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An MLS Moment: What the Chivas USA Controversy Tells US About the State of US Soccer

March 6, 2013 — by Ryan

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In a recent podcast for Grantland, Roger Bennett and Roger Davies reflected on MLS’s current fortunes. After nearly two decades, they argued, the league had made it through the leanest years intact, financially healthy, and ready to expand its market share. Indeed, soccer remains one of the nation’s most popular youth sports and perhaps more importantly, among 17 – 24 year olds, as was widely reported last year, soccer ranks second just behind American football in popularity. Undoubtedly, as evidenced by their recent success in the English Premiership, American players, most of them former or current MLS standouts, have become increasingly common. From grunge era throwback Brek Shea’s recent debut for and Geoff Cameron’s starting role in Stoke City’s side, Clint Dempsey and Stuart Holden’s (when healthy) long standing runs, and Landon Donovan’s past successes at Everton not to mention Jozy Altidore’s 24 goals for AZ Alkmaar in the Netherlands, the skill level of American players in MLS has risen to the extent European clubs now see promise. Indeed, if one watched the raucous March 3 Portland Timbers/NJ Red Bulls home opener, a cracker of a 3-3 draw, one would think MLS had arrived.

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Yet, during halftime of Sunday night’s fixture in Portland, ESPN soccer analysts Taylor Twellman and Alexi Lalas delved into one of the few non-Landon Donovan controversies/talking points of the new season: Chivas USA and their apparently pro-Mexican/Latino recruiting model. The two former US national team members highlighted Chivas’ recent commitment to building the team’s ties to Mexico by openly recruiting and signing Latino, often Mexican, surnamed players. Lalas lamented to Twellman that though the policy fell short of racism it remained “exclusionary.” Though league President Don Garner supported Chivas’ efforts – “We need teams that look and feel different,” he told Lalas – the two analysts clearly disagreed with the commissioner’s policy. “Here’s my question for Don Garner.” Lalas began. “If you were a young boy playing soccer in Southern California and you don’t have Mexican or Hispanic heritage, do you have an equal opportunity to play for both your teams in Los Angeles and right now the answer is no and I don’t know if this is the message the league wants.” As Cultfootball co-editor Suman Ganguli commented in an email exchange with fellow football bloggers, “I think Lalas just played the white man’s burden race card …. Amazing.” Ganguli along with fellow CF editor Sean Mahoney sketched out the perfect film treatment for America’s first MLS oriented movie:

Johnny Football (Futbol?) toiling away in the hot SoCal sun on beautifully manicured fields (thanks to those illegal landscapers working the sprinklers), housekeeper washing his training kits. Just hoping to make it to the big leagues someday (or at least one of the local MLS sides). Maybe use his signing bonus to buy his parents a (2nd) house, say a nice little ski cabin in Mammoth.

As noted by Ganguli, the film’s narrative arc already had its trademark song lined up, Frank Ocean’s “Sweet Life”: “You’ve had a landscaper and a house keeper since you were born/The starshine always kept you warm.” Can we get Ryan Gosling in the lead?

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One might also note a bit of irony in Lalas making such statements. Remember, after a star defensive turn in the 1994 World Cup, the flamboyant long-haired, guitar-strumming ginger signed with Padova of the Serie A. Now if everyone is honest, they will acknowledge that Lalas was never even remotely an elite defensive back, just a really good American athlete who scrapped, fought, and competed really hard. If anything, Padova signed the guitar-slinging jugador (his band the Gypsies put out two albums and even opened for Hootie and the Blowfish in the 1990s) because of his novelty: a prototypical American athlete that could play football in the Italian professional league. Padova signed Lalas because of his nationality, not, at least by international standards, because he was good. Sure, he anchored their defense and scored three goals, but Padova barely survived relegation.

Still, despite any implicit irony, others noted that Lalas’s comments and Twellman’s overly enthusiastic agreement held some merit. Fellow Cultfootball editor Sean Mahoney defended Lalas’s comments to some extent: “A club shouldn’t focus on just one ethnic group to recruit,” he noted, “But his delivery was as deft as you’d expect coming from the likes of him.” After all, soccer, in Europe, Latin American, Africa, and Asia, often comes draped in nationalism and ethnocentrism. Sure, it might be the world’s most popular sport and international football leagues contain some of the most diverse locker rooms around the globe, but it also remains rife with racial and ethnic prejudice. One need only look at reference books like How Soccer Explains the World or witness frightening displays of anti-semitism and racism in European leagues to see how these issues often manifest themselves among fans and players. One does not exaggerate when they claim football matches have sparked civil wars and international conflicts. So the fact MLS seems devoid of these tensions, thus far at least, should be seen as a positive, therefore some could argue Chivas’s policy to be a can of worms the league wants to reseal.

