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.

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While Fulham’s expats are relatively high profile, there are many Americans playing abroad who are anything but. It’s a truly dedicated fan who knows Eric Lichaj of Aston Villa, Michael Enfield of Sydney FC in Australia or Tighe Dombrowski of IK Sirius in Sweden.

But while teams abroad are snapping up American players (among other reasons, the falling value of the dollar makes them a good bargain), they appear reluctant to look at American coaches. Only one native-born American coach has held a major job abroad (Steve Sampson, who was in charge of Costa Rica’s national team from 2002 – 2004). Scouring the depths of my brain and the Internet for examples of American coaches who have worked abroad was only able to come up with three, all of whom are naturalized Americans born in other countries.

Last week, Martin Vasquez’s career got a bit of a jump. Until then, the 44 year-old was an assistant coach for MLS’s Chivas USA. But then, Jürgen Klinsmann, who will take over from Ottmar Hitzfeld as Bayern Munich manager next season, announced that he will bring Vasquez across the Atlantic with him as his number two man. It will be quite a responsibility for Vasquez, especially if Klinsmann takes the type of hands-off approach he did during his time with the German national team, when many credited his assistant (and now head coach) Joachim Löw with being the driving force behind the country’s resurgence.

Martin Vasquez (photo: Juan Miranda/Chivas USA/Soccer America)

Klinsmann knows Vasquez from his time in Southern California. In a statement, the German legend said, “I’ve known Martin since 2003 when he was training at an elite football camp in the United States. I was impressed by his positive leadership style and I recommended him to LA Galaxy.” Vasquez was a Galaxy assistant for one season before moving to LA rivals Chivas USA. That move was nowhere near as big as his upcoming switch to Munich.Vasquez does not lack experience crossing borders. Born in Mexico, he moved to LA at age 12. Vasquez played college soccer at UCLA before returning to Mexico to begin his pro career. He played for several teams in Mexico and even earned a spot on the Mexican national team, playing for El Tri several times in the early 1990s. Vasquez returned to the US in 1996 to join the fledgling MLS. His play for the now-defunct Tampa Bay Mutiny and the soon-to-be revived San Jose Clash (known today as the Earthquakes) earned him a call-up from then US national team boss Steve Sampson (he was eligible having only played in friendlies for Mexico), where Vasquez eventually earned 7 caps.

Another coach making his name abroad is Iranian-American Afshin Ghotbi. Born in the Iranian city of Jahrom, Ghotbi remained in his homeland until just prior to the Iranian revolution, when his familiy left for the Los Angeles area, home to a large Iranian expat community. He continued to play soccer and like Martin Vasquez was a member of UCLA’s college team (in fact, given their similar ages, they would likely have been teammates there).

Afshin Ghotbi during his time with the Korean national team (photo: Soccerphile)

After his college career, Ghotbi was involved with youth soccer in Southern California. He coached several professional players in their formative years, including John O’Brien, who went to Ajax in part on Ghotbi’s recommendation. Ghotbi worked as a coach for the US national team, then spent time with the LA Galaxy before using his connections to Holland to get a job as an assistant to Guus Hiddink during his time coaching Korea at the 2002 World Cup.

Ghotbi’s biggest move, though, came last year when he returned to his homeland to take over Tehran giants Persepolis. Given the state of relations between his homeland and adopted country, Ghotbi was worried what reaction his return might bring, but he was welcomed with open arms. He has had tremendous success with his club team and has been talked up as a future Iranian national team manager.

The third and final American manager to have worked abroad is Alketas Panagoulias. Born in Thessaloniki, Greece, Panagoulias moved to the US to do university studies. While in New York, he became involved with the Greek American Atlas Soccer Club, serving as the team’s coach. At a time of little professional soccer in the US, Pangoulias’ amateur team won three consecutive US Open Cup (the American version of the FA Cup) titles from 1967-1969.

