It is an understatement to say that the path from Uganda to South Carolina is not well trodden. But in the past few years an increasing number of young men from Uganda have been making the unlikely journey to Winthrop University in Rock Hill, South Carolina to study and play for school’s soccer team. Winthrop’s connection with Uganda began several years ago, and since that time several players from the East African nation have played for the Eagles. Daniel Ridenhour, an assistant coach at Winthrop, recently traveled to Uganda on a recruiting trip. He spoke with me shortly after returning to South Carolina about his time in the country.
Daniel Ridenhour (L) talking with locals in Uganda (photo: Daniel Ridenhour)
Reconstruction of Afghanistan and Iraq has proven far harder than the invasions of those two countries. In Afghanistan, a newly released report from a British think tank claims that the Taliban can attack US and coalition forces in over half of the country. In Iraq, the cost of occupation may soon hit $1 trillion dollars, yet the country lacks security in many places.
One important aspect of the US military’s reconstruction work has been an attempt to win over Afghan and Iraqi “hearts and minds.” This work has seen the American military (along with private contractors and the State Department) to use soccer, a popular sport in both countries, to gain support from locals. In doing so, they have run into many obstacles, several of which are emblematic of the larger difficulties the US military has faced in attempting to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan.
U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Michael Sandoval, from Charlie Company, 2nd Battalion, 35th Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division, juggles a soccer ball before giving it away to a boy in the Maghdad district of Kirkuk, Iraq, Sept. 30, 2006. (Photo: TheDonovan.com / U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Samuel Bendet)
very once in a while, stories pop up in the Western press about odd goings-on at a soccer match in a remote part of the world. These stories contain sordid details of spells placed by witch doctors, animals sacrificed by fans, or objects burned by those seeking to affect the outcome of a game.
Of all the teams in the 2006 World Cup, only two had teams comprised entirely of players based in their domestic leagues. One of these was Italy, the eventual champion. The other was Saudi Arabia, who finished last place in their group with only a draw against Tunisia to their name (at least they didn’t lose 8-0, as they did against Germany in 2002).
The Saudi Arabian national team
That the entire 2006 Italian squad played their club ball in Italy is not a surprise given the strength of Serie A. But the story of the Saudi squad is as much about Saudi Arabia the country as it is about soccer.
Women are not the only Saudis who face restrictions on travel abroad. Saudi footballers face even more of a challenge when attempting to play outside of the kingdom. To date, only two Saudi players, Sami al-Jaber and Fahad Al Ghasian, have ever made the move abroad.
Why is it that Saudi Arabian players do not go abroad?
It is not a question of skill because, while not world beaters, Saudi players are good enough to play in leagues stronger than their own.
The reasons why Saudi players remain at home are economic and cultural.
The Saudi Arabian league is, as Sukhdev Sandhu writes in The Thinking Fan’s Guide to the World Cup, structured very differently from most. It is a “cosseted league system, bankrolled by princes and the state rather than by local entrepreneurs” (246). Those same princes are also in charge or closely connected to those at the Saudi Arabian Football Association and few in the hierarchy want to lose their most recognizable local stars. (Yet, just as Saudi Arabia’s rulers keep their people happy with oil dollars from abroad, soccer authorities often import aging European and Latin American stars to generate excitement.)
The economic imperative to keep home-grown stars at home is apparent, but it is not the only reason so few Saudi players have gone abroad.
Just as there are laws that hinder women from traveling abroad, Saudi soccer stars have faced restrictions on playing in other countries.
Throughout history, the Saudi authorities have officially banned its players from going abroad. After the 1994 World Cup, star Saeed Owairan (scorer of this goal) “was banned from moving abroad by his football federation … along with the rest of that squad.”
Saeed Owairan
Saudi bans on women’s freedom are, by nature, paternalistic. Paternalism is also in evidence in the soccer authorities’ ban on players going abroad. Sukhdev Sandhu writes, “The Saudi Arabian Football Association apparently fearing that its players might not be ready for the rigors and discipline of foreign leagues, has sought to stop would-be-exiles from leaving” (264).
In the past decade, there has been some loosening of this ban. Sami Al-Jaber played for half a season with Wolves in 2000, although he returned home after playing only a few matches as a substitute.
Sami Al-Jaber
Recently, the ban on Saudi players going abroad has been lifted. There are rumors that Galtasaray is interested in Yasser Al-Qahtani and the striker may move to Turkey over the summer.
But Al-Qahtani is unique in appearing to have an interest in playing abroad. As written on the Channel 4 website prior to the 2006 World Cup, “The barriers imposed by the Saudi FA on players moving abroad are no longer in place, but still few Saudi players have the desire to take their talents abroad.”
Saudi soccer fan Ghassan Bataweel told the website menafan.com in January that many players from his country have internalized the paternalistic attitudes of the Saudi FA. He says players are fearful that they might not be able to cut it in Europe. “[P]layers would not get the opportunity to play for prominent European clubs. It takes hard work and training to develop the level of skills that are required in order to make it on such teams.” (Economic factors are at work here too. Salaries in Saudi Arabia are far higher than Saudi players going abroad could hope to earn.)
In Saudi Arabian soccer, as in the country as a whole, a degree of hegemony has been established. Just as many in Saudi society have come to accept the strict social controls imposed by the country’s rulers as natural, so too have the country’s footballers internalized the interests of those who run soccer in that country. The Saudi FA may have eliminated the ban because, with so few players interested in playing abroad, it is no longer necessary.