While others have highlighted Chivas’s new direction, some writers have noted the strategy isn’t new. According to blogger and broadcaster Jonathan Yardley, Chivas’s recent front office decisions actually reflect a return to previous incarnations. “[T]hey are basically re-starting the club and returning to its original intent: to be an American version of Chivas Guadalajara, playing a Mexican style and fielding a mix of Mexican-Americans, Mexican players on loan, and Californians,” he noted in a recent post. According to Yardley, rumors abound that all front office staff are expected to know Spanish and Chivas jettisoned English-language broadcasts. Still, though he expressed reservations, Yardley also admitted that if Chivas succeeded in putting a superior or at a minimum a very different style of play on the field, it might increase interest as American (though it remains unclear just what “American style” soccer is) and Mexican approaches to the sport “clash.” Moreover, considering the amount of antipathy between Mexico and America’s national teams – between players themselves and fans – Chivas might serve as a the “heel” of the league. A 2013 version of the Detroit Piston Bad Boys of the 1980s, an effective but hated opponent: “They could be a hated rival for every team with a fan base that loves the U.S. national team.” Then again, one wonders if this might slip into unhealthy jingoism that painted every game as some sort of battle between an invading Chivas’s Mexican “other” and whatever random MLS team they play against. While Mexican immigration has dropped precipitously in recent years, to the extent that Asians have replaced Mexicans as the largest group immigrating to the US, tea partiers, birthers, minutemen, and others continue to blow nativist dog whistles and ring xenophobic bells. Soccer as foreign scourge threatening US values may be a diminishing trope (google “soccer” and “socialism” and see what you get), but it persists. Perhaps, Chivas’s new direction might exacerbate this tension.

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Of course, one needs to consider Chivas’s financial situation. Professional sports remains a business and when competing with the L.A. Galaxy – even if devoid of the magically inconsequential David Beckham – drawing fans has proven difficult. Remember, the second largest city in America still doesn’t even have an American football team, having failed to keep both the Rams and Raiders. Only 7,121 fans attended Chivas’s home opener this year; the smallest home opener in league history. Even worse, numerous observers alleged that the real attendance may not have even reached 4,000. Granted, league wide attendance for opening weekend declined by nearly 10% but 4,000 spectators at the Home Depot stadium does not spell success. When one considers that NBC recently fell behind Univision in network television ratings, maybe all-Spanish broadcasts of their games makes more sense. In this way, can anyone blame Chivas for trying to capitalize on the millions of Southern California Latino Americans in the Los Angeles and yes, Orange County area (Latinos make up 1/3 of its population and Asian Americans another 1/4)? In its initial years the MLS played with ethnic affiliations in cities like Chicago, purposely placing Eastern European players on its roster in hopes of drawing more Polish and other Slavic residents to home games. Currently, the national team under Jurgen Klinsman has been openly courting American players of German descent to the point that some simply call them the Von Trapps (see Sound of Music). The aforementioned Davies and Bennett frequently joke about the illegitimate offspring of U.S. G.I.s and Germans as the life blood of American national team hopes. If Chivas’s move is so offensive then why does no one complain about a national team that focuses on its German American descendants?

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Some of this has to do with MLS’s audience and the league’s grasp of it. This greatly complicates matters. In late January, Lalas provided some water cooler talk with the following tweet: “You’re not a true American soccer fan if you ignore MLS, you’re part of the problem.” Whatever you think of Lalas’s line in the sand, it gets at a core issue: what does MLS mean to American soccer fans? Mahoney expanded on this, pointing out that while the dominant cultural sport in most of the world, soccer’s popularity in America stemmed in no small part to its outsider status. Being a soccer fan in the US, for a particular segment of the audience, includes an aversion to other American “big time” sports. Less generous observers describe these followers as sort of “sports hipsters,” interested as much in a statement about aesthetics and politics than just sports. “In part, the situation is this sort of ‘hip’ subculture that exists as a group of people who are anti-big American sports (which is really anti-all that goes along with big us sports culture, e.g. big fat sweaty (white) guys who are usually some combination of racist, sexist, homophobic, and xenophobic),” noted Mahoney. Unfortunately for the MLS, most of this demographic prefers La Liga or the EPL to MLS. The key, argued Mahoney, lay in finding a connection between this “’underground cred’” and MLS. However, not everyone sees this as a realistic enterprise. “Manufacturing Cred,” fellow football blogger and CF writer Ron Kirby argued, “So you cultivate credibility, and then kids who abhor stadium commercialization will attend? Better to pair underage booze with underground [football] in illegal nightclubs.”

Competing with European and Mexican league sides places the MLS at a disadvantage. No matter what league officials say, the MLS remains a solid but middling league, perhaps on par or near parity with Mexico’s professionals but still greatly apart from the EPL and many other European associations. Convincing white hipsters, immigrants, and others that MLS has the better product continues to be a dicey proposition. Lalas never said ignore those other leagues, but getting people to fill a Brooklyn pub or San Diego beer hall to catch the latest clash between Real Salt Lake and the Colorado Rapids in the same way they do for national team games, the Euros, World Cup, or even EPL derbies, continues to be one of MLS’ greatest challenges. Grantland founder and editor Bill Simmons frequently highlights the fact that Americans like soccer, but they want to watch it at the highest level, no matter where it happens, rather than what some, perhaps incorrectly, perceive as an inferior MLS product.

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If you’re wondering about the league’s racial makeup in terms of players, coaches, and administrators, MLS does quite well regarding gender and race. A November 2012 report by The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports (TIDES) gave the MLS a B+/A- for “racial hiring practices” an A+ for its diversity initiatives and the multi-ethnic/racial background of its players. It also improved representation in management circles. However, it should be noted, while the league went from a D to a B- regarding general managers, it also dropped to a C+ in terms of head coaching positions. Though the percentage of assistant coaches rose from 18% in 2011 to 19% in 2012, last year, Chivas and Colorado were the only teams led by minority head coaches. In the end, the league improved its overall gender and racial diversity enough to move from an overall B in 2011 to a B+ the following year. Honestly, when one thinks of recent incidents in the EPL – John Terry and Anne Hatheway look alike Luis Suarez – the MLS seems a bastion of tolerance.

