Life during, and after, the World Cup

Like an unopened suitcase left to lie on the closet floor after coming home from a cooling beach, a stamp of denial about vacation being truly over, I have put off finishing this blog, unwilling to bid farewell to World Cup 2010, now entering the second week following its finale.

But since much of what I read and saw in media and heard among friends this time around bore an unmistakeable air of translating-between-cultures, a sort of  this-is-our-ritual-and-this-is-what-it-means, I wanted to leave off with a note about why millions bear what one Facebook page called “Post-World Cup Depression.”

The thing is — and the idea is a sort of cliché perhaps — the World Cup is more than a sporting event, and the 20 percent or so foreign-born residents of Las Vegas, plus their family members who may have been born here, and many others, follow the monthlong marathon with a series of emotions more varied and complex than a simple interest in who wins or loses.

Doug Unger, UNLV English professor, fine writer and sharp observer of culture helped crystallize these ideas for me a few days after the dramatic July 11 final match. Unger was born in the U.S. but destiny led him to spend part of his youth with a family that adopted him in Argentina, one of the most fútbol-mad  countries in the world, its Buenos Aires home to 24 professional teams.

Unger’s house was not much different from tens of thousands in the valley from June 11 to July 11 in the way its inhabitants were transformed during the once-every-four-years event. As he noted, it was the one time he spoke frequently with his family in Buenos Aires and old friends, burning the long distance wires with match highlights as well as personal news. And so it was with many of the 1-in-4 heads of household in Las Vegas who are foreign-born. And with me as well; during the World Cup my e-mails and texts bore the same mix of sport and love. 

I remember a young Brazilian woman I interviewed in a club on Flamingo Road at half-time during the Brazil-Ivory Coast match. She had just finished recalling the painful isolation of her first two years in the U.S., more than a decade ago, still a teenager. Now she feels a part of life here and embraces English and the “colder, less friendly culture” — as she put it — that comes with the tongue. But during the World Cup, with every match that Brazil plays, she waits for her cellphone to ring; it’s her father and sister in Rio calling before and after gametime, and they trade news, and send good luck to their selecao.  

That sort of connection to loved ones fades, of course, with the event’s end, and lies dormant for four more years, like a bulb in the ground waiting for rain.

The other thing Doug mentioned that rung true: nearly every one of the billion or so adults who follow the World Cup played football through childhood and perhaps beyond. Or, their brothers, fathers, uncles and cousins kicked a ball every day while growing up, even within the four walls of the house, drawing the inevitable yells of Mother. Many of those people, as children, dreamed of being on the fields broadcast from different time zones every four years.

“I remember what it was like to make a good, clean sliding tackle,” Unger said to me. “And that comes back to me when I’m watching the games.” That’s different from American football, basketball, or baseball, where it’s not necessarily true that the overwhelming majority of the people watching a championship also have played the sport for thousands of hours.

So in some ways the World Cup also takes people of the world back to their childhoods.

And then there’s the getting-together, the association with strangers, sometimes not even linked by country, but perhaps only solidarity with one or another country whose team is on the pitch.

Say, for example, Ghana. Being the only African team to advance to the round of 16, they found themselves representing all of Africa, during the first World Cup to be played in Africa. So their matches were an excuse for perfect strangers to come together, united by being African, as seen in an Ethiopian restaurant in the Strip’s shadow called Meskerem. 

As Ghana’s last match ended in tragic disorder, the African team eliminated by penalty kicks, a lanky, round-faced Sudanese named Chuol stared at the screen in Meskerem while the camera panned the crowd, full of African faces. He exhaled deeply. “I wish I was there,” he said.

Of course, Argentinians also filled Rincon de Buenos Aires on Spring Mountain Blvd. to standing-room-only during every one of their beloved team’s matches, even the one that began at 4:30 AM, and so rekindled their culture for a few hours, assisted by steaming-hot empanadas, cold Quilmes beers or frothy cappucinos.   

So the World Cup is a chance to eat, drink, sing and maybe dance, with strangers, united by connections to a place, and memories of that place, or even solidarity with someone else’s connections and memories.

This is the mystical part of soccer as a sport, then — that it can carry the weight of all these emotions in a global tournament, and much of the world takes part.

