tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-44197525388387730102024-03-05T00:09:28.964-08:00Das LiberoIan Sysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14381094556560006623noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4419752538838773010.post-56550186980159455112013-02-05T21:35:00.001-08:002013-02-05T21:35:55.626-08:00Das Libero: Soccer not Violent Enough?<a href="http://liberodas.blogspot.com/2013/02/soccer-not-violent-enough.html?spref=bl">Das Libero: Soccer not Violent Enough?</a>: It's counter-intuitive I know but the deep resentment displayed by some commentators towards soccer might well be because its violence is no...Ian Sysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14381094556560006623noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4419752538838773010.post-18524601451607863052013-02-03T15:36:00.003-08:002013-02-03T17:31:39.188-08:00Football Violence in Melbourne<span style="font-family: inherit;">The first soccer match I went to at Docklands stadium was about 10 years ago, between South Melbourne and Melbourne Knights. A decent (12K or so) crowd turned up but the vast stadium looked empty. I had gone with a Southend-supporting pom whose thoughts on the game were predictable and dreary. Anyway, we went and stood with the noisy band of South Melbourne supporters who were making the best out of a bad lot at the northern end of the ground. Chants included "Ooh Aah Serbia!" to taunt the Croatian opposition supporters and their regular run of positive chants directed at their team.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">At one point a supporter fell and broke a chair, at which point the song became "broken chair, broken chair, broken chair!" It was an accident; no-one was punished and no-one was blamed. We moved on.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">On the weekend just gone a few more chairs were smashed at a soccer match at Docklands, around 170 and most of them were deliberately broken. Perhaps that's a measure of just how far soccer has come in Melbourne. I hope that flippant comment is taken as weary sarcasm because I am not condoning the stupidity of chair smashing. I wish people who do that deliberately would just leave the game, forever.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">But, the double-standard and the hypocrisy of the Melbourne media never fails to astound me. The scales are not balanced. We know the pattern: 100s of cricket arrests and ejections: boys being boys; supporters bashed and hospitalised at the footy: one-on-one Aussie blokes being Aussie blokes; 1 soccer arrest + 170 broken seats; apocalyptic violence and threat to social fabric. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Then again, why should I be astounded? Channel 7 has a stereotype of the dickheaded soccer supporter that it likes to portray and when the dickheaded supporter acts according to type . . . <i>voila</i>! Nor should it be forgotten that 7 is in the pocket of the AFL and is quite happy and quick to give negative headlines to a soccer fixture that is starting to become of of Melbourne's big-ticket sporting events. It's telling that Channel 9 mentioned nothing of the damaged seats and preferred to go the wholly positive route.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">In Melbourne Channel 7 stereotype runs: <i>Footy is a violent game, but one where all the violence happens on the field; spectators co-mingle in sweetness and light sharing sandwiches and thermoses of tea. Soccer is a game where so little happens on the field that the passions erupt off it. Given that the game is largely supported by wogs then it's no surprise that violence occurs. The only surprise is that there aren't more knives being used.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">It's a nonsense; but it is a nonsense that has nonetheless taken root in the belief system of a city. It's hard not to see it as a product of the xenophobic resentment of foreigners following the arrival of European migrants in the post-war period. Prior to that soccer received plenty of negative press but little of it pertained to perceived spectator violence.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Looking at the history of spectator sporting violence in this city, far more brutal and terrifying events have occurred at cricket and Australian rules football. <a href="http://liberodas.blogspot.com.au/p/footbrawl-australian-rules.html">Even in recent years footy has kept up with many ugly incidents.</a> Soccer has had its moments as well, to be sure, but they pale into insignificance.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">It is of some interest to ponder two things: 1) how soccer rose to be seen as the code of spectator violence, even as more severe violence was occurring elsewhere and 2) how the real history of footy spectator violence faded into the mists of time as if it never, ever happened, thereby allowing present day footy spectator bashings to take on the character of isolated events without a pattern, a context or a history .</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">This is from 1948, reported in, of all places, the Charters Towers paper, <i>The Northern Miner</i>:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<h2 class="S8">
<span class="displayFix" id="lc1"> <span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="ocrhighlight">Football</span></span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="displayFix" id="lc2"> <span class="ocrhighlight">Violence</span></span></span></h2>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span>
<br />
<h3 class="S8">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="displayFix" id="lc3"> Brawls in Melbourne</span></span></h3>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span>
<br />
<div class="S8">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="displayFix" id="lc4"> MELBOURNE, May 15.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span>
<br />
<div class="S8">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="displayFix corrected" id="lc5"> Three brawls occurred during a <span class="ocrhighlight">football</span></span><span class="displayFix corrected" id="lc6"> match between Port Melbourne and </span><span class="displayFix" id="lc8"> Williamstown at Port Melbourne today.</span></span></div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="S8">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="displayFix" id="lc8">Foot and mounted police escorted the</span><span class="displayFix" id="lc9"> umpire from the ground after the match.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="displayFix" id="lc10"> Two of the brawls. were between</span><span class="displayFix corrected" id="lc12"> players, and one between spectators.</span></span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="displayFix corrected" id="lc12">Just before the interval rough play</span><span class="displayFix corrected" id="lc13"> developed into a free-for-all, involving</span><span class="displayFix corrected" id="lc14"> nearly half the players. Trainers and a</span><span class="displayFix" id="lc15"> boundary umpire broke it up, while the</span><span class="displayFix" id="lc16"> remaining players continued the game.</span></span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span>
<br />
<div class="S8">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="displayFix corrected" id="lc17"> Another ugly scene followed a collision</span><span class="displayFix corrected" id="lc18"> between two players. An umpire </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="displayFix" id="lc19"> intervened.</span></span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span>
<br />
<div class="S8">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="displayFix corrected" id="lc20"> At the same time, some of the spectators</span><span class="displayFix corrected" id="lc21"> began to fight They were quelled </span><span class="displayFix" id="lc22">by police.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="displayFix corrected" id="lc23"> Other examples of <span class="ocrhighlight">violence</span> at Melbourne</span><span class="displayFix corrected" id="lc24"> <span class="ocrhighlight">football</span> in the past month have </span><span class="displayFix corrected" id="lc25">been: </span></span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="displayFix corrected" id="lc26"> On April 17, detectives were bashed</span><span class="displayFix corrected" id="lc27"> by a mob of 200 outside South Melbourne</span><span class="displayFix corrected" id="lc28"> Cricket Ground. </span></span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="displayFix" id="lc29"> On April 24, police with batons, and a</span><span class="displayFix" id="lc30"> mounted constable, had to intervene to</span><span class="displayFix" id="lc31"> break up a brawl which developed in</span><span class="displayFix" id="lc32"> the outer ground during the last minutes</span><span class="displayFix corrected" id="lc34"> of the Carlton-Fitzroy Victorian <span class="ocrhighlight">Football </span>League game. </span></span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span>
<br />
<div class="S8">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="displayFix" id="lc35"> On May 1. after Preston had beaten</span><span class="displayFix corrected" id="lc36"> Prahran at the Australian Rules Association</span><span class="displayFix corrected" id="lc37"> match at Prahran, police with </span><span class="displayFix corrected" id="lc38">batons had to protect Umpire J. Egan</span><span class="displayFix" id="lc39"> from 300 angry Prahran barrackers.</span></span></div>
</blockquote>