In America, for better or worse, soccer continues to be a largely suburban sport punctuated by white faces. One of the ironies of Twellman and Lalas’s angst is the way in which they ignore the infrastructure that radically favors these players. Sure, suburbs are changing – more Latino, black, and Asian families have put down stakes in suburbia and by extension this infrastructure. However, under 17 tourneys, regional ODP teams, or local club soccer requires time and a parent willing to chauffeur and pay for this development. MLS officials, thus far, are not delving into working class Mexican American enclaves or inner city communities for footballers. No, for American players, the pipeline to the MLS still travels through the land of soccer moms and SUVs. For Lalas and Twellman to pretend otherwise misses the MLS’ far more complicated, if also promising, predicament.

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Extreme Makeover Football Edition: What Michael Vick, John Terry, and Joey Barton Tell Us about Media Rehabilitation in 2012

July 30, 2012 — by Ryan

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Recently, Michael Vick appeared on ESPN’s Pardon the Interruption (PTI).  Vick appeared on PTI to plug his new book, Finally Free: The Power of a Second Chance. In his nearly eight minute interview, the Philadelphia Eagles star openly acknowledged his problematic past and while contrite and thoughtful he also admitted the book was also an attempt to end the conversation about his history. “We can talk football, we can talk other personal things but let’s not talk about my past, let’s leave it where it is.”

Vick’s career and life provide insights into several aspects of sport including race, and media rehabilitation.  After serving hard time in prison for dog fighting, Vick’s efforts in rehabilitating his career, image, and persona have been notable.  Finally Free is really the last leg in a Michael Vick public relations campaign to undercut those who see Vick as little more than a talented, underachieving, amoral mercenary dog torturing athlete.

For years, Vick has worked with the Humane Society filming PSA’s and making appearances in the name of animal rights. Yet, as Vick seems to becoming full circle, this summer a prominent English footballer finds himself regarded as a talented but maligned influence.  Much like Vick, the trial of John Terry provides insights into many of the same issues, but knowing Terry’s character (as will be explained) a reversal of Michael Vick proportions seems unlikely.  Instead of the thoughtful, long term, self-reflective, and honest effort by Vick, Terry should go for the superficial answer much like his manic violent Newcastle peer Joey Barton.

The Trial of the Century?

In the second week of July, one of the most anticipated summer trials in all of England ended with a predictable acquittal. John Terry, Chelsea’s stalwart defender and starter for the English national team, was found not guilty of racially abusing another player.   Accused of directing a racial profanity toward QPR defender Anton Ferdinand (Terry allegedly called him a “black cunt”), Terry professed his innocence, even taking the stand to relate to the court how soccer players interact on the pitch.

The trial itself played out in tragic-comic fashion via the New York Times.  Needless to say, the language exchanged between opposing players at any level can reach rather dicey levels as insults directed at one’s family members prove quite common.  In college, I roomed with a female soccer player who admitted to once using a remark about child molestation to get under the skin of the forward she was marking and that was Division III soccer.  Between amateur and professional male athletes, mothers, sisters, girlfriends and wives bear the brunt of such insults, just ask Zidane who sacrificed France’s 2002 World Cup to defend his sister’s honor (Italian Player Marco Materazzi later admitted to more or less calling her a whore).   The Daily Mail quoted Terry pointing out that “players routinely tell each other they ‘s***’ each other’s partners.” It got even worse, as during testimony Terry further admitted “that conversations between players descend to degrading levels during the heat of battle in the Barclays Premier League.” Do tell?

Remember when you liked me?

Of course anyone who uses the Times as a source for such prurient details was disappointed argued the Atlantic’s Alexander Abad-Santos. Abad-Santos pointed out that the Times policy of neutering language to avoid controversy had turned “a NSFW cluster-cuss into the most sterile argument ever,” he noted.  At least the Times gave us all stateside some new slang: handbags as in “this whole thing is handbags” or much to do about nothing as Chelsea teammate Ashley Cole described the whole affair.  Terry portrayed his interaction with Ferdinand similarly. “As the argument on the field became more heated, Mr. Terry at one point compared Mr. Ferdinand to male genitalia, and then to female genitalia, in consecutive sentences.  Most of these constituted ‘handbags,’ or ‘normal verbal exchanges between the players,’ reported the Times.”  In the end, though damaging, the Times coverage remained so awkward, one could be forgiven if distracted.  Again, this played to Terry’s favor, as the ridiculousness of this aspect of the trial overshadowed its more serious themes. Remember, Luis Suarez received an eight game ban for a racial outburst toward Manchester United’s Patrice Evra and then inflamed matters when he refused to shake Evra’s hand several weeks later when the two teams met in competition. By contravening pre-match tradition, Suarez reignited questions about his character and apparent racism. It got worse last week when Suarez blamed his ban and subsequent controversy on Man U’s “political power.” Is Suarez the Richard Nixon of the EPL, constantly and unfairly under siege, abrasive and contentious but oddly talented and always the victim?  Who’s to say?

