t get any more beautiful than that.

So I know that faithful readers have been patiently waiting for my take on the current goings-on in the world of international soccer … Though this is the off-season, of course, for most of the world’s leagues (other than our own MLS), there’s a fair bit of action out there, in particular (a) the Women’s World Cup, in Germany, and (b) the main South/Central American tournament, the Copa America, in Argentina.

Re the first: I’m not, generally speaking, much of a fan of the women’s game. Like women’s basketball, though the games can be exciting, there’s not enough skill and athleticism, usually, to hold my interest. But I have to say that the WWC games I’ve watched so far have been pretty damned good — the level of play is much higher than it’s been in the past, and some of the games — Germany-France (4-2), Sweden – US (2-1), Australia-Equatorial Guinea (3-2), and France-Canada (4-0), were fine matches, full of attacking play, near misses, great goals, and all the rest. The Germans look formidable, and will probably win it all – though my money is on Brazil (which plays the US tomorrow at noon, a match that, given the shaky back lines and strong attacks of both teams, could well be a 5-4 thriller …).

As to the Copa America, the big news there so far has all been pretty negative. The two giants of South American soccer — Brazil and Argentina — have looked uninspired (to put it mildly); Brazil was held to a boring 0-0 by Venezuela, pegged as one of the weaker teams in the tournament (Venezuela being one of the very few countries in the hemisphere where baseball, and not soccer, is the sport engaging the most passion); And the less said about Argentina’s performance the better; salvaging a 1-1 draw against Bolivia with a late goal, and then a truly awful performance in a 0-0 draw with Colombia. Their offense is sputtering miserably (and the home fans, needless to say, are deeply unhappy); Colombia easily had the best chances in the last match and should have come away with the victory. It’s proof (if proof were needed!) of the importance of mid-field playmakers; the Argentines have terrific strikers – at one point in the Colombia game they had four world-class strikers (Higuain, Messi, Tevez, and Aguero) playing at the same time, but still created virtually no offense to speak of. Messi – the consensus best player on the planet – looks lost; without the fabulous midfield play of Barcelona’s fabulous two providers (Xavi and Iniesta), he doesn’t seem to be able to get into the rhythm of the offense. It’s been painful to watch, actually — I’m a big fan of the Argentines, and I do hope they can get their act together in time to make at least some noise in the tournament.

The dark horse in the Copa America, to my eyes, is Chile; though one should never count out teams like Argentina and Brazil, with the unbelievable talent and skill on both teams, the Chileans have played the best and most exciting soccer in the tournament so far, and it wouldn’t surprise me if they went far, and possibly all the way.

A somewhat dispirited series of highly-anticipated matches between FC Barcelona and Real Madrid was elevated to high art through the remarkable play of the remarkable Lionel Messi. If you didn’t see his goals in Wednesday’s game — the second one in particular is a thing of sublime beauty — check them out

here (the UEFA official website, with a pretty niggardly 45 second clip)

or here (from a broadcast clip of the 2d goal)

The matches have been dispiriting because Jose Mourinho (Madrid’s coach) made the tactical decision to play the most conservative brand of static football imaginable, in the hopes of suffocating Barcelona’s attack. He’s got no faith, as my son Sam put it, that his players can compete with Barcelona if both teams are attacking. Aside from the fact that the strategy is failing, it has deprived us of what could have been some magnificent games – Madrid showed last weekend, in demolishing a very good Valencia side (on the road, no less) 6 -3, that they have the potential to be a terrific attacking side, and a game in which the two teams were at their attacking best could been truly wonderful side to watch.

But at least — thank goodness — there’s Messi. I know I’ve said it before, but it does bear repeating – we’re lucky to be around to watch him. Those Madrid defenders he’s running by are not clumsy oafs, or statues – they are world-class soccer players, made to look like clumsy oafs and statues. And they’re not the ones with a ball bouncing around unpredictably at their feet!! Jordan, Gretzky, Ruth – sometimes someone not only is better than everyone else in the world at what they do, but better by a prodigious margin, and it’s really something to see.

And while I’m on the subject of spectacular feats on the athletic field: where did the often-repeated trope that “Hitting a baseball from a major league pitcher is the hardest thing to do in sports” come from?? It is demonstrably false. Think about the pitchers, when they’re at the plate. They’re pretty lousy hitters, as a rule – a batting average of .150 or even lower is the norm. But that means once or twice, in every ten at-bats, they not only manage to hit the ball, they hit it well enough to get a base hit! I know they’re terrific athletes, and that most of them spent a lot of time practicing their hitting as teenagers. But the hardest thing in all of sports!?? If that was the hardest thing to do in all of sports, surely we’d expect that people who hardly ever practice it wouldn’t be able to succeed at it, wouldn’t we?

. . . is.** [see note below] But on a day when our sports pages are filled up with loads of nonsense — about whether Barry Bonds knew what every 12 year-old in America knew (that Bonds was taking steroids), and about whether Kobe Bryant’s utterance of an “anti-gay epithet” that is apparently so nasty that the NY Times can’t even bring itself to tell us what it is deserves a whopping $100,000 fine — real money, even to Kobe Bryant! — it’s nice to bring the discussion around to a sporting event where what is about to happen between the lines, on the field of play, could really turn out to be something most extraordinary.

If you have friends who have a passion for the world’s game (or are Spaniards), you might want to cut them a little slack over the next few weeks. Soccer fans around the world are now in a state of high heat about an unprecedented series of encounters about to take place between two of the real giants of international soccer, FC Barcelona and Real Madrid. The two teams, who ordinarily meet twice per year, are going to play 4 times over the next 3 weeks — their regular meeting (this Saturday afternoon 4 PM EDT) in the Spanish League (in Madrid), the Final of the Spanish Cup tournament (the Copa del Rey) in midweek, and then twice (home and home) in the semifinals of the big all-Europe soccer competition, the Champions League (April 27 and May 3).

It’s enough to make a soccer fan go mad – Spain will almost certainly grind to a complete halt (not great news for its bondholders, given its current economic woes), and much of the rest of world will at least slow down noticeably. It does indeed seem too good to be true. For any number of reasons, this could well be a truly epic matchup. To begin with, Barcelona and Madrid may well be, at the moment, the two best teams in the world; only Manchester United is really in that conversation right now. Madrid got spanked when they last met — a stunning and humiliating 5-0 defeat in Barcelona; but that was back in the mid-Fall, and virtually all observers agree that Madrid has gotten its act together and started to play a very different brand of soccer over the last few months.

