Major League Soccer officials have just one hope for England’s friendly against France on Wednesday: that David Beckham does not get hurt. They are less concerned with Beckham earning his 100th cap than they are with ensuring that he return for Saturday’s LA Galaxy season opener injury-free.

The bubble of hype that Beckham’s arrival in LA inflated was popped by the injuries that kept him out of most of last season. Some fans who had purchased tickets to see Beckham complained – many teams forced them to buy multi-game packages to see the Galaxy come to town – and MLS officials were forced to explain that his injuries were genuine and there was nothing they could do. The off-season has given Beckham time to recover fully, leading to his England recall and a nervous few days for MLS officials.

David Beckham, the face of MLS? (photo: The Offside)

But to say that Beckham is all MLS has going for it is to ignore a maturing and increasingly competitive league. The league began in 1996, hoping to build on the legacy of the 1994 World Cup. In the 12 years since then, the league’s long-term survival has occasionally been in doubt, but the past few seasons have undoubtedly been the best, both on and off the field.

MLS is run on a “single-entity” structure in which all teams and players are owned by the league. This structure is intended to avoid the irrational exuberance that led the NASL, America’s previous professional league, to go under in 1984. Slow and steady growth has been the goal this time, although for several years it was more slow than steady. In 2001, the league was forced to eliminate two of its teams and in 2004 there were reports that it had lost $350 million.

From this low point, MLS has begun to move toward profitability. The league signed a 10-year, $150 million dollar sponsorship deal with Adidas in 2004 and in 2006 inked its first television rights deal (it had previously been paying to put games on TV). Last season was the first in which MLS teams sold shirt sponsorships, proving that Americans are behind Europe in at least one aspect of capitalist excess.

Much of the success in recent years can be attributed to teams building their own “soccer-specific stadiums.” After years of being forced to rent American football stadiums, teams with their own stadiums now reap higher matchday revenues. They have also sold the naming rights to these stadiums, which explains why the LA Galaxy play home matches at the Home Depot Center (named after an American home improvement store), and will open the MLS season at the home of the Colorado Rapids, Dick’s Sporting Goods Park (nickname: The Big Dick).

The Big Dick (photo: dickssportinggoodspark.com)

This surer financial footing has given MLS the confidence to begin expanding. This season sees the resurrection of the San Jose Earthquakes, a team that was unceremoniously moved to Houston and renamed the Dynamo in 2005. A Seattle team will join the league in 2009 and Philadelphia will bring the league to 16 teams in 2010.

The Philadelphia team has received a fair amount of publicity for its preemptively-formed fan club, the Sons of Ben. This group is part of a trend of increasingly numerous and boisterous MLS supporters groups, including DC United’s Barra Brava and Chicago’s Section 8. These groups are truly grassroots, and have sprung up in a league that was, until recently, more focused on attracting soccer moms and their families than reaching out to knowledgeable fans. MLS increasingly recognizes the importance of soccer-savvy fans and has eliminated many Americanizing gimmicks, such as keeping the official time on the stadium clock and having it count down, using hockey-style shootouts to avoid draws, and naming the Kansas City team the Wiz (though their current nickname, the Wizards, is only a slight improvement).

The standard of play in MLS has risen dramatically since the league’s inception. Early on, skilled foreign players often complained about the excess physicality and lack of skill in the league and hotfooted it back to where they had come from. Foreign players arriving today are just as likely to say that the level of play in MLS is above what they expected.

But high-profile foreign players like Beckham are the exception rather than the rule in MLS. Or, perhaps more accurately, they are the result of the so-called “designated player” rule, which allows teams to sign players at salaries that exceed the league-mandated salary cap (around $2 million per team per year). Former Aston Villa striker Juan Pablo Angel and USA captain Claudio Reyna went to New York and Mexican legend Cuaumtémoc signed with Chicago on this rule last season. This year’s designated player signings are Argentines Marcelo Gallardo and Claudio Lopez, who will play for DC United and Kansas City respectively.

But perhaps the biggest on-field shift in MLS in recent years has been the emergence of young American players. The most promising talent at the moment is New York’s Jozy Altidore. Born to Haitian parents, the 18 year-old striker has the rare combination of size, skill, and poise in front of goal that has led Real Madrid to take an interest in him (and to top it all off, he also writes a weekly column on the New York Times website). When Altidore does leave, he will join a growing list of former MLS players in Europe, including Brad Friedel, Brian McBride, and DaMarcus Beasley. Less well known, though just as promising, is 20 year-old Michael Bradley (son of national team manager Bob), whose 16 goals from defensive midfield at Heerenveen in Holland have attracted interests from teams across Europe.

A more worrying exodus is the increasing number of players headed for leagues whose level of play is in no way superior to MLS, but whose salaries are. Beckham’s millions aside, salaries in MLS are relatively low. As a result, many players have taken more lucrative offers to play in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Austria in recent years. The loss of these players is bound to lower the quality play in MLS and worry league officials, especially as new teams thin the talent pool.

This season begins on Saturday with teams looking to knock back-to-back champions Houston Dynamo off their perch. Steve Nicol’s New England have come close to doing so, but have lost in the playoff final both years (like other American sports, MLS determines its champion in the playoffs, not in the league). DC United turn out consistently strong teams, though their hopes this year rest on how well playmaker Marcelo Gallardo adapts to the league. Chicago hope to build on the success that Mexican Cuauhtémoc Blanco inspired at the end of last season.

Cuauhtémoc Blanco (photo: Last Kick)

Unfortunately for MLS, teams in the two biggest American markets have experienced little success. Red Bull New York (the team was purchased by the energy drink company in 2006) boast the dangerous strike tandem of Juan Pablo Angel of Jozy Altidore, but the club have always struggled. Chivas USA, the American offshoot of the eponymous Mexican club, were the better of the two LA teams last year, beating the Galaxy 3-0 twice. The Galaxy failed to make the playoffs last season and real questions remain about the team going into this season. New coach Ruud Gullit has promised to bring sexy football to LA, but his team have few quality players outside of Beckham, US international Landon Donovan, and Guatemalan striker Carlos Ruiz.

At the outset of its 13th season, there are two ways of looking at MLS. Pessimists will claim that it has failed to break into the American mainstream and can’t match the quality of top European leagues. But optimists will point out that MLS has achieved a degree of financial stability and raised the level of play on the field to a point many doubted it would ever reach. David Beckham may be the icing on the cake, but at least there is cake to be iced.

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After the 2006 World Cup, Sanchez got his wish and was named national team boss. He stuck with his promise not to select naturalized players until earlier this year when he called up one of Lavolpe’s favorites, Antonio Naelson. Sanchez retreated from his previous statements and relied on the same constitutional rationale that Chivas officials recently employed to justify Jesus Padilla’s spot on their team. “The doors are open for all Mexicans, and the constitution says that they are Mexican,” said Sanchez.

Hugo Sanchez has not been as revolutionary as he promised to be (Photo: FMSite.net)

Hugo Sanchez has a completely different set of problems today. As boss of the Olympic team, he recently failed to get out of a qualifying group that also included world heavyweights such as Canada, Guatemala, and Haiti. The cases of Chivas and the Mexican national team indicate that Mexico is a country currently working to define what it means to be Mexican.

