Four: Germany Wins The World Cup-- What Does it Mean?

People say “It’s the USA versus Mexico tonight.” In every World Cup, England always end up playing a country that they once fought in a war or had colonized. That comes from identifying with a long history that includes a large empire. I suppose some match-ups are not as fraught. New Zealand versus Italy or Ivory Coast versus Japan come to mind. Some match-ups are exciting for strictly footballing reasons, like Germany versus Argentina. Germany's story of its self is very closely linked to the sport. 

     Let’s take West Germany’s 1954 World Cup victory in Berne. Called “Das Wunder von Bern” Germany now re-enters the world stage. There is a way to participate in the international community again. The defeat and corruption of the Nazis will only haunt the country so long. This final was the first time the German National Anthem had been played at an international event since World War Two.

 

1954 Germany in White and Hungary in Black.
Morlock scores for Germany. Source: Getty Images

   German characteristics were often cited in explaining the victory. Adidas had invented a new boot with screw-in studs so you could keep the same boot on in muddy weather. Teamwork, diligence, and technology will get Germany out of its troubles. Das Wunder von Bern is part of the story of the Wirtschaftswunder. The Cold War also comes into play as Germany beat a Hungarian team widely considered one of the most skillful ever.[1] A cold rain is sometimes still called “Fritz Walter weather” after the captain of this team. 

     There are hundreds of examples of soccer matches invested with narrative implications. Polish fans remember a match on July 3^rd 1974 that they call “Der Wasserschlacht” the “Water Slaughter”.

A whole day of rain created conditions that were widely said to give Germans an advantage. Germany did win the match, knocking Poland out of the tournament. I was very struck when I found out that Polish television replayed this entire match right before showing a recent encounter between these two teams in the 2008 European Championship. How could anyone invest themselves in such grief? 

     France’s World Cup 1998 winning side is celebrated as a triumph for the multicultural vision of France. (The story of Zidane became the stuff of obsession because a multi-colored France won in France.) It would be hard now to win with a racist understanding of any national team. Jean-Marie Le Pen stated that he would

rather have a team composed of “actual” Frenchman. The team signed a statement that they would not play for France if Le Pen won the French presidential election. The team represents the country and its composition forces a debate. Debating the national team gets people talking to each other who otherwise do not meet.

     Similarly, many Americans have recently learned of the existence of Black Germans as the US national team has recruited among the children and grandchildren of Americans.

     

I was struck by an article Ogo Sylla on Howler magazine’s website that argues that the 2014 Men’s World Cup is the first German victory that “means nothing”.[1] Sylla calls this the "first apolitical victory in it's soccer history." 
It is hard to argue that this victory meant more than the one in 1954 but stories will be told. Right before the World Cup Final, David Goldblatt places the German team in the “real-world” context that informs the sporting narrative:

Germany, finally emerging as what it has been for decades, the pre-eminent European power, has a football team to match its ambitions and its character: brilliantly organised but instantly flexible, individually accomplished but telepathically networked, technically superior to the Brazilians in touch, positioning and anticipation. Yet they carry other German traits too: a collective solidarity that disdains the egotistical, and a realistic conservatism about an uncertain world, for no one feels victory is assured. (“The World Cup is Political Theater of the Highest Order” the Guardian 11 July 2014)

Ogo Sylla is arguing that this German victory is, unlike some earlier matches, neither changing the self-assessment Germany has or its international reputation. There is no Zero hour in the recent past nor is there a Cold War in the present. But the idea that Germany has it figured out in a world of chaos is not the worst message to put out. There is a reason Angela Merkel showed up for so many pictures with the team. 
     Sylla describes the narrative as wholly soccer-based. But look at his final two paragraphs. 

Following the country’s failure at the 2000 European Championships, Germany heavily overhauled its soccer infrastructure. The DFB integrated more immigrants into its academies — facilitated by the reform of the German nationality law in 1999 — to improve the selection pool, which opened the path to the likes of Lukas Podolski and Miroslav Klose (Polish descent), Mesut Özil and Sami Khedira (Turkish descent) and even Mario Gomez (Spanish descent), among others.  

Maybe this absence of any added significance in victory has helped Germany focus better on their objective: winning. At least, compared to Brazil, the difference was clear as day. Unlike the hosts who were all emotion, Germany had been all business. 