Panagoulias returned to Greece in 1972 to serve as an assistant coach for the national team. He was promoted to the head coaching position in 1973, and remained in that job until 1981. He took over Greek giants Olympiakos and led the team to the Greek title in 1982 and 1983. In 1984, he returned to the US to coach the Olympic team in the Los Angeles games. From there, he became the senior national team manager.

Panagoulias returned to his homeland in the late 1980s, coaching Olympiakos again and Aris FC. In 1992, he was appointed to a second spell as national team boss. Panagoulias led the team to its one of its greatest ever moments, qualifying for the 1994 World Cup in the USA.

Alketas Panagoulias (photo: View Images)

Why have there been so few American coaches abroad? My guess is that there remains a stigma against them, left over from the decades in which American soccer was a laughing stock. Although American players have become desirable for teams abroad, American coaches have not found work abroad easy to come by at all. Bruce Arena, the most successful American coach of all time whose greatest accomplishment was guiding the US national team to the quarterfinals of the 2002 World Cup, desperately tried to throw his hat into the ring for the Scotland job recently, but to no avail.

This is perhaps not surprising, as many more European coaches have gone to traditionally less powerful countries to play their trade than vice versa (of the 16 teams in African Cup of Nations, only four are African, though the World Cup Blog expresses some hope that this may change in the future). Even South American countries, who, given the players they produce, know a thing or two about their job, have found it tough to break into Europe (the most notable failure of recent times being Wanderlei Luxemburgo at Real Madrid).

For now, it seems, the only Americans able to break into the coaching ranks overseas are those whose foreign birth gives them a degree of street-cred that native-born coaches lack. Only time will tell if American coaches can become as desirable as the players they are increasingly producing.

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Like most talented players, Qumsieh began to show interest in soccer early on. From the age of three, he began to kick anything within range. And whenever soccer came on television, he was transfixed.

Like young soccer enthusiasts around the world, Qumsieh began playing in the streets with friends. But unlike most kids, Qumsieh’s games were often interrupted by Israeli soldiers. “They would shoot in the air and tell everyone to leave,” recalls Qumsieh. When he later joined the Palestinian team Thagafi Beit Sahour, the team bus would often be turned back at Israeli checkpoints on the way to games.

Qumsieh was a precocious player and made his debut for Thagafi at age 16. Shortly after, he was invited to a try-out for the Palestinian under-17 national team. He made the team and in a match against Kuwait scored a memorable goal. With his team down 2-0, Qumsieh picked the ball up in midfield. He picks up the story from there: “I saw the goalkeeper playing like a sweeper … so I figured a shot it was worth it.” And the shot he took was definitely worth it.

After the game, people wanted to talk to him about his incredible goal. Some questioned whether he was young enough to be eligible for the U-17 team. All around him, he heard murmurs and people saying, “There was no way a kid … can have a shot like this.” So many people questioned his eligibly, Qumsieh says, that the “[tournament organizers] had to take something from my knee to see how old I was.”Qumsieh was a rising star in Palestinian soccer, but he also wanted to continue his education. When an offer came for a full scholarship to play soccer at Goshen College in Indiana, he took the offer. In two years at Goshen, he became a star at the Mennonite school, leading them to the national tournament. Qumsieh’s developed unique style – he describes it as “freestyle, moves, thinking fast” –on the streets of Bethlehm, but it translated quite well to the cornfields of the American Midwest.