Halfway across the globe, Qatar’s oil wealth has, for years, allowed its clubs to bring in talented foreign players (admittedly, slightly past the peaks of their careers). Gabriel Batistuta, Frank Leboeuf, Jay-Jay Okocha, and Romario have all spent at least some time in the Q-League. Despite these big names playing in the domestic league, the Qatari national team has achieved very little.

Recently, Qatar has begun to naturalize foreign players so that they can represent the country’s national team. This might seem to be controversial, but unlike in Mexico, there has been very little criticism of Uruguayan-born boss Jorge Fossati. Why is this the case? Just as in Mexico, political economy largely explains this phenomenon. Critiques of using foreign-born players (of Mexican descent or otherwise) in Mexico are rooted in a conception of Mexican identity originally promoted by Jose Vasconcelos, and shifts in this conception are now occurring largely because of the economic situation that has led to large numbers of Mexicans living outside of the country. In Qatar, foreign workers are an integral part of the country’s development. In a country accustomed to this reality, non-Qatari born soccer players representing the national team may not be such an, um, foreign idea.

Jorge Fossati is named Qatari national team boss in 2007 (Photo: FIFA/AFP/Karim Jaafar)

Like many countries in the Middle East, Qatar has, in recent years, brought in thousands of foreign workers. The US State Department reports that foreign workers are 52% of Qatar’s population and 89% of its labor force. In addition to native Qataris, Indians make up 20%, Filipinos and Nepalis 10% each, Pakistanis 7%, and Sri Lankans 5% of the 900,000 population of the gulf state. Foreign workers are employed in many industries and are the labor engine that is firing Qatar’s economy.

With half of the population made up of foreigners, Jorge Fossati has a limited pool from which to name his squad. He told FIFA last month, “You mustn’t forget that this is a country with a population of only 250,000, which makes it very hard to select a national team using only players born and bred here.” Just as bosses of Qatari industry have done, Fossati has looked for labor abroad. Michael Cockerill wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald last month of this plan:

After a string of frustrating failures at both World Cup and Asian Cup level, it dawned on the Qatari authorities that they were always going to struggle to make a splash in international football unless something radical was done. There are roughly 850,000 people in Qatar. Only one quarter of them are actually Qatari citizens, and only half again are male. To create a competitive national team out of such a limited talent pool was clearly a pipe dream. So Qatar began “buying” players from Africa, South America and other parts of Asia who hadn’t yet played for their own national teams. By accepting the lure of tax-free petro-dollars in the Q-League, they had to also declare their allegiance to the Qatar national team. For most, it was a no-brainer.

Qatar’s earlier attempts to lure relatively high-profile players such as Ailton and Dede to represent their national with promises of cash were shot down by FIFA. Instead of giving up on the idea of naturalizing foreign players to make them eligible for their national team, the Qataris simply looked for lower profile players. In a thread snarkily titled International Gathering of Failed Foreign Players in Qatar aka Qatari National Team, on the aliraqi.org message boards, user Al-Kazwami has detailed the foreigner players (and their country of origin) who have represented the gulf nation recently. They include Lawrence (Ghana), Wissam Rizk (Palestine), Talal Al-Belushi (Kuwait), Mujeeb Hameed (Sudan), Qassim Burhan (Sudan), Ali Mejbel Fartous (Iraq), Majdi Sidiq (Sudan), Ali Nassir (Yemen), Hussein Yasser (Egypt), Majeed Mohammad (Sudan), Sebastian Soria (Uruguay), Abdulah Koni (Senegal), Mohammad Saqr (Senegal), Fabio César Montazine (Brazil), and Marconi Amaral (Uruguay).

Qatar’s Uruguayan-born forward Sebastian Soria, in white (Photo: FIFA/AFP)

That this gaggle of foreign players representing Qatar has not caused more of an uproar in the gulf nation is not unconnected from the number of foreign workers in the country. Qataris accustomed to foreigners working in industries seem content to let them move into the sporting arena. The contrast with Mexico – a country with little history of immigration– is clear, and it is no surprise that bringing in foreign players for El Tricolor is more controversial. The controversy in Mexico is coming as a result of the high levels of emigration and the increasing number of talented foreign-born Mexicans like Jesus Padilla has forced Chivas to change its “Mexicans born in Mexico only” policy. Indeed, Hugo Sanchez and future Mexican national team bosses may begin to field more and more American-born Mexicans (New Mexico-born Edgar Castillo was part of the unsuccessful U-23 team). The team selections of Chivas, El Tricolor, and the Qatari national team are being drastically affected by global political economics.

Jesus Padilla (photo: Mexsport/mediotiempo.com)

The revelation about Paddilla has forced Chivas to alter its long-held policy. The club says that it will now follow the definition of citizenship laid out in the Mexican constitution, which states that “those born in a foreign country of Mexican parents; of a Mexican father and a foreign mother; or of a Mexican mother and an unknown father.” On the face of it, this shift seems like a purely sporting matter. But it is not. In fact, definitions of Mexican identity are shifting in society as a whole, profoundly affected by the numbers of migrants leaving for the United States. The case of Jesus Padilla is simply one example of how Mexico as a whole is being forced by massive demographic shifts to change its notions of what it means to be Mexican.

Ideas about what it means to be Mexican are complicated and long in the making. Few people can be said to have had as strong an influence on shaping Mexican identity as Jose Vasconcelos. The Mexican lawyer, philosopher, and presidential candidate is best known for his 1925 book La Raza Cosmica (The Cosmic Race). Vasconcelos’s work was a response to some who claimed that the Mexican “race” – a mix of indigenous, European, and African people – was inferior. Vasconcelos sought to turn the argument on its head, claiming that this mixture was precisely what made Mexicans unique.

Jose Vasconcelos (photo: Arikah.net)

Vasconcelos’s work was used as part of a nation-building project in Mexico that sought to unify the country after the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920. During those 10 years, fighting between Mexicans of diverse backgrounds racked the country. Governments immediately following the Mexican Revolution latched on to the idea of la raza (to which it was shortened), promoting its message that all citizens are united by the “race” they share. Vasconcelos’s ideas have continued to be important in shaping Mexican identity and the relatively high degree of nationalism in the country is not unconnected from them.

There is no evidence that Chivas implemented its “Mexicans born in Mexico” policy to directly appeal to this strong strain of nationalism. But the club’s decision to do so has led to it having one of the strongest fan bases in Mexico. Chivas USA defender Claudio Suarez, who played nearly 150 matches for Chivas Guadalajara in the 1990s, told Andrea Canales that many fans’ support for the club comes from its Mexican-only selection policy.

Chivas fans (photo: redchivas.com)

The national pride promoted by Vasconcelos’s ideas and taken advantage of by Chivas has had to be reconsidered recently, especially in the face of high levels of emigration from Mexico. The millions of Mexicans and their descendants now living in the United States have presented a challenge to conceptions of Mexican citizenship and identity. Is someone who moves to the US a Mexican? What about someone born to Mexican parents who live in the US? What about the child of Mexican-born father and an-American born mother of Mexican descent? This is exactly the scenario in which Jesus Padilla was born.