What is submitted as "all business" and "apolitical" is highly political. Germany is winning because it has become cosmopolitan. 
     Sylla is not one hundred per cent accurate, though international immigration is confusing. Germany would have issued passports (if not full citizenship) to all of these players. Klose and Poldoski were Aussiedler and had a right to citizenship based on German ancestry. Mesut Özil is a third-generation German and Khedira (of Tunisian descent) and Gomez have German parents. The path was not opened by new immigration laws. This team is marked by the Europeanization of Germany. Look at the picture with Merkel and our idea of what it means to be German is shown to have shifted. (This move is one of the reasons Germany has weathered a few economic storms it should be said.) 
     This raises the question of how important a World Cup should be. I have been arguing that creative fans should write the stories that work and that ought to be told. Goldblatt is an excellent example of this, though some of the debtor countries in Europe may not be as impressed with Germany's economic achievement. Sylla's tone reminds us that we should have an ironic stance towards all narratives that hold sport up next to the world. Once a result is used to explain the outer-soccer context, we should look back into the soccer context. After all, if Mario Götze had just hiccuped, we would have told a story of Argentina recovering from a currency crisis. If that didn't work, then we would have told a story of a very resolute team. Or we would have deified Messi. 
     I am ready to welcome these big stories if irony is brought to bear. However, the fact that FIFA denies glory to the women's game gives the ironist the upper hand.

FIFA spent more money on a movie United Passions about the history of its executives than it would cost to lay down sod for the upcoming Women's World Cup. I have not seen this movie but one can see where the glory-priority lies. Matches played on artificial turf have a lower-league feel just like the ding of an aluminum bat gives a baseball game a lower-league feel. FIFA says that Canada won the bid and they might use turf for men in the future. FIFA failed to get a good bid. They only got two and the other was from Zimbabwe. They could have said that and tried again. FIFA may well know that if Russia or Qatar insist on turf for every pitch, the tournament will be denounced. Instead of fibbing, FIFA could make it a priority to give the women's game some of this story-telling power. Make it look right. 

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[1] Ogo Sylla, “For Germany, For Once, It Means Nothing: previous triumphs were fraught with political overtones but the 2014 champions will be remembered solely for their soccer” Howler at http://www.howlermagazine.com/germany-means-nothing/

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[1] See Deutsche Welle, “Mourning the Miracle of Berne”   http://www.dw.de/mourning-the-miracle-of-bern/a-948399-1. Like many people I also would refer to David Goldblatt’s The Ball is Round [ref and ppg.]. This title quotes Sepp Herberger, the manager of this German team. 

The Tail Wags the Dog... Again. This Time an Ethicist Falls to the College Sports Crazy Machine

The headline in the Chronicle of Higher Education:

The Ethicist Who Crossed the Line

Brad Wolverton reports that Jan Boxill, a philosopher at UNC-Chapel Hill, head of one of their Ethics Centers has been complicit in steering athletes into fake classes that included no attendance or evidence of learning or writing of any kind.

This really makes me sick.

I have a little bit to say about Jan Boxill. The Chronicle article, by the way, is deeply flawed. Click here to read the Guardian and to find links to the actual report.

Jan Boxill was an important source in philosophy and sport, in particular ethics and sport. I've benefited from her work. She also was apparently a fixture in UNC campus life. The school decided to pretend many, many, athletes who could not pass a class were students. She would have had to defy the school to reveal the truth. The administration could have caught this if they ever looked into it. Jan Boxill's work will now be harder to read.

As someone trying to read and write philosophy of sport, I can tell you that there already is a problem with it being taken seriously. This will not help.

We know that ad hominem arguments are invalid. We know that she may well have been correct while writing about ethics and sport while all wrong as an advisor. But actually, there may not need to be as strong a divide drawn between her theoretical work and her work subordinating education to athletics. In fact, a running theme in her work is an explanation of why sport fascinates. She considers playing to be a free, creative, act of the sort that the world of work fails to provide.

Sport, I maintain, fascinates for many reasons, including its beauty and its display of morally heroic virtues.  Human beings admire the beauty and grace in sport; they are moved by the discipline of the best athletes; and often it is the heroism and courage in sport that they applaud, not the violence which occasion the display of these virtues. (Jan Boxill, "Introduction: The Moral Significance of Sport"; in Sports Ethics: An Anthology; Jan Boxill, ed.; Malden, MA: Blackwell; 2003.) 