Granted some might argue, John Terry’s alleged racism though vile, doesn’t hurt anyone or thing physically while Michael Vick’s actions resulted in mutilated animals and disturbing levels of violence.  Others might point out that discursive racism can lead to violence against ethnic, racial, and religious groups accordingly, John Terry needs to be punished for contributing to such discourse.  In Vick’s case race played an important role, but secondarily. Race played a role in perceptions or how people viewed him.  Most people – black, white, brown, yellow etc – were rightly horrified when the stories of his dog fighting facility emerged. The reaction to this might have been racial but the underlying facts of the case were not. From established press, (ESPN The Magazine published a controversial article titled “What If Michael Vick were White?”) to the attentions of more academic bloggers, numerous outlets have reflected on what Vick’s career and image mean.   Sure Vick’s case involved very volatile emotions regarding animal rights, but plenty of non-white folks feel strongly about their animal brethren.

In regard to John Terry, his case shows that lingering pockets of racial tension persist in the EPL and more widely, Europe. Though numerous ex-coaches and current teammates vouched for his impeccable unbiased nature, others remained silent on the issue including Rio Ferdinand, Anton’s brother. Racism has been a recurring problem in soccer across “the continent” and internationally.  Franklin Foer demonstrated sectarian, ethnic, and racial hatreds perpetuated by soccer fans and players in various parts of Europe in his book, How Soccer Explains the World.  More recently, Italy’s Mario Balotelli accused Croatian fans of making racist taunts during the two teams’ encounter at this summer’s European Championship.  Go to present day Poland and Ukraine where some clubs’ fans openly employ Nazi salutes and make references to the holocaust.  When the Times noted that the trial revealed divisive schisms in “the close-knit world of Premier League soccer,” it seemed unsurprising.  After all, though Chelsea won the Champion’s Cup this year, they struggled through their domestic campaign.  Rumors floated around that the team’s Spanish and Portuguese speakers supported doomed coach Andre Villas-Boas (AVB) while the older English speaking players resisted the European tactics he brought to the table.   Soccer’s swirling mix of cultures and styles, though enormously beneficial on the whole can sometimes clash.  Terry probably deserved some credit/blame for AVB’s departure mid-season.

Of course, the efficacy of such trials and the FA general policy deserve some scrutiny. The FA has rightly targeted racism to be squashed; undoubtedly a noble and worthwhile effort.  However, the effects of this policy seem less clear.  Suarez remains unchanged by his punishment, should we expect any different from Terry?  Add to it, that following the trial, Rio Ferdinand fell under FA investigation for replying in the affirmative to a tweet that Ashley Cole (who is black) amounted to “choc ice” (basically meaning black on the outside, and white on the inside) for testifying in Terry’s favor.  Ferdinand responded to accusations of racism, how else, via twitter: “What I said yesterday is not a racist term. It’s a type of slang/term used by many for someone who is being fake. So there.” Should Ferdinand be reprimanded? Does the FA want to adopt the heavy handed tactics of Roger Goodell’s NFL?  When Emmanuel Frimpong of Arsenal (on loan to Wolves) responded to a hostile posting by a Tottenham Fan with “Scum Yid”,  Frimpong promptly removed the comment from his twitter feed, but shouldn’t he be punished too?  Add to it, the complexity of Tottenham’s identify, which Foer documented. Having once been home to a large Jewish fan base, many Tottenham fans adopted the term Yid as a means to undercut the term’s viciousness. “Instead of denouncing the Jews as pollutants to the nation, chunks of the working class have identified themselves as Jewish, even if only in the spirit of irony.” (Foer, 85) While an improvement on anti-Semitic violence, it still leaves Jews as cartoons, outsiders, or “others” in European minds. The point is the FA policy and its ramifications can be dizzying.

With that said, the fact that Terry had to sweat it out on this, makes this writer feel better. Yet, enough doubt remains regarding his true racial beliefs that it might be good to consider the full man.  When one does, you find a man guilty of much more than racism. Outside his significant soccer talent, consider his other claims to fame. On 9/11 he drunkenly mocked American tourists at Heathrow Airport. In January of 2002 Terry assaulted a nightclub bouncer resulting in his suspension from the English national side thereby forfeiting his shot at that year’s World Cup. In November of 2006, Terry allegedly racially abused Tottenham’s Ledley King.  A 10,000 pound fine was levied for “inappropriate conduct.” He cheated on his fiancé Toni Pooole with a 17 year old girl in a London parking lot in 2007. Three years later, Terry famously slept with the girlfriend and of his best friend and English teammate Wayne Bridge.  This led opposing fans to chant “Oh wherever you maybe, don’t leave your wife with John Terry!”  Sure there are other incidents but really, you get the point.

No handshake for you!

Even if John Terry needed a Michael Vick sized make over, I’m not sure he could pull one off. Intellectually, Vick’s pretty sharp, John Terry reminds this writer of Kevin Kline in A Fish Called Wanda.   So how does the former captain of the English national team rehabilitate his image? Well first, play well and win; avoid being sent off in critical Champion’s Cup matches for openly kneeing people in the back.  After that it is simple really, John Terry needs to open a twitter account and grow a mustache: the superficial answer for a superficial man.

John Terry, Joey Barton, and the Future of Football Public Relations

Does that seem flippant? Perhaps, but new social media like twitter, not around when Vick returned to professional athletics, enables athletes to escape the “filter” of the traditional media.  Certain stylistic accoutrements like wild haircuts or distinct facial hair do well to draw attention away from volatile personalities.  Vick’s earnest and hard won second chance came as result of jail time, open contrition, athletic success, and persistent attempts – through PSA’s and now his book – to change the conversation about his image.  The example of Joey Barton provides the 2K12 route to “rehabilitation.”  Be assured, as evidenced by Barton’s season finale, the route remains skin deep, but are there more apt words for Chelsea’s 31 year old defender?