Having so many of its people living outside of the country has forced Mexico to reconsider ideas about who is Mexican. It was this that led to citizens living abroad being given the right to vote in Mexican elections for the first time in 2006. The contradiction between the constitutional definition of citizenship and the reality that millions of Mexicans were being disenfranchised could no longer be sustained.

Jesus Padilla’s situation also presented a contradiction between the club’s stated policy and the reality that there are millions of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans living in the United States. The club would undoubtedly like to take advantage of this potential pool of players. Indeed, they were already been doing so with Padilla as well as Los Angeles-born youth player Carlos Borja. The realities that the demographic shifts of the past several decades present are affecting Chivas’ selection policy just as surely as they are voting rights for Mexicans living abroad.

In announcing the decision to recognize foreign-born Mexican players, Chivas vice president Nestor de la Torre acknowledged these new realities in words that could just have as easily come from the mouth of a presidential candidate courting votes in Los Angeles. “In Mexico, because of the social reality, there are many countrymen who have to go work in the United States. Does that need and the accident of someone’s birth in another piece of land that’s not Mexico take away his values, customs, and Mexican race?”

Though not nearly as influential as other aspects of Greek society passed down to us today, several top soccer teams have names that make reference to Greek gods and places. In most cases these names suggest qualities to which the teams aspire (though perhaps don’t always achieve). The list I present here is relatively small, though I don’t doubt that there are other teams with Greek-inspired names (I am not, of course, counting Greek teams themselves in this list). If you know teams with such names, please post them in the comments.

One of the most important teams in the development of soccer worldwide was England’s Corinthians FC. The team was one of the top sides in England during the latter part of the 19th and early part of the 20th century. Corinithians gained fame by traveling around the game, bringing the soccer gospel to many different countries. So taken were the Brazilians by these visitors that they named a local team after them. That team, Sao Paulo’s Corinthians, continues to play professionally to this day (though were recently relegated to the second division) and has recently had players such as Carlos Tevez and Javier Mascherano on their books. The English Corinthians merged with Casuals FC in 1939 to become Corinthians-Casuals FC, a team that plays in the Ryman Football League (formerly known as the Isthmian League) today.

The Greek city-state of Corinth, for which Corinthians FC was presumably named, once rivaled Athens for power and prestige. Most notably, Corinth hosted the Isthmian Games. This competition was held every two years and has been described by archaeologist Oscar Broneer as “probably the most popular of all the Panhellenic celebrations.” Although the last Isthmian Games were held in the 4th century AD, the name of the city-state which hosted it was revived by an English soccer team 1500 years late, as was the spirit of athletic competition for its own sake that both celebrated.

An archaeological dig being done at the site of the Isthmian Games (photo: Michael Lahanas)

In Italy, Atalanta are a team known for producing young players, including Italian legend and current national team coach Roberto Donadoni. The team today sits in 8th place, one spot away from qualifying for the Intertoto Cup. The team’s blue and black uniforms give them one of their nicknames, the Nerazzurri. That nickname may be shared with current Italian champions Inter, but Atalanta’s other nickname is all their own.

The team from Bergamo is also known as La Dea (Italian for “goddess”). That is because the team takes its name from the Greek god Atalanta. As the myth has it, Atalanta was so beautiful that she had many suitors, but rebuffed all who sought her hand. Her father convinced her to agree to marry anyone who could beat her in a footrace. Atalanta agreed, and ran many races against potential suitors, winning all of them. Finally, she came up against Hippomenes. Finding him attractive, Atalanta sought to convince him not to run, as losers of the races were put to death. Hippomenes did race Atalanta, but had the god of love Aphrodite intervene on his behalf, placing apples on Atalanta’s path, which she stopped to pick, allowing Hippomenes to pass her. Could it have been Atalanta’s pace and beauty that inspired the Italian team to choose her as their name?

Atalanta’s logo incorporates an image of the goddess of the same name (photo: Atalanta BC)

No country has more teams named for Greek gods, heroes, and places than Holland. For a country relatively distant from Greece, this is a bit of a surprise (to me, at least). Sparta Rotterdam, a team which nearly always plays second fiddle to city rivals Feyenoord, takes its name from perhaps one of the greatest city-states of ancient Greece, immortalized for its role in defeating Athens in the Peloponnesian War.

Heracles Almelo may be small potatoes even in the modest Dutch league, but the Greek god from which they took their name is anything but small. Heracles, who the Romans would incorporate into their traditions and rename Hercules, was the son of Zeus. Above all, he was known as a great warrior, whose strength and guile enabled him to achieve a mythic status in ancient Greece. Heracles Almelo, who did win the Dutch league in 1927 and 1941, have, in recent years, shown little of the athletic ability demonstrated by the Greek god from whom they took their name.

The Greek god Heracles in action (photo: Jean Oh)

The most famous team named for a mythological Greek hero, however, is Ajax. That Ajax is written about in the Iliad, most prominently when he argues with Patroclus over who will take Achilles’ shield after that hero has been slain. Ajax loses the argument and is enraged. In his rage, he slaughters a flock of sheep. When he realizes what he has done, he feels ashamed and instead of living the rest of his life with this shame, kills himself.

Ajax Amsterdam, on the other hand, have not died (though their teams in the past couple of years have been pretty poor). The team from the Dutch capital has seen two golden periods: one in the early 1970s when, inspired by Johann Cruyff, they won the European Cup three times in a row (1971-1973), and a second in the mid-1990s when, coached by Louis van Gaal, they put out a team of young players (including Marc Overmars, Patrick Kluivert, Edgar Davids, Clarence Seedorf and others) and won the European Cup (1995). Despite the team’s recent lack of success, Ajax Amsterdam – in contrast to other teams with similarly inspired names – are now more prominent than the original god Ajax from which they took their name.

Peter Lupson’s book Thank God for Football! explores the religious backgrounds of many top English club teams (of the 38 teams that have played in the Premier League since its inception in 1992, 12 have their origins in churches). Churches that founded teams often did so for reasons other than pure love of soccer. David Goldblatt, in his history of world soccer called The Ball is Round, has written of the importance of so-called muscular Christianity in shaping early English football. He writes that “the Victorians were quite convinced of the relationship between physical, mental, and moral health” (27).

Drawings of the first international between England and Scotland in 1872 show some of the virtues of the burgeoning British style (photo: Wikipedia)

Lupson told the EPL Talk podcast last year that churches sought to instill 4 elements of character into their football-playing parishioners: courage, fair play, team spirit, and self-control (20:50). Such qualities are still seen today in the English game. Post-game press conferences with English managers almost always focus on at least one of these elements (Stuart Pearce is my personal favorite, rattling on and on about team spirit but with seemingly little concern for tactics and the like).

As soccer spread around the world, diverse styles of play developed that barely resembled the game played in England. In South America, short passing replaced the long ball made popular in England. In Argentina, this style was offered referred to as criollo. David Goldblatt writes that “criollo football and masculinity came to be defined in opposition to the English” who had brought the game to Argentina, and whose economic system was fundamental in shaping the country’s style of play.