Boxill writes very well about why sport presents virtue and often presents a microcosm of the society that organizes sports. Boxill's description of the fascination the game poses for the player and the viewer cannot be trumped by her ethical lapse. Her descriptions help explain it. I often state that "it is the beauty that makes us insane" when it comes to sport.

I can't imagine anyone trusting UNC Chapel Hill if all they do is fire Jan Boxill and one other deceitful professor (who organized classes no one attended) and then say sorry. But these high-revenue programs steer the school. I couldn't imagine anyone going to Penn State after they merely lost a couple of coaches and their president. Penn State still has the football program that steered the whole school crazy. Penn State and UNC are not structurally different from all those other schools where the tail wags the dog.

from laxmagazine.com

An aside: Fandom entails an emotional connection. Who could go cheer for a team once used as a child rape magnet? That Nittany Lions logo was in the locker room. Being a fan there will require deflection and denial-- not good virtues for a school. This makes it harder for me to watch schools with the same structure play games. Some people aren't going but those who challenge the culture at Penn State-- which was cited as a problem in Louis Freeh's report-- are often threatened.

While the Penn State scandal, the rally to support football there, and the lack of consequences is on another level, the UNC fake credit scheme is outrageous. UNC conducted a massive scam. 3,000 students got college credit for a class they did not attend. Boxill was not their fake professor but she was advisor to many of them. She knew what was going on. She was earlier the elected Chair of Faculty and served as the director of the schools' Parr Center for Ethics. Her time as head of faculty has ended and she has, naturally, been replaced at the Parr Center. The press release has no explanation and is signed by a dean who still has some explaining to do.

Boxill may well have seen herself as helping students she liked. An e-mail of hers shows her lobbying for a "D" for a student who has finished playing and needs to graduate-- and who had plagiarized the paper. She liked student athletes and explains why in her work. This sort of things happens outside of sport as well. Of course, in helping students she liked, she harmed students who would have used their scholarships to, you know, learn things. She also harmed professors who want students to, you know, learn things.

I hate to be sarcastic here. I do not want to see Jan Boxill thrown under the bus. Her e-mail exchange was bad but that stuff happens now and then. We should note that many, many, on-line classes are open to similar abuse. Not all work is done by the student who gets the credit. How does the instructor know? This isn't treated as the obvious scandal.

I was reluctant to mention Jan Boxill's husband, Bernard Boxill, but his name will come up. I would doubly hate to see very good work on his part called into question. His book, Blacks and Social Justice was written in the eighties but still constitutes an excellent introduction to political philosophy and proof that it can be clarifying and relevant. I read it as a new grad student and it kept me going. Almost every anthology on race and philosophy has included a good essay from Bernard Boxill. While there is no reason to besmirch this work, which covers issues like economic distribution, the history of African-American political thought, international obligations, affirmative action and reparations, I worry that this will happen anyway.

And Jan Boxill's work still deserves a critical read. Just because she lost sight of priorities doesn't mean she can't help us see the motivation for putting up with such madness. Deans, the president, and the NCAA have a lot to answer for. Would they have found this fake class if they wanted to. Upton Sinclair once said "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

Blaming the Ethics of Care

When I worry about Bernard Boxill and African-American Studies getting an unfair deal, I can only point to the treatment given the "ethics of care" which is cited as a potential source of Jan Boxill's loss of moral compass. The author Brad Wolverton cites Richard Southall who is a sports management professor who had written in her anthology. (No philosopher was contacted for this article.)

Southall says to Wolverton that Boxill argued that the ethics of care should be mentioned alongside other approaches in a book that she edited on sports and ethics. And then either Southall and Wolverton or just Wolverton speculate.

But the ethics of care should be featured in a book on sports ethics. It is an important debate in ethics. In fact, I have not seen Jan Boxill argue for the ethic of care, though there is much there that I have not read. (If anyone knows let me know.) The fact that she argue for its inclusion is no evidence that she believed in it or that it warped her.

The ethic of care arose in some feminist philosophical circles and argued that care can be as strong a source for ethics as justice. Many feminists were not on board. There was a very rich debate about the place of care in ethics and its potential to fill in where justice-based ethics were too abstract or otherwise skewed.

If only there were sources on the ethics
of care...

If you blame something, you ought to describe it. Here is the ethics of care according to a piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education:

"In a nutshell, Mr. Southall said, the ethics of care puts the needs of an individual foremost, looking out for what’s in his or her best interests."