I’m glad my two sons have lived this and will continue to do so, I’m sure; I hope their children do the same.

And now I’ve unpacked the suitcase, and it’s back to work, and to life between World Cups.

A Few More Words on Style, hours before the final match

A few hours before the final curtain call, the end of it all, the last roll of the ball…the issue of style comes back to mind.

To me it is nothing less than a triumph for football, or soccer, that Spain and the Netherlands should be in the final.

Now much has been written in recent days, in the typical copycat style newspapers on deadline tend to employ, about how Dutchman Johann Cruyff is the invisible hand, as it were, behind the World Cup final 2010, having helped create similar styles in both countries over a period of four decades beginning in the 1970s, first as player and then as coach. (An early example in the parade of stories on this appeared in the Wall Street Journal July 8: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703636404575353251442811016.html?mod=WSJ_worldCup_Left_TopStories).

And while Cruyff’s influence is undeniable, it is also to be recalled the none other than Brazil coach Dunga, on the eve of his team’s 2-1 loss to the Oranje, compared the Netherlands to South American teams. This from an ESPN blog:

The coach said the matches against the Dutch are always special because of the teams’ offensive style. Dunga had said the Netherlands is one of the few European teams that play similar to the South American nations, always trying to attack. “They are always pretty matches,” the 46-year-old coach said. “The teams always try to play. The players have quality, they do what we all like to see, try to dribble, take chances, use their creativity.

Elsewhere, Dunga referred to the obvious technical skill that is the basis for the Dutch team’s ability to retain possession, move the ball and create chances at goal (http://www.dutch-football.com/football/holland/world_cup_2010/quarterfinal-brazil-port-elizabeth/dunga.shtml).

And now we have Holland’s coach van Marwijk saying that Spain has some of the same footballing ideas as the Dutch, but is better at applying them, playing what he calls “a more attractive” game (http://blog.taragana.com/sports/2010/07/08/van-marwijk-lauds-spains-style-focuses-on-improved-finishing-to-win-world-cup-title-119070/).

The underlying point is, in the end, the final match — and, it could be said, even the final four matches — in the 2010 World Cup is a victory for football based on technical skill, possession as a philosophy, balletic, precise passing as a means to keeping possession, and creative bursts to take advantage of opportunities created by possession. Of course, there has also been very well-organized defense on the best teams.

But what is hoped from where this blogger sits — Las Vegas, Nevada, in the USA — is that youth coaches locally and across the nation begin to wake up and smell the football being played in these matches; it is not a long-ball, run-and-gun game based almost entirely on physical conditioning. It is time for youth coaches here in the US to lay off the laps a little bit and work much more on dribbling and passing, on the technical part of what makes for a beautiful game, in this beautiful game.

First-time conversation about LV soccer

 

At certain moments, yesterday’s KNPR show centering around the future of youth soccer and featuring a recently-returned-from-South-Africa Herculez Gomez, had the feel of the sort of conversation that may be referred to years from now.

That was, in part, because you had a rare collection of voices key to the future of soccer locally, which   I am convinced is key to channeling positive results for tens of thousands of immigrant children here, especially Hispanic boys, who otherwise unfortunately wind up on many of our most worrying lists as a community: low high-school graduation rates, high dropout rates, high crime rates, and so on. So to the degree that soccer may help turn around some of those outcomes, and I have seen with my own eyes that well-run soccer programs can do just that, then ensuring a better future for soccer in the Las Vegas Valley is better for everyone who lives here.

And that goes without mentioning that improving the panorama for youth soccer locally may produce more players on a par with Herculez Gomez, which will only help the development of the sport nationally, as well as local pride.

The hour-long show featured the US team player Gomez, former running mate all-state player and now state assemblyman Ruben Kihuen, former state soccer association president Guy Hobbs, and founder of Universal FC club Edwin Canizalez. They spoke,  I think for the first time in a public forum, about the balkanization of soccer locally between the suburbs and the barrio, the haves and the have-nots, the gringos and the Hispanics. (Full disclosure: I also wear a hat as manager of the U14 team for Universal FC, where my older son Jesse plays.)