The English were focused and disciplined, combining collective organization and physical force – the prerequisites of an industrial labour force turning out an industrial product. On the Rio de la Plata where industrialization had yet to completely stamp its imprint on the economy, landscape or rhythms of life, masculinity was more restless, impetuous and individualistic, spurning crude force in favor of virtuoso agility (204).

This “virtuoso agility” is still seen today in Argentine soccer. Marcela Mora y Araujo has written of the gambeta, which 1986 World Cup winner Jorge Valdano told her has two elements: “The first is ability: to show that I, with my foot, have the skill to do anything; the second is feinting, I have to deceive my opponent, make him believe exactly the opposite of what I’m going to do. This is also very Argentinian, the taste for deceit.”

Maradona gets his gambeta on in 1986 against England (photo: Telegraph)

Not surprisingly, given its proximity, Brazil developed a style in many ways similar to that of the Argentines, complete with intricate short passing and elaborate dribbling. Tim Vickery, South American correspondent for BBC, The World Game, Sports Illustrated, and World Soccer magazine, told me that “[soccer] was reinterpreted by the South American masses from a game of straight running, muscular Christianity to a much more balletic thing full of twists and turns.”

Alex Bellos, author of Futebol: Soccer the Brazilian Way, offers several suggestions as to how the “Brazilian” style has developed. The incredible technique that typifies Brazilian players may have come from the “informal kickabouts” in which a bundle of socks often substitutes for a ball would lead “their ball skills to be more highly developed and inventive” (34).

“Alternatively,” writes Bellos, “one could explain the flashy individualism by pointing to the national trait of showing off in public.” Tim Vickery concurs with this explanation. He offered me an example: “Say I’ve got the ball and you come and tackle me and I do a little shimmy and you fall on your backside. Even if that move serves no objective purpose and you’re on your feet instantly, I’ve made you look ridiculous, for that one little instant I have humiliated you. And that is the moment that will most get the Brazilian public up.”

Alex Bellos offers a couple of other possible explanations for how the Brazilian style has developed. It may have had to do with race relations, he writes.

Some historians have suggested that reliance on the dribble evolved because of the racism of the game’s formative years. They say that the style was created by black players who improvised artfulness as a way of self-protection against whites. If you were a black, you would not want to have physical contact with a white player, since this could end in retaliation. Blacks had to use guile rather than force to keep the ball. (35)

Or perhaps, Bellos suggests, the Brazilian martial art of capoeira played a part in developed the country’s soccer style. He suggests that the “hip-swinging body language used by a capoeirista is very similar to samba dancers and Brazilian dribblers” (35).

The Netherlands is another country with a unique style of play. The Total Football style of the 1970s, in particular, was unlike anything ever seen (and though not explicitly employed today, remnants of its influence remain). David Winner, in his book Brilliant Orange, claims that this style has much to do with Dutch conceptions of space.

Space is the unique defining element of Dutch football. Other nations and football cultures may have produced greater goalscorers, more dazzling individual ball-artists, and more dependable and efficient tournament-winning teams. But no one has ever imagined or structured their play as abstractly, as architecturally, in such a measured fashion as the Dutch. (44)

Winner claims that Total Football exemplifies the Dutch conception of space. It was “a conceptual revolution based on the idea that the size of any football field was flexible and could be altered by the team playing on it” (44).

Of course, the size of a football field is not flexible, Winner attributes this mentality to the land the Dutch have been given. A small, low-lying country with a long sea coast and a relatively large population, the Dutch have in fact expanded their land through the use of polders and other elaborate water control measures. Winner sees spillover of Dutch attitudes toward land into Dutch soccer. He calls the Dutch “spatial neurotics” and says that “the Dutch think innovatively, creatively and abstractly about space in their football because for centuries they have had to think innovatively about space in every other area of their lives” (47).

A Dutch goalkeeper ponders his country’s water reclamation projects (photo: Roberta on the Arts)

In 2000, I studied in Japan. At the time, Frenchman (and recent convert to Islam) Phillipe Troussier was coach of that country’s national team. The team had long used an all-action, team game (like that of the Koreans in the 2002 World Cup).

A constant refrain from Troussier, though, was that his team was too nice, too polite, too afraid to really mix it up. Japan’s style of play was too team-oriented, as were his individual players, and he told the BBC that “the Japanese are very organised.”

Even in their free time they need organisation. I gave them a day off and they all want to do the same thing. They take the same photographs, eat in the same restaurant. I had to close the hotel restaurant and told them to go out and do different things.

Troussier’s attempts to change the Japanese style of play ran up against the deeply-held value of group unity.

Troussier also constantly railed that his players weren’t tough enough. Again, what Troussier saw as a lack of toughness may have been a manifestation of the value Japanese place on harmony. Being tough is not encouraged in Japanese society the way it is in Europe, and Troussier saw his role as imposing this toughness on his players. In 2000, he told Sebastian Moffett of the International Herald Tribune that “the younger Japanese players are maybe better than Europeans in technical areas. My challenge is to prepare the players for world football — to play against aggressive foreign sides.”

Phillipe Troussier works on scaring his players into being tougher (photo: BBC)

If this last example is staring to sound like national stereotypes transformed into ideas about styles of play, it’s because it is just that. And it’s far from the only such example. One hears constantly about Germany’s Teutonic efficiency, Italian players’ sneakiness and diving, and many other examples that are nothing more than simple stereotypes put in the context of soccer. These stereotypes can at times come across negatively, especially when reference is made to African teams’ lack of discipline. Grant Wahl of Sports Illustrated has written: “[I]t sometimes strikes me as a veiled form of racism (especially when a European journalist asks an African coach if his team’s “lack of discipline is a reflection of the national character,” which actually happened during the 1996 Olympics.)”

Today, the traditional styles of play that have typified footballing nations for years are less pronounced than in the past. With more and more players and coaches crossing borders and games being broadcast across the globe, it’s often hard to pinpoint a style as coming from one country. David Winner wrote in March of last year that Arsenal – a team based in London but coached by a Frenchman and who rarely feature an Englishman in their lineup – are the only team that best typify Total Football today. But Arsenal are different, a team that actually seeks to play with style. Most are content to play with whatever style (or lack thereof) will win them the next match.

As an American, I have often thought about whether there is an “American style.” As a country of immigrants, it would make sense for our style to reflect the people who have come to the United States. But for most of our soccer history, I don’t think this has been the case. The historical soccer connections between the US and the UK have meant that American soccer has often been more British in its style than anything else. That may be changing today, though, especially with the influx of immigrants from Latin America.

Jay Martin, longtime men’s soccer coach of Ohio Wesleyan University, laments the fact that for too long American soccer has not had its own identity, but has simply sought to replicate that of other countries. He hopes to see the development of an American style, as he wrote in an article for the National Soccer Coaches Association of America (NSCAA) in 2006.

The fact is we are Americans. We are not Brazilians, Germans, Dutch or French. We cannot play the style of those countries. It is simply not possible. We cannot replicate the Brazilian culture and society. These factors influence — no, dictate — how the Brazilians play. Social, economic, political and cultural forces directly impact how any national team plays. Nor can we replicate the club systems of England and Germany or the youth system of France and Holland.