No it doesn't. In fact, I would not be surprised if Mr. Southall did not say this and Brad Wolverton just couldn't follow. If Wolverton knew anything about philosophy, he would not have considered this quote evidence. The ethics of care does not entail exploiting people on behalf of those you care about. Sure, there are "duties of care" that family members have towards each other, teachers have for students, and advisors would have for advisees. But care does not trump all fairness. If your interpretation of something is crazy town, you ought to re-investigate.

A concept rooted in feminism is  given a skewed description (again) and then it is blamed for corruption. To be more accurate-- it is a possible source of corruption. Is it? Philosophy and feminism are often interpreted as if its adherents were weak or nonsensical. Look at that quote. Would you attribute strong thinking to someone who argued that care could justify deceit and a general mocking of education. Did I mention no philosophers were contacted for this article? The Chronicle should apologize.

Is Caring for Athletes Even Remotely the Problem?

Caring about sports might cloud your judgment. Caring for students wouldn't lead to the world of big time college sports. These students practice for hours and often aren't given classes they need because everyone is pretending they are qualified to attend a college. If the SEC and other big schools weren't bringing them in, the very talented could prove their athletic skills while acquiring skills in reading in writing at a Community College or a minor league team with a literacy program. Caring for sport is not the same as caring for students.

There is a reason the school puts an adjunct in charge and not someone with the security that tenure would provide. Tenure is not just an award for academic labor. It holds up a light to shady corners. We should remember John Dewey's arguments when the AAUP campaigned to formalize tenure in the early 20th century. Dewey cared more about promoting public conversation that private perks for professors.

That the school used an Afro-Am department this way is extra sickening. Most Afro-Am courses I know about are too rigorous for most Freshman, it should be said here and will have to be said again. UNC allowed a scam artist to become chair of the African-American studies department. Other Black studies programs already face problems being taken seriously. African-American studies grads at UNC should call a lawyer.

The small uptake: Why on God's green earth would a college be able to keep a scholarship athletics program after this? Suspend it. "Why punish all the student athletes?" UNC should be required to keep funding them at UNC or wherever they transfer. That would be called an adequate punishment. Suppose I were to say "Such a scholarship would give them more time to study." You may well have thought "They don't want that." That perception is poisonous to a school. Actually, I can list quite a few athletes who clearly benefited from their education. This is not a lost cause. Schools can just learn to live without players who can't attend real classes or write their own papers.

This ad popped up in a search. You can love a
game and still tell the truth about it.

Some more objections: "You can't suspend the football program. They want to be athletes at UNC." I bet they do. They can't have it at the expense of schooling. "Students demand athletics and will transfer." UNC ought to be punished. If a serious review of athletic practices were to happen, these students could wander like Cain. Intramural or non-scholarship athletics wouldn't be banned. I know its not the same but you cannot have the same after all this mess.

3,000 people in a fake class. I have students who hear this exists (and hear it defended by sports commentators) and it poisons them. Students think they are suckers for not cheating. They are outraged when I don't let them do it over. Don't let UNC do it over.

The OSU marching band forms the eye of Sauron

The big uptake: All schools with big revenue programs need to acknowledge that the pressure has gotten poisonous. Phase out this imbalance in power. The NCAA lists how many student athletes there are in an effort to argue that these incidences are rare. They are not that rare. There have been well-documented rapes. There have been riots after games. Vulnerable adjunct professors are pressured and fan professors are found in order to dig up favors and fake credits. I don't know exactly how but phase this out. Schools are playing with fire when it comes to the programs. The desires of alumni and students and administrators are distorting judgments.

The Pumas in Mexican Soccer bear the name
of the Autonomous National University of
Mexico and they play near campus. Fans tend
to be alumni or students. But the players are
pros and not required to be students and no one
at the school has to pretend anything.

If the Cardinals can represent "Saint Louis"
with no residency requirement for players,
why can't the "Tarheels" represent the
UNC with no pretend academic requirements?

One possible answer: License out the name of the university to pro teams. The SEC could just stop pretending they are looking for students. (As part of the deal, give the players tuition when they are finished playing ball.) Schools would probably raise more money this way. Another possibility: pro leagues could start a minor league as an option for athletes who don't want to be in or can't handle college. Or both. There may be other fixes. Just quit pretending this isn't a nightmare.

Most objections just assume this cannot change. But it can. There are other games to watch and people will watch them if these disasters keep happening.