Specifically, the guests addressed such subjects often left to sotto voce as, why are most of the best fields in this town in the suburban Summerlin area, while the emerging pool of many great future players, Hispanic immigrants, is concentrated on the other side of the valley? Not to mention the high costs of the largest clubs and the Olympic Development Program, pushing out many potential players. They also addressed the physical, run-and-gun style taught in the suburban leagues, called ligas americanas by Hispanics, versus the more technical (meaning skillful), creative style taught in the ligas mexicanas. Hobbs spoke of his frustration, for years, about the lack of integration between the two worlds, which he was convinced set back soccer as a whole in the state of Nevada.

Gomez spoke after the show of his dreams of coming back to Las Vegas, where his parents still live and where he grew up to give back by setting up some sort of academy. Kihuen represents a largely-Hispanic area around Rancho High School and is running for state senate; he mentioned a desire to channel the positive influence of soccer somehow through the political machinery. Hobbs wondered if he had gotten across just how frustrating it was for one side of the valley to have ignored the other side for so long when it comes to what may be the fastest-growing sport locally, and, again,  a key to turning around many future social and economic problems. 

Again, this may be the beginning of an overdue and vital dialogue about the beautiful game as it plays out in Las Vegas. You can listen to the show here: http://www.knpr.org/son/archive/detail2.cfm?SegmentID=7027&ProgramID=1994.

What is the US style of soccer?

Way back in the heady days for nascent US soccer fans about two weeks ago, when Landon Donovan scored an in-your-face goal from an acute angle to help his team come back against Slovenia, a frothing headline on the NY Times Website the next day read, “An American Style is Born.”

The story attempts to address one of the more fascinating aspects of soccer, or football, as the world’s most popular game: does the way different nations play tell us something about the cultures of those nations? It refers to Spain’s “artistry and grace” and a few other countries, while calling the pondering of a US style akin to “a zen koan.”

But Donovan’s goal, it says, could change all that, its brashness perhaps heralding a “cowboy” style of soccer.

There are several things wrong with this. First of all, if such a shot signified a style, then, as several alert Times readers posted below the article, others practiced the same style in the same tournament — including Brazil’s Maicon and Fabiano. Another reader recalled Didier Drogba powering home similar goals more than once for Chelsea.

But more importantly — and in all fairness, perhaps the writer must be excused for being thrown onto a soccer beat at the last minute during the frenzy to meet reader demand for news from the world’s most popular sporting event — the article wastes an opportunity, and I have yet to see anyone else take it up. Exactly how does the US team play the game, and why, and what can be done to improve its chances in future World Cups?

To my mind, the same Donovan more tipified the US approach to soccer with another theatrical goal, the one that pulled the US into the fateful round of 16 on the back of a last-minute 1-0 victory over Algeria.  For those who were stuck in a cave for the past  few weeks, Donovan’s moment came on a breakaway started by US goalkeeper Tim Howard’s alert and skillful throw to the midfielder on the right touch line. Donovan to Altidore, Altidore to a barrelling Dempsey, who bowls over the goalkeeper, but doesn’t slot through the ball, which rebounds onto…Donovan’s onrushing feet, who cooly side-foots a goal into the left corner. “The Shot Heard Round the World,” as many headlines dubbed it, drew the attention of millions, including former and current US presidents.

And it tipifies what I would call the US style. Again, let’s go to another Times reader. (One of the interesting things about the World Cup is not just that the U.S. media suddenly discovers soccer for a month, “flooding the zone” with all sorts of angles, but that, in the Internet age, that same coverage brings out all sorts of knowledge from all corners of the globe in the form of readers’ comments on media Websites.) This reader calls himself “F. Beckenbauer” and indicates that he is posting his comments “driving past Munich” which must mean someone else has his or her hands on the wheel. Regardless of whether the famed German player is actually weighing in on the subject online, on the road, the comment is spot-on:

As for American style, its an atrocious bastardization of English style. Heave it long and hope our strikers can out muscle for a favorable bounce. I have yet, to see the US players break down defenders one on one (like a Messi,) or even good first move and blow by with speed (as I even saw some Nigerian and RSA players do today). The play never builds from the back through the midfield and forward, and many of the all important first touches are brutal.

If the truth hurts, so be it. What the speeding, wreckless driver is referring to is the tendency to teach soccer in many youth programs across the country in search of players with speed, size and strength, as if Wayne Rooney was the ideal prototype for world soccer. The result: players like US forwards Findley and Altidore, who are definitely fast and strong, but have relatively little skill with the ball, not only down the field, but around the net.  