American soccer is unique. America is unique. We can and should learn from other soccer nations, but we should develop and play an American style. There is no question that there is a great deal to learn from other soccer-playing nations. We should, however, take these lessons and use them in the context of an American style.

So, my fellow gringos (and others), what do you think? Is there an American style of play? If so, what is it? Because frankly, I don’t have an answer to that question.

I think back to August 2007, when England hosted Germany in a “friendly” match that had “no meaning” as is often said. Christian Eichler of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, a paper of record in Germany, wrote at the time about Wembley Stadium, where the game would be played:

In times of globalization, not only of markets but also of experiences and memories, there are few places that remain non-interchangeable. Places like Wembley. That place is uniquely English and at the same time: a German place.

Germany train at Wembley before their match against England (photo: AP/FAZ)

The article recounts important German wins at Wembley and the idea of playing in the land where the game was born. Articles in the English and German press show that many people, players and fans, cared very much about this match, despite the fact that it was only a “friendly.”

Of course the biggest event is the World Cup Final of 1966. In Germany, the term “Wembley Goal” signifies a goal that hits the top of the crossbar, lands in the goal, and then bounces out of it. The term refers to all such goals and the one that Germans believe lost them the 1966 World Cup Final against England, played at Wembley.

Why do events like this mean something? I will refer to something in philosophy called the “hermeneutic circle.”This circle consists of the background or “big story” that is understood by the interpreter encountering something new. Often, this background is implicit, also consisting of habits of interpretation. When we interpret something, we encounter a new “little story” and hold it up against the background, which also often changes as a result. The circle loops from the interpreter’s background to her new experience, which reshapes the background, and so on…National teams represent their countries and so their matches are inevitably held up against the big stories about those countries. For instance, when the US plays Cuba this year in the World Cup Qualifiers, the political relationship between these two countries will be thematized as the match is anticipated and discussed.

Germany’s World Cup win in 1954 represented a new state of affairs, in which Germany could again participate in the world scene in a normal way. Had they lost, another symbol might have been found but the “miracle at Bern” signaled that there is a way to be German and still participate in global affairs. Virtues are often cited in describing the team that won, including persistence, tactical intelligence, cooperation, and fitness. These enter the background in future attempts to deal with problems, many outside of soccer.

On the other side of this example: the Dutch have made every match with Germany about WWII. Representing the occupied Netherlands has proven to be a way to expunge the collaborationist parts of their history. Frank Rijkaard spitting on Rudi Völler wasn’t about Völler at all – great Dutch writers cite the occupation when they recall these matches (see Simon Kuper’s book Ajax, the Dutch, the War for more on this). There is a limit to how “normal” the interaction between Germany and the rest of the world can ever be.

(A side note: England’s football background is rather sad, really. The dominant themes are “we can’t get a break” and “those over-paid fat gits.” I can’t figure out if this is really part of England’s background in the larger scheme or not. There seems to be a sense that a country that ought to be the best isn’t. Having the fifth-best World Cup record and recently reaching the quarter-finals makes them the envy of most of he world but fans treat this as the result of forty years of bad luck or bad training or bad leadership. The win in 1966 somehow isn’t enough to turn around this diagnosis. Would another World Cup win achieve this? Why didn’t the Rugby win do the same thing?)It is hard to know how the interaction between a background and sporting events will happen. Germany’s “Wembley Goal” did not change the background in Germany. Second place in 1966 counted as a confirmation of the virtues they cited in 1954 and in other wins. The 2006 World Cup was hailed as a national “Summer’s Dream” and reaching third place launched massive street parties. Support for the national team launched a widespread discussion about how the country should present itself. There have never been so many Federal Republic flags flown and some people worried about how it would affect Germany’s behavior and image. The question that arises is whether it is appropriate for Germans to be proud of being German. Sporting events do not dictate interpretive outcomes because those are the products of the decisions made by the interpreters, given the options they are offered.

German fans fly their flag at the 2006 World Cup (photo: Orange.co.uk)

What makes Wembley a German place? The stories that were developed there. As Eichler puts it, “Ten German games there, five of them unforgettable.”Do sports events change things? Yes, thousands of people are doing something when they follow a game. For one thing, they are interpreting the world they live in. This is why measures to punish racist chants and unsportsmanlike conduct are important and need to be backed up with serious consequences.

I used national teams as my example but club identification can be explained (at least in part) with the same circle of interpretation. Later, I hope to illustrate that the great clubs all have a story. Many descriptions of clubs found in this blog have offered rich examples of this.

Note: The first notes for this article were written during the England/Germany friendly match. Germany won 2-1 and the match was declared a “typically English” one by the Guardian’s Tom Lutz. No meaning, indeed.

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Dutch giants Ajax were founded by a young man named Floris Stempel, who, in 1900, invited several of his friends to join him in his new endeavor with a letter that read: “Hereby the undersigned invites you politely to grace us with your presence in one of the upper rooms of Café-Bar ‘Oost-Indië’, at number 2, Kalverstraat, on Sunday morning at 9 hours and 3 quarters, to discuss the establishment of an entirely new Football Club.” Were they alive today, Stempel and co. would probably be surprised to realize how big their club has become.

Many clubs throughout the world have their origins as teams formed by British expatriates. Such is the case with many teams in South America as well as Italian giants AC Milan.

The 1901 AC Milan team, made up mostly of British expats (photo: Wikipedia)

British expatriates were not the only ones to form teams outside of their homeland. Many prominent teams were founded to represent immigrants settling in foreign lands. So it was that Palmeiras initially represented the Italian community in Brazil (the original club name was Palestra Italia but was changed during World War II). AEK Athens was founded by Greek refugees fleeing Istanbul and oppression under the Ottoman Empire. Celtic quickly came to represent the Irish community in Scotland, founded by members of a Glasgow church with many Irish parishioners.

Celtic are far from the only team to have grown out of churches. So too did Everton, Birmingham City, Bolton, and Tottenham, among others. In France, Auxerre was founded in 1905 by a priest named Father Deschamps (I’m assuming that to be a common enough name to not indicate any relation to Didier).

Soccer today is big business, but at the time many teams were founded, they were intended simply to provide a recreational outlet for company workers. It was for this reason that Dutch electronics firm Philips started PSV. Similarly, Bayer Leverkusen was begun as team for workers of the aspirin-making firm (its logo includes lions surrounding a white pill with Bayer written on it), and Sochaux was established for workers at the Peugoet car factory.

The lions attack the aspirin (photo: UEFAclubs.com)

Living under capitalism is not a prerequisite for having soccer teams organized at work; several Russian teams were begun during communist times to represent workers of particular trades.

Given their prominence today, it’s hard to fathom, but several teams were founded as just another team at large, mulisport clubs. Brazil’s Flamengo, for instance, was originally a rowing club that only later developed a soccer team (its official name, Clube de Regatas do Flamengo, hints at this past). Argentina’s Gimnasia y Esgrima de La Plata were founded as a gymnastics and fencing club and only later developed a football wing. In the northeast of England, both Newcastle and Middlesbrough were originally cricket clubs, and their football teams were only founded to help players keep fit in the winter.