Much like Terry, Barton’s personnel history vibrates with the controversy, but perhaps more disturbingly than his Chelsea counterpart. In 2002, Barton extinguished a cigar in they eye of his teammate Jamie Tandy.  In 2007, a fight between himself and teammate Ousmane Dabore ended with Dabore bleeding from the ears. Speaking on the issue four years later, Barton expressed little remorse: “Frankly, Ousmane is a little pussy. Where I come from, when you fight there is no rule. You fight ‘til it’s over.'”  Soon after the Dabore exchange, Barton assaulted a man outside a Liverpool McDonalds, punching him twenty times in the head.  Barton served 77 days in prison for his crime.  Yet, if not for a psychotic outburst in his team’s season ending match this year, in much of the public’s eyes Barton had been rehabilitated.  Granted, his bizarre antics against Manchester City (resulting in a 12 game suspension next year) poisoned much of the work he had done in rebranding himself, but his example would serve John Terry well.

Sometime in 2009, Barton opened a twitter account and began randomly posting philosophical twitter messages. His tweets ranged from quotes by George Orwell  (“In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act.”) and Fredrich Nietchze (“Whoever feels predestined to see and not to believe will find all believers too noisy and push; he guards against them.”) to political diatribes (“Why are British troops in conflict zones risking their lives, on America’s behalf? Supporting a fascist regimes ideologies? Bring them home.”) to an homage to the Smiths (“There is a light that never goes out”………The Smiths! Best song ever written. Thanks marr / mozza for getting me through that drive….”) He visited art galleries and told soccer fans all about them.

Then in 2010, Barton glommed on to one of the oldest tricks in the book: the mustache. The midfielder promised not to shave his newly acquired mustache until Newcastle recorded a victory.  It didn’t take too long, by August 22, Barton and his Newcastle teammates had thumped Aston Villa.  Still, by this point, Barton had tapped into his inner Magnum P.I.  His twitter feed and mustache drew attention away from his clearly unstable nature.  Sure we used to equate mustaches with totalitarianism (has their ever been two more famous mustaches than those of Uncle Joe Stalin and Adolph Hitler), but today even Michael Jordan rocks a mustache that many argue looks very similar to that of a certain genocidal German.  Today’s famous mustaches range from the conservative American Patriot Ron Swanson (“Parks and Rec”) to the businesslike Stringer Bell (The Wire) to ubiquitous “ironic” or  hipster mustache (really a character like Swanson and Bell unto itself – see Jude Law here for celebrity example).  People began talking about the quirky, mustachioed twitter happy Barton, not the thuggish freak that served over two months in prison.

Barton in a long line of football hipster ‘staches

Joey Barton’s angled masterpiece was a combination of Brooklyn Flea artisan and Toledo used car salesman; in other words, “creative everyman”, if everyman only sold tricked out El Caminos that came with a free Rites of Spring discography.  With a mustache, Joey Barton’s previous violent outbursts became ironic acts of cognitive dissonance.  “I beat that man senseless because of how futile I think violence is, don’t you get it?  I tweet Nietchze!” In the same way, Terry needs to grow a mustache and maybe tweet out some obscure Foucault quote about bio-politics or something.  Then his acts of racism become nothing more the deadening affects of governmentality.  See you aren’t even sure what that means and honestly neither am I. That’s the point.  Terry’s set the bar so low, even a spark of intellect promises a wildfire of good publicity.  Besides, all that talk of salty language at the trial reinforced the idea that players say such inappropriate things, John Terry’s outburst, whatever it really was, simply reflected this.  All Terry needs to do is back that up with some reference to the power of discourse and he’ll have an army of anthropologists looking to complete their dissertations on the culture of profanity in football.

One might suggest fellow alleged racist Liverpool’s Luis Suarez grow his own mustache. Yet, as Roger Bennett and Michael Davies of the Men in Blazers podcast are found of pointing out, Suarez has Anne Hathaway sized teeth: the kind you see in nightmares about the dentist or eating carrots.  No, a mustache on Luis would leave him resembling one of those caricature drawings you get at theme parks.  Mr. Suarez will have to discover some other way to hide his unpleasant personality and casual bigotry.

Suarez’s choppers

In today’s over saturated media, nobody reads books.  Vick deserves credit for a well earned climb back to respectability.  Some will forever see him as a torturer of animals and this is how it must be.  Actions have consequences, in addition to jail, there will be some people he will never reach. Vick served two years in Leavenworth.  That’s real time alone, in a very bad place.  So even if you hate him, you must admit he’s done some thinking on his crime. John Terry, Luis Suarez, and Joey Barton are different sorts who lack the sincerity of Vick and in Suarez’s case any sense of responsibility. Likewise, John Terry thinks his trial “handbags”, so a real conversion appears unlikely.  Say what you want about Vick, but the man has suffered for his crimes and reflected upon them honestly. If we must settle for mealy-mouthed P.R. campaigns dedicated to scrubbing John Terry’s history clean let it be one as entertaining, hirsute, and schizophrentic as that of Joey Barton. That way fans will know it’s all a show and won’t be disappointed when Terry, Suarez, Barton or some other EPL lug decides to travel down the rabbit hole of racism.

Commentary

Deadwood: The Painful Boredom of MLS Football

July 28, 2011 — by Ryan

For once they are excited about something other than sleeve tattoos and sticking it to the man!