Watching the two best teams in the world play four times in three weeks would be a treat in any circumstances – it’s just a million times more delicious that it’s Madrid and Barca. In a world full of great sports rivalries — a very partial and incomplete list would probably have to include (and I’ll surely offend many of you here) Yankees-Red Sox, the great US college football rivalries (Texas – Oklahoma, Michigan – Ohio State), maybe Celtics-Lakers, Bears-Packers . . . and many terrific soccer rivalries overseas as well (Inter Milan – AC Milan, Man U – Liverpool, Boca Juniors – River Plate in Buenos Aires, Galatasaray – Fehnerbache in Istanbul . . .) — Barcelona-Madrid has a very strong claim to being the greatest of all. The history alone assures that. Madrid, of course, was Franco’s team – his favorite, and he showered it with affection, and prestige, and financial emoluments. And Franco was no friend to the Catalonians, to put it mildly; at a time when all expressions of Catalonian culture were brutally suppressed by Franco’s administration (in Madrid), you could still root for FC Barcelona, and rooting for Barca thereby became a kind of reference point for Catalonian (and, not coincidentally, anti-Franco and anti-Fascist) identity. And all this, remember, is not some old tale out of the history books; it’s within living memory for millions of people (Franco’s reign of terror having ended only in the 1970s).

So there’s that. And there’s plenty of other stuff to give the games even more spice. Madrid’s coach, Jose Mourinho, was hired this year because he, supposedly, has the secret to beating Barcelona; last year, when he coached for Inter Milan, he beat the Catalonians in the Champions League semifinals (and went on to hoist the trophy in the Final) — though that 5-0 drubbing in the Fall put a dent in his reputation on that score. And then there’s the contrast between Madrid’s collection of international superstars plucked from other teams for outrageous amounts of money — Christiano Ronaldo from Manchester United, Kaka from AC Milan, Benzema from Marseille, Xabi Alonso from Liverpool, . . . — and Barcelona’s remarkable group of entirely homegrown stars — Xavi Hernandez, Iniesta, Pique, Puyol, and, of course, the transcendent Lionel Messi.

It all seems to good to be true. We shall see. Tune in, if you’re looking for some fantastic soccer.
***************
** I’ve been having a debate with a colleague about whether the correct form of the expression is:

“If it seems too good to be true, it probably is” [i.e., it is too good to actually be true] or

“If it seems too good to be true, it probably isn’t.” [i.e., it probably isn't true]

It’s rather odd that both forms work and express the same idea … but I vote for the former as the clearer and cleaner of the two]

I’m here in Torino, Italy, getting ready for my talk tomorrow at the Nexa Center of the Torino Politecnico on “Thomas Jefferson, The Internet, and Egypt” — the talk will be livestreamed Friday at 0830 EST here, if you’re interested. I’ve been thinking a lot about the events in the Middle East, and what they mean for the Internet and Internet law, but I need some time to get my thoughts together on all that; I hope to be posting a series of essays when I return.

But whatever happens at my talk tomorrow, the highlight of my European trip this week has already occurred. My son Sam and I were privileged to be at the Camp Nou, FC Barcelona’s stadium, along with 95,000 of our closest friends, on Tuesday night for the extraordinary match between FC Barcelona and Arsenal FC to decide a spot in the final 8 of the UEFA European Champions League. Suffice it to say that it was like nothing I’ve ever experienced, in or out of a sports arena. Our seats were way down low, and lemme tell you, hearing 95,000 people, from the bottom of the bowl, in FULL VOICE, singing the FC Barcelona anthem, or whistling at the ref, is simply indescribable. The electricity in the place was palpable and almost terrifying. Barcelona’s attack was relentless, wave after wave after wave … And when the great Lionel Messi scored the first goal at the end of the first half — a goal that the newspapers here in Italy are already calling one of the greatest ever scored* (if you haven’t seen it, check it out here (before UEFA, in its wisdom, orders it taken down from Youtube) — Sam and I (and everyone else in the place) went totally berserk. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen people in that state before, let alone 95,000 of them. Unforgettable indeed. We took this trip because Barcelona, this year, may well be the best team ever assembled anywhere, and we figured we couldn’t possibly let the opportunity pass to see them in person — and boy, was that the right call.

——————–
*The headline in today’s Corriere della Sera:
“Il segreto della meraviglia Messi? Giocare alla velocita’ del pensiero. Guardiola in estasi: ‘E il gol piu bello che Leo abbia mai segnato.’”

“The secret of the marvelous Messi? To play at the speed of thought. Guardiola in ecstasy: ‘It was the most beautiful goal that Leo has ever scored.’”

Inasmuch as I feel it has become my duty to inform VC readers of extraordinary happenings in the world of international soccer, I’m writing to announce what those of you who follow these matters already know: today, at 245 PM (EST) (televised on Fox Soccer Channel) Barcelona travel to the Emirates Stadium in London to take on Arsenal in the first of two matches in the Round of 16 of Europe’s Champions League competition. [And yes, the rumors are true - I am indeed heading to Barcelona for the second match between the two on March 8] It promises to be a delightful affair — Barcelona this year, to many soccer fans, is not only probably the best team on the planet at the moment, but quite possibly the best team ever – and surely the most beautiful to watch. And Arsenal, though (imho) not quite up to Barcelona’s level in terms of overall talent and teamwork, nonetheless plays the same kind of game – free-flowing, short-passing, delicate and intricate — as their Spanish visitors. And neither team goes in for the kind of defense-minded bunker mentality stuff that often afflicts teams at the highest level 9and that can make soccer a bit of a snooze sometimes to watch). It should be, as they say, a cracker. Not to be missed.

Sports Fans!: Brian Phillips, over on Slate, has a nice piece on “the special feeling of euphoria, a kind of Olympian giddiness, that soccer fans experience while watching F.C. Barcelona.” Even for those of you who care little for the game, you should make at least a small mental note about what is happening over in Barcelona at the moment – it’s a global phenomenon of some importance, I think, certainly inside, but probably also outside, the closed world of sport. Many people believe that this is, simply, the best soccer team of all time — and who knows, possibly the best that any of us will see in our lifetimes, what with the uncertainty that always surrounds the structure of the sport, changes that may be imminent in the way players are allocated among teams, etc. etc. Phillips has a nice way with words — he describes the recent dismantling of their rivals Real Madrid, a 5-0 drubbing (of a team that could possibly lay claim to the title of 2d best in the world) that left the soccer fans of the world in a deep state of awe and wonder, as “a mesmerizing display of off-handedly beautiful ruthlessness,” which is a phrase I wish I’d written. And he captures something — not everything, surely, but something — of what makes this team, at this moment, so special:

Soccer takes great athletes and makes them artificially clumsy—forces them to show what they can do, in effect, with both arms tied behind their backs. It’s a game of tricks, one that turns the simplest action, just keeping possession of the ball, into a perilous high-wire act. But Barcelona pass the ball, and pass the ball, and pass the ball—938 times in their recent 5-0 win over Real Sociedad—and invert defenses as casually as if they were rotating a kaleidoscope. It’s not just that they make it look easy. It’s that three years into their reign as the world’s best soccer team, they still haven’t realized they’re playing 50 feet above the ground.

Teams like this, in any sport (let alone the world’s most popular), don’t come along all that often, and it’s worth pausing to appreciate how lucky we are to be around when it’s happening (and at a time when US television distributors have finally gotten around to showing lots and lots of international soccer on TV!! Oh rapture!!)