There was much handwringing in the days after Ghana knocked the US out of the World Cup for the second time in a row, particularly around the fact of there having been no goals, also for the second World Cup in a row, from forwards. How do we create forwards? sportswriters asked. Maybe we need Kobe Bryants in soccer! another suggested. Yes, bigger, stronger, faster.

But wait a minute. What nations are having their best World Cup in history? The ones who speak Spanish, and in the case of Brazil, Portuguese. How is soccer taught, and played in the streets, in these countries? Ball control, skill, flair, creativity. That’s first. Who is considered the world’s preeminent player at this point? Lionel Messi, from Argentina. He’s 5’6″.

The fact is, US soccer has a resource it seems to be overlooking, which are the tens of millions of Latino and other immigrants who either came from places where technical skills are prized above all else, or perhaps they were born in the US — like Herculez Gomez, the only US player with two Hispanic parents –, but grew up seeing soccer played like it is in Latin America.

If more youth programs across the nation had more Latinos as coaches, and more teams, clubs and leagues were more integrated, instead of forming separate, so-called “Mexican” or “Hispanic” teams, clubs and leagues, not to mention including more immigrants from Africa and other parts of the world, we might see a style develop in the US that more accurately reflects the melting pot we supposedly are as a nation.

That would make for some more interesting soccer, and the US team would do better in the World Cup.

 

What’s fun got to do with it?

As we were filing out of the Mexican nightclub that had been converted into a samba-filled Brasil-Ivory Coast World Cup first round viewing party Sunday early afternoon, repinique player Marcos Santos summed up his hopes for the rest of the once-every-four-years tournament that more than hundreds of millions of people will be watching. “We hope to have a lot of fun,” said Santos, who will be providing a soundtrack with other members of his batucada at every match. What he meant was that he hoped his selecao, which he has been following for more than four decades, plays with skill, flair, and beauty, and that he gets to see them do this surrounded by loved ones, and that they all dance to his playing. If all this happens, the team will also win. 

It reminded me of what Ronaldinho said when European reporters sought an explanation for his renewed energy and vital role in much of AC Milan’s Serie A season last year, after a dismal showing the year before and speculation that the former World Player of the Year was all washed up.

“I’m having fun again,” he said, rather simply. He could have mentioned being involved in nearly half his team’s goals, between leading the league in assists and scoring 10 times, or helping Milan fight for first place before fizzling out under the weight of injuries to fellow Brazilian Pato and others, but no, he said he was “having fun.”

Then there’s Robinho, who returned to his first club, Santos of Brazil, after cycling through Spain and England, where he was hardly playing for Manchester City. He recovered the form that led some to compare him with former Santos star Pele when he was a few years younger. And unlike Ronaldinho, Brazil coach Dunga tapped him for the World Cup. Here’s how he explained his transformation: “I found happiness on the pitch here with a wonderful team that plays attacking, with a smile.”

I also remember when my older son Jesse made a switch from the so-called ligas americanas here in Las Vegas to the ligas mexicanas. In the former, his coach yelled all the time, in practice and during games, threatening players with being benched if they made mistakes or stepped out of position or in any way failed to contribute to the chief  goal, winning. The first thing his new coach in the “Mexican league” told him was to “have fun” and “be yourself.” Of course, the idea was also to win the game. But there’s an underlying belief that if you’re loose, and creative, and have some talent, you’ll win. And along the way, it’s fun.

In Las Vegas and most other major U.S. cities, children first start playing soccer in what are called “recreational” leagues, meaning, it is often said, that the soccer is “just for fun.” Then, if the players and/or the parents are “serious” about the game, and the players want to improve, they go on to want are called “competitive” leagues. At that point, it seems, the game is no longer about having fun. It is about winning.

In other parts of the world, and Brazil may be just one of the more visible examples, the game is played with joy, and when played well, the players have fun. And they win, or lose, since no team wins all the time. Of course players at top levels want to win, as does anyone who loves to play. But there’s no inherent contradiction seen between the two.

The Sleeping Giant watches World Cup

A radio program on the fever that overtakes many Latinos in Las Vegas  during the World Cup. We talk with four observers of the Mexican community in Las Vegas to get their take on what the event means to immigrants who love soccer, but find themselves far from their places of birth, glued to the television.