At Goshen, Qumsieh was a big fish in a small pond. He longed for more space to swim and so when Park University coach Efrem Shimlis expressed interest in the Palestinian forward, Qumsieh took the chance. He transferred to the Kansas City school, where he just finished his first year. Qumsieh says that his first year with his new team was successful, even though they lost in the first round of the national tournament.Qumsieh is disappointed that the college teams he’s played on haven’t performed better in national tournaments, but says he’s grateful just to have the chance to play soccer in peace. He’s aware that the situation is quite different for Palestinian players who remain in the occupied territories.The Palestinian national team, Qumsieh notes, has, in its ten years of existence, struggled to overcome barriers imposed on it by the Israeli occupation. Qumsieh notes that, playing with youth national teams in Palestine, players would often be stopped at border checkpoints. “We would be on the borders like any other people. We would sleep in the streets at the borders.” Team officials would often appeal to FIFA to intervene, with limited success.(A movie called Goal Dreams chronicles the Palestinian national team’s unsuccessful attempt to qualify for the 2006 World Cup. The Palestinian FA went so far as bringing in Chilean players of Palestinian descent because the Israelis would not allow native Palestinians players through checkpoints.)In addition to barriers imposed by Israel, Qumsieh notes, a lack of money hinders the Palestinian team’s progress. He reckons that, on merit, he would likely be called up for the national team, but the costs of getting him to games prevents it from happening.

The political situation that has led to the West Bank and Gaza Strip being governed by separate Palestinian factions has also been played out within the national team. Qumsieh notes that spots on the team are divided equally between the two territories. This often causes problems for the players, as they get little chance to train together before matches. “Sometimes we don’t have time to know each other because of the situation. We practice maybe once or twice together. We’re not even used to each other at all.”

Despite this obstacle, Qumsieh says that atmosphere in national team camps he’s been involved with have been overwhelmingly positive. On youth national teams, Qumsieh was the only Christian, and often got good-spirited ribbing from his Muslim teammates. “They would kid me: ‘why don’t you become Muslim? Come on, man’.” But, Qumsieh says, “They’re all my friends. We respect each other. We’re representing Palestine.”

Representing Palestine is a powerful inspiration for Qumsieh. He has two goals: to become a professional player and to represent and improve the senior Palestinian national team.

Qumsieh had a trial with Egyptian powerhouse Al-Ahly last year and may have trials with European teams next year. When I ask him if he would ever consider playing for an Israeli team, Qumsieh laughs at the suggestion. Despite the geographic proximity, Israeli teams don’t scout Palestinian players. If considered in purely geographic terms, Qumsieh’s career path (Palestine to the US to, hopefully, Europe) makes absolutely no sense. But then, little in the Middle East does.

Qumsieh’s desire to represent his country again is, not surprisingly, tied closely to the political situation. He notes that all Palestinians cheer for their team, one of the few representations of statehood for a stateless people. Seeing the Palestinian national team, says Qumsieh, helps to take people’s mind off of the difficult conditions under which they live. The team allows “people [to] forget about the conflict.”

Qumsieh expresses exasperation with the conflict. “We’re really getting sick of it,” he says. “It’s boring.” The word boring may not be used often to describe the Israeli – Palestinian conflict, but its repetitiveness is, in some ways, just that.

Peace with Israel would represent a major boost for the Palestinian people of course, but also for its national team. Qumsieh is hopeful that Palestinian statehood can boost the team. “To do something to be proud of, that’s what I really wish for in the future. I want to represent Palestine with a good team, not a bad team.”

Thanks to Lee Tesdell for offering the idea that led to this interview.

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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)

Several months after the invasion of Iraq, ever-supportive Fox News printed a list of the US military’s reconstruction projects. Several of these projects used soccer. Soldiers helped to collect and distribute soccer balls, set up teams and leagues, and clear and fix up fields throughout the country.

In the years since, Sadr City, Ramadi, and other cities throughout the country have all received new soccer fields or had old ones spruced up. Speaking in 2005, President Bush cited the reopening of a soccer stadium in Najaf as evidence of progress, although the Washington Post wrote shortly after that his claims were overblown.

Discrepancies between President Bush’s views on progress in Iraq and the reality on the ground occur quite commonly. Indeed, many have argued that his administration’s inability to see problems as they developed led to the full-blown insurgency that came about after the invasion of Iraq.