I've had a few friends with kids looking at colleges. I don't have a lot of particular college advice. Personal preferences matter. Big school/ small school. Big city/ small town. Whatever floats the kid's boat. But stay away from all schools with big revenue sports programs.

I've liked every coach I've met who works in a school where the programs make more sense. No scholarships but you lose your place on the team if you can't get decent grades. I put it in my syllabus that I will contact the coach if a student tells me that the sport has made them too busy to finish an assignment. Coaches promote attendance. This helps me teach.

Not one European college president or admin has ever had to deal with an athletics scandal. Think how much head space and time that leaves for school. You know, for learning things.

Ghost Robot and 8x8 Magazine reproduce three great moments in the 2014 World Cup. 

#1 is unadorned.

#2 and #3 are little masterpieces.

The World Cup has slowed down my writing. More is to come.

Soccer as Dialogue

Jennifer Doyle shows how its done. She lays out a great virtue in team USA. 

http://thesportspectacle.com/2014/06/23/art-of-conversation/

Three: From Headbutt to Worldview The Match Must Represent SOMETHING

Zidane’s Headbutt. I screamed when I saw it.

Trash talk, like Materazzi's, is an interesting ethical topic. If it is appropriate on the pitch can it be appropriate in other workplaces? Headbutting someone is easy for an ethicist- only in self-defense, unless the rest of the contact that the game permits changes the circumstances. I will let others work out the ethics that should bind the athlete. I want to look at this event, one of the most well-known in the world, from the point of view of the interpreter. 

I can think of no better example of the need to invest representative force onto sporting events. Interpreters pushed hard against what turned out to be the strongest interpretation-- an exhausted athlete flipped out. But no one just left it at that. That would just cancel out so much of what makes a World Cup Final an event. Every World Cup Final poses the possibility of someone moving from one level of glory to another. The headbutt stopped Zidane from apotheosifying. And he was close: 

The score for the 1998 final had been projected throughout the match. France 3 Brazil 0 was the final score. "Zizou's" face and "We Love You" are then writ on the Arc De freaking Triomphe

I am writing this during the 2014 World Cup, two days after Uruguay beat England and it looks like Luis Suarez could well be elevated from great player to an avatar of Coyote, the trickster. A spot made by ESPN has just asserted that Messi will become a Messiah if wins the Cup for Argentina. Zidane was almost there. If he had scored a goal (he came close earlier) or if had just waited and scored during penalty kicks... While he remains admired, his headbutt cost him the match and an entire level of glorification. 

Maradona’s “hand of God” fits a narrative, especially after his second goal of the match. He brought his handball into the narrative, explaining that he enjoyed it most because England deserve it, citing their control of the “Malvinas” also known as the “Falkland Islands” a tiny sheepapelago that was referenced again by the Argentine team leading up to this years’ tournament.

Real estate cannot account for the value placed on these islands by Argentina and by the United Kingdom. Narratives can make a few islands, or a desert, into something you kill for.

(Given that we are poised to subsume ourselves into these stories, perhaps it is good that there is a way to do this with sport? Or is it bad that something like sport can foster a national narrative?) 

Zidane had led France further than most guessed they would go. He was playing like he did when younger. This was his last match as a player. He certainly played beautifully. His sort of skill doesn't fit well alongside any image of rage. So, what happened? Everything we see is interpreted in reference to a background. Sometimes the background determines the interpretation of the event. Sometimes the event pushes us back to revise our background convictions. 

Julie Foudy said it well on ABC's post-game discussion. I am using my memory and could not find a link to the video but she says right way that (1) Zidane just wasn't thinking at that point and that (2) Materazzi must have said something that makes sense of Zidane’s massive sporting mistake. 

There are always details that conspire to make a moment become big. Materazzi did say something and then Zidane delivers the hit. Also, the visual was incredible. Zidane is always well-poised and Materazzi sold the hit. Before we heard from the players, media used this opening . 

Media sources claimed that they had hired lipreaders and then produced different projections onto the moment. Lip readers depend a lot on context to do their work. Importantly, they would not know for sure if Zidane were speaking French or Italian or Spanish. or English. 

Yet many papers reported that Materazzi called Zidane the “Son of a terrorist whore”. I remember verbally passing that one on. Another claimed Materazzi wished an ugly death on Zidane’s family. Another claimed that Materazzi called Zidane a “harkis” which refers to Arab supporters of the French regime in Algeria. (Materazzi would not know this, by the way.) 

