So I'm starting a new soccer team. This is the first time in a long time that I have gone two consecutive seasons without being on a team. There are lots of other things I do for fun and to keep fit, but soccer is something special.Being the super-dork that I am, I not only like to play soccer - but to watch it, to read about it, and to think much too deeply about it as a metaphor for all sorts of things. Soccer as poetry!
Before I get into what I really want to write about this morning, let me highlight a couple exceptional examples of the kind of soccer writing that I find so compelling. It is writing that makes soccer overflow the pitch, explaining, celebrating and mourning everything from nationalisim to globalization to the mysteries of life itself.
See, I'm not the only super-dork soccer fan! We are (apparently) legion, and some of us even write books - which other super-dorks (like me) pay for and read with all too much fervor!
1. My favorite: "How Soccer Explains the World: an unlikely theory of globalization" by Franklin Foer. Foer wanders the world looking at the ways in which soccer shapes and is shaped by culture, politics and the new economic realities of globalization. The book is funny, infectious, smart and ultimately hopeful. A fascinating read for football fans and non-fans alike. The section on the role of football hooligans in the Rwandan genocide is particularly chilling and important.
2. "Soccer Against the Enemy: How the World's Most Popular Sport Starts and Fuels Revolutions and Keeps Dictators in Power" by Simon Kuper. In 1992, Kuper set out to travel the world, looking for case studies to support the thesis in this book's subtitle. He found a former East German who'd been hounded by the Stasi for his love of a West German team, a Slovakian president who made a nationalist statement with troops and truncheons in a soccer stadium, a Ukrainian club that exported nuclear missile parts, and much more.
3. And on a lighter note... "Soccer in Sun and Shadow" by Eduardo Galleano. Uruguayan poet and writer Eduardo Galleano writes about soccer as game, as metaphor as cultural phenomenon, as muse and as lover (sometimes spurned). His writing is lyrical, evocative and beautiful. A lovely book that will make you want to love soccer the way Galleano does.
But now to my main point. Having soccer on the brain lately, I have been following the trials and tribulations of the Iraqi national soccer team wiuth considerable interest. They have just made it to the finals of the Asian Cup, and international tournement where they have played the role of underdog better than any movie script could have dictated.
The New York Times has been covering the team, and has published two very good articles this week. They can be found here: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/21/world/middleeast/21soccer.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
and here: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/26/world/middleeast/26iraq.html
In the first article, "For Iraq, Common Ground Can Be Found on Soccer Field", we read about how the Iraq remains "soccer crazy, and despite mortars, bombings and shootings that are sometimes aimed at amateur teams in Baghdad and Ramadi in western Iraq, it remains the national game. While the young play, older men and children gather to watch and women who are walking by steal glances from under their long, black veils."
The Iraqi soccer team, unlike any remaining Iraqi institution is non-sectarian. Players and coaches are Sunni, Shiite and Kurd, and the fact that they play and succeed as a team is powerfully inspiring as the rest of Iraq continues to spiral into a sectarian bloodbath.
"For Iraqis the success of the soccer team — a 22-member squad with Sunni Arabs, Shiites and Kurds — evokes the old days, a time before sectarianism began to tear the country apart. It offers a moment of national pride and fosters the hope that the country, like the team, can look beyond its differences.
“The Iraqi team is the only thing that is uniting us now,” said Haiydar Adnan, 29, a Shiite. “When the Iraqi team wins a game, the people in Karkh, who are Sunnis, get happy, the people in Rusafa, who are Shiites, get happy.”
“I hope that the Iraqi politicians would look at these simple football players who managed to unite the Iraqi people and learn from them,” Mr. Adnan said.
Not only does the team bring together ethnic and sectarian groups (under a Brazilian coach), it is also free of the abuse that sports teams suffered under a son of President Saddam Hussein, Uday, who was the head of the soccer federation. That is another encouragement to Iraqis that they can win out of skill, and not out of fear."
So I was feeling all good and sunshiney for a day or two there, which is tough when it comes to Iraq. But hey, I thought, any silver lining is still a silver lining, right?
But I (not to mention the Iraqi people) was quickly brought back down to earth. I guess I saw it coming, but the next headline, "Soccer Victory Lifts Iraqis: Bombs Kill 50" was as heartbreaking as ever.
"As the Iraqi national soccer team eked out a 4-3 shootout victory over South Korea on Wednesday, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis poured into the streets in a paroxysm of good feeling and unity not seen in years.
It was more rapture than celebration, a singular release of the sort of emotion that has fueled so much rage and fear and paranoia. But this evening, at least at first, it seemed diverted into nonstop car-horn bliss; spontaneous parades clogged streets from Erbil to Karbala, from Basra to Mosul, from Ramadi to Baghdad.
Then, just as suddenly, the moment passed in places, and the fractured Iraq re-emerged. As throngs of people danced and shouted in Baghdad, insurgents took quick advantage of the unguarded revelry. Two suicide car bombs ripped through cheering crowds in Mansour, on the western side of Baghdad, and in Ghadir, on the city’s eastern side. Together they killed at least 50 people and wounded 135 more, according to an Interior Ministry official."
Tellingly, not even the suicide attacks have been able to entirely dampen the spirits of Iraqi soccer fans who finally have something to cheer about, something to be hopeful about - even if it is only the largely symbolic victories of a team playing a soccer match thousands of miles away. The celebration goes on, as life and love always does - terror or no terror.
Which brings me to my new idea. This new team of ours needs to have two different jerseys, one white and one colored. I found a website (the Assyrian Market http://assyrianmarket.com/iraq-soccer-team-jersey.html) where we can order Iraqi jerseys. I can't speak for the whole team obviously, which hasn't even come together yet, but I have decided to wear a white Iraqi soccer jersey for all of our "white" games, in solidarity with the people of Iraq, who still laugh and play and cheer even as the war drags on and on.
I also encourage churches and other community groups to participate in the Passback Program. Passback collects gently used soccer equipment and redistributes it to people and places where it is needed - including Iraq. We did this last year at the First Unitarian Church of Denver and quickly collected enough equipment to outfit almost ten full teams, more than 100 players worth! If you are interested, please contact Courtney at cef@ussoccerfoundation.org or (202) 872-6659. The Passback website is: http://www.passback.org/
By the way, if you'd rather play soccer than read about it, and you happen to live somewhere near Denver, email me. We may just have a roster spot for you...
in peace, Aaron
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