The rules of soccer were first codified at British schools in the middle of the 19th century. Since that time, the sport has been extremely popular in schools throughout the world (I have seen it played at recess in schools on several continents). Many prominent teams have their beginnings in educational institutions.

Turkey’s Galatasaray was founded by students at their school of the same name. The team logo and colors were clearly taken from that of the school. Real Madrid also have their origins in a school. “Football was introduced to Madrid by the professors and students of the Institución Libre de Enseñanza. They included several Oxbridge graduates. In 1895 they founded the club Football Sky, playing on Sunday mornings at Moncloa.” From these humble beginnings arose one of the most successful club teams in the world.

Istanbul’s Glatasaray Lisei (photo: Wikipedia)

In Belgium, Standard Liege got their start at with students of the College of Saint-Servais in 1900. France’s Strausbourg was founded by several primary school students, whose efforts were coordinated by their school teacher. Germany’s Schalke was founded by high school students in the city of Gelsenkirchen.

The part of the world with the most student-founded teams, though, appears to be Latin America. Many teams in that part of the world have names that indicate their scholarly beginnings. They include Mexico’s Pumas, a team with its origins in the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). The team began with students filling its roster, although this changed when the club went professional in 1954. Despite this shift, the club remains known as a producer of quality youth players. And to this day, Pumas draw much of their support from UNAM students and alums.

Many teams throughout Latin America have “Universidad” in their names. Most share a similar past with Pumas: founded as a university team though since having obtained professional status. Chile has Universidad de Chile and Universidad Catolica, teams whose fans indicate the type of student each attracts. The more left-leaning U de Chile fans attend that large public university while Universidad Catolica fans often come from wealthier backgrounds. (When American Jonny Walker played there, jokes were often made playing on his name and that of the eponymous scotch, which, it was claimed, only Catolica fans could afford to drink.)

Across the Andes, Argentina has Estudiantes de la Plata, which was formed by college students fed up with the gymnastics and fencing played at city rivals Gimnasia y Esgrima. And in Rosario, graduates of the English High School formed a team and named it after their former coach, Isaac Newell. And in Peru, Cienciano, winners of the 2003 Copa Sudamericana (South America’s equivalent of the UEFA Cup) were founded in 1901 by students at the National School of Science of Cusco.

An early Cienciano team (photo: Cienciano)

Students have been primarily responsible for founding teams at schools, but teachers have also gotten into the act. Sunderland was founded in 1879 as the Sunderland and District Teachers Association Football Club and drew its ranks from local teachers. A year later, they opened their ranks to outsiders and the Teachers bit was later dropped from the club name. Today Sunderland AFC find themselves in the Premier League with a full roster of professional players. But having taken only 17 points from 20 matches, Roy Keane’s men are sitting precariously close to the relegation zone. Historically-minded fans of the northeast team must have wondered at times this year whether the original teachers could have done much worse than the current crop of players.

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Students involved with Grassroot Soccer (photo: Grassroot Soccer)

Leah Bellow-Handelman grew up in New York City. It was a bit of a shock for her, then, when she went to college in rural Ohio at Oberlin College. That shock, though, was nowhere near what she experienced when she graduated and headed off to South Africa to begin working at Grassroot Soccer. Grassroot Soccer (GRS) was founded in 2002 by Tommy Clark, son of Bobby Clark, current Notre Dame men’s coach and former Scotland international. Tommy had played professionally in Zimbabwe before returning to the US to get his medical degree. But Africa one of Africa’s most vexing problems – HIV/AIDS – drew him back, determined to use the sport he loved to fight the disease. He gave GRS its motto: “using the power of soccer in the fight against AIDS.” Since its founding, Grassroot Soccer has grown enormously in stature. On a recent visit to Africa, Bill Clinton visited a GRS program in Zambia.

Slick Willie in Zambia (photo: WinMcNamee / Getty Images / Grassroot Soccer)

Leah Bellow-Handelman first heard about GRS from a friend of a friend who had worked for the organization. A player at Oberlin who majored in Politics and African-American Studies, she had become interested in public health in Africa. What better way, Bellow-Handelman thought, to combine her interests than to work for GRS?

Since arriving in South Africa in September, she has been participating in various aspects of GRS’ work. The primary goal of GRS is to provide education and awareness about HIV/AIDS and how to prevent the disease. It is a massive task. Bellow-Handelman says that, when asked on a quiz if they can avoid getting HIV/AIDS, many children in South Africa believe they cannot. Her job, then, is to show them how they can avoid the deadly diseases. And her entrée into their lives is something they love: soccer. “Anytime [kids] see a soccer ball,” she says, “they want to play, they want to talk to you.”

Bellow-Handelman works on various projects at Grassroot Soccer. She spends a lot of time in schools, playing games that incorporate soccer and HIV/AIDS awareness. One game called “Risk Field” has students dribble a ball around cones, each of which represent a risk of exposure to HIV/AIDS. Another game is called “Find the Ball” and it involves students standing in a line and hiding tennis balls behind their backs while a classmate has to guess which players are holding balls. The balls are intended to represent HIV/AIDS and the premise behind the game, Bellow-Handelman says, is “you can’t tell who has HIV/AIDS by looking” at them.

South African students participate in a Grassroot Soccer game (photo: Grassroot Soccer)

Recently, she has begun organizing a “Street Football League.” Bellow-Handelman says that this project takes advantage of South African’s children natural proclivity to play soccer everywhere possible (“driving through the townships,” she says, there are “kids playing on every street corner”). Right now, it happens once a week and begins with 45 minutes of Grassroot Soccer HIV/AIDS awareness games and then a street soccer game with whoever has shown up. The project has been quite successful, Bellow-Handelman says. “It’s really incredible to see. We show up and there are ten kids. Within ten minutes, they see cones and a soccer ball and there are swarms of sixty, seventy, eighty kids.”

Soccer, Bellow-Handelman has found out, is her way to connect with South African children. When they get over their initial shock of seeing a white woman playing soccer (something she says is “fairly shocking” to South African kids), many come to talk with her. “There are constantly kids coming to the office to borrow a soccer ball. They don’t really speak English and we just juggle with them for hours. There’s a way to communicate with them through soccer and through sport.”

Children play street soccer (photo: Grassroot Soccer)

Of course, the soccer is the tool that GRS uses to promote its message of HIV/AIDS prevention. That work can be difficult in many ways. Bellow-Handelman is well aware of the statistics on the rates of infection in South Africa and knows that many of the students she works with already have HIV/AIDS. And she worries at times that GRS’ message of empowering students to prevent themselves from getting the disease is impractical for some. “It’s hard for me because I know we have these messages about the positive aspects of prevention: ‘you can make a choice’ and ‘you can avoid getting HIV.’ But the reality is a lot of these kids, unfortunately, can’t.” Belllow-Handelman notes that many children got HIV/AIDS at birth or through sexual abuse.

