Soccer, good and ill

As I sit here typing, the World Cup is on my television a few yards away, Germany vs. Croatia. I couldn't tell you one player on either team, nor their division, nor how much losing would harm either team's chances. But it's a diversion, right up there with World Poker or that perky woman's tours of fabulous hotels on the Travel Channel.

A few months ago, when I started this thing, a friend and golfing buddy James Wright recommended I write something about the new Nike Commercial, which shows the American soccer team at various points of what looks like distressing world tour. As they travel and compete, they are met with hostile fans, rows of rifle=bearing soldiers, and--in the last image--snow. All this is played out to a piano tinkling, "Take Me Out to the Ball Game."

Translation: Soccer--the new American pastime?

Answer: No. Of course not. But a harmless enough notion.

A lot of people like soccer. A lot of people love soccer. Well, good for them. Me, if nothing else is on, and I'm reading or typing, great. Better that than women's billiards. I do intend to venture forth to the Red Lion pub with some friends to soak in the experience--to practice sociology without a license. And I will watch the final match.

Where I draw the line is the notion that soccer has this mythic, earth-shaping ability, an ability to trascend sports and provide a mental therapy for the world. In today's Houston Chronicle, Daniel W. Drezner lays to rest the notion of soccer as a force for peace. The Civil War interruption Bono refers to in his ESPN ads refer to the Ivory Coast, where a cease-fire has done nothing to halt ongoing terror. Where peace has actually broken out due to soccer, Drezner writes, it has been fleeting. The famous World War I Christmas Eve Soccer match between German and English soldiers lasted a bit more than an hour; the Biafran War in Nigeria that was suspended so the Africans could watch worldwide hero Pele lasted two days. And every story brings with it a counter-story: the 200-hour war between Nicaragua and Honduras was a spillover from a soccer riot, and was called, literally, the Soccer Wars. And Drezner walks the reader through the complicated role soccer played in the run-up to the Balkans War.

Beyond this, the notion of the event itself as a force for peace is laughable. "Sooner or later," Martin Amis once wrote, "Every Englishman will attend his last football game. For some it is also their first football game." The crowd behavior in other parts of the world is often the sort that would not be tolerated in Philadelphia or Oakland; does anyone recall the Mexican fans' chants of, "Osama! Osama!" when the United States beat Mexico? And Andres Escobar's murder after Brazil's 1994 defeat in the World Cup, with his murderers shouting "Goal! Goal!" with every bullet? And what about the one-game (one-game) suspension to the soccer player who celebrated his goals by striking a Heil-Hitler arm raise? As Jim Rome posited: try to imagine Derek Jeter going seig-heil after a home run, or Shaq after a monster slam. "Look the hell out," Rome concluded, "and rightfully so."

Well put.

I think soccer is fine, as a sport. Its influence as a force for pure good is, at best, neutral.

Just my thoughts.