football

Thierry Henry’s no look pass to William Gallas in injury time (extra time) against the Republic of Ireland at the Stade du France last Wednesday sent Les Bleus to the 2010 World Cup. One problem: Henry used his hands, which even those most ignorant of the world’s game know is a no-no.

This has created outrage in most of the soccer/football/futbol loving world, with most of the ire being foisted upon Henry, a soccer superstar in the early part of the decade. Our American readers might recognize him as the “unknown foreign guy” in that Gillette razor commercial along side Roger Federer and Tiger Woods. The former Arsenal great and current Barcelona striker has been accused of being a “cheat” – mostly by English and Irish commentators.

The controversy has also reignited a movement to bring instant replay into the world’s game. FIFA, the global governing body for the game has staunchly resisted adding video replay to ensure the validity of on-field decisions. Contrast this to the popular sports in the United States (Football, Basketball and Baseball), all of which have adopted some form of instant replay. Why are American sports willing to adopt new technology while the world’s most watched sport reject’s its use?

America’s soccer exceptionalism might provide some answers. America’s pragmatic, individualist, consumerist, innovation-centric culture might provide a more welcome environment for technological intrusion into sport. The U.S. is a political culture that presumes people rise and fall based on merit rather social/structural conditions. Inasmuch as sporting culture can be viewed as a mirror reflection of a culture’s myths, a culture of individualistic merit demands that its sports give the impression of merit. This I think explains American’s general displeasure at diving in soccer (although they seem to have no problem with faking fouls in basketball). Any effort to use guile to affect the outcome of a game is seen as offensive to American sensibilities.

In the main, the rest of the world might look doesn’t share this individualistic/pragmatist/consumerist view of the world. Thus they don’t demand the precision and constant dynamism that U.S. culture and sport demands – there must be a winner and scoring must be profligate. Soccer, by contrast, can be inherently unfair and cruel. Because scoring a goal is so difficult, a team can dominate possession of the ball but fail to score while another team can be completely outclassed but still score a goal off of a deflection or a moment of individual brilliance. Not very meritocratic.

I love soccer partly because it is absurd. It is existential. It is more like a novel than a technical manual. It doesn’t always provide clear meaning. Hence the oft scorned 0-0 draw. No one scored. No one won. It’s the sport equivalent of Waiting for Godot. This confounds tons of American sports writers and fans to no end. But to me and to most of the rest of the world, it more closely mirrors reality.

The rest of the world is not as wedded to an strict individualist-merit based view of the world but instead see the world as it is messy, unfair, bound up in social relations, etc. As an example, South Americans use terminology that likens soccer to a novel. A goal scorer is often referred as el autor del gol or un protagonista a protagonist. A dynamic play-maker is often called (my personal favorite) un desequilibrante a destabilizer/mischief maker. This language suggests a world that is hermeneutic rather than positivistic, constructivist rather than explanatory. The rest of the world might not demand that their sporting culture produce absolute certainty and meaning. Instead, much of the world sees human error and failing is part of the story of soccer.

However, as the United States slowly embraces the world’s game, it might stand to borrow a page from the U.S.’ steely eyed pragmatism in its professional sports. The world has rightly eschewed calls to Americanize the game by making the goalposts bigger, getting rid of offsides or having penalty “shootouts” to decide winners. These are artificial mechanisms to alter the life of the game for no other reason than to “make it more exciting” by introducing a rapid-fire consumerist ethic to the sport. This need to extract constant feedback from sport is what makes basketball tediously unwatchable until the last 2 minutes of the game.

These approaches would change the essential character of the game. Instant replay is different. Rather than change the rules to create some banal sensation of constant scoring or false decisiveness, it change soccer by setting up rules that encourage fairness. A quick review of a handball or ball crossing the goal line does not detract from the game’s chimerical quality.

Currently the global game is dealing with a corruption scandal. As the sport enters a World Cup year, it must consider how it evolves. Emerging soccer nations like Japan, South Korea, Australia, and the United States bring their own aesthetic to the game. The sport should borrow what it can from the “developing soccer world” so it can remain the world’s game.

Just read a jarring piece by Malcom Gladwell’s in the latest issue of the New Yorker on the emerging connection between playing football and developing serious brain injury later in life. One study Gladwell cites finds a significantly higher proportion of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (C.T.E.) in the brain, a malady caused by trauma, than in the rest of the population. The problem Gladwell discovers, is in the accumulation of micro-traumas to the brain, rather than the accumulation of concussions as was previously believed.

It’s particularly disturbing to read this article as a football fan. At its best, the sport is a celebration of strength, courage, teamwork, and intelligence. Further, it is deeply woven into the American psyche. Television ratings for American football far exceed that of all other sports. FOX, CBS, NBC and ABC/ESPN have paid hundreds of millions of dollars to secure television deals. Personally, my earliest memories are of watching the Miami Dolphins with my dad. As a 12 year old, I sobbed uncontrollably when the Dolphins gave up a 10 points halftime lead to the Washington Redskins in Super Bowl XVII (damn that John Riggins!!!!) Even academics wax poetic about the muscular ballet of football…check out these two Stanford Humanities professors going on about the aesthetic beauty of the sport.

While it appears that research on brain trauma is in its early stages, it seems the toll the sport takes on its participants is far greater than even they realize. From a policy perspective, it opens up the question of paternalism. When should the state step in to save individuals from themselves? The lure of current riches – both monetary and psychic – draws individuals to enter into contractual arrangements that, in many cases, leaves them worse off than if they had not played. Because they have imperfect information about future outcomes, then exchange future health for current fame and fortune. Should we allow them to?

A more vexing question is whether we as Americans have begun to construe access to football spectating as a social right? Social rights are typically those goods that government provides to help secure our well being. Examples are education, health care, etc. Typically, once Americans consider something a social right, government has a difficult time withdrawing it….see Medicare. Having gone to college in the South as I did, I’d be hard pressed to envision what the vast majority of people would do on a Fall Saturday afternoon if there were no college football to watch. I can’t imagine a politician that would even touch the question of banning football. I’m afraid we have developed such a deep, inviolable attachment to the sport that getting rid of it would be akin to getting rid of universal public education? I say this as someone who still watches the Miami Dolphins and marvels at the brilliance of the wildcat offense. But now when I watch, I’ll do it with both admiration and apprehension.