Ahhh, the magic of MLS.  The alchemy of the United States’ professional soccer league remains an elusive beast. While most observers would agree that the league’s play has improved dramatically during its existence (one could argue that it’s the equivalent of the Mexican league though admittedly it remains a tenuous argument and really few defenders in the MLS meg opposing forwards in their own defensive third so maybe the MLS still has a way to go), its skill level remains, well frequently uninspiring.  At least in its current incarnation the league provides a medium for developing American talent, even if one gets the sneaking suspicion that Landon Donovan and others like him would benefit from more European or English competition (to Dononvan’s credit his brief time in Everton was very fruitful and proved Donovan could compete at the level of the premiership).

 

Still, even if play has improved, how much has the fan experience benefited? Hard to say. Like most things in life, it seems to depend on where you are and the local demography. For example, take all the recent hoopla over the Portland, Vancouver and Seattle franchises.  Chris Ryan’s recent article on grantland.com provides a fine example. The rivalry that has emerged between the neophyte sides of Seattle and Portland serve as the best stories out of an MLS summer overshadowed by the Women’s World Cup (and the glorious insouciance of Hope “Han” Solo). Between the natural rivalry that exists between the jewels of the Pac Northwest and the established histories of both clubs (The Portland Timbers and Seattle Sounders were both established A League franchises and the two cities had an NASL rivalry as the aforementioned Ryan points out.), it should probably not surprise anyone that the two franchises have done so well. Moreover, their natural rivalry outside of soccer, such as the once famous Sonics-Blazers battles symbolizes the kind of excitement that has emerged around soccer fixtures in the region. One need only look to IFC’s hysterical Portlandia for further evidence of the Pac Northwest blood feud.

 

Inappropriate? Yes! But at least you're paying attention.

The hipster aesthetic probably doesn’t hurt either, after all, even though Grizzly Bear Blitzen Trapper Sleater Kinney (ooh I think I dated myself on that last one) lovin’ bohemian might eschew more traditional sports, soccer retains some kind of alternative credibility in America.  Granted, it boggles the mind that a predominantly white suburban sport (on American shores that is) still harbors an alternative identity, but its cosmopolitan international nature seems to mystify the fixed bike gauged pierced afficianados of the American Pacific Northwest.

 

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Scattershot Politics: Sport and Its Serpentine Political Meanings

June 14, 2011 — by Ryan1

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[Editor’s note: We welcome back contributing writer and longtime friend Ryan Reft.  He’s kindly allowed us to repost this essay from his groupblog Tropics of Meta.  For some of his past contributions to CultFootball see here, here and here.]

Over the past fifteen to twenty years, historians have increasingly emphasized the role of sports as both a driver and reflection of society.  The recent Bill Simmons-inspired and ESPN-produced 30 for 30 documentary series tackled a number of difficult subjects via sport.  In “The Two Escobars“, directors Jeff and Michael Zimbalist travelled through 1980s Columbia, following the lives of Pablo (international drug dealer/murder/local philanthropist) and Andres Escobar (captain of Columbia’s 1994 World Cup team murdered in a nightclub alteration several months later).  The two unrelated protagonists encapsulated the travails of late 20th century Columbia.  Drug money filtered into the nation’s soccer infrastructure, boosting its competitive success but also adding layers of complexity and violence to a nation already struggling with decades of conflict.  Writing for the Onion’s AV Club, Todd VanDerWerff summarized its importance similarly: “The film’s portrayal of Colombia as a nation that made its compromises and learned to live with the hell they unleashed is also particularly good, as the story of the two men at the center slowly radiates outward to encompass more and more of the nation’s society.”

This is not a wholly unusual conclusion for the series.  In “Pony Exce$$,” director Thaddeus Matula explored the corruption and ultimate destruction of Southern Methodist University’s (SMU) then dominant football program as booster money flowed in from the oil wealth that defined the Southwest US in the 1980s. Though the Southwestern Conference consisted of eight schools (Baylor, Rice, SMU, Texas, Texas Tech, Texas A&M, Arkansas, and Texas Christian University), Dallas served as a hub for numerous successful graduates of each school.  As several observers note in the documentary, football rivalries crackled in the board room meetings of Dallas high rises as alumni from all schools engaged in recruiting practices that seemed to define the decade.

Likewise, Billy Corben’s film,“The U” about the dominance and bravado of Miami University’s 1980s football teams reflects similar themes.  Miami’s football team served to unite a divided city behind a collection of local talent that also rewrote the rules of the game.  Miami’s players excelled spectacularly on the field but stoked controversy with their trash talk and exuberance.  If oil money shaped SMU, Miami’s notoriously tough African American neighborhoods, embraced by Miami’s first successful coach Howard Schnellenberger, came to symbolize “The U’s” power.  Along with cultural productions like Scarface, Miami Vice and the notorious Two Live Crew, players like Michael Irvin challenged college football and its fans.  Unlike “Pony Exce$$”, “The U” reveals the racial undertones that marked some of the criticism faced by the Miami program.  When teamed with Steve James’ masterful “No Crossover: The Trial of Allen Iverson” and the recent “Fab Five” film about the innovative early 1990s Michigan basketball team, “The U” reveals so much more about American life than just college football.  Race, money, and a changing cultural landscape collided.  As one writer observed, James’ movie looks at Allen Iverson “more as a phenomenon, a human inkblot whose polarizing effect on people often says more about them than it does about him. They see whatever they want to see, and that may or may not be the truth.”  In essence, all these films and others in the 30 for 30 series function to elevate sports to a level of political and social importance that might have been derided in early decades.