Ian Sysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14381094556560006623noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4419752538838773010.post-395116030701034842012-08-31T17:43:00.000-07:002012-08-31T17:43:09.646-07:00Collingwood Army dispensing Summary JusticeJust in case they take this <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/sport/cricket/an-appetite-for-anecdotes-20120831-255t8.html#ixzz25Aqy4N5X">Greg Baum piece</a> down or edit it<br />
<br />
At a luncheon Eddie McGuire:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
recalled how as a 13-year-old, he rejoiced to watch the Magpies
triumph over the Blues in a semi-final, then was distraught when, on his
way home, a navy-blue clad thug reached through closing train carriage
doors, snatched his beanie from his head and threw it under the train …
then rejoiced again to look back to the receding platform and see a
group of Collingwood fans dispensing summary justice on his behalf. ''It
was the first time I felt part of the Collingwood army,'' he said.</blockquote>
<div style="background-color: white; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">
Eddie McGuire's feelings of inclusion were based on an act of violent retribution by Collingwood fans. This is a not so subtle celebration of footy fan violence by both McGuire and Baum. </div>
Ian Sysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14381094556560006623noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4419752538838773010.post-81345861843400327632012-08-16T05:02:00.000-07:002012-08-16T05:02:00.845-07:00Das Libero pages updatedBut still need more updating and correction. Feedback welcome.<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><h4>
<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://liberodas.blogspot.com.au/p/soccerphobia.html">SOCCERPHOBIA</a></span></h4>
</li>
<li><h4>
<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://liberodas.blogspot.com.au/p/soccerphobia-australia.html">Soccerphobia Australia</a></span></h4>
</li>
<li><h4>
<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://liberodas.blogspot.com.au/p/soccerphobia-usa.html">Soccerphobia USA</a></span></h4>
</li>
<li><h4>
<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://liberodas.blogspot.com.au/p/footbrawl.html">FOOTBRAWL</a></span></h4>
</li>
<li><h4>
<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://liberodas.blogspot.com.au/p/footbrawl-australian-rules.html">Footbrawl Australian rules</a></span></h4>
</li>
<li><h4>
<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://liberodas.blogspot.com.au/p/footbrawl-cricket.html">Footbrawl Cricket</a></span></h4>
</li>
<li><h4>
<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://liberodas.blogspot.com.au/p/footbrawl-rugby-league.html">Footbrawl Rugby League</a></span></h4>
</li>
<li><h4>
<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://liberodas.blogspot.com.au/p/footbrawl-soccer.html">Footbrawl soccer</a></span></h4>
</li>
<li><h4>
<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://liberodas.blogspot.com.au/p/footbrawl-other.html">Footbrawl Other</a></span></h4>
</li>
</ul>
Ian Sysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14381094556560006623noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4419752538838773010.post-38847951088914424132012-06-25T17:33:00.000-07:002012-07-08T17:40:32.978-07:00They've called it the Wanderers, yeah the Wanderers, they roam around . . . etc<span style="background-color: white;">So, 'Wanderers' it is!</span><br />
<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqXLKVMGhZilw_ddimeNtV8JEd1YyT52SEK_n5FyosDONNhOi_uV-SRodmXXFdUulQ2th8AUDHIQlU2jhAQ335aHHaoTGpu0c0zysVL_lO4HG0L1_ZyEl5dQ5YNVzjvYdVTzcuHtecuVI/s1600/614482-western-sydney-wanderers-kit.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqXLKVMGhZilw_ddimeNtV8JEd1YyT52SEK_n5FyosDONNhOi_uV-SRodmXXFdUulQ2th8AUDHIQlU2jhAQ335aHHaoTGpu0c0zysVL_lO4HG0L1_ZyEl5dQ5YNVzjvYdVTzcuHtecuVI/s320/614482-western-sydney-wanderers-kit.jpg" /></a><br /><br />The new Western Sydney team's name has been announced and the club can now get on with the business of organising the less symbolic and more substantive aspects of running an A League team.<br /><br /><div>
Like all such processes this naming has produced great consternation - something that is, admittedly, not all that difficult to create within soccer circles. While I didn't have a great stake in the outcome, I'm quietly pleased that the FFA has gone with the Wanderers. For once they might have got something right.<br /><br /><br />* * *</div>
<div>
<br />The Wanderers was the name given to the very first organised team in Sydney in 1880. Even the first game played by the team was out west, at the King's School in Parramatta.<br /><br />In July of 1880, a movement seemed to emerge in Sydney. A number of letters to the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald were published, advocating the playing of football under the English Association rules.<br /><br />This long letter from John Walter Fletcher published in the SMH on 17 July 1880 sums up the interest and takes the important step of suggesting a meeting. It is an important, if not founding, document.<br /><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">
TO THE EDITOR OF THE HERALD.<br />Sir,-I was glad to see in your issue of this morning a letter advocating the introduction of the English Association game into New South Wales, and I am a little surprised that some old English player has not made the suggestion before. I have reason to think from conversations I have had on the subject that if the game could properly be started it would become very popular, not only with players, but with the public. Unfortunately, a very general misapprehension appears to exist as to the nature of the game, a great many people I have spoken to evidently confusing it with the Victorian Association game, whereas the two games have not a single point in common. As to its chances of popularity, let any one read in Bell's Life the accounts of International or club contests in Glasgow, Sheffield, London, &c. witnessed often by from 10,000 to 12,000 spectators. It is, I think, about twelve years since the game was first started in England, though its principle, that football is a game for feet and for hands, had long existed in the Eton and Harrow games. At the present time the football players of Great Britain, playing under Rugby and Association rules, are about equally divided, and the two games exist side by side without one interfering in the least with the other, save that of late the value of good dribbling has become universally acknowledged in the Rugby game. I feel that we are rather late in writing in advocacy of the English Association game, inasmuch as a large sectïon of the football players of New South Wales, dissatisfied with Rugby rules, appear to have committed themselves to the adoption of Victorian rules. Nevertheless, there must be many old English and Scotch Association players, or old Eton and Harrow men, who would be glad to see their old game played here, and who would make an effort to introduce it; and I am quite sure that the principle of the game, which forbids the use of the hands, except by goalkeeper, and does away with scrummaging, collaring, mauling, &c, will commend itself to a very large section or this community. The game is essentially a scientific one, requiring, above everything else, unselfish and organized combination. I do not wish to attack the old Rugby game, which, properly played, is interesting and exciting to players and spectators; but must enter a protest against the introduction of the Victorian game, which, though certainly interesting and amusing to look at, is, I believe, rougher than the Rugby, and violates the fundamental principle of all games like football - I mean the law of off side. The very thing condemned under the name of "sneaking" in the Eton game is here encouraged and applauded, and in fact may almost be said to be the chief art of the game. In the brief space of a letter it is impossible to say all that one would in behalf of the introduction of the rules of the English Association; but I hope that, since at the present time a radical change is demanded in the present code, football players and the public generally will give the matter a more thorough investigation than it has yet received before committing themselves to the Victorian game. I should be willing to communicate with gentlemen willing to assist in starting a club under the rules of the English Association, and perhaps it might be possible to convene a meeting to consider the whole question. I am, &c.,<br />J. W. FLETCHER.<br />Union Club, July 14.</blockquote>
<br />In what seems very little time a meeting is convened for 3 August.<br /><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">
FOOTBALL UNDER ENGLISH ASSOCIATION RULES<br />A meeting convened by Messrs. J. W. Fletcher and J. A. Todd will take place this evening, at Aaron's Exchange Hotel, " to consider and promote the introduction of football under English Association rules." All football players and others who may be interested in the improvement of the winter pastime are invited to attend. (SMH, 3 August)</blockquote>
<br />And two short weeks later, the first game is played with the second already planned.<br /><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">
FOOTBALL.<br />The first match in New South Wales played under English Association rules was played on Saturday last, by the newly formed club, against the King's School boys at Parramatta. The visitors had a very fair team, allowing for the fact that hardly one of them had played football for some years. This advantage was, however, balanced by the fact that the boys had not played these rules before. The game was well contested for an hour and a half, and terminated in favour of the visitors by five goals to none; the number of goals must not, however, be taken as a criterion of the play, which was remarkably even, particularly after half time, the boys on several occasions only failing to score on account of their want of familiarity with the art of passing and middling the ball. On the side of the English Association Club all played up well, but the play of D. Roxburgh as back was remarkably good and invaluable to his side, and Scott's goal-keeping deserves praise. On the King's School side the play of Fenwick was very fine, and he would make a grand Association player; all, however, played well. Mr Savage, an old International player, played with and coached Kings School. The names of the club players were -T.A .Todd (captain), W.J. Baker, T.W. Fletcher, C.E. Hewlett, C.F. Fletcher, Wastinage, W. Robertson, W. Simson, Chapman, D. Roxburgh, J Scott (goal).<br />A match has been arranged, under English Association rules, on Moore Park, for next Saturday, against the Redfern Club. (SMH, 18 August)</blockquote>