As Sam put it here, “If you are a soccer fan–but especially if you aren’t–do yourself a favor and watch the Barcelona-Madrid game from Monday afternoon” (still available for replay viewing on ESPN3.com). Paul Gardner over at Soccer America has a good description of the game, too — but just watch the game if you can. This is simply as beautiful as the beautiful game ever gets — that it was played in the pouring rain just makes the precision with which Barcelona plays even more unbelievable than it would otherwise have been. It does not get any better than this.

Political scientist Barry Rubin has an interesting column criticizing the modern tendency to teach kids that playing to win is bad:

My son is playing on a local soccer team which has lost every one of its games, often by humiliating scores. The coach is a nice guy, but seems an archetype of contemporary thinking: he tells the kids not to care about whether they win, puts players at any positions they want, and doesn’t listen to their suggestions.

He never criticizes a player or suggests how a player could do better. My son, bless him, once remarked to me: “How are you going to play better if nobody tells you what you’re doing wrong?” The coach just tells them how well they are playing. Even after an 8-0 defeat, he told them they’d played a great game.

And of course, the league gives trophies to everyone, whether their team finishes in first or last place…..

[A]m I right in thinking that sports should prepare children for life, competition, the desire to win, and an understanding that not every individual has the same level of skills? A central element in that world is rewarding those who do better, which also offers an incentive for them and others to strive….

The playing field was perfectly even, but the boys were clearly miserable. They felt like losers, their behavior rejecting the claim that everything was just great, or that mediocrity was satisfactory as long as everyone was treated identically. They knew better than to think outcomes don’t matter….

When the opportunity came to step in as coach for one game, I jumped at the chance to try an experiment…..

For the starting line-up, I put the best players in and kept them in as long as they didn’t say they were tired or seem fatigued…..

I didn’t put terrible players in at forward or in the goal. It didn’t take any genius to do so, just basic sports common sense….

Before the game, I gave them a pep talk, with the key theme as follows:

Every week you’ve been told that the important thing is just to have a good time. Well, this week it’s going to be different. The number one goal is to win; the number two goal is to have a good time. But I assure you: if you win, you will have a much better time!

And that’s just what happened. They took a 1-0 lead and held it, in contrast to the previous week when it was scoreless at the half but turned into a 3-0 humiliation when someone ill-suited was made goalkeeper just because he wanted that job….

I worried that the boys who played less of the game and were given seemingly less significant positions would be resentful. But quite the opposite proved true….

They played harder, with a bit more pressure and a less equal share of personal glory than they’d ever done before. But after the victory, they were glowing and appreciative, amazed that they had actually won a game. Yes, winning and being allowed to give their best effort as a team was far more exciting and rewarding for them than being told they had done wonderfully by just showing up, …. and that the results didn’t matter.

I agree with Rubin here. Playing to win encourages better performance. People, including children, are unlikely to make a real effort if they are told that results don’t matter. Moreover, the incentive of victory helps overcome one of the biggest obstacles to effective teaching of children: the fact that they tend to have very short time-horizons and can’t easily be motivated by benefits that lie far in the future. Few kids will work hard at soccer because doing so will make them more physically fit ten years later (or even ten months later). But many more will do so in the hope of experiencing the thrill of victory. As I wrote in a 2006 post on research on student incentives:

[C]hildren and teenagers have notoriously short time horizons and many are unwilling to work hard today for rewards that they can’t enjoy until many years later. [Harvard economist Roland] Fryer’s financial incentives [for inner city children to do better in school] represent one possible way to give students more immediate rewards for studying hard. As he points out, middle and upper class parents have often used such rewards for studying for their own children….

Like Fryer, … I was a terrible student for much of my school career. Although I knew that good grades were important for getting into college, this was too distant a reward to motivate me very much. What turned my situation around was high school debate. If I worked hard on a debate topic for 2 or 3 weeks, I could win a prize at a tournament at the end of that time…. Although tournament trophies (like Fryer’s $10 cash prizes) are trivial in value compared to the long-term benefits of education, they were an immediate reward that provided quick gratification to my teenage mind. Over time, learning to work hard on debate issues also led me to study harder in other classes.

Long-term goals such as college did play some role in my eventual academic turnaround. But the short-term incentives of debate had a much more powerful immediate effect. And like Rubin’s soccer players, I also found that winning after making a real effort is a lot more fun than losing after just showing up.

Everything has reasonable limits. We should not encourage elementary school soccer players to be as hypercompetitive as Michael Jordan or Vince Lombardi. There may also be gender differences here. Some research suggests that competitive incentives are on average less effective with girls than boys (which is not to say, of course, that they aren’t effective at all). Nonetheless, Barry Rubin’s approach strikes me as much more sensible than that of his son’s coach and others with similar attitudes. Contra Lombardi, winning isn’t the only thing that matters. But it’s foolish to pretend that it doesn’t matter at all.

Looking for opportunities to segue from my recent obsession with all things soccer-related to the more mundane matters of copyright law that I usually focus on here on the VC, and lo and behold . . . . Two opportunities, actually:

1. For the “Content Owners, Knee Jerk Protection Responses Of” file: I found the link to the Youtube clip of the horrible foul by Nigel DeJong on Xabi Alonso in Sunday’s final game, which I wanted to embed in one of my postings, but by the time I got there FIFA’s copyright police had already gotten YouTube to take the clip down. They’re within their rights, I know — though query how much copyright “originality” adheres in the broadcast file of the game, and why we usually unthinkingly assume that the broadcast is a protected work — but more to the point, does FIFA really think that they’re harmed in some way by the availability of the clip?

2. In his nice summing up of the Cup final, Jeff Klein at the NY Times blog, writing to congratulate the South Africans for a job well done in hosting the games, writes about one of “the many wonderful things South Africa has given the world (not counting vuvuzelas),” the song “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” Not only does he include a link to the Youtube (audio) clip of the original 1939 South African recording (by Solomon Linda and the Evening Birds), as well as a link to the extraordinary article by South African journalist Rian Malan (“In the Jungle: How American music legends made millions off the work of a Zulu tribesman who died a pauper” lovingly detailing the amazing history of the recording (and the many, many, many copyright squabbles that erupted as its popularity spread around the world). Great stuff . . .

[thanks to Jerry Lewis for the pointer]

The World Cup final (and the Dutch) are both taking well-deserved beatings in the blogosphere – it was not a very beautiful game to watch, thanks largely to the unrelentingly nasty play of the Dutch. Jonathan Wilson over on SI.com summarized it nicely:

At least after an ugly, unpleasant game, the World Cup had the right winner, the only side in the tournament that was consistently proactive in its play.

A fourth 1-0 win in a row doesn’t tell the full story; Spain had none of the control it had possessed in the previous three rounds, as the Netherlands effectively kicked it out of its rhythm. An open extra time gave the game some credit, but this was a match ruined by Dutch brutality. Referee Howard Webb was booed by the crowd and will no doubt be harangued by pundits, but the greatest share of the blame belongs to the Netherlands and its negativity. The goodwill built up by years of attractive football was severely depleted by 120 sorry minutes. A more defensive approach is one thing; borderline anti-football is something else.