The greatest threat to this status quo is globalization, a phenomenon occurring at a torrid pace. Even insular societies such as Saudi Arabia are facing increasing outside influence (satellite TV has brought European soccer to the kingdom and several leagues are draw higher ratings than the local competition). In the future, Saudi players will become more familiar with other leagues, and will recognize the poor quality of their own league by comparison. This may lead to more players wanting to test themselves abroad. But until that time, the country’s best players will continue to ply their trade in Saudi Arabia.
When I first came across Desmond Morris’s book The Soccer Tribe, I thought it was a joke. I was on the campus of Amherst College and popped in the library to see what kind of soccer books were on the shelves. There I found the book that has since become one of my favorite soccer titles of all times.
The Soccer Tribe is a coffee table sized book from the early 1980s. The biography of the author said he had earned a Ph.D. from Oxford and had carried out much important research on animal behavior (he may also be known to readers more worldly than I was at the time as the author of the classic The Naked Ape).
The book, in 320 pages and complete with full-color pictures, looks at everyone (players, coaches, referees, fans, bureaucrats, etc.) who has anything to with soccer. This so-called “Soccer Tribe” is studied with the type of precision usually reserved by anthropologists in their work on tribes in remote parts of the world. As I flipped through the pages for the first time, I couldn’t tell whether Morris had written a serious study or if his book was simply intended to amuse.
It turns out the book is quite serious (it would have been quite a lot of work to simply make a joke, I now realize). The Soccer Tribe is, in some ways, reminiscent of the satirical paper Body Ritual Among the Nacirema, in which anthropologist Horace Miner made typical American behavior (like teeth brushing) seem exotic. Like Miner, Morris employs tools that anthropologists typically use to study “real” tribes in other cultures in looking at those involved in soccer. The result is a book that is simultaneously brilliant in analysis, hilarious in making light of things we take for granted, and beautifully presented (fair warning: short shorts and mullets do make many, many appearances).
I now have The Soccer Tribe on my coffee table and love to show it off to both soccer fans and non-fans alike. It is, to be sure, not a typical coffee table book, but this uniqueness is one of the things I most value about it. Morris’s book is now, sadly, out of print so it will take some searching to find it. But trust me: it’s worth it.
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Looking back at Morris’s book recently made me think again about some of the funniest of soccer rituals. Having watched so much soccer in my life, I rarely stop to consider the uniqueness of many such rituals, as I am so accustomed to seeing them. It is only in looking at The Soccer Tribe or watching games with friends not familiar with soccer that I remember how unique they are.
The pre- and post-game rituals offer some of the most striking examples. The most interesting pre-game ritual I have seen develop in the past few years is the players walking out to the field with young children in tow. Every Premier League game has these “mascots,” to use the British terminology. The sight of cute little children accompanying sporting superstars to the pitch is something I have not seen in other sports. Perhaps the thought of how Allen Iverson would respond if this happened to him is enough to dissuade the NBA from trying something similar.
On behalf of Steven Gerrard and all overpaid superstars ever treated poorly by four year-olds, Thierry Henry gets revenge on a mascot before a game against Ajax.
In Argentina, four year-olds are clearly over the hill. Most games there involve players carrying out infants to the field. But watching this Argentine spin on the pre-game ritual, one can’t help wonder if this might be a bit too young. The deafening roar of the crowd, the confetti thrown toward them, and the thought that they might be dropped by a sweaty many with strange clothes on has brought several of these young children to tears. And quite why parents trust soccer players, who clearly have other things on their minds right before a game, to not drop their infants is beyond me.
Boca Juniors’ Martin Palmero is lead to the field by young children.
There are also several post-game rituals which are unique to soccer. Players in most sports will exchange some sort of handshake at the end of a match. Soccer players (in big games, at least) take it a step further in exchanging shirts. On occasions when a smaller team players a bigger opponent, less well-known players fight to be able to exchange their shirt with superstars.
The US’s Claudio Reyna and the Czech Republic’s Pavel Nedved exchange shirts at last summer’s World Cup.
Soccer players also have a post-game ritual that I find completely endearing: applauding their supporters. Even in this era of massive money in sports, it is refreshing that professional soccer players recognize their fans after nearly every game by clapping to them. The gesture may be symbolic, but it epitomizes the fact that soccer teams in Europe have historically been clubs to which all belong, not the franchises that reduce the connection between professional athletes in American and their fans.
Sunderland players applaud their fans.
The post-game ritual of applauding fans is given a Japanese spin in that East Asian country. Instead of simply applauding, players there bow to their fans. This has come as a shock to some foreigners who have played in the J-League, but bowing is, of course, prevalent in Japanese society.
When I lived in Japan, I often saw bowing in soccer games. The middle school I worked at had a team whose players would bow both before and after matches to show appreciation to their coaches, opposing players, and referees.
Japanese (American) football players bow before a game.
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If a new version of Desmond Morris’s book The Soccer Tribe were to be written, it could certainly include this Japanese and the above Argentine example of soccer rituals. The 20 years of globalization since it was published have brought increased connection among the peoples of the world. In this time, we have been shown the similarities and differences of the rituals of the soccer tribe.
When I first came across 