<br />Interestingly the team did not yet have a name. This situation was rectified at a meeting on 19 August at which the name was determined and a number of other decisions were ratified, including the decision to seek membership of the Football Association:<br /><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">
FOOTBALL.<br />A committee meeting of the newly-formed English Association Football Club was held on Thursday evening last, at which the following resolutions were proposed and carried -<br /><br />1. "That the club be called 'The Wanderers.'"<br />2. "That the uniform be white jersey and cap, with badge southern cross, and blue stockings."<br />3. "That an account of the proceedings be sent to England to the secretary of the English Association, for publication."'<br />4. "That the club be enrolled (with permission) in the English Association." (SMH, 24 August)</blockquote>
The first game under the new name saw the team score another win, this time against a team from Redfern FC.<br /><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">
REDFERN v. WANDERERS.-The second match under the English Association Rules took place at Moore Park on Saturday last, and resulted in a win for the newly-named Wanderers by two goals to nil, both of which were secured in the first 10 minutes, after which the game was very even. Redfern Club, being strangers to the rules, played up well, ably assisted by W.J. Baker. For Redfern, J. Mulcahy and North played well, whilst for the Wanderers J. Fletcher, Harbottle, and M'Donald, were in grand form. (SMH, 28 August)</blockquote>
The Wanderers name pops up in match reports throughout the rest of the decade. In 1888 a healthy competition seems to have been established in the Sydney region, one which is oriented significantly to a Scottish sensibility (thereby marking a long tradition in Australian soccer). The following article suggests that up to fourteen clubs, including the Wanderers, were active in metropolitan NSW at this time.<br /><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">
SOUTHERN BRITISH FOOTBALL ASSOCIATION.<br />The annual meeting of the Southern British Football Association was held on Tuesday night, at Hodge's Commercial Hotel, Mr. John Wallace occupied the chair, there being about 25 members present. The annual report stated that a new series of rules had been drawn up on the lines of those used by the Scottish Association, certain alterations being made to suit the game here. During the past season there were seven clubs in the association, viz.:- Parkgrove, Granville, Rovers, Wanderers, Caledonians, Hamilton Athletics, and Pyrmont Rangers, whilst almost an equal number did not join, but two of these - Bulli and Joadja - have joined for this season.</blockquote>
<br />Yet from here the Wanderers name appears to fade from the records. Indeed, a subsequent use of the name in July 1888 is in reference to the Parramatta Wanderers, a Rugby team!<br /><br />While the archives are sketchy, Phil Mosely's brilliant thesis, <a href="http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/19176748">'A Social History of Soccer in New South Wales, 1880-1957'</a> gives a good coverage of the early history. We learn from it that the first Sydney Wanderers were a spent force by the 1890s. Maybe their spirit lived on in the Auburn Wanderers (referenced in 1893 and 1898) and the Balmain Wanderers in 1899, but it is hard to tell. Nonetheless, the Wanderers were a substantial force in the establishment of soccer as a competitive and organised sport in Sydney - no matter how historically fleeting their presence.<br /><br />There were plenty of candidates for the new name of the West Sydney Club. None of them, however, had the claim to history that the 'Wanderers' has. Whether this was a good point or not was not for me to decide. There are many other names and arguments that needed to be looked at. But I'd love to think that a sense of this history is what gave the name the edge. What I do know is that I and some other (though by no means all) soccer historians are pleased that an acknowledgment of the game's historical roots and longevity have been made in the naming of the Australian soccer's newest professional club.</div>Ian Sysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14381094556560006623noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4419752538838773010.post-41049879119494666352007-12-03T06:16:00.000-08:002012-07-09T06:17:29.820-07:00OPEN LETTER TO KEVIN MUSCAT<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;"><strong></strong></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Dear Kevin </span></span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">No, I haven’t
played the game at professional level, so I don’t know first
hand the situations you face every week in the A-League or the top
leagues in England and Scotland, but I have watched your career
since you were an Under-9 at Green Gully and later at Sunshine George
Cross. You have marvellous talents and you can play a bit, but when
you were young I thought you were a thug and a very bad influence
on a youngster from Geelong who also could play the game, when you
were in under-age representative sides in Victoria. Your skill and
commitment and strength of mind led good coaches to select you for
the Young Socceroos and the Olyroos when you were younger than all
the other players. They could see in you something they needed for
their teams, for they were not romantics but hard-headed winners
like yourself.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">
</span><div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">It was a similar
story at Milwall, Glasgow Rangers and for the Socceroos. Talent
and refusal to accept defeat was written on your face and your body
in every game you played. Yet when you try to explain and excuse
your conduct in <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/news/soccer/criticism-deserves-a-red-card/2007/12/01/1196394689358.html">your
column in the sports section of the <em><strong>Sunday Age</strong></em></a>,
you show that you have never been able to distinguish commitment
and sacrifice on behalf of the team from violent conduct as defined
by the Laws of the Game.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">
</span><div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Soccer has always
had its hard men who could play, like Roy Keane, Denis Wise, Billy
Bremner, Tommy Smith, Norman Hunter and Dave Mackay. Coaches and
managers have always been delighted to have these players in their
sides and at the end of their careers their exploits have been glossed
over or romanticised. But they did awful damage to other players
along the way, sometimes they would claim, as you do, accidentally
but on other occasions with malice or at least recklessness of the
consequences.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">
</span><div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Some of the
work you have done for the Melbourne Victory under Ernie Merrick
deserves the highest praise. You have been the very public face
of the game in Victoria, have put in countless hours in promotion
of the game at all levels and are now engaged in training yourself
as a coach. In games, other A-League teams know that they are never
safely in control of a match while you are on the field. Yet like
many of those who follow this code in Australia and want desperately
for it to succeed, not in toppling Australian Rules or anything
like that, but just to become a normal part of the sporting scene
in this country, I fear that your behaviour is dangerously counter-productive
in one key respect.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">
</span><div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">It is not only
your propensity to launch the most violent tackles on opponents,
often from behind, but the snarling refusal to accept decisions
which go against you and the browbeating of officials and opponents
which sets an appalling example. Others believe if Muscat can get
away with it, so can I. If that conduct is allowed to persist the
skilful players will be driven out of the game. Juninho, the little
Brazilian magician playing for Sydney FC, has already made clear
his fears about the way the game is played in this country by a
few players like yourself.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">
</span><div align="center" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><img src="http://www.theage.com.au/ffximage/2007/12/02/majkevinmuscat_wideweb__470x346,0.jpg" /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">
</span><div align="left" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">I
am not in the slightest concerned about your kicking an advertising
hoarding. It is fascinating, and symptomatic of the modern game,
that your immediate apology was to the sponsor for the off-field
incident and not to the thousands of others you have let down for
the on-field behaviour.</span></div>
<div align="left" style="font-family: inherit;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">
</span><div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Nor am I convinced