[Other interesting comments in a similar vein over on Slate and Sam's Posts]

Like a lot of US soccer fans, I watch “big games” like this with a dual perspective: just to watch the game, of course, but also to see if this one will be the one that will grab even those who are unenthusiastic and give them at least a glimpse of why this is the greatest sport on earth. Alas, that didn’t happen — there were a number of such games during this World Cup (USA-Algeria, Spain-Germany, Argentina-Korea), but the final definitely was not among them. [And it did illustrate, though not happily, Post's Fourth (or is it Fifth) Law of Soccer: The referee is a participant in the game. Howard Webb, the English ref, had a bad game - too many whistles interrupting play when he could have just played the advantage and let play go on, too many missed red card fouls, and way, way too many pauses to lecture the players about their nasty tackling . . . He didn't cause it to be a lousy game, but he sure didn't help]. But I certainly agree with what most people are saying: the right team won. The Spanish certainly deserved the crown, and perhaps gave a boost to the more positive and beautiful aspects of the game.

So we’re down to the final question: Who to root for on Sunday? [And who will win? See below] It’s a pretty complicated tangle. If it were a simple question (as it usually is, for me) of “Who’s playing the most beautiful and creative football?,” it would be easy to get behind Spain, who were magnificent in their semifinal against the Germans.

But the Dutch, surely, have a deeply rooted claim to our affections and whatever good karma we can send their way. The Dutch are to beautiful and creative football what Little Richard and Muddy Waters are to rock and roll. The great Dutch teams of the 70s, led by the incomparable Johann Cruyff, defined a style (“Total Football”) that was as mesmerizing and melodious, in its way, as the Brazilians’ jogo bonito, a flowing symphony of short passes and diagonal runs and relentless attack . . .

But the gods of soccer, who should have showered them with riches and rewards for their contribution to the game, have been cruel — crueler to them, probably, than to anyone. One major tournament championship, the European Cup in 1988, in the 36 years since Total Football was unleashed on the world in the 1974 World Cup. [The 1974 final, Holland v. Germany, was the first soccer game I ever watched; I was at a hotel in Nairobi, Kenya (long story), and the game happened to be on, and even for someone who knew not the slightest thing about the game, it was clear that the Dutch were up to something special. Plus, who could root against the Dutch playing the Germans, a mere 29 years after the end of WWII?] Always the bridesmaid, playing the beautiful soccer, never the bride. Time and time again, they’d get close, and fail. I was at the Ajax Stadium in Amsterdam for the semifinals of the Euro 2000 championship; the Dutch had murdered their opposition (6-1 in the quarters against Yugoslavia) and had a team with sublime talent all the way through; with 50,000 orange-clad fanatics in the stands, they lost their nerve, losing to Italy on penalty kicks after a 0-0 draw, in the course of which game they missed five penalty kicks!! Five!! Two during the match, three more in the shootout. The subway back to Amsterdam after the game was full of very, very unhappy people.]

So let them win already! Who could wish it otherwise?

The problem, though, is that this year’s version of the Dutch team is playing a most unimaginative brand of football — mostly dull and defense-oriented, lots of pushing and shoving and fouling, pretty predictable in attack. It’s the Spanish who are the new Dutch — at their best (and, as I predicted, they were at their best against Germany) playing with the kind of abandon and flow that characterized the great Dutch teams of the past. [Brian Phillips, over on Slate, has some interesting thoughts on this point] [And ironically enough, the Spanish wouldn't be playing as beautifully as they are now were it not for the Total Football of the Dutch, which Cruyff brought to Barcelona as player and coach in the '70s and '80s and which has remained the touchstone of the Barca style [and with six players on the Spanish starting 11, the Barca style has become the Spanish style -- and just this year, Cruyff was made Honorary President for Life of Barcelona FC . . . ]. While the Dutch spend a huge amount of time whacking their opponents on the shins, or feigning agony after being whacked themselves, the Spanish are all business, all about the game; the most remarkable thing about the Spain-Germany semifinal was that there wasn’t a single foul called in the first 25 minutes or so, and only maybe 8 or so the whole game, no diving, no writhing around, no yellow cards handed out, nothing but soccer — kudos to the Germans, too, for that). In the great battle for soccer’s heart and soul between the Realists and the Romantics, the Dutch have switched sides, ceding the Romantic banner to their opponents in Sunday’s game, and a victory for Holland on Sunday will — more irony! — be taken by many as additional proof that too much beauty is incompatible with bringing home the trophy.

It’s a bit of a conundrum. This is going to be one of those games where I’m truly glad I don’t have any actual say in who wins and loses – if those soccer gods were to come to me and tell me that it was my decision, I’d be truly unhappy. It would be nice if Spain got this year’s Oscar for Best Team, and the Dutch got their Lifetime Achievement Award, but it doesn’t work like that, alas.

As to what will actually happen . . . I think the Spanish will prove too patient and too clever for the Dutch defense, and they’ll win 3-1. [And though I'm really not given to bragging, I have to congratulate myself here for the prescience of my earlier observations and predictions. I didn't get everything right -- but I had Spain and Holland as two of the four teams capable of winning it all, Italy and France and England going out early, the Brazilians not that impressive, the Africans as a group doing badly, . . . not bad!] But I won’t be heartbroken at all if I’m wrong and it goes the other way. [Especially since I put money on each of them to win -- Spain at 8-1, Holland at 12-1 -- at the beginning of the tournament!]

[Update: And many thanks to Visitor Again for his comment on the Magical Magyars, who were indeed before my time but who were, as the comment reminds us and legend has it, a sight to behold ]

Uruguay’s loss to the Netherlands in yesterday’s World Cup semifinal may perhaps have been foreordained, given how deeply they had offended against the gods of soccer. For those of you who missed it, at the very end of the previous game, the Uruguay-Ghana quarterfinal, a tense back-and-forth affair which was tied 1-1 in the closing seconds of the 30-minute “extra time” period tacked on to the first 90 minutes, Ghana was awarded a free kick; the ball was sent into the box, and one of the Ghanaian players launched a shot that was clearly goal-bound but which Luis Suarez, the outstanding Uruguayan forward, punched away. It was an excellent save — except that Suarez is not the goalkeeper, and not entitled to use his hands. The ref spotted it immediately, Suarez was given his red card and expelled, and Ghana was awarded a penalty kick — which Asamoah Gyan pomptly clanged against the crossbar. The final whistle blew, the game went to penalties, and Ghana lost.

It was — to put it mildly — an excruciating moment. [A perfect illustration, by the way, of Post's First Law of Soccer: that we don't love watching soccer because it is "fun," we love watching soccer because it is compelling drama. There will not be many times you'll see, in public, pain like that; with a billion people or two watching, including just about everyone in Ghana that he knows or has ever known, with the ability to put an African team into the World Cup semifinals for the very first time in history (and on African soil, with the crowd going completely crazy with the possibility), and he hits the crossbar . . . I doubt that even the most passionate Uruguayan supporters would say that was "fun" to watch. But if you're watching, it touches something that a great performance of Lear touches -- I've seen some actors who can make me actually feel Lear's pain the way that I felt Asamoah Gyan's, but not many.]