Both players have confirmed that Materazzi said nothing racial or particularly vicious. Materazzi had pulled on Zidane's shirt. Zidane said, I'll give you my shirt after the match. Materazzi said, "I prefer the whore that is your sister." Headbutt. Worse things have been said on the pitch. Something so childish just doesn't rank up there with the sort of thing that morally mandates a physical strike, never mind one that costs the World Cup and pharoanic sorts of glory. (By the way, sexist language should be banned and the word "whore" should probably be on the list of terms that get you punished. The point still stands. You finish the game.) 

When ejected, Zidane had to walk right past the World Cup Trophy. So close. 

1998

2006

I forget which match it was earlier in the tournament but I remember someone telling a referee that Zidane had fouled him. Zidane looked at the ref and pointed to the name on his back. This is to say "I am not a mere player. I don't foul people. Zidane does not need to." 

Great players benefit from their renown. In the English Premier League, Manchester United gets a little extra time if they are behind one goal. The referees don't mean to do this. They are operating in a world in which demi-gods do not foul to win and in which Manchester United always get late goals. This sense of privilege may well have played a role. Zidane had scored in this final match. Materazzi ought not to have equalized and he should not be talking to him like one player to another. 

Zidane still maintains that there was cause for the headbutt. He has apologized to everyone for what they saw, particularly to "the children". The exception is Materazzi, “to him I cannot. Never, never. It would be to dishonour me.I'd rather die. There are evil people, and I don't even want to hear those guys speak." Good versus Evil instead of two millionaire athletes losing the plot. Many fans think there must be something else to all of this. 

As a viewer, I can see the headbutt interfering with the story of a players rise to immortality. There may be other stories at stake in the background. 

Yasmin Jiwani writes about a French constitutional order and a set of social practices that could integrate, Black, White, Arab, Berber, Basque, Pacific Islanders and others. There is an imperative to show that all of these people can become French and comfortably identify with each other as such. 

(Jiwani does not mention the French debate over legally permitting women to wear the hijab in public but I am always struck by many commentators who just can't separate the right to wear something from an assessment of what it means. Public loyalty should not depend on too much private allegiance to common, but not-public norms. This topic might take more time than I am giving it. I still think it is a shame that so many people think a hijab would make you less French.) 

Jiwani argues that Zidane represents the benefits multiculturalism provides for France as a whole and also for the benefits posed by the French constitutional order for those communities that are called upon to identify themselves as French, even if that requires negotiation. 

Zidane came from one of the banlieus,  the name for the towns that surround the big cities. The area where he grew up was La Castellane, just outside of Marseille. You'd have been advised not to visit there. He expressed pride in being Algerian and Berber and French. He was widely hailed as the best player in the world. The 1998 team had members from African, the French Carribbean, the Pacific, Algeria, the Basque country, and players who were uncontested in their Frenchness. 

One player, Lillian Thuram was then and remains, a Black Frenchman, born in Guadeloupe, who is intellectually gifted and a resolute anti-racist activist. Check out this interview with him. 

Jean-Marie Le Pen complained that the team was not actually French. In 2002,  Le Pen, with around 16% of the vote, got into a run-off with Jacques Chirac for the Presidency. Many members of the French national team, including Zidane, signed a statement that they would not play for France if Le Pen had won. While Le Pen’s victory was unlikely, this was a resolute statement that a multi-cultural France is on strong footing. If a sport is going to do good in the world, statements need to be made that are this explicit. 

The headbutt is followed by an economic crisis. French voters seem to be flailing about, no longer sure of their arrangements. They are unsure about Europe and unsure about a mulit-cultural, rights-based, constitution. 

Very recently, there has been a rise in National Front votes. Zidane ought not to be blamed. He has recovered his reputation over time. The rest of his career is noted. He still works for Real Madrid, a team whose glory is linked to a murky past. 

Jean-Marie Le Pen’s daughter leads the party and has distanced it from her father, who has been making Nazism-referencing jokes. Her policies though are predicated on a strong idea of who is French and who is not. The French are white people who are French. I can’t make their worldview much more plausible than that. They are contemptible schmucks. 

A country always has multi-cultural narratives at its disposal. There is no place on earth that has been able to lean back on a single culture that settles questions about how to handle the present. These are in contention everywhere. Even authoritarian regimes had to go back to the drawing board. 

The facts do not fix the narrative. The facts combined with the background do not fix the narrative. The narrative is re-written by a community with a history and a set of desires. 