Another difficulty is being around children when they find out that they have HIV/AIDS. Attending a recent GRS event in Lesotho that had on-site testing, Bellow-Handelman says, “It’s not easy to tell a group of kids to get tested when it’s likely that they might test positive, but part of my job is getting them to understand that it’s better to know your status, regardless of what it may be.”

Even though she knows it is better for kids to know their status, the process of testing is emotionally taxing. To encourage kids to get tested, Bellow-Handelman decided to get tested herself.

As I watched so many kids go for testing, and told so many how important it was to know their status, it felt strangely hypocritical not to do so myself. I felt compelled to share the unpredictable emotions, fears, and potentially life-changing experience that so many kids had just gone through, so toward the end of the day, I walked into one of the tents to be tested myself. Even though I knew my status, there is something about walking into a testing and counseling tent, in the middle of rural Africa, that makes your heart beat just a little bit faster.

Leah Bellow-Handelman left the event knowing that she did not have HIV/AIDS. Not everyone was so fortunate: of the nearly 500 children tested at the event, 23 tested positive.

Children at the Lesotho at the “Test Your Team” tournament wait to get tested for HIV/AIDS (photo: Leah Bellow-Handelman)

Over a decade after the end of apartheid, Bellow-Handelman says that some people she’s met maintain views reminiscent of past eras. Some white people, she says, “laugh at us and tell us that our work is in vain and that ‘these people won’t change’.”

This is, fortunately, a minority view. Most people Bellow-Handelman has met support GRS’ work. “When people find out what we do, there are so many people who want to be trained in our program,” she says. Training locals to implement the GRS curriculum is an important goal of the organization. They don’t want to be seen as just the latest group of foreigners coming in telling Africans how to live their lives. And in the long term, GRS wants to make its program self-sustaining. “Our main goal is to come here, deliver this program, and train enough people so that when we leave, it won’t disappear,” Bellow-Handelman tells me.

GRS has been quite successful in getting locals trained in their program out to work in the community. This makes Bellow-Handelman quite proud. “It’s really easy to see … that our trainers, even if they started out as just people in the community, become community role models. Kids know them as Grassroot Soccer coaches and know that they’re a resource they can go to.”

Nearly all talk of soccer in South Africa these days is focused on the 2010 World Cup. Grassroot Soccer hopes to be involved with the tournament, using the high profile event to get out its message of HIV/AIDS prevention. Leah Bellow-Handelman has her own ideas about how she’d like to see the GRS model used at the tournament. She tells me excitedly that her dream is to do “Find the Ball” at halftime of a World Cup game. “That,” she says, “would be awesome.”

More information about Leah Bellow-Handelman’s work with Grassroot Soccer is available at her personal blog.

Since 1994, Vickery has been discovering more and more about South American soccer and writing about it for the BBC, The World Game, Sports Illustrated, and World Soccer magazine. He was kind enough to take the time to speak with me recently about soccer in Brazil, the country where he is based.

Tim Vickery (photo: Tim Vickery)

One of the first games Tim Vickery went to when he came to Brazil was between two of the coutry’s biggest teams, Flamengo and Corinthians. At the time, Savio (who would later play for Real Madrid and earn 44 caps for Brazil) was playing for Flamengo. Vickery was amazed at Savio’s talent, and the fact that he had not heard of this player, who was clearly destined for great things. It was at that point, says Vickery, that he realized how strong the Brazilian “factory of players” was. Going to games, he says, was like “going to a movie and seeing the trailers. These are the forthcoming attractions of world soccer and you’re privileged to see them.”

At the same game in which Savio wowed Vickery with his skills, there was another player who also caught his eye, but for a very different reason. Corinthians defensive midfielder Ze Elías was, as Vickery describes him, “an awful, awful player, a bad, bad player.” Ze Elías subscribed to the “if it moves, kick it; if it doesn’t move, kick it until it does” school of soccer more often associated with Vickery’s homeland than Brazil. “It was a surprise to me that someone of this limited technical ability could be considered of great prominence,” says Vickery. Yet Ze Elías’s constant effort and his effectiveness had endeared him to many in Brazil.

Ze Elías was just as popular with Corinthians fans as Savio was with Flamengo supporters. Though he says it was a “huge surprise that a player such as [Ze Elías] could be lionized by the Brazilian public,” this taught Vickery an important lesson: Brazilian soccer has been “mythologized out of all proportion” and the reality is often far different from the stereotypes that most people have about it. Yes, there is jogo bonito, but that is not all to be said about Brazilian soccer.

Anyone who’s watched games from Brazil knows that violence is quite common in the Brazilian league. Vickery notes that games in South America’s largest country “can be played in a very violent atmosphere. It doesn’t take much for the fists to start flying.” A former coach told him simply: “football is survival.”

Brazilian coaches in general today don’t fit the vision many have of Brazilian coaches, encouraging creativity, flair, etc. Advocates of jogo bonito are few in number, having been overtaken by what Vickery describes as the “technocrats” that make up much of the ranks of Brazilian coaches. These men often have advanced degrees in physical education and work with a large team of highly specialized assistants. Like technocrats in any profession, Brazilian soccer coaches “live in a world of statistics. What they can’t measure, they can’t manage. They absolutely love breaking the game down into statistics.” Vickery recalls meetings of coaches he has been to as being incredibly boring, focusing on ideas such as whether moves that string together over seven consecutive passes are more likely to lead to goals.

Current national team boss Dunga is a good example of a new breed of Brazilian coaches. Dunga subscribes to the belief that “winning is everything,” and he is far from the only one in Brazil to believe this. Vickery says he “absolutely hates” the Brazil teams of 1982 and 1986, who played a more free-flowing game, and calls them “specialists in losing.” Dunga’s teams value winning over everything, even if that means leaving out players such as Ronaldinho and Kaká in favor of Josué or Mineiro, both players in the mold of Ze Elías (or, more generously, Dunga himself).

Tim Vickery’s most recent column focused on the touchy subject of race in Brazilian soccer. In that article, Vickery goes back to the 1950 World Cup to explain ways in which race remains important in Brazilian soccer today.

The 1950 team had several prominent black players. There was a widely promoted idea that Brazilians were a new “race,” distinct from the indigenous population, former slaves, and European immigrants who were their ancestors. The 1950 loss led many to question this idea and brought out what Vickery describes as Brazilians’ “racial phobias” about themselves. “The idea of being an inferior, mongrel race, which was very, very popular at the time, that really came to the fore. The players who were singled out for special scorn after that were the black players.”

These racial phobias were not put to rest until 1958, when Didi, Garrincha and a 17 year-old named Pelé won the World Cup for Brazil. They remained in place for goalkeepers until recently (some might say they still exist) and Vickery says the low number of black coaches is evidence they haven’t disappeared completely.The Brazil team of 1958 and many teams after them played a free-flowing soccer that gave rise to the typical “Brazilian” style (exactly which Dunga and the like have been fighting against in recent years). This style originally came about as soccer was brought to the country from England, explains Vickery. The sport there had been “forged by the values of the English industrial revolution … where the virtues of muscle power and reliability” were important. But most important of all in English soccer was the collectivity, everyone working together for a common goal. Factory workers were valued for their muscle power, reliability, and ability to work together during the worker; footballers were prized for the same talents on the weekend.