But beyond all that, an interesting Internet kerfuffle has arisen concerning the “meaning” of Suarez’ action. Mind you, this wasn’t a case of someone sticking out his elbow a few inches to try to push a ball away and getting called for it, Suarez behaved just like a goalkeeper, throwing both arms at the ball and punching it away. To some (including Suarez, who talked about the incident after the match), he did the right thing (and would/should do it again in the same circumstance). If that ball goes in, which it will, Uruguay loses; if he punches it away, he’ll get a red card but his team is still in the game and might win (as it did). If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime — Suarez was prepared for the punishment and accepted it as the price to save his team. Way to go, Luis!

To others, though, he’s a cheater and to be roundly condemned for his act. [Much of the discussion in the blogosphere has focused on whether FIFA should enhance his penalty over and above the usual one-game suspension for a red card - perhaps suspend him from the rest of the tournament] Nobody but the keeper can touch the ball – that’s as fundamental a rule as there is in soccer, and Suarez knew it. The rules don’t establish an “exchange” (break rule/get punished), they establish principles of right and wrong, and what Suarez did was simply wrong; the act of murder is wrongful, even if done for good reasons and even if the perpetrator is prepared to pay the price for it.

Not at all sure where I stand on this one, to be honest.

[And, incidentally, as noted in an earlier posting, I'm picking Spain in today's match. Not just because I will win a pile of dough if Spain wins, having bet on a Spain-Holland final back at the beginning of the tournament when the odds were 23-1; and not, certainly, because Spain has looked better than Germany up to this point. Quite the contrary - the Germans have been revelatory, while Spain hasn't quite clicked. But there's just something that tells me they'll start clicking today. The Germans will not be able to do to the Spanish defense - which is outstanding - what they did to the Argentine defense (especially without the (unjustly) suspended Thomas Mueller), and I think the Spaniards will get their offensive machine in gear. We shall see.]

Having just returned from 10 days bicycling in France, away from my computer and therefore unable to share with you my thoughts on the developments in South Africa, it’s time to catch up. France was an unfortunate place to be, as it turned out, for the second round of the Cup; while it was pretty amusing to watch the French team self-destruct from afar, from inside France it wasn’t so amusing at all – it was actually pretty painful. “Morte au champ du deshonneur” was the headline in one of the papers the day we got in — “Death on the Field of Dishonor.” Ouch. People were genuinely depressed by the whole thing – so much so that there was ZERO interest in the remaining games of the Cup; more bars in Oklahoma, I’d bet, were showing games live, and many more people were watching there, than in the Dordogne region of southern France. The French government’s “Minister of Sport and Culture” — and nothing so clearly indicates the differences between France and the US than that they have a government ministry for “Sport and culture” and we don’t — had to defend herself against angry insults on the floor of Parliament, President Sarkoczy had a hastily-arranged meeting with Thierry Henry, sort of the elder statesman on the national team, to try to figure out what went wrong, and the newspapers, at least for the first 4 or 5 days we were there, had 4-10 pages of stuff about the teams disgraceful performance every day. There was a very palpable sense that the team reflected some deep failure of something, somewhere – national character, or will, or passion, or something. It was all pretty nasty and depressing, actually …

But on to the games . . . While I had predicted early exits for France, Italy, and even Brazil, I did not expect the Argentines to be going home so soon [though others were more prescient than I]. [As an aside, I recommend this little essay, by Joe Posnanski over at Sports Illustrated, on the genius of Lionel Messi]. The Germans, who have, for my money, been the big surprise in this tournament, simply took them apart. [I ended up watching that match at an Argentine bar in the heart of Paris -- not, as it turned out, a happy choice]. Germany v. Spain (Wednesday’s game) could be a cracker — Germany’s looked downright unbeatable, but something tells me that the Spanish, who have looked a bit out of sorts for much of the tournament, might be clicking at just the right time. But whichever team comes out ahead, I’m expecting a terrific match – both squads are built to attack (though both are also strong in the back), and it should be a no-holds-barred affair.

I have not, to be honest, been too impressed with either Uruguay or the Netherlands, who meet tomorrow in Semi #1; both have had a dose of good fortune to get where they are (Uruguay with a relatively easy draw, Netherlands with a Brazil squad that completely lost its cool in the quarterfinal), but I’m picking the Dutch to make it through to the Final. A Holland-Germany final would be nice, a repeat of the classic 1974 Final when the Johann Cruyff-led Dutch team scored right off the opening kickoff with a 15-touch move culminating in a penalty kick and a goal before any German player had even touched the ball! [though the Germans stormed back and ended up winning 2-1]. But my money’s on Holland – Spain in the final, with the Dutch — always remarked-upon as the Best Team Never to Have Won the World Cup — finally getting their longed-for trophy. It’s probably a case of my heart over my head, but there you have it.

Here’s the goal, if, like me, you want to watch it over (and over) again …

In reference to some of the comments on my earlier posting about the game , I’ll just say this: If you come to soccer with the mindset that the goal of sports is to create a playing field in which all elements of randomness have been removed — soccer ain’t really for you. Yes, the linesman made a terrible call to deprive the US of a goal. Yes, it sucked, and was unfair, and I and every other soccer fan wish that the refs didn’t make so many mistakes. But they do, just like the players do, and for the same reason: they are human beings. It’s just part of the game. It’s cruel, but you get over it — it took the players about 1.35 seconds to get over it, because they have to get their heads right back into the game. Fans, too. To let it sour a great moment like Donovan’s goal is really too bad. There is, as he put it over at Sam’s Posts, “really nothing in sports comparable to that last-gasp goal in soccer. After playing for so long, doing everything except scoring, the swing in emotions is indescribable. And for it to happen to the US team, in a decisive World Cup game! Even if they didn’t play the best soccer, team USA treated us to the two most dramatic examples of soccer matches in the last two games: a two-goal comeback, and a last-minute game-winner. We’re all lucky to have witnessed it.”

[And not to get ahead of ourselves or anything, but don't look now: the US plays Ghana in the Round of 16, and then, if it wins, the winner of Uruguay-S. Korea. Tough games, but definitely winnable by the US -- not the hardest route one could face to getting into a World Cup semifinal by any means . . .]

. . . stop reading immediately, go to ESPN3.com, and watch. Do not read further – you’ll thank me later.

If you watched it . . . that was not only the greatest moment in US soccer history (without question), but I’m thinking it may well have been the greatest moment in US sports history (or in the top 2 or 3 — “Miracle on Ice”? What else is even close?). I do NOT mean the greatest moment in the history of sports in the US — there are way too many candidates on that list. But I do mean possibly the greatest moment in the history of “US sports” — sports in which “the US” was a participant. Even those of you who don’t care much for the game of soccer have to agree – that was an extraordinary contest and extraordinary drama. I don’t know what others are looking for when they watch sports, but if that one didn’t do it for you, you’re . . . not a soccer fan, I guess. [I feel the same way about Wagner operas -- if you can listen to a great performance and come away unmoved, then it just means Wagner's not for you ...]. And it’s the first 91 minutes of frustration and anger — another blown call!! missed chances right and left!! bad decision-making!! — that makes it all the more delicious [a lot like Wagner, actually!]