But while skewed perceptions of reality are a problem, some have argued that the military’s “hearts and minds” projects, such as those using soccer to win local support, are themselves problematic. Critiques have come from NGOs such as Oxfam, who said in 2003 that “[m]ilitary involvement in relief provision blurs the boundaries between military strategy and the independent action of impartial humanitarians. Military involvement can compromise the effective delivery of aid and lead to unintended consequences, potentially threatening the security of civilian aid workers.”

Some with military backgrounds have also criticized this strategy, saying that soldiers are not trained to be relief workers. Despite these critiques, the US military continues to employ relief work as part of its arsenal.

Throughout their time in Iraq, the US military has been accused of poor book-keeping. It has been alleged that millions of dollars have been lost and that weapons intended for the Iraqi army and police have instead made their way into the hands of those fighting the Americans. Abuse of funds destined for soccer-related projects has occurred as well. The Washington Post reported that an Iraqi contractor hired to renovate a high school in the Iraqi city of Musayyib was charging them double the going rate for soccer balls.

Part of the reason the military believes that soccer has the potential to win hearts and minds is because the sport and its stadiums had been so misused by previous governments in Iraq and Afghanistan. Saddam Hussein’s son Uday was known to torture Iraqi national team players who performed poorly. The Taliban banned soccer in the national stadium in Kabul and used it instead to stage public executions. By reopening soccer stadiums as places to play soccer and by encouraging people to play the sport free of fear or persecution, the US military hopes it will win local support.

A match organized in Afghanistan’s national stadium after it was reopened in the post-Taliban era

Much of the use of soccer in reconstruction has been projects carried out on the ground in countries the US has invaded. But the success of Iraq’s Olympic team and later its full national team has not escaped the notice, and attempted political repurposing, of President Bush. During his reelection campaign of 2004, Bush used images of the Iraqi team (which surprisingly reached the semifinals) in an ad that included a narrator saying, “At this Olympics there will be two more free nations — and two fewer terrorist regimes.” Some players responded angrily, including Salih Sadir who told Sports Illustrated’s Grant Wahl, “Iraq as a team does not want Mr. Bush to use us for the presidential campaign. He can find another way to advertise himself.”

(Bush seems to have learned his lesson, and didn’t use the Iraqi national team’s victory in last summer’s Asian Cup as an opportunity to toot his own horn. Perhaps he didn’t need to: many media outlets, including the New York Times, wrote about how the accomplishment had brought Iraqis of all stripes together. More recently, Iraqi national team players made the news when three of them defected while in Australia.)

The US is not alone in using soccer to try to improve its image in Iraq and Afghanistan. Japan granted the rights to air its popular anime Captain Tsubasa (renamed Captain Majed) to be broadcast free of charge in Iraq. Before pulling out, Korean forces in Iraq organized soccer tournaments and invited Iraqi players to Korea. Even enemies of the US have tried to use soccer for their own purposes: Iran has sought to increase its influence in neighboring Afghanistan by rebuilding, among other things, soccer fields.

Captain Tsubasa, soon to be Captain Majed (photo: Coucoucircus.org)

But as the biggest player by far in both countries, the US has had the most opportunity to use (and misuse) soccer as a tool in attempting to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan. Reconstruction has proven far harder than any of the original promoters of war envisioned. Their ideas about freedom and democracy, it turned out, could not simply be imposed on countries with cultures and histories far different from their own.

In August, the US military initiated a project they thought would win over people in the Afghan city of Khost. They flew over the city and dropped soccer balls from a helicopter as a gift to local children. But when the balls hit the ground, the locals were incensed. The balls contained a Saudi Arabian flag, on which the name of Allah is written, and this writing is considered holy by many Muslims. A protest ensued, bringing hundreds out onto the streets.

Khost residents protest the “blasphemous balls” (photo: BBC)

Local politician Mirwais Yasini said, “To have a verse of the Koran on something you kick with your foot would be an insult in any Muslim country around the world.”