I leave Yasmin Jiwani's depiction of France's understanding of self and return to the premature end of a story of ascent.  

Marco Materrazzi had an incredible World Cup final. He scored the goal to equalize and got Zidane sent off. Yet, he does not appear in lists of the “greatest ever”. (He might in Italy.) That is because he killed the story that 2006 was set up to tell.

The idolization of the greatest athletes is the product of centuries of technology. The stadium was developed over great periods by the ancient Greeks and Romans. These stages and theatres proved so electrifying that they were featured in every sizable colony. Plato thought they should regulated with all the severity one would control a nuclear power plant. 

Roman Amphitheater in Nimes, France.
Source Donald, R. Wonders of Architecture (New York, NY: Charles Scribner & Co., 1871)

Fascism tapped into these technologies to secure political allegiance. The Olympics and the World Cup have run with fascist aesthetics for the purpose of allegiance to a spectacle. The lighting of the torch was first done at Garmisch-Partenkirchen in front of a cordon of swastikas. Zidane’s headbutt was staged at Berlin’s Nazi-built Olympiastadion. It is incredible that the final was staged in the same stadium used for the Nazi Olympics. But it had the right shape and scale for the event.

1936 Olympiastadion. Source: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-R82532; Foto:Hoffmann 

2006 Same Stadium Used for the World Cup Final
Source: © Partner für Berlin/FTB-Werbefotografie

These are hard points for a fan to take. There is a thin line between riding the wave of drama and spectacle and being duped by the drama and spectacle. 

These are beautiful events. The beauty is what tempts us to go insane. 

Television has added another dimension. We shared the headbutt with half of the world’s population. FIFA has a slogan—One World, One Game. It’s kind of creepy, really. Is that really the goal? What’s wrong with Cricket and Muggle Quidditch and Curling? 

Having one game for the whole world makes an apotheosis plausible. 

David Goldbatt, in his The Ball is Round, reminds us that a section of the Popol Vuh, a Mayan Saga has mortals compete in a ball game alongside the gods. 

See Michael E. Whittington The Sport of Life and Death: The Mesoamerican Ballgame. Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte, North Carolina.2001.

The Indian author Nalinaksha Battacharya has a wonderful scene in which a Hindu holy man tells the story of a man and a woman who are brought in as ringers for a match against the asuras.” Narad says “We can easily camouflage these mortals as gods.” ("Hem and Football" in The Global Game; U of Nebraska Press; 2008. 10-15.) 

There is something about a ball. 

Sometimes we see the life of a retired player and it can be disappointing to see them as mere bourgeois mortals. I have trouble when seeing the home of a current god of the realm and not finding stacks of books. And then some of them tell us about their political and religious opinions…

The glorification goes way beyond the player’s actual (and impressive) (and beautiful) achievements. Glorification also runs up against the brute fact that a tremendous amount of the game is luck. If Zidane had scored on a header earlier in the match, he may have been engraved on the pantheon. 

If Rooney had been a few inches over on two of his shots two nights ago. (Rooney has always struggled against the premature announcement of his impending apotheosis. It is also hard to imagine seeing him as a supernatural being. Being merely a world-class player, he is labeled a disappointment. His failings will be cited in explaining England’s early exit, which is ridiculous.) 

Have we set this goal of an entire planet watching one match every four years and following one sport between those matches because we live in a disenchanted world, one in which gods no longer serve to explain the weather, the stars, or the movements of money or power?

Is it possible to love the game and not believe in it in quite this way?

For some, this is clearly a tight rope. 

Even though the anti-climactic truth about the headbutt was revealed, a sixteen-foot statue of the moment was unveiled at the Centre Pompidou in September 2012. 

It was put on display in Qatar in October of 2013. Qatar is scheduled to host the World Cup in 2022. They have invested huge amounts of money already and see the event as a way of putting itself on the global map. The sculpture was removed after about 20 days because local conservative Islamic leaders denounced it as idolatrous. 

They have a point. 

I will argue later that a sense of irony is essential for anyone who watches the game. Cultivating irony will enable one to experience the drama of the matches, which depend on the interplay of moment and narrative, while not letting those narratives have a hold on conclusions one reaches due to the game. 

One should either “leave it all on the pitch” or consciously tell good stories, ones that ought to be told. 

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See Amy Lawrence's recent piece on the headbutt, including a re-print of Kevin McCarra's Guardian article at the time.