This Cup, for my money, has had decent soccer (I’d give it a “B” so far, overall) and great drama. It’s compelling in the way that March Madness is compelling, but multiplied by maybe 10 million — fundamentally, because “Nigeria” and “Spain” and “France” and “Ghana” and the rest of them are, as ideas and symbols to which people are profoundly attached and about which they care very, very deeply, about 10 million times more powerful than “Duke” and “the University of Kansas” and “Butler” – no disrespect to those fine institutions, of course. The implosion of the French, the great fightback by South Africa yesterday to gain at least a degree of respect, the way the Argentines have finally found a way to get the most creative player in the world into the thick of the action, the Portuguese demolition of the North Koreans (who looked so strong against mighty Brazil) . . . . lots of great story lines throughout. [and for my money, I think Sam's posts on the Cup have been as good as anything I've been reading out there on the subject ...]

And I’m pretty happy so far with my pre-tournament predictions. I pegged Spain, Brazil, Argentina, and the Netherlands as potential winners, and they look like good choices thus far (though Spain still has some work to do to assure itself a place in the second round). “Italy looks old and tired, France anemic in attack, Germany unimpressive, and England . . . . well, England looks like England.” I think that was pretty prescient — except for the Germans, who look a lot better than I expected them to look. And also, as I predicted, the African teams were a mess – we may well have a round of 16 without a single African team in it, which would really be a shame.

(and with apologies to Paul Simon)
So here’s to you, Landon Donovan
The heavens are resounding with thy name, that’s what I’d claim.
What’s that you say, Mrs. Robinson?
Landon took the shot that won The Game.
Hey hey hey, hey hey hey …

We really wuz – er, were. A truly stirring US comeback from a 2-0 deficit in its game against Slovenia was spoiled by an indefensible and inexplicable call by the Malian referee, disallowing what would have been the Americans’ third goal. Replays from every conceivable angle confirmed what most viewers thought at the time — the only possible fouls that occurred were committed by the Slovenians on the Americans, particularly one defendenr who literally wrestled US midfielder Michael Bradley to the ground as the ball was coming into the box. But Bob Bradley, the US coach, had the right attitude after the game:

“Honestly I think that the set piece, most of what took place was that Slovenia players were holding our players. One player had his arms around Michael (Bradley), Michael was trying to break loose and a foul was called. I don’t know if that’s accurate. But that’s one version. There are moments when you are frustrated because you feel that situations have not been handled 100 percent correctly or fairly. But that’s how the game works sometimes. You move on.”

And speaking of moving on . . . the good news on the day for the US was that England’s dispiriting performance in its 0-0 draw with a surprisingly confident and skilled Algerian team means that the US has its fate in its hands, and is a pretty good bet to progress to the second round. The permutations are complicated but the bottom line is that the US goes through if it can beat the Algerians next week, regardless of what happens in the other game. Even if its a tie, we’d get through if (a) Slovenia beats England (which, from the looks of things so far, is eminently possible), or (b) England and Slovenia tie and England ends up with fewer total goals than the US. [Currently, we're ahead on that measure by 3-1]. So get your vuvuzuelas out, people!

Richard Epstein — whom I believe, if memory serves me, is quite persuasive when it comes to articulating the reasons why the common law has evolved towards greater and greater efficiency over time — is apparently unwilling to extend that line of reasoning to the rules of soccer. He’s got some suggestions for changing the rules to make “transform a flawed game.” It’s an interesting and little-remarked-upon phenomena surrounding the spread of soccerphilia in the U.S.; Americans, I have found, are remarkably free with their suggestions, once they get a taste of the beautiful game, for measures that should be taken to make it better. Every four years, I hear from friends how if they only made the goal bigger, or got rid of the offside rule, well, then it would really be fun to watch . . .

I don’t mean to be unfair to Prof. Epstein — perhaps his suggestions (two points for a goal from the run of play, 1 for a penalty kick goal; and a hockey-like system for penalties to replace the red card/yellow card scheme) come from long study and deep understanding of the game. But I suspect not. The proposals would quite fundamentally alter a game that — lest we forget — two or three billion people are currently in love with. Hmm. It takes a lot of confidence — or chutzpah — to come in and say: I have figured out a way to make this better.

[Thanks to ajr13 for the pointer]

… and dedicated to Tod Lindberg and his daughter Abbey.  Tod is editor of Hoover’s Policy Review and a foreign affairs guru and both Lindbergs are soccer fanatics.  I, on the other hand, can only say – further to the very interesting discussion from Ilya, et al. – that I know as little about soccer as about American sports.  I am hazy on how most of them are scored, to start with.  Leaving my inadequacies aside, however, Chris at OJ has a fascinating post on the intersection of soccer and international law, specifically the recognition of which places count as countries to be able to send teams, and what those who don’t count are doing instead.

Padania’s victory [over Kurdistan] was not in the football (American translation: “soccer”) World Cup being played in South Africa but in the one that was just played in Gozo. You know, the Viva World Cup, the tournament among the unrecognized states of the world.

The World Cup being played in South Africa is sponsored by FIFA, the Federation Internationale de Football Association, the governing body of international soccer that is an association of the national football leagues from around the world. But, as author Steve Menary put it, there are “the lands that FIFA forgot,” such as the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, Gozo, Occitania,Somaliland, and, of course, three-time world (?) champions Padania. (No Transnistria, but Sealand is an Associate Member.) The Viva World Cup is organized by the NF-Board (see also wiki), which may have originally stood for “Non-FIFA Board” but is now referred to as the “New Federation Board.”

In a recent post, I wrote that US pro sports have an important unappreciated advantage over international soccer. Unlike the latter, they are not organized in ways that fuel ethnic violence and provide prestige for oppressive regimes. Co-blogger David Post seems to concede my central point, but defends soccer anyway:

I think Ilya’s on to something here. What’s most interesting, to me, is that he describes this as an “advantage” of US sports. Another way to say what he’s saying: people around the world care about soccer in a way that is far deeper than the way most US fans care about their sports. It touches a much, much deeper chord, and, as a result, is much more bound up with all those things people care deeply about — religion, and politics, and honor, and the rest of it. I’ve said it before: soccer’s like life, and people care about it the way they care about their lives….. But to those of us who love soccer — all 2.75 billion or so of us — that’s not a bug, that’s a feature. Do US sports have an “advantage” because they lack this quality?? Depends how you measure these things. Ilya (like Jonathan Adler) has an unspoken theory of sport standing behind his comments: sports should take us away from the real world, it should provide us a respite from the ethnic tensions and religious divisions and political problems of the real world. I can see it — I just don’t share it. Sure, “promoting ethnic violence” and “providing propaganda fodder for repressive and corrupt governments” are bad things. But the way I see it, it’s a lot like love — many, many terrible things have happened over the centuries because of love, but “on balance” we’re better off for it…

The analogy to “love” doesn’t really work for me. We can’t have the beneficial aspects of love without accepting some of its negative consequences. By contrast, the US example shows that we can enjoy professional sports without linking it to nationalism, ethnic hostility, and propaganda for repressive regimes. Perhaps there is an extra level of additional enjoyment when sports is connected to these things. But I doubt it’s worth the cost, as measured in people killed in soccer riots, wars, and political repression. I would make the same point about love. Yes, love is great. But we nonetheless try to curb those aspects of it that lead to violence and oppression. For example, we punish jilted lovers who kill or harrass those who reject them. We don’t let them off merely because their actions are an understandable part of “life.”