A military spokesperson responded, in a manner that epitomized the bright-eyed naiveté with which the Americans have gone at reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan. She admitted that US forces had made “significant efforts to work with local leaders, mullahs and elders to respect their culture. Unfortunately, there was something on those footballs we didn’t immediately understand to be offensive and we regret that as we do not want to offend.”

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Son Al-Saadi Qaddafi, meanwhile, has signed for several Italian Serie A teams, played no more than one game for each, and been banned for drug use. Trying to understand the way that the family’s mind works, on politics or soccer, is difficult, is mind-boggling.

Father and son (photos: Getty Images/BBC and AP/BBC)

After coming to power in a military coup in 1969, Muamar Qaddafi rose to worldwide prominence as a supporter of terrorism. He is believed to have funded the Black September group responsible for the Munich Massacre at the 1972 Olympics and the bombers of Pan Am flight 103, which exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988. In 1984, a British policewoman named Yvonne Fletcher was killed by shots fired from within the Libyan embassy during an anti-Libyan rally (during the subsequent investigation Libya invoked diplomatic immunity and the shooter was never identified).

It has been a surprise to many, then, to see Qaddafi morph in the past few years into a semi-respectable leader. He allowed suspects in the Lockerbie bombings to be extradited in 1999 and in 2003 agreed to pay up to $10 million each to families of the victims. That same year, he announced that Libya had had a covert nuclear weapons program, but that it would be scrapped.

Shortly after September 11, Qaddafi had said, “Irrespective of the conflict with America it is a human duty to show sympathy with the American people, and be with them at these horrifying and awesome events which are bound to awaken human conscience.” Most recently, Qaddafi sponsored a peace conference aimed at stopping the killing going on in the Darfur region of Sudan. Though it amounted to little, it was striking to many to see Qaddafi, the former sponsor of terrorism, working to alleviate conflict.

Muamar Qaddafi presiding over the recent Darfur peace conference in Libya (photo: Reuters/Fred Noy/U.N./Handout)

But lest one think that Qaddafi is a completely reformed man, it should be noted that he retains a dictatorial hold on Libya, despite his rhetoric about “direct, popular democracy.” He urges his supporters to “kill enemies” of his regime. And his country was in the news recently for accusing 17 Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor of intentionally infecting Libyan children with AIDS and sentencing them to death on flimsy evidence (they were freed at the last minute under intense international pressure).

Qaddafi himself remains an eccentric person. Paul Vallely described the Libyan leader’s quirks in the Independent in September of 2006:

Gaddafi has always been odd. He dresses in flamboyant robes and receives visiting heads of state in a Bedouin tent. His personal bodyguard [sic] are an Amazonian corps of women, all martial arts experts. He does things like ordering the population of Tripoli to paint their rooftops green so that the desert city appears lush to visitors flying in.

Qaddafi looking absolutely fabulous (photo: The Royals Forum)

If Muamar Qaddafi’s personality and rule of Libya seem a bit odd, just wait until you hear about the soccer career of his son, Al-Saadi.

He began his career playing for Al Ahly Tripoli. In 2000, it was reported that he had signed with Maltese team Birkirkara F.C. But Al-Saadi never made the trip to Malta to join the team. He later signed with (and even joined!) Italian team Perugia in 2003, though he only played one match before failing a drug test and being suspended (this one match was apparently enough to convince many of his talents: the Observer wrote last month that he is “widely described as Serie A’s worst ever player).

This history wasn’t enough to dissuade Udinese from signing the younger Qaddafi in 2005. A bench-warmer the entire year, Al-Saadi did play 10 minutes of an unimportant late season match before being released.

Qaddafi the younger was most recently given the opportunity to train with Sampdoria, though this seemed to have as much to do with team president Riccardo Garrone, head of oil company Erg, trying to get a slice of Libya’s vast oil reserves. A friendly was arranged between Sampdoria and the Libyan national team that Al-Saadi Qaddafi said would “also add to the political and economic relations between Italy and Libya.” This was surely music to Garrone’s ears.