by you and your coach pointing to the disciplinary record of other
clubs as if it was their propensity to commit fouls which determined
their places on the A-League ladder. I found your attempt on television
to defend some of the crude tackling by some of Juninho’s
team-mates in the exhibition match against LA Galaxy hard to take
as well. I know this is a contact sport and if it becomes basketball
we will all be the poorer. But the kind of tackling which injures
others in the name of winning matches is something we can do without,
particularly if we want to succeed in Asian competition. I want
to see Australian teams which match others for skill, not physicality,
and I just wish you could curb your occasional but violent assaults
on your fellow players for the greater good of the game.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">
</span><div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Yours in sorrow
more than anger,</span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<br /></div>
</span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><span style="font-size: small;"><strong>Roy
Hay</strong></span></div>
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.theage.com.au/news/sport/kevin-we-are-the-ones-who-should-be-seeing-red/2007/12/02/1196530481167.html" style="font-family: inherit;">An
edited version of this letter was published in <em></em></a></span><strong><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.theage.com.au/news/sport/kevin-we-are-the-ones-who-should-be-seeing-red/2007/12/02/1196530481167.html" style="font-family: inherit;"><em>The
Age</em></a></span> </strong></span></span>Ian Sysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14381094556560006623noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4419752538838773010.post-62532495853463314712006-12-04T17:21:00.000-08:002012-07-08T17:28:32.410-07:00The Ball is Round: A Global History of Football<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">
<strong><span style="color: #cc0000;">The Ball is Round: A Global
History
of Football </span></strong><em><strong><br />
</strong></em><strong>By David Goldblatt</strong></span><span style="font-size: x-small;">
</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> <img align="right" src="http://www.theage.com.au/ffximage/2006/12/29/TheBall_061229023141875_wideweb__300x387.jpg" /></span></span><br />
<br />
THIS BOOK IS A monster: a 978-page, gloriously fat, thorough-going account of the history of association football, the world game. Beginning with the deep prehistory of football, David Goldblatt takes us on his 320,000-word journey through the developmental stages of the game as its tentacles spread relentlessly around the globe.<br />
<br />
Football, in this account, is a product of industrialisation, global commerce and professionalism. It is the game of modernity. As regions and nations around the globe enter periods of modernisation, football seems most often to be the game that comes knocking, usually without competition from other sports.<br />
<br />
For Goldblatt, the game's many imperial successes result from a potent brew. Its origins lie in the "rationalising thrust of Victorian society" that intensifies the desire of the English and Scottish middle classes to create a codified form of football out of a rowdy and disruptive pre-modern form of folk culture.<br />
<br />
The game spreads outward via patterns of "industrial globalisation" that take the game to parts of the world that adopt football with ease and make it their own. Once transported, football is able to generate such immediate and near universal interest because of its simple adaptability and its inclusive emphasis on grace and fluidity over exclusive brawn and brutality.<br />
<br />
The final key to the game's success is that no other "game embraces both the chaos and uncertainty and the spontaneity and reactivity of play like football". Goldblatt adds grimly, "at no moment in our history has humanity faced a world so threatened by the former and been so in need of the latter". Football, the beautiful and joyous game of risk, injustice and tragedy, is the game of and for our epoch.<br />
<br />
These many histories of football are presented by Goldblatt with the aid of a sociological mirror. The waning of English and Scottish influence in Latin American football reflects the decline of the "de facto" British economic empire. The history of Spanish football is utterly embedded in Spanish politics; or is it the other way around? When France wins the World Cup in 1998 it's also a victory for French multiculturalism; its miserable run in the early 2000s parallels the rise of Jean-Marie Le Pen and the racist right. It is never quite clear whether Goldblatt sees political, social and economic change as harbinger or product of events in the football world. He probably sees the relationships as dialectical, given his subtle but not infrequent Marxist reference points.<br />
<br />
He shows that for all the economic hype around the game it's still a relatively small player in the global economy. Economic decisions in football are never really earth-shattering. Where football leads and directs history is at the levels of collective emotion and spirit, though Goldblatt might baulk at these terms.<br />
<br />
Goldblatt's narrative is one that in hindsight seems so inevitable. He tracks the conquests as one might observe falling dominoes. Rather tantalising, then, is the suggestion that football's hegemony in Britain was determined by its better handling of the pressures of encroaching professionalism than rugby (which split into amateur and professional codes, thereby losing its unity and influence). Had rugby taken the same path as football the domino tracks of global sport today would make a very different pattern. Of course, some of the dominoes failed to fall, especially in the English-speaking world - though history has not had its final word on this.<br />
<br />
The reasons association football fails to take hold fully in Ireland, the United States, Australia and New Zealand revolve around such matters as: the formation of colonial national identity as a rejection of the imperial centre and its cultural practices; association football's unavailability in codified form when the need or desire for regulated sporting competition is emerging in the colonies; and sheer serendipity.<br />
<br />
For example, the All Blacks' 1905 successes against British rugby teams were vital in bolstering that code's already rising fortunes in New Zealand. By comparison, the New Zealand and Australian association football teams had to wait until the mid-1920s before they had the honour of being pummelled by a visiting English team. For all the much-vaunted Aussie and Kiwi fighting spirit we nonetheless turn our backs on our failures as readily as anyone else. It's a matter of record that association football has struggled to gain a strong foothold in Australia until very recently. Yet I write this review after having recently been a part of a crowd of 50,000 at Telstra Dome watching a domestic Australian match and having spent a year boggling at the unprecedented feats of the Socceroos.<br />
<br />
For anyone trying to understand this phenomenon, The Ball is Round is an ideal place to start, even though it is wafer thin on Australian football history. As a global history it is ultimately a collection of stories about locality. Through his grand temporal and geographic sweep, Goldblatt builds story upon story, mapping patterns of growth, decay and regrowth that pulse to the beat of the history of modernity, adding local variations to the rhythm as he finds them. It's a framework that invites and accommodates further local comparisons.<br />
<br />
The key to Australia's recent football history lies in Goldblatt's notion that the game enters a new era as the globalised economy heats up. Post-industrial football, with its global television deals, mega-rich players, corporate branding, architecturally sculptured all-seater stadiums and cashed-up "theatregoing" audiences, has fundamentally rewritten the guidelines for success.<br />
<br />
The old modern industrial football was always a joint enterprise between the working-class masses who supported the game and the businessmen who obtained power, influence and cachet (but rarely capital) by owning and running football clubs. The loyalties of the majority of the Australian working class, having been captured by Australian rules or rugby league, were largely lost to association football in this country.<br />
<br />
However, post-industrial football doesn't need the working-class masses, it needs customers. It doesn't need grassroots, it needs cable connections (apologies to Ken Wark) and the apparatuses of the post-industrial corporation. One beauty of The Ball is Round is that it gives the reader models for understanding the reasons association football can suddenly seem to bloom in Australia without ever broaching the topic directly.<br />
<br />
Goldblatt also enables us to understand what football fans in Australia might be losing even as our game slides into the mainstream because he feels deeply the ebbs and flows of the global game.<br />
<br />
But this is a book with many attractions. In the end it is simply magnificent; an exhaustive and exhausting, well-written and beautifully packaged story of the most popular game in the world, written by a man whose knowledge and research is encyclopedic if not maniacally obsessive. It is an absolute must for fan and aficionado alike.<br />
<br />
Reviewed by Ian Syson <br />
<br />
This review first appeared in the AgeIan Sysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14381094556560006623noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4419752538838773010.post-71290587321229175292006-07-13T17:17:00.000-07:002012-07-08T17:29:00.043-07:00Foul! The secret World of FIFA:<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #cc0000;"><strong>Foul!