Sports is like life, just as David says. And we should strive to accentuate the good in both, while eliminating the “many, many terrible things” as much as possible.

UPDATE: I also disagree with David’s view that the differences between international soccer and US pro sports have to do with the nature of the sports as such. Rather, they are consequences of the social and political organization of international soccer. If baseball or basketball were organized the same way, we would see similar results. Indeed, Fidel Castro’s regime has in fact tried to used baseball in much the same way that other dictatorships use soccer.

First, a word about co-blogger Ilya Somin’s interesting post “An Underappreciated Advantage of American Professional Sports Over International Soccer”“. Ilya describes an “important advantage of US pro sports over international soccer: soccer often promotes nationalist and ethnic violence and provides propaganda fodder for repressive or corrupt governments, while US pro sports (with extremely rare exceptions) do not.”

“European and Latin American soccer rivalries are commonly linked to nationalistic and ethnic antagonisms . . . Many European and especially Latin American soccer teams are also closely associated with governments. This often allows repressive and corrupt regimes to obtain propaganda benefits from the teams’ victories. . . . In the United States, by contrast, pro sports rivalries are based on geographic divisions that have little or no connection to deeper social antagonisms over race, religion, or political ideology. . . . US pro sports leagues are sometimes criticized for failing to engage the deeper loyalties of fans as much as soccer does in other countries. On balance, it’s actually a good thing that they don’t.”

I think Ilya’s on to something here. What’s most interesting, to me, is that he describes this as an “advantage” of US sports. Another way to say what he’s saying: people around the world care about soccer in a way that is far deeper than the way most US fans care about their sports. It touches a much, much deeper chord, and, as a result, is much more bound up with all those things people care deeply about — religion, and politics, and honor, and the rest of it. I’ve said it before: soccer’s like life, and people care about it the way they care about their lives. Why that is so is a very interesting question — I believe it is inextricably tied in some way to the very nature of the game itself, but I can’t yet quite articulate the full theory for that. But to those of us who love soccer – all 2.75 billion or so of us — that’s not a bug, that’s a feature. Do US sports have an “advantage” because they lack this quality?? Depends how you measure these things. Ilya (like Jonathan Adler) has an unspoken theory of sport standing behind his comments: sports should take us away from the real world, it should provide us a respite from the ethnic tensions and religious divisions and political problems of the real world. I can see it – I just don’t share it. Sure, “promoting ethnic violence” and “providing propaganda fodder for repressive and corrupt governments” are bad things. But the way I see it, it’s a lot like love — many, many terrible things have happened over the centuries because of love, but “on balance” we’re better off for it — as Lennon and McCartney (huge soccer fans, both of them, incidentally) put it: “I don’t care what they say, I won’t stay in a world without love.”

Back to the playing field. Some good news and some bad news, so far, out of South Africa. The bad news is that the early indications are there might really be problems with the new ball they’re using in the tournament. [As for why FIFA, in its infinite wisdom, feels it has to come up with a new ball design for each World Cup, you'll have to ask someone else - it is entirely inexplicable to me]. As is common before each World Cup, there’s been a lot of moaning and groaning about the new ball, particularly from goalkeepers, about the new ball, which is apparently more unpredictable in its flight than others. Most fans discount those complaints — but the first 5 games have provided a little evidence that there might be some problems with this ball. The scores so far: 1-1, 0-0, 2-0, 1-1, and 1-0. Could just be early-round nerves – but it does look to me like the strikers are having some problems keeping the ball under control. Free kicks, in particular — I don’t think there’s been a single one that hasn’t flown wildly over the goal, and these are some players whose abilities on free kicks is truly extraordinary. It’s a little worrisome

The good news, though, is that Lionel Messi was magical in Argentina’s first game. Messi’s the best, and by far the most entertaining through the sheer magnificence of his play, player in the world, though he has been largely out-of-sync when playing for the national team. But not yesterday — back to his old mesmerizing, jaw-dropping ways. He didn’t end up scoring, but only because of four astonishing saves by the Nigerian goalkeeper, Vincent Enyeama, who had what he himself described as the “game of his life.”

Good news, too, for the US, of course, courtesy of one of the most egregious errors by England’s keeper that you will ever see in a top-flight international soccer game. But the US deserved that result — even a 2-1 victory, which they almost pulled off, wouldn’t have been overly flattering; England looked uninspired in the extreme, and in my eyes their chances of winning this tournament went from very slim to none after yesterday’s performance.

This month, as two years ago, we have an interesting coincidence of a Celtics-Lakers NBA finals and a major international soccer tournament. In 2008, I wrote a post on the subject that I think is still relevant today:

The conjunction of the Celtics-Lakers NBA Finals and the European Soccer Championship [this year, the World Cup] led me to reflect on two important advantage of US pro sports over international soccer: soccer often promotes nationalist and ethnic violence and provides propaganda fodder for repressive or corrupt governments, while US pro sports (with extremely rare exceptions) do not.

European and Latin American soccer rivalries are commonly linked to nationalistic and ethnic antagonisms (e.g. – England vs. Germany, England vs. Ireland, Germany vs. Poland, etc.). Even the fan bases of teams in internal national soccer leagues often break down along ethnic lines. This conjunction of sports rivalries and nationalistic/ethnic rivalries often leads to violence. The most notorious example is the 1969 “Soccer War” between El Salvador and Honduras – a conflict which might have been funny except for the fact that 2000 people were killed and tens of thousands displaced from their homes. And there are many lesser cases of riots and other violence resulting from soccer games.

Many European and especially Latin American soccer teams are also closely associated with governments. This often allows repressive and corrupt regimes to obtain propaganda benefits from the teams’ victories. For example, the repressive Brazilian and Argentinian military governments of the 1970s increased their public support as a result of their national teams’ World Cup victories in 1970 and 1978. In Europe, Mussolini, Franco, and the communist government of the Soviet Union derived similar benefits from their teams’ successes. On a lesser scale, incompetent or corrupt local governments in Europe sometimes benefit from the victories of local clubs.

In the United States, by contrast, pro sports rivalries are based on geographic divisions that have little or no connection to deeper social antagonisms over race, religion, or political ideology. As a result, even the most heated US sports rivalries, such as the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry, rarely result in violence between fans of opposing teams – and never in the form of the large-scale soccer riots that we sometimes see in Europe, Asia, and Latin America…. The key difference is that there is no broader Boston-New York conflict that goes beyond the sports rivalry…..

And because US sports teams have relatively few associations with government (with the important exception of indefensible government subsidies for sports stadiums), politicians don’t benefit from their victories….