Is watching World Cup on TV in the US the same as watching Mexico, or anywhere else in the soccer-mad world? How is it different? And how do thousands get on with their daily lives during what has been called the world’s most important cultural event?

Listen to the conversation here.

Truth, justice and the American way

The Superman credo comes to mind in the wake of Friday’s USA-Slovenia 2-2 outcome. By now anyone not living in a cave knows the States team came back from 2-0 for the first time in their World Cup history and Maurice Edu slotted into the net  a winning third goal in the last minute, only to have it immediately annulled by the ref, a Malian who was calling his first World Cup game. The ref didn’t explain to a shocked US squad who had committed the apparent foul, or what he had seen, and still hasn’t said a word to the team or to the rest of the world, a world filled with people who watched the dramatic finale on television, sharing the open-mouthed expression of the US players.

Back in the US, New York City’s three main newspapers graced their Saturday front pages with the story, perhaps making for another first, an across-the-board top-of-the-fold day for soccer in the Big Apple. The New York Post headline: CRIME! The Daily News : We Wuz Robbed! And the Grey Lady splashed a large photo across the top left corner with a caption that began, “The tie breaker that wasn’t.”

Later that day,  at the gym, a woman stopped doing ab crunches to the left of me and stared up at ESPN’s replay of those last few seconds. “That was incredible, no?” she said, after noticing my head turning in the same direction. The same sorts of comments came from customers behind me on line at Macy’s, after the cashier brought up the whole affair.

So valuable front-page real estate gets grabbed and people across the United States are engaged in proverbial water-cooler talk about a soccer game that took place on the other side of the world. And I’m convinced that the explanation for this highly unusual phenomenon lies not only in the inherent drama: The US won! They didn’t win!  The fact is, FIFA, world soccer’s governing body, has rules that say referees don’t have to explain a call. Further, Sepp Blatter, FIFA’s president, has said before and repeated yesterday that it is better to rely on the human eye and mind, with their inherent fallibility, than to use such technology as instant replay, in order to preserve the game’s inherent unpredictability and controversy.

As Associated Press writer and soccer referee Simon Haydon wrote in response to the incident, FIFA has rejected the use of video technology, preferring to try to maintain the spontaneous nature of soccer and, in the process, inherently rejecting U.S. sports like football and, to a lesser extent, baseball, that have incorporated replay into the sport.

These ideas run against the grain for many if not most Americans: you can’t demand an explanation from authorities about what you did wrong, and there’s no machine that can prove you did it wrong, or did not.

Further, the reason you don’t want to change the way things are done, which may raise the level of infallibility, as well as ensure greater justice, is because you place higher value on such qualities as unpredictability and spontaneity. Not to mention controversy, which of course, arises from passion.

These are all ideas which I have noticed are still foreign on soccer fields across Las Vegas in the short careers of my two sons, Jesse, who is 13, and Dylan, who is 8, as they come under the guidance of coaches here — coaches born and raised in the USA.  I have seen time and again that these coaches transfer cultural ideals such as order and its outcome, predictability, as well as its cousin, aversion to risk, onto the game, affecting the way they teach children to play the game. And I have found myself defending unpredictability, and its cousin, chance, or art.

Which is way the game’s primary exponents, the country that has won the most World Cups, Brazil, coined the phrase, jogo bonito. The beautiful game.

8-yr-old asks, Does every country in the world play soccer?

In those quiet moments before closing his eyes to sleep last night, my 8-yr-old son and crack center midfielder Dylan asked, “Does every country in the world play soccer?” 

We had just gone through the ritual performed daily in households across the planet for one whole month every four years, reviewing the next day’s World Cup schedule. It included games between countries as dissimilar and far apart from one another as South Korea and Argentina, Greece and Nigeria, Mexico and France.

Dylan, an assiduous observer of the beautiful game, seemed to be spinning a globe in his mind. “”Yes,” I said without hesitating. “They do.”