Libya and Sampdoria before their friendly (photo: Libyan Football Federation)

The Sampdoria president is not the only Italian boss reaching out to the Qaddafis. The family owns a 7.5% stake in Juventus, a team owned by the Agnelli family, who control Fiat, and have long ties to Muamar Qaddafi and his family. The connection between family and club seems to have as much to do with business and personal ties as it does with soccer.

The Qaddafi family normally divides up areas in which they demonstrate their strangeness: Muamar specializing in politics, Al-Saadi in soccer. But Muamar (the “Brother Leader” as he prefers to be called) recently ventured into the world of sport. Writing on his official website, he denounced FIFA and the World Cup.

It is monopolized, badly exploited and willfully adapted to serve the interests of those who monopolize and exploit it. Ostensibly, the World Cup was established to achieve a social and psychological benefit for people. Nevertheless, what The World Cup has achieved is the exact opposite.

He continued, claiming that soccer is bad for people’s health.

Those who have football (soccer) mania, and those addicted to the game are most at risk of psychological and nervous disorders. Those disorders in turn are the leading causes of heart attacks, strokes, diabetes, hyper-tension and premature ageing.

Oh, and soccer creates racism, claimed Qaddafi. And human trafficking. And war.

Mostly, though, Qaddafi seemed interested in having World Cup matches staged in countries around the world (without this change, he says, “the World Cup is not international nor does it belong to all people”). Brother Leader finished with a flourish.

This is the solution. Otherwise, the World Cup should be abolished in view of the mortal danger it poses to the world physically and morally. It leads to problems, difficulties, disorders, hatred and enmity. It causes the spread of degenerate behavior and collective recklessness and irresponsibility. Socio-psychological studies have proven that the manic, fanatical addicts of the World Cup are below normal in intellectual capacity and psychological development.

In no way is Muamar Qaddafi mentally unstable (photo: Algathafi.org)

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Carlos Roa, a goalkeeper once rumored to be on his way to Arsenal and Manchester United, shocked the world of football when he announced that he was retiring from the sport because his religion wouldn’t allow him to train or play on Saturdays. But the shock didn’t end there. Roa also announced that he was convinced that the coming of the millennium would bring an end to the world.

He told Argentine sports paper Olé, “The year 2000 is going to be difficult. In the world, there is war, hunger, plague, much poverty, storms, floods … I can assure you that those people who don’t have a spiritual connection with God and the type of life that He wants will be in trouble.” To prove his dedication, the goalkeeper, then on the books of Real Mallorca in Spain, retreated to a farm in the rural Argentine province of Santa Fe to await his fate.

Bible in hand, Roa awaits the end of the world on his farm

Roa is one of a small group of players whose religious beliefs have gotten in the way of their soccer careers (of course, they would claim that the opposite is in fact more accurate). While some players use soccer as a stage on which they can promote their religious beliefs (notably, AC Milan’s Brazilian star and Christian evangelical Kaká), others have more difficulty finding time for both endeavors.

Many of Carlos Roa’s religious beliefs come from the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. His insistence on not playing on Saturdays comes from this faith tradition, which observes the Sabbath on this day. (Roa’s nickname, incidentally, is lechuga, the Spanish word for lettuce, because his being a vegetarian – another Adventist belief – stands out in beef-obsessed Argentina.)

It should be noted, however, that Roa moved away from strict Adventist beliefs (he now refers to himself simply as a Christian”). His belief that the millennium would bring the end of the world, for example, was shared by few in that church.

When the millennium arrived without incident (heck, even Y2K was a dud), Roa found himself in a predicament. He had once been a soccer star (he famously saved David Batty’s penalty kick in the 1998 World Cup to help Argentina advance), but now was just a Chicken Little living on an Argentine farm. The man who said on announcing what turned out to be a short-lived retirement, “If I go back [to football], I’d be defrauding God” needed a job and he swallowed hard. Roa returned to Mallorca, then moved to Albacete before going back to Argentina to play for Olimpo.