The secret World of FIFA: </strong></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #cc0000;"><strong>
Bribes, Vote Riggings and Ticket Scandals</strong></span> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong>
By Andrew Jennings</strong></span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">For
a football supporter, reading this book is (I imagine)
like finding
out that your parents are crooks. You realise that your
lifestyle
and values are at some level morally compromised.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">If only half
of what Andrew Jennings documents in Foul! is true then
the much-lauded
‘football family' is rotten to the core. Among the
bureaucracies
of FIFA and its confederations, Kick-backs, bribery, vote
rigging,
and ticket laundering are commonplace.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Jennings presents
a stream of examples: the case of the illicit stand-in
member at
the FIFA congress (her being a young woman instead of an
older man
went unnoticed); the tidy US$500 per diem expenses claimed
by annointed
FIFA representatives; CONCACAF's overlord Jack Warner
funnelling
World Cup tickets exclusively through his private travel
company
at £1,700 profit per package. The list is extensive.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">All over the
FIFA world easy corruption is practised by glib
hypocrites.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Not much different
from any other transnational corporation then! Indeed, as
Jennings
points out, FIFA and the IOC have a lot in common.
McDonald's, Nike
and most other rapacious global enterprises seem to be
models for
FIFA imperialism – or should that be the other way around?
FIFA has a longer history than many of them.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Jennings is
an award-winning investigative journalist, having exposed
serious
corruption in big business, Scotland Yard and the Olympic
movement.
His investigations need to be taken seriously.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Jennings knows
the dangers of making such powerful enemies. And his
method is to
keep himself loud and visible. Despite the odd, veiled
physical
threat, he fronts up at press conferences (when he's not
banned
from them) and ask the blunt questions: ‘Where's the money
gone, Mr Blatter?' His journalism keeps alive themes that
others
might have allowed to die prematurely. He endures insult
and innuendo
about his motives. But he will not be distracted from his
quarry,
FIFA CEO Sepp Blatter and his senior henchmen.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Jennings' strategy
forces FIFA into trying other, less direct, means to
silence him.
They try unsuccessfully to coax him onto the gravy train –
through bribery or soft-soaping. When that fails they
resort to
lawyers and the threat of legal action – all of which
Jennings
blithely and joyfully sidesteps.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Unfortunately,
Jennings' investigative method finds itself replicated in
the book's
structure. Too often, he thrusts himself forward as the
hero of
the story, all the while alluding to his own cleverness,
bravery
and solid principles. Sometimes Jennings is more worried
about the
minutiae of the investigation than the bigger story. This
paper
chase has too much paper and not enough chase.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Ultimately,
Foul! doesn't tell us much about the game of football,
merely the
corrupt state of its governance. Maybe that's Jennings'
purpose;
but the resultant story is monotonous and limited.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">While Jennings
dedicates his book to the fans of the game, he doesn't see
them
as major players in his story, even though they are the
ones being
ripped off. Their inclusion might have given the book the
balance,
colour and life it hasn't achieved.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Foul! Is about
what happens when money in sport gets so big that the
sport itself
becomes the background. The past four weeks has shown us
what can
happen when a body like FIFA is so corrupt: the sport it
governs
is seen in the same light. Refereeing errors are turned by
some
commentators into proof of wide-scale corruption. The
ascent of
skillful and tactically superior teams like Italy and
Brazil is
translated into a pre-ordained maintenance of the status
quo.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">For some, tomorrow
night's victor will be forever tainted by the smear of
political
manipulation.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Despite my reservations,
this is a book that deserves to be read by all football
fans –
so we can understand how badly our beautiful, flawed game
is run
and be inspired to work out ways of taking it back from
the criminals
who run it.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Reviewed by
Ian Syson</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">This review
first appeared in the <em><strong>Age</strong></em></span>Ian Sysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14381094556560006623noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4419752538838773010.post-18076811083231037432006-06-10T17:19:00.000-07:002012-07-08T17:20:02.067-07:00Reviewing the Gravy Train?<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><em><span style="color: #cc0000;"><strong>By
the Balls: memoir of a football tragic</strong></span></em>,
Les
Murray</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><strong><em><span style="color: #cc0000;">The
Away Game: the secret lives of Australia's soccer
superstars</span></em></strong>,
Matthew Hall</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><strong><em><span style="color: #cc0000;">Guus
Hiddink: Going Dutch</span></em></strong>, Maarten
Meijer</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><strong><em><span style="color: #cc0000;">The
World Game Downunder</span></em></strong>, edited by Roy
Hay and
Bill Murray</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><strong><em><span style="color: #cc0000;">German
Football: History, culture, society</span></em></strong>,
edited
by Alan Tomlinson and Christopher Young</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><strong><em><span style="color: #cc0000;">Calcio:
A history of Italian football</span></em></strong>, John
Foot</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span></blockquote>
Even as John Aloisi was driving home the winning penalty on that mad night in November, they were already at it. While we mere punters were celebrating joyously, drunkenly, wantonly, the publishing accountants clicked into gear like cat burglars taking advantage of a massive street party. They were busy: adjusting schedules, ordering reprints, contacting authors to update their now out-of-date books, asking the odd popular writer without a jot of interest in the game if they could perhaps write a sokkah book for them. A gravy train had arrived and they were getting on board.<br /> <br />Maybe I'm a little too cynical. But it's hard not to notice that publishers with little prior commitment to the world game have acknowledged its marketability in Australia and are pushing out World Cup books by the truckload. It's a good thing; it's a bad thing. A number of the books reviewed here bear the traces (if not the open editorial wounds) of this new publishing imperative.<br /> <br />For example, I wish Les Murray's By the Balls had not been subtitled, memoirs of a football tragic . It's too marketing-department and tacky, conjuring the image of a small-minded man pretending to love something in order to gain advantage. In truth, Murray is a stalwart of the game in Australia who almost single-handedly cemented SBS's reputation as the Soccer Bloody Soccer channel. His relation to football is romantic, perhaps heroic, but never tragic.<br /> <br />This is the first full-length book telling of Murray's transition from Hungarian boy Laszlo Urge to Australian football identity. It describes the Urge family's escape from Stalinist Hungary in 1956 and their arrival in Wollongong a year later. Young Laszlo was struck immediately by the lowly status of the game he loved. How could it be that football was not popular in Australia? Why did the identity and strength given to him by ‘his' team, the magnificent Magyars of the early 1950s seem to mean so little in his new country where the eggball codes reigned.<br /> <br />Thankfully, Murray found football in Australia via his family's involvement in Hungarian community teams, first Wollongong-based Pannonia and then Sydney team, Budapest (later St George).<br /> <br />Football gave a sense of belonging to Murray (and to legions of European migrants) and his story is one of a debt gladly repaid through his activism for the sport in Australia.<br /> <br />By the Balls ends on a sobering note. As football becomes ever more a business in which financial success drives what happens on the field, the beauty and ethics of the game are in peril. For Murray, what ‘quarantines the game and its virtues is national team football'. When the accident of birth determines selection and national pride is the reward, the excesses of football capitalism can be averted. Consequently, the World Cup is the ‘pinnacle of the world game'. As he confesses, this may be a tad ‘romantic'. The next four weeks will tell.