Half an hour earlier I had flipped through the TV schedule, confirming that the first of those games, South Korea-Argentina, to be played at 4:30 AM our time, would be repeated later in the day. But as I lay in bed after bidding Dylan good night, I entered in debate with myself — to wake up and watch it live or not? I had to. But why? First of all, with half of my household from Colombia, Argentina is a perennial, closely-followed rival, with some of the world’s great players. Colombia’s not in the Cup and Maradona’s crew is the best Spanish-speaking South American team, which transforms them from rival into … a sort of cousin whose game you want to be sure not to miss.

But still, I could see them later in the day, more comfortably. The more important reason to wake up, then, lay in Dylan’s question. There’s something to knowing you’re sitting in front of a screen, even if it’s alone in your living room, watching the same game at the same time as hundreds of millions all over the planet. In this hemisphere, it will be mostly before dawn. On the other side of the ocean, it will be after sunset. But we’ll all be seeing the goals, or an outstretched goalkeeper, or a terrible injury, at the same time.

I’ll do it.

Shortly after the second half’s start, Argentina now up 2-1, I heard a telltale creak of mattress springs from down the hall. Before I could turn around, there were two of us on the couch, ready for the next forward crush of Argentina’s attacking front line. It was Dylan, eyes open early, launching day seven of his second World Cup in a short life already full of fútbol.

Interview with Sunil Gulati in WSJ

I remember what it was like living in Colombia in the 1990s and working as a foreign correspondent, dealing with the isolationism of Americans and trying to second-guess what readers back in the States would be interested in and how to pitch stories to editors in the U.S., or even the UK and Canada, that could somehow break into the increasingly small newshole, as space for stories in a newspaper or magazine is called…

Something of that comes to mind now,  as one can’t help but feel that  many U.S. publications only notice soccer every four years, during the World Cup. In the last month, the covers of Time and Vanity Fair have introduced millions of U.S. readers to the Ivory Coast’s Didier Drogba and Portugal’s Ronaldo. Sports Illustrated also got in the act. One positive outcome of these 15 minutes of fame is that there’s a lot more analysis about how we’re developing as a country with regards to the “beautiful game,”  which is a comment on how we’re finally joining a worldwide club, a planet full of joyful children kicking balls on pitches, after a century of being mostly on the outside.

So here’s this interview with Sunil Gulati, a figure central to the development of US soccer…And if the WC brings up discussions of nationality, of culture –witness what has been written about African teams being unable to field teams with African coaches, for example — it’s at least worth wondering when Galati, who was born in India and never played beyond the college level, will be replaced by, say, a Latino, who might know with greater clarity how to reach into the nation’s barrios and develop greater players, which in turn will attract more of the nation’s sports-crazy public…Just sayin’…

Here’s the story: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703509404575300794290598112.html?mod=WSJ_olympics_TopRightCarouselHighlights_1

Mexico Jerseys out of stock in Vegas, US jerseys also hard to find

As the first weekend of the World Cup winds down, I’m not sure what is more surprising — that both Adidas and Nike, respectively, seemed to have dropped the ball as far as Mexico and US jerseys go, or that the Mexico jersey has outsold the US jersey by orders of magnitude….In recent days I’ve spoken with small and large stores alike, in Summerlin and the barrio, and they coincide on  both fronts. First, they say, the Mexico jerseys — whether the more traditional green or the newer and therefore more coveted black one, have sold out, in many cases, as early as April — and Adidas is not supplying any more!!!  Most places say they ordered much less US jerseys, but they also have been selling, and, in another bizarre business decision, Nike is only sending more after July 1!!!! Janice Locatelli, manager at Rogue Sports, near the Kellog-Zaher fields in Summerlin, said it best when she described this situation: “Both companies have not only let down the customer, they have let down the teams and their fans.”

I’m also surprised no one else in the media seems to have picked up on this. Could it be another example among many of how the US, culturally speaking, still doesn’t live and breathe soccer the way the rest of the planet does — including US  journalists?

For example, in Spanish, we say, “amor por la camiseta” — “love for the shirt (or jersey).” Which really means, during the World Cup especially, is love for country, for your family, for your own blood. The jersey almost replaces the flag of your country during the World Cup;  it goes beyond rooting for a team. And if you don’t have the jersey, you can’t express all those feelings in the same way. 

I have sent inquiries to Adidas and Nike about this situation and have so far received PR speak that adds up to nothing. But I will be pursuing the companies until I get a better answer…Stay tuned.