I’m not saying that there is anything intrinsically wrong with soccer as a sport. I enjoy baseball and basketball much more than soccer, but that is purely a matter of personal preference. Nor am I saying that Europeans and Latin Americans shouldn’t root for their soccer teams. The problem is not soccer as such, but the social and political organization of the sport in much of the world.

US pro sports leagues are sometimes criticized for failing to engage the deeper loyalties of fans as much as soccer does in other countries. On balance, it’s actually a good thing that they don’t.

Simon Kuper’s book Soccer Against the Enemy: How the World’s Most Popular Sport Starts and Fuels Revolutions and Keeps Dictators in Power is a good discussion of the interconnections between soccer, repressive regimes, and harmful nationalism. Kuper could have made his case even stronger had he given greater consideration to the propagandistic exploitation of international sports by communist regimes, which was on an even larger scale than that by right-wing dictators.

I don’t object to soccer fans wanting to enjoy the World Cup. I might even watch a game or two myself. But I’m going to spend the lion’s share of my sports-watching time this month chanting “Beat LA.” It’s less likely to be taken literally than some of the soccer slogans are.

I am, I admit, a total national anthem junkie, and one of the things I love about the World Cup is the way the anthems are featured. The Olympic award ceremony has a certain charm, with the flag being raised while the anthem of the winner is played. But for me, the Cup has more drama, with the teams lined up, heads high, each player with his hands on the shoulders of a youth player standing in front of him, the anthem playing and the ‘locals’ in the crowd (and, very often, the players) singing at top voice. It’s one thing that I have found most appealing at the international soccer games I’ve gone to (in Italy, Holland, and Israel), the way that the crowds get so passionate during the initial singing of the anthem. It’s something we Americans hardly ever do — we have a particularly difficult anthem to sing (though there have, to be sure, been some notably spectacular performances, see, e.g., http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU5AYcAhvyo), and we don’t have quite the tradition of public singing that others do. I tell you, sitting in the midst of 50,000 or so Italians all belting out their anthem molto fortissimo is a helluva way to start a soccer game. [I expect some good noise from the US fans at tomorrow's game -- apparently more US fans have bought tickets to the Cup this year than from any other country, and I'm hoping for a nice rousing rendition of the Stars and Stripes before they take the field against England].

Bowing to incessant popular demand, here’s the latest in my quadrennial guide to everything you need to know about the upcoming World Cup tournament. (OK, not really everything, but at least a bunch of interesting stuff). Even those of you who are, shall we say, less than captivated by the game itself should take the opportunity to get in the flow of things over the next month or so; there really is something pretty special about any World Cup, to taking part in something to which pretty much everyone in the world is paying attention, a chance to experience, if only vicariously, the passions that people bring to the sport and to their national teams. We Americans rarely (if ever) really experience the sort of national frenzy that will be the norm over the next month or so, when every day, starting on Friday, ordinary life in at least four countries (whoever’s teams are playings) comes to a complete standstill for 90 minutes or so; our national teams just don’t capture our collective imagination, even in sports we’re pretty crazy about (baseball, basketball), let alone in a sport we’re just coming (though we are coming) to care about. [Think US-Canada Olympic hockey final, happening twice a day – and even that doesn’t really begin to capture it] What to look for from amidst this abundance of riches?

Continue reading ‘World Cup 2010:’ »

[As VC's resident soccerphile, I am of course busily preparing myself for the World's Greatest (By Far) Sporting Event beginning next week in South Africa. I'll be posting regular reports on the games, all of which (along with this post) come with the following request: Those of you who seem unable to elevate your discourse or analysis above the level of "Soccer Sucks!!!" are gently requested to avoid anything and everything I write, if only for the sake of your blood pressure]

Co-blogger Jonathan Adler has suggested that baseball needs to increase its use of instant replay to correct blown calls (such as the one last night that deprived Armando Galarraga of his perfect game) to become more like hockey (which allows a wide range of replay review during stoppages in play). Here’s the sentence that caught my eye:

“The outcome of the game should turn on the performance of the players, not the performance of the referees.”

That may seem obvious, to some. But to my eye it is not obvious at all — and indeed soccer is the exception that disproves the rule.

First of all, how do we know what the outcome of a game “should” turn on? If Adler is simply saying: “I only like games in which the outcome turns entirely and exclusively on the performance of the players, and not the performance of the referees,” that’s fair enough. But he’s making a much more general, normative point about sports and games, and what they’re about, and I think he’s on thin ice.

Let’s take a look at some facts:

1. The outcome of soccer games turns on both the performance of the players and the performance of the referees. Even a casual soccer fan understands this point. Not only does soccer have no replays, it places all calls in the hands of a single referee (assisted by two assistants on the sidelines), who is responsible for following the actions of 22 players racing back and forth over a 110 yard field for 90 minutes. (Hockey and basketball, by contrast, with a lot less going on and a much, much smaller place to monitor, use 3 on-field refs; and football, of course, has an entire platoon of referees seemingly monitoring each and every player’s every movement). Soccer referees make mistakes — lots of them, every game. Everyone knows this. The Offside Rule is particularly problematic; a study published in Nature several years ago showed that almost 30% of the offside calls in a large sample of professional soccer games are erroneous. Handball calls, fouls, balls crossing or not crossing the touch lines, etc. – even the best refs blow them time and time again.

2. Soccer is, by orders of magnitude, the most popular sport in the world. Not merely in terms of participation (which can perhaps be explained simply on the basis of the ease with which a soccer game can be started — a ball, a little open space, a few rocks to mark off the goal, and at least 2 people willing to go at it), but as a spectator sport; I would guess that the number of people across the planet watching soccer on any given weekend (live or on TV) is somewhere between 100 and 10,000 times greater than for any other sport. An objective visitor from another planet would have to conclude: human beings love one particular sport, and are mildly fond of a number of others.

Now, these two facts may be unrelated to one another — but I am convinced they are not. It is — oddly and paradoxically, perhaps, but there you have it — part of the appeal of the game; the refs are actually a part of the game, and their performance gives you more to be angry about or amused by, and more to talk or argue about after the game is over. Nick Hornby had it right, in his wonderful novel “Fever Pitch”: one of the necessary ingredients of a truly great soccer game is that the ref makes a horrendous call against your team — a penalty against you, say, awarded on the basis of a patently-obvious flop inside the box — but you win anyway! Not something a football fan is likely ever to experience.

Adler’s claim really goes to the question of what games are about, and why we love them. Soccer is like life. It can be terribly, brutally unfair; if you have any Irish friends, ask them how they feel about the blatant handball that enabled France to defeat Ireland and make it to the World Cup finals. It’s full of error and mistake. We (soccer fans) don’t like it when refs blow calls, any more than we like the fact that life deals out tragedy seemingly at random, or that good and virtuous people don’t always get their just desserts. But it’s part of the game, and part of what we respond to in the game, part of why we care so passionately about it. Football and hockey and the rest of them try to eliminate that element from the game — good luck with that, by the way. Nothing a priori better or worse about either approach, I suppose – but when one starts to talk about what sports should or should not have, perhaps the principle of vox populi, vox dei should inform our judgments.