<br /> <br />Matthew Hall's The Away Game contains the stories of a number of footballers who left Australia to advance their careers. It was an important book in its first edition (2000) partly because it was published at a time (post Iran) when everything seemed lost for the international ambitions of our star players. It had all the poignancy of a story of wasted youth.<br /> <br />As Hall acknowledges in the new edition, a lot has changed in the past six years but he fails to explain just what, how and why things have changed. One definite change is in the contents of the book. New material has been added, some has been excised, and the chapters have been re-ordered to draw attention to current Socceroos.<br /> <br />Unfortunately, this major structural change has been not been accompanied by thoughtful editing – ‘get this out in a hurry' seems to be its editorial method. We are repeatedly told information that we have already read. Updating has occurred without much thought as to how it might relate to the rest of the book. I got to the point where I just wanted the book to end. It was like being told the same story over and over.<br /> <br />While the book needs re-organising it is still worth dipping into. The (first edition's opening) chapter on Joe Marston, the Aussie who went to Preston in the 1950s, is a classic Australian sports story.<br /> <br />The Away Game is an important book in that it reveals the repeated patterns of shoddy treatment meted out to young Australian players – the three brave players who independently admitted they were sometimes reduced to tears of loneliness in their rooms at night are testimony to this. If only the publishers had cared more about its integrity.<br /> <br />Maarten Meijer's Guus Hiddink: Going Dutch is a biography of the man who will take some of the players in Hall's book to the World Cup.<br /> <br />Marketed as an ‘intimate biography of the super coach', it is nowhere near as intimate as we'd like, reproducing the stereotypes of Hiddink that circulate through other media without revealing much that is new or enlightening. The large font ensures a 260 page book when 150 pages might have done.<br /> <br />Moreover, it seems that the bulk of the book was written shortly after Hiddink's Korea career came to an end. The Australian material feels very much tacked on – another case of MPS (the Must Publish Soccer syndrome).<br /> <br />If Roy Hay and Bill Murray wrote about AFL the way they write about association football in Australia they'd be local heroes. Hay has a long and distinguished track record as a scholar and working journalist while Murray is a highly respected international scholar, having published the classic history, The World's Game.<br /> <br /><br /> <br />With The World Game Downunder, Hay, Murray and their contributors have produced a fascinating but necessarily disjointed history. A precursor to a big history the two editors are writing, the collection gives us insight into the way football in Australia, unable to move beyond second-rung status, has progressed in waves of interest and appeal only to fall into troughs of neglect and abuse.<br /> <br />All those with more than a vague interest in the history of football in Australia will want to get their hands on it.<br /> <br />If The World Game Downunder represents academic publishing at its best then German Football, edited by Alan Tomlinson and Christopher Young sits towards the other end of the scale. An interesting book crippled by its turgid and sometimes impenetrable prose, it is constructed around essays that seem to tick all the ‘appropriate' scholarly boxes: immigrants in football; women in football; hooliganism; fandom and so on, without coming together to make a coherent argument.<br /> <br />The defence that this is an academic book speaking to academics doesn't wash either. Sports history, as an academic discipline, doesn't need to model itself on critical theory, sociology or discourse analysis to do its job. It should be able to develop its own forms of communication that engage sports aficionados. Indeed, Hay and Murray show the way.<br /> <br />Nonetheless, German Football contains some significant and important essays from which I learned a great deal.<br /> <br />Until the First World War, football was a minority sport in Germany, a nation that treated sport with contempt. (The game's English origins didn't help either.) In fact football never fully established itself in the national imagination until Germany's 1954 World Cup final victory over Hungary, a vital moment in the regeneration of postwar German identity (as well as being a major tragedy in Laszlo Urge's young life).<br /> <br />That victory helped to strengthen arguments for a national club competition. I was surprised to learn that the German national competition, the bundesliga began as recently as 1963 (only 14 years before Australia's NSL).<br /> <br />The subsequent West German triumph, in 1974, gave the nation a different kind of legitimation in a context of massive social upheaval, radical politics and domestic terrorism.<br /> <br />But I wanted more than this. I wanted a story of German Football and not footnotes at its edges.<br /> <br />Calcio: a history of Italian football , by John Foot is a magnificent compendium/encyclopaedia of a book. It demonstrates just how important football has been in the unification of Italy and how significant its World Cup triumphs have been for the development of Italian national sensibility.<br /> <br />Foot is demonstrably in love with Italian football ( calcio ). He adores it; he is obsessed by it; now and then he hates it – but never for long. The game is both object and vehicle of his passions. The book is superbly written and richly layered. The longest by far of all those under review here, it was the easiest and most delightful to read. Over 220,000 words went by almost without a hitch. It suffers from a little repetition but (unlike The Away Game ) its echoes are both understandable and forgivable.<br /> <br />Calcio is organised around the vital themes of the Italian game: history, referees, players, managers, Italian style, the media, the World Cup and others. In covering these so thoroughly Foot kicks up recurring problems in calcio and Italian society.<br /> <br />By this account, Italians live their lives in a constant state of antagonism: the referee is out to get them; FIFA is out to get them; the English gave them the game but play it badly and are out to ruin it; everyone hates them and they hate each other.<br /> <br />Moreover, Italians seem to accept corruption as an unavoidable part of their lives and their sport. It's OK to bribe referees; it's OK to pre-determine results to the satisfaction of both teams; it's OK to dive and cheat in order to advance the interests of the team. Foot gives the example of an English player, new to Italian football, who refused to fall down after a heavy challenge in the penalty area being criticised broadly for failing to dive and get a penalty for his team. Teams that try too hard when they have little to play for are accused of playing outside the spirit of the game!<br /> <br />There'd be something offensive (if not racist) about all of this if Foot were not deeply immersed in Italian culture and thereby also able to find and express the joy and spirit at calcio 's heart.<br /> <br />This immersion produces the book's one narrative flaw – and it's a big one. The English critic David Goldblatt argues that Foot is too compromised to say what he really thinks about Italy and calcio. So Goldblatt says it for him: ‘Italy and Italian football are a disgrace', a corrupt and corrupting world unable to mend its fractured history or escape its legacy of fascism.<br /> <br />I suspect Foot agrees. It's hard to finish this book without feeling profoundly depressed about the possibility of Italy and calcio emerging from its corruption in the near future. I don't want to agree with Foot – because national stereotypes are usually wrongheaded – but his story is presented with such weight and passion that it's hard not to.<br /> <br />If there's a significant thread to be drawn from this collection of books it is this: football, the World Cup and nationalism are inextricably entwined. World Cup victories are always significant events in a nation's history – the exception might be Brazil, which seems to take such things in its stride. The failures of teams like Hungary and Holland to win the Cup when they seemed the team most likely have also left their mark on ideas of their respective national characters.<br /> <br />A common idea seems that national sentiment and confidence can only form fully on the back of a nation's World Cup exploits – a notion that raises questions about Australian nationalisms, all of which have formed in the absence of major success in the world game. If we have (as a nation) defined ourselves on the sporting field it has been in an anti- or post-colonial mode, against England and other Commonwealth countries. We have never been in a position to succeed in a genuinely popular and global sport.<br /> <br />But we have glimpsed a possible future with the recent successes of the Socceroos. And we have been given intimations of a previously unseen kind of multicultural nationalism at recent World Cup qualifiers. It is intriguing to think on the kind of effect Australian success at the World Cup (if it ever comes) will have on ideas of who we think we are and our place in the world.