But in Brazil the game was reinvented. Vickery says that “[soccer] was reinterpreted by the South American masses from a game of straight running, muscular Christianity to a much more balletic thing full of twists and turns.” Playing this new style, Brazil was very successful and this “led to international triumphs and international recognition for a nation that [was] starved of both.”

In this reinterpretation, Brazilians came to value individual play over that of the collective. Despite the pragmatic shifts of recent years, this emphasis on individuality remains an important part of Brazilian soccer. Vickery attributes this in part to the social stratification, which has long been a part of Brazilian society.

“In Brazil, the football culture is much more individual. … Brazil remains semi-feudal and people are born serfs almost. Football is the moment where the serf can become a king. Say I’ve got the ball and you come and tackle me and I do a little shimmy and you fall on your backside. Even if that move serves no objective purpose and you’re on your feet instantly, I’ve made you look ridiculous, for that one little instant I have humiliated you. And that is the moment that will most get the Brazilian public up.”

Robinho (in white) becomes a king during his days with Santos (photo: Sydney Morning Herald)

I ask Vickery whether soccer is played more avidly among any class of Brazilians. Absolutely not, he tells me. Soccer is universal in Brazil and “all the other sports live on scraps.”

But Vickery does acknowledge that the make-up of professional players might be changing. Whereas before well-off Brazilians would have given up their passion for soccer in order to pursue a more stable career, today more are tempted to pursue a career in the sport. Especially with more and more players going abroad, the potential payoffs are just so great today, Vickery says. A player like Kaká, who comes from a quite well-to -do family, would never have tried his hand at professional soccer twenty or thirty years ago. Even Pelé, who came from anything but a wealthy family, was discouraged from going pro by his father, who was afraid an injury might ruin his son’s career, as it had ruined his.

Brazilian soccer was recently in the news when FIFA announced that the country will host the 2014 World Cup. Vickery has written recently about some of the potential problems the nation will have to overcome in order to stage a successful tournament. Given this, I was surprised when he told me that he has no doubt that the 2014 World Cup will be a success. “Football has a fantastic ability to assert itself in the most unfortunate circumstances,” Vickery says.

But that, he says, is not the real question. It is more appropriate to ask what the legacy of the World Cup will be for Brazil the country. “It’s a fantastic opportunity in terms of stadium and infrastructure improvement. I worry that the opportunity is not going to be taken to the fullest extent and the traditional pattern of Brazilian society will reassert itself once more. A small minority will do fantastically well and the great majority won’t get a great deal out of it.”

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Surprisingly, George Weah is one of the few former soccer players to use their fame to move into a career in politics. Former players are some of the most prominent people in society and were they to move into politics, they would begin their new careers with higher name recognition than many politicians in office for years. But, for whatever reason, few players attempt to make this transition. A few of those who have (along with some former coaches, officials, and referees) are listed below. I’m limiting this list to those who have played at the professional level. Many politicians played soccer as kids (though few are as bad as Tony Blair).

Blair attempts to at least make contact

The most recognizable former soccer player of all, Pele, has tried his hand at a few things since retiring from the game. Unfortunately, he’s been bad at just about all of them. His stint in politics was no different. Appointed Extraordinary Minister for Sport in 1995, he went about trying to kick out corruption in Brazilian soccer (a much-needed task). His attempts to do so were unsuccessful and Pele left his job in 1999. In 2001, Pele himself was accused of profiting off of a charity match staged for UNICEF that never happened.

Turkey’s prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is today visiting Washington, speaking with George Bush about the situation in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq and Turkey. But before he got into politics, Erdogan was apparently a professional soccer player, though with which team I don’t know.

Far less notable is Toshiro Tomochika, current member of the Japanese Diet and former J-League player. Tomochika was part of the surprising Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) sweep of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in the upper legislative house earlier this year. Soccer features prominently on the legislator’s website.

Toshiro Tomochika playing for J-League team Ehime FC (photo: Live Door)

Eastern Europe under the Iron Curtain produced two politicians who were former players. Jozsef Bozsik was a friend and teammate of the great Hungarian Ferenc Puskas, and also a great player in his own right. He won 101 caps for the Hungarian national team. After his playing days were over, Bozsik was also elected to the parliament, though perhaps elected is too strong a word to describe the political system in use at the time in Hungary.

Several decades later, Oleg Blokhin became a star for Dynamo Kiev and the USSR national team, for whom he earned 112 caps in total. He also won the European Footballer of the Year in 1975. Blokhin later coached several teams, including Ukraine, whom he guided to the 2006 World Cup. His coaching duties have not stopped Blokhin from serving in the Ukrainian parliament, to which he was elected in 2002.

Soccer club officials go into politics in far greater numbers than do the players they employ. Silvio Berlusconi parlayed his career as owner of AC Milan into a stint as Italy’s prime minister. Elected as head of Forza Italia (a party with connections to soccer supporters), Berlusconi ruled the country twice (1994-95 and 2001-06), though never as successfully as he has run AC Milan.

The always dapper Silvio Berlusconi (photo: Monte Cerignone e dintorni)

Berlusconi’s peer at Boca Juniors is Mauricio Macri. The Argentine won election as mayor of Buenos Aires earlier this year, a victory that just happened to coincide with Boca’s victory in South America’s Copa Libertadores. Some have suggested Macri may have his eye on the presidency, though he will now have to take down Argentina’s equivalent of the Clintons, current president Nestor and his wife Christina, who just won the election to take over his job.

Jack Warner is a mover and shaker in the FIFA hierarchy. The Trinidadian is a vice president of the world soccer body and head of CONCAF. He has allegedly used these position for his own profit when he resold 2006 World Cup tickets for $1 million, despite FIFA edicts against the practice. Warner announced his candidacy for the Trinidadian parliament recently and used his prominent position to win a seat in yesterday’s election.

Jack Warner (left) with Trinidadian Prime Minister Patrick Manning (photo: Office of the Prime Minister)

In addition to Oleg Blokhin, Argentina’s Carlos Bilardo is one of the few coaches to go into politics. The man (whose fantastic and accurate nickname is “Narigón” or “big nose”) who coached his country to victory at the 1986 World Cup announced he will become sports secretary of the province of Buenos Aires.

Argentina seems to produce more politicians from the ranks of soccerdom (perhaps it’s because the politics and soccer are so intertwined in the country). Javier Castrilli is, as far as I’m aware, the only referee to jump the ranks of arbiters to politics. The man once known as “El Sheriff” has hung up the whistle and become an official with the Argentine Ministry of Internal Affairs, focusing on security at stadiums.

Though the ranks of former soccer players, officials, coaches, and referee going into politics are fairly limited, there are two current players who one can imagine having a political career after retiring from playing. Not surprisingly, they both play for Barcelona, a club that define its identity in political terms. Defenders Lillian Thuram and Oleguer have both spoken out forcefully on political issues they feel strongly about. Will they devote themselves entirely to politics in the future? Only time will tell.

Have I missed any former soccer players, coaches, officials or referees who have gone into politics? Let me know by leaving a comment.

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