“Architecture is the simplest means of articulating time and pace of modulating reality and engendering dreams.  It is a matter of not only of plastic articulation and modulation expressing an ephemeral beauty, but of a modulation of producing influences in accordance with the eternal spectrum of human desires and the progress in fulfilling them.  The architecture of tomorrow will be a means of modifying present conceptions of time and pace.  It will be both a means of knowledge and a means of action.” – Ivan Chtcheglov, Forumulary for a New Urbanism, 1953

 

Writing in 1953, nineteen year old architect and devotee of the Situationist movement, Ivan Chtcheglov published his sweeping indictment of mid-century urban planning.  For Chtcheglov, the architecture of cities past reflected the dead life of capitalist production.   City dwellers had been hypnotized by the built environment, thus, focusing exclusively on capitalist accumulation to the extent that when “presented with the alternative of love or a garbage disposal unit, young people of all countries have chosen the garbage disposal.”  One can see parallels with sport, most clearly in the above examples regarding SMU and the Escobars. The excess capital of drug and oil money created a vehicle for the egos and dreams of ruling classes that were then imposed. (To be fair, soccer teams as several interviewees in The Two Escobar note, serve as great money laundering devices.  One might suggest the same of Enron and other corporate entities in recent years.)

For Americans, sports provided both meaningless entertainment and incredible important cultural moments of resistance.  Dave Zirin documents athlete resistance of the twentieth century in his 2005 work, What’s My Name, Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States.  To Zirin’s credit, What’s My Name, Fool? gathers countless examples of political acts by athletes across the sports spectrum, engaging in issues of race, gender, and class.  For example, Zirin traces the complicated politics of Jackie Robinson who, despite his bravery in desegregating MLB, came to be unfairly seen by radical Black nationalists of the late 1960s as a sell out. Some have described Zirin as sort of Howard Zinn of spors journalism.  Perhaps.  He does look at major historical events like the 1968 Mexico City Olympic protest by Tommy Smith and John Carlos, in which both athletes upheld closed black gloved fists.  Zirin explores many facets of the event that had gone unnoticed.  Unfortunately, while Zirin collects valuable stories worth reflection, he too often veers in the direction of soap box oratory. Moreover, Zirin seems to feel the need to conclude paragraphs with zingers. For example, how about this gem regarding the failure of several WNBA sports franchises: “while some franchises found success, others have folded faster than a rib joint in Tel Aviv.” (186)  When discussing Allen Iverson, Zirin notes Iverson’s role as an anti-corporate anti-hero summarizing his nickname may have been A.I. but “there was nothing artificial about him.” (163)  Nuance is not the most prominent feature of  What’s My Name, Fool.  Still, even if the equivalent of street corner radical, Zirin contributes something to our knowledge of American culture and sport.

If baseball and to a lesser extent American football and basketball have served as venues for political expression, predictably, football occupies a similar position for Europeans. In How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization, Franklin Foer traipses through countries around the world, but predominantly Europe, exploring the meanings and processes that manifest themselves in the sport. Throughout How Soccer Explains the World one thing becomes clear, the political complexity of football and more generally, sport, radiates in countless directions.  When Foer presents Barcelona’s “bourgeois nationalism” as a model for 21st century cosmopolitanism,  he goes so far as to claim that it “redeems the concept of nationalism.” (198)  For Foer, Barca never demonizes opponents the way supporters at Red Star (Belgrade- the subject of a previous chapter, one that found soccer fan bases and clubs of the former Yugoslavia as germs for the paramilitary organizations of the Balkan wars in the 1990s) have. Instead, Barca illustrates that “fans can love a club and a country with passion and without turning into a thug or terrorist.” (197)

A central aspect of Barca’s identity rests on its foundational myth, its role as a means of Catalan resistance toward the post Spanish Civil War fascist Franco regime. According to this myth, Camp Nou, Barca’s legendary stadium, enabled Catalan fans to express themselves in ways forbidden by Franco.  Camp Nou allowed for political and social subversiveness. “Its fans like to brag that their stadium gave them a space to vent their outrage against the regime,” writes Foer.  “Emboldened by 100,000 people chanting in unison, safety in numbers, fans seized the opportunity to scream things that could never be said, even furtively, on the street or in the café.” (204) Yet, as Foer acknowledges, there is another way to view Barca’s history.  More likely, Franco saw Camp Nou and Barca as harmless outlets for his repressed populations.  Unlike the Basque region and its terrorist/separatist movement ETA, Catalonia never developed any similar liberation fronts.

BooksGeneral KnowledgeHistory

Intersectionality Meets Football

November 23, 2010 — by Ryan1

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The Collision of Ethnicity, Class, and Memory in My Father and Other Working Class Football Heroes

If one believes the authors of Soccernomics, the provincialism of the nation’s working class remains one of the maladies plaguing English football. Though the authors acknowledge England’s creeping post war “embourgeoisement”, working class attitudes continued to dominate footballing circles and not necessarily for the better. In America, football depends largely on the middle class, but in England, for much of its sporting history, working class culture produced the vast majority of players. Soccernomics laments this development, suggesting the exclusion of the nation’s middle classes from competitive soccer acts as a “brake” on England’s international hopes. Furthermore, Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski argue that the provincial proletarian mindset continues to bedevil the sport. Pointing to the insights of Manchester United Manager Alex Ferguson as evidence, Britain’s working class players subscribe to a theory of work in which they are “entitled” to a couple pints every night (provided they’ve put in an honest day’s work), not to mention the semi-frequent Saturday night bender. Ferguson identifies this belief system as a direct result of “the shift worker’s mentality”. How very Scottish.