<br /> <br />Reviewed by Ian Syson<br /> <br />This review first appeared in the Age<br />Ian Sysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14381094556560006623noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4419752538838773010.post-5897374118304348062006-04-29T17:14:00.000-07:002012-07-08T17:15:32.500-07:00The Goal is Going GlobalGoal!, a movie released without much fanfare into our cinemas very recently, could play an important part in a renewed imperial campaign being fought on our shores. The global might and vast resources of FIFA (the world football governing body) are being deployed against some powerful and resilient defences – mainly set up by the AFL but with the support of the two rugby codes, all of which are involved in their own programs of geographic expansion. <br /><br />One of the primary ideological defences of these codes has been the cultural denigration of football (or soccer as it is called in all countries where it is not the dominant sport). The late Johnny Warren called it the ‘Sheilas, Wogs and Poofters' mentality: the idea that the game is not one for real men – real anglo-celtic men, that is. <br /><br />FIFA has the economic muscle to wage and win a long war but to get the war over more quickly it needs to win ideological battles first. This is where Goal! comes in. <br /><br /><img src="http://vulgar.com.au/libero/images/soccer%20ball%20small.jpg" /><img src="http://vulgar.com.au/libero/images/soccer%20ball%20small.jpg" /><img src="http://vulgar.com.au/libero/images/soccer%20ball%20small.jpg" /> <br /><br />Supported and sanctioned by FIFA, Goal! is the story of the rise and rise of a football-loving Mexican boy, Santiago Munez into the English Premier League. It puts the kind of passion we saw in November when Australia qualified for the World Cup into a fictional but no less affective form. <br /><br />For all its Hollywood schmaltz and contrivance, Goal! is riveting – a compelling and magical story of a boy who refuses to give up his dream despite hurdle after hurdle in his way. The ending has all the audience on the edge of their seats – much like the ending of a tense football match. When Santiago scores the goal that puts Newcastle United into Europe, the on-screen (and off-screen) outpouring of emotion is, again, familiar to any football supporter. <br /><br />Beneath the slick storyline is a kind of realism not usually captured in sports movies. The bleak and spectacular Northumberland coast, the driving rain and bitter cold of a winter in north east England, the beautiful rhythms and sounds of Geordie dialect and the mad banter of football supporters – not to mention the black pudding – produce a texture that owes as much to the documentary realism of Ken Loach as it does to the fantasy of Hollywood. Unlike a lot of sports movies, the crowd scenes are convincing and the way the actors have been spliced into footage of actual games is seamless and convincing. The cameo performances of stars of the game (Raul, Zidane, Beckham) are appropriately understated and charming. <br /><br />The four young boys who accompanied me walked out of the cinema uplifted and with stars in their eyes. <br /><br /><img src="http://vulgar.com.au/libero/images/soccer%20ball%20small.jpg" /><img src="http://vulgar.com.au/libero/images/soccer%20ball%20small.jpg" /><img src="http://vulgar.com.au/libero/images/soccer%20ball%20small.jpg" /> <br /><br />But Goal! is more than a very entertaining movie. It is also a piece of FIFA propaganda that is meant to sway youngsters and their parents to the world game. <br /><br />Significantly, for Australian audiences, Goal! does some subtle ideological work. Santiago's exuberant skills and selfish play are modified for the (supposedly) more physically demanding English game. The Latino temperament makes way for English graft and physical aggression. At one point the Newcastle coach says to Santiago, “Maybe you don't have the pace and stamina for the English game.” Santiago proves in the end that he is able to ‘anglicise' himself. <br /><br />Make no mistake, this movie is about the pointy end of sport capitalism and at stake are the hearts and minds and wallets of football supporters of all codes in this country and around the world. <br /><br />While the conquest of Australia is important to the world game, there are two far more important markets that have been in FIFA's sights over the past two decades: China and the USA. China seems smoothly to be taking to the world game whereas the USA is proving to be a much more difficult citadel to capture. <br /><br />Soccerphobia is one of the USA's most important defence mechanisms for its domestic sport. In How Soccer Explains the World , American journalist Franklin Foer argues that many of the louder voices in American public culture hate football with a vengeance. It's a hatred that crosses political lines and the game is seen as one for wimps, girls, Latinos and middle-class ‘soccer moms' afraid to let their boys play ‘manly' games. There's a strong correlation here with the old-fashioned Australian attitudes towards the game. <br /><br />But the USA goes even further in its fear and loathing. Despite the fact that association football is organised worldwide on far more competitive and capitalistic bases than is the draft-ridden and salary-capped NFL, the game is sometimes derided in the USA as politically correct, liberal or even socialistic. To Foer, the confused rhetoric of right-wing shock jocks suggests that the American fear of soccer is ultimately a fear of globalisation. And this is where Goal! makes its most searching observations of contemporary USA. <br /><br /><img src="http://vulgar.com.au/libero/images/soccer%20ball%20small.jpg" /><img src="http://vulgar.com.au/libero/images/soccer%20ball%20small.jpg" /><img src="http://vulgar.com.au/libero/images/soccer%20ball%20small.jpg" /> <br /><br />In the opening scene, Santiago and his family are planning to enter the US illegally, under the cover of night. Santiago is woken and told by his father to hurry and get his things together. One of these things is his most precious possession, a football. As the family are hurrying through a gap in the border fence, pursued by border guards, Santiago drops the ball. When he stops to consider returning to get it his father Hernan stops him, urging him to hurry “leave that stupid ball” behind. <br /><br />Symbolically, football has been shut out at an American border that has nonetheless allowed the politically loathed but economically necessary illegal Mexican immigrants to pass through. <br /><br />The action then jumps ahead ten years with the Munez family settled in Los Angeles. Santiago and Hernan are working as gardeners for rich clients. <br /><br />Despite having lost his precious ball, Santiago's passion for the game has been retained and strengthened and he stars in minor local competitions. His games are played on dustbowls where no grass has taken root or on fields marked out on a still-evident grid iron. The message is that the game is an alien one. Like Santiago, football cannot get a Green Card. <br /><br />This seems to be Santiago's lot until he is spotted by a visiting talent scout, Glen Foy – one-time player with Newcastle United. Foy contrives to get Santiago a trial with Newcastle – as long as he can pay his own way over – bringing Santiago into conflict with his father, who believes that the idea is utter foolishness. To Hernan there are two types of people in the world: those who own the big houses and those who do their gardening or wash their cars. It represents a class divide that is impossible to cross. The American Dream does not apply to the section of the American population among which the Munez family lives. <br /><br />Despite Hernan's objections, and with his grandmother Mercedes' covert financial aid, Santiago makes his way to Newcastle to begin his struggle to make it in the top flight of English football. <br /><br />While this section is only the first third of Goal!, it's the part where the movie's politics are laid bare. Its makers clearly see the USA as a class-ridden and culturally protectionist society. The one delicious and central irony in all of this is that in order to achieve what was once thought of as the American Dream, Santiago needs to leave America and go to the banks of the once-decrepit Tyne at the heart of post-industrial working class Britain to achieve his goal. <br /><br />As FIFA propaganda this movie has done a lot of work already in Australia and elsewhere. And it will keep on doing so. <br /><br />More significant than this, it may well be signalling the beginning of the end of football's attempt to woo the USA to its cause. Goal! didn't need to be set in LA. It would have worked equally well had Foy found Santiago playing in any part of Central America. The only purpose of setting it in America seems to have been to reject that country as a place where the world game can take root and flourish. This could mean one of two things: FIFA has given up on favouring the USA; or it has seen the beginnings of the demise of the American empire. Perhaps both. <br /><br />When an organisation as large and as powerful as FIFA starts making oblique observations such as these we can only sit up and take note. They give us pause to contemplate the future of the American empire and its role in global politics. <br /><br /><img src="http://vulgar.com.au/libero/images/soccer%20ball%20small.jpg" /><img src="http://vulgar.com.au/libero/images/soccer%20ball%20small.jpg" /><img src="http://vulgar.com.au/libero/images/soccer%20ball%20small.jpg" /> <br /><br />Goal! is the first in a trilogy. Perhaps the next two instalments will clarify the political and economic programs FIFA is implementing. Clearer is the impact Australia's qualification for the World Cup has had on the screenplay of the third