The authors are not completely unkind. They point to long traditions of self education among working peoples, the rise in college attendance among the general British public, and the blame that the middle and upper classes deserve for the wayward educational opportunities of England’s proletariat, yet despite these examples “the anti-intellectual attitudes that the soccer administrators encountered do seem to be widespread in the English game,” write the authors, “These attitudes may help explain why English managers and English players are not known for thinking about soccer.” [21] For many players and managers, education serves as a mark of suspicion rather than achievement; Kuper and Szymanski label this the “anti-educational requirement.”[22] While Soccernomics points to many truths about the game, it is not the rosetta stone of football. The book is sometimes guilty of ahistoricism (or at the very least flawed periodization that doesn’t always fully reveal all the nuances and turns of their subject’s narrative) and economic determinism (which some fairly point out should not be a surprise considering its title). The question is, how to get at these slippages?

BooksCommentaryGeneral Knowledge

The Cruel Economy of Soccernomics: Capital, Players, and Football in the 21st Century

October 18, 2010 — by Ryan

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In 2000’s The Many Headed Hydra, historians Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker explored the transnational revolutionary Atlantic world’s collection of working and enslaved peoples’ of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Linebaugh and Rediker present numerous examples of this burgeoning Atlantic world proletariat as it struggled against the crushing dominance of a nascent capitalism shedding its mercantilist restraints.  The commoditization of labor and peoples, left sailors, slaves, and commoners as physical representations of opposition, providing tangible fervor and ideological depth to various uprisings, revolts, and revolutions from England to the West Indies to the United States.  Acting as “nodes of revolution”, sailors and slaves carried ideas, plots, and oppositional violence against “the dictates of mercantile and imperial authority” targeting the property of the growing merchant class.  (156) In the face of state sponsored violence of the period ranging from slavery to penal colonies to military intervention, revolution through piracy, slave revolt, and riot served as resistance to the formation of new capitalist order.

Strangely, 2009’s Soccernomics (entitled Why England Lose in the UK) represents an interesting correlation to The Many Headed Hydra’s oncoming tsunami of free trade and “open markets”.  No footballers are not, never have been, and are highly unlikely to ever be “nodes of revolution:”, anyone who’s followed recent sex scandals involving prominent players like England’s John Terry (likes 18 year girls  and sleeping with his best friend’s former fiancée) or Wayne Rooney (allegedly cried after “performing” with an escort while his wife was in labor with their first child which makes him simultaneously ridiculous and despicable) knows that even getting them to be “nodes of decency” proves challenging. Yet, throughout Soccernomics the three themes seem central to authors Simon Kuper (soccer journalist/writer) and Stefan Szymanski (economist) economically deterministic approach to football:

  • •  The rising dominance of European style/tactics over the past 30 – 40 years (the authors even argue that Brazil has diminished aspects of its “beautiful game” to adopt much of the European approach)
  • •  The role of capital flows in altering the modern game
  • •  Players themselves, most from working class populations (in the rich and developing world (though differences between poverty in France and South Africa remain stark), serving as nodes of both developments.

“The best soccer today is Champions League Soccer, western European Soccer.  It’s a rapid passing game played by athletes.  Rarely does anyone dribble, or keep the ball for a second. You pass instantly.  It’s not the beautiful game – dribbles are prettier – but it works best.  All good teams everywhere in the world now play this way.  Even the Brazilians adopted the Champions League style in the 1990s.  They still have more skill than the Europeans, but they now try to play at a European pace.” (27)

Commentary

Hating on US Soccer—Bill Plaschke’s Sadly Simplistic Soccer Vision

June 25, 2010 — by Ryan1

Come on ... that was pretty good ..

So how big was the U.S. victory on Wednesday?  For most Generation Xers (like myself), is there any doubt that Landon Donovan’s goal might now be the most memorable in US soccer history?  But plenty of sportswriters didn’t attend high school in the 1980s or the early 1990s, never attended concerts by the Roots or Jane’s Addiction, and hate Allen Iverson for questioning the efficacy of “practice” (never mind that NBA players are forced to ball 82 games a year, making practice fundamentally stupid in the regular season), meaning they fail to grasp the nuances of a sport that for much of their lives was viewed suspiciously.  Moreover, this willful ignorance fails to take into account the sport’s historical trajectory stateside.

Take Los Angeles Times columnist Bill Plaschke.

Commentary

Digging Europe’s Dark Vision of Futbol: The Unsettling Language of UK Futbol Announcers

June 22, 2010 — by Ryan1

It's really not all that bad.

One of the best side benefits of World Cup soccer has been the chance to listen to non-American announcers cover the games. It’s not so much that the U.S. seems to have few legitimate broadcasters who can competently, unpretentiously offer their opinion, which is basically a true statement, no it’s more about the subtle nuances like terminology. Take the following examples:

1) “the smash and grab” – in the overwhelming cluster$#%k that was Switzerland’s goal against Spain the UK announcer repeatedly described it as a “smash and grab” goal. Likewise, Paraguay’s set play success against Italy received the same moniker. I swear no American announcer would ever imply both theft and violence in the purest of all things a world cup goal. No, our man would say the Swiss were “gritty”, “dogged” or “had a nose for the goal”. I’d say the “smash and grab” is all those things and more.