movie. The movie's Australian producer, Matt Barrelle has changed the script to feature the Australian team and local fans. <br /><br />It remains to be seen what the lasting impact of this trilogy will be on the stocks of association football in Australia. Initially it will be no surprise if it attracts large attendances in Australian cinemas because the word of mouth will be strong. And in this World Cup year word will travel easily. <br /><br />Had a movie like Goal! come to our shores ten years ago, it would have had a brief success only to be forgotten within months. Periodic spikes of mass interest is the story of Australian football in the past few decades in this country. Twice, more than 80,000 have turned up to support the Socceroos at the MCG. Full houses of more than 40,000 have seen National Soccer League grand finals at Lang Park in Brisbane and Subiaco Oval in Perth. At each point, after a brief surge of interest, ‘soccer' was returned by the media to its ‘rightful' place on the edge of the sporting map. <br /><br />Recently things seem to have changed – though a history of false dawns for Australian football keeps those of us who care prepared for the worst. <br /><br />Three letters say it all: WCQ. One mad night in November, Australia achieved a victory for which very few dared to hope. At Telstra Stadium in Sydney, we qualified for the World Cup for the first time in 32 years. It was a moment of intense climax and celebration. It revealed the passion of the world game to a gobsmacked Australia, a good part of which was trying to come to terms with the sheer ratings fact that this was much bigger than most AFL grand finals of recent years. <br /><br />Alongside this, the rejuvenated national club competition, the A League has seen outstanding crowd averages. This weekend's grand final between Sydney United and the Central Coast Mariners will fill the 43,000 seat Aussie Stadium in Sydney. At the end of March Australia will play European champions, Greece at a more than likely packed MCG before trotting off to compete in the world's biggest sporting event, the 2006 World Cup in Germany. The gaps between the spikes seem to be shortening. <br /><br />The world game and its existence here are now firmly planted in the minds of a lot of Australians who might previously have seen it a foreign game – despite its 120-year history in this country. The game still has its many detractors. But even they have glimpsed the passion. <br /><br />This is why I think Goal! has the capacity to help change the sporting landscape in this country permanently. If for no other reason than it's hard to walk out of this movie believing that football is a game only for sheilas, wogs and poofters. It will take more than this movie to convert the true disbelievers but it will help to soften even the hardest anti-soccer heart. <br /><br /><a href="http://www.theage.com.au/news/in-depth/the-goal-is-going-global/2006/04/27/1145861485765.html">First published in the Age, April 29 2006</a>Ian Sysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14381094556560006623noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4419752538838773010.post-6082778382077877132004-08-17T17:23:00.000-07:002012-07-08T17:30:48.578-07:00How Soccer Explains the World:<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><span style="color: #cc0000;">How
Soccer Explains the World: </span></strong></span><strong style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #cc0000;">An Unlikely Theory of Globalization</span></strong><br />
By Franklin Foer<br />
HarperCollins, $39.95 <br />
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Any book about Association Football with soccer in the title is ultimately written from an outsider's perspective. Aficionados would never refer to the game as soccer, except in circumstances of coercion or necessity. And they would normally do so with measures of hesitancy and guilt. Les "phoodbol" Murray is a case in point. <br />
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No such reservations exist for Franklin Foer, who tours the world examining soccer" as he finds it: Serbia's Red Star Belgrade and its ugly role in Serbian nationalism; Glasgow's sectarian rivalry between Celtic and Rangers; the various corruptions among Italian and Brazilian clubs; the difficulties Nigerian players, on-sold like expensive exotic trinkets, find in the Ukraine; soccer's power to oppose the clerics in Iran. <br />
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Each chapter focuses on the ways the game relates to a particular region's culture, politics and economy and I learned something from every one. Some chapters were revelations. The discussion of the great Jewish teams around Europe (but especially in Austria) before World War II is a new aspect on the evil of the Holocaust. <br />
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There is, however, something wrong with this book. This is, in part, explained by Foer's failure to show how soccer explains the world. You probably won't finish this book understanding the world any better - though you might be clearer about the way soccer works in various regions. Foer doesn't put forward the promised "theory of globalization" either, aside from the general point that money and players move around more easily and more often than in the past. <br />
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But these are just flaws in the structure of the argument. Really disturbing is the echoing S-word, discordant at every point: Glasgow's rivalry is not a soccer rivalry; it's a football rivalry! To give up the word "football" is to give way too much ground. "Football" connotes "the game of the people", wherever it is used. <br />
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Foer also uses annoying terminology: players are "ejected" from games and teams are "offensive-minded". Unforgivably, he gets the name of one of the world's best players, Zinedine Zidane, wrong. <br />
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Having an American author and publisher, the book is linguistically idiosyncratic. But interpretation is never simply a matter of replacing one dissonant term with one you understand. Foer's idiosyncrasies belie a political project that is intimately linked to America's place in contemporary world politics.Woven through the book are the suggestions that there is good and bad globalisation and that moderate nationalism is about the best form of group identification available to us. Leftism is mocked at every point. Foer will not "dredge up the tired old Marxist criticisms of corporate capitalism", though he seems happy to dish out the dreary truisms of bourgeois liberalism. Murderous thugs are met with faint damnation. Rapacious capital is tut-tutted. AC Milan owner and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi might be corrupt, but at least he is open about it! <br />
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Militant political activity is frowned upon - unless it happens to be by progressive activists in a repressive Islamic state. Foer celebrates the behaviour of the women who defied police to get into the stadium in Tehran to celebrate Iran's defeat of Australia in the lead-up to the 1998 World Cup, but is scathing about those who bring a leftist-nationalist agenda to their support of Barcelona. Absurdly, the latter are criticised for consuming cappuccinos at the game. <br />
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Tellingly, Foer offers "beer and burgers" as alternative and more appropriate fare for soccer supporters. And this is the point: he is not writing this book for the rest of the world; he is writing it for Americans. <br />
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Before reaching its final chapter, How Soccer explains the American Culture Wars, I was ready to dismiss this book as one more offering from a naive American gobsmacked by the difference and complexity of the rest of the world. But this chapter rescues the book. He is speaking to a culture that sees soccer as a socialistic, enfeebling, yuppie game that threatens America's existence: "the United States is perhaps the only place where a loud portion of the population actively disdains the game, even campaigns against it". Foer's explication of the soccer world is for their benefit, not ours. <br />
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Many Americans - especially shock jocks - have a visceral reaction to soccer that is stunning in its intensity. Foer sees no conventional political explanation because both sides of American mainstream politics have their lovers and haters of the game. He argues that the American fear of soccer is a fear of globalisation, an argument rich in potential that just doesn't get the airplay it deserves, either in this book or elsewhere. <br />
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While this book is written for Americans, many of the arguments of the final chapter are applicable to Australia, especially the conclusion that soccer flounders wherever it fails to take hold in a nation's working class. And that's a lesson for Soccer Australia in its ongoing search for security and success in this country, for its final transition from soccer to football. <br />
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Reviewed by Ian Syson. <br />
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This reviewed was first published in the Age.Ian Sysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14381094556560006623noreply@blogger.com0