Roa saves Batty’s penalty kick

Taribo West is another player with a passion for his religion. The Nigerian defender of many and often-changing hairstyles grew up in the slums of Lagos and might have ended up a gangster had his footballing talents not taken him to Europe. A career as a professional player gave West great wealth, but he rejected it and the materialism he saw around him. He instead turned to religion, becoming a born-again Christian. While in Milan (where he played for both AC and Inter) in the late 1990s, West became a pastor and founded a church, called Shelter from the Storm Ministry, which caters mainly to West African immigrants.

Taribo West, doing his best to make David Beckham’s hairstyles look classy

West left Milan in 2000, but continued to return to the city to preach in his church. While playing for Derby County he often jetted off to Milan without letting his club know of his whereabouts, angering his employers After being transferred to Kaiserslauten, Taribo West refused to go to a Sunday morning training session, instead visiting his congregants in Italy. Kaisterslauten didn’t take kindly to Pastor West’s priorities and sacked him, to which the defender replied, “The Lord is more important to me than a football club.” (He then petulantly added in a most non-pastorial diatribe, “Kaiserslautern wanted me to come in the day after a match and I said to them ‘let me face my maker’. But they wouldn’t because Germans are selfish and stupid.”)

Recently, Spain has seen two instances in which religion has affected players in La Liga. Neither have been forced to miss games like Roa and West, but both have questioned (or had questions asked for them) whether they should play under circumstances that conflict with their religious beliefs.

Fredi Kanoute, a devout Muslim, claimed that wearing Sevilla’s uniform was an affront to his religion. Kanoute’s (halal) beef was with the team’s sponsor, online gambling company 888 (gambling is a sin under Islam). Kanoute said, “Gambling is the work of Satan. It is forbidden by the Koran and I will not play in a shirt that promotes it.” Kanoute taped over the uniform sponsor in protest of this affront to his religion.

Kanoute with a (fairly horrible) tape job on the Sevilla’s Satanic jersey sponsor

Hell hath no fury like a sponsor scorned and Sevilla realized they had to come to a compromise that would please both 888 and Kanoute. Eventually they settled on a charitable donation made to a cause supported by Kanoute in exchange for the Malian striker “doing Satan’s work” (perhaps it’s this diabolical boost that’s taken his goal tally 26 this season).

The devil is on his chest

Dudu Aouate’s conflict between sport and religion is not of his own making. Unlike all of the players above, the Israeli goalkeeper has tried to keep the two separate, but that has seen him mired in controversy, albeit created by others.

Aouate is an Israeli goalkeeper currently playing for Deportivo La Coruña. This past October, he faced a dilemma when his team’s match against Real Sociedad was scheduled for the night of the Jewish holiday Yom Kippur. The holiday, which calls on Jews to take leave of their normal activities in order to fast and pray, would conflict with shot-stopping and the like. But Aouate was eager to be flexible in his observance of Yom Kippur in order to play in the game. He suggested extending his observation an hour or two later the next night in order to make up for time lost to observance during the game.

Dudu Aouate

Aouate did eventually play versus Real Sociedad and this caused a minor uproar in Israel. Some Orthodox Jews called for him to be removed from the national team. A conservative member of the Israeli Knesset, Yaakov Margi, did the same, saying, “Someone who plays on Yom Kippur grossly tramples the values of the Jewish people and is not worthy of representing the country.” Aouate took the criticism in stride and the controversy has since died down. The goalkeeper continues to represent his country and has recently been named captain.

Panahi knew that taking on the subject of female football fans in Iran would be controversial, and so tried to make his movie quietly so as to avoid the censors. In an interview, he described how even his best attempts to avoid notice were ultimately unsuccessful.

We tried to be very discreet and avoid any mention in the press. However, five days before the end of the shoot, a newspaper published an article stating I was directing a new film. The military immediately gave orders to interrupt the shoot. We were instructed to bring them our rushes to be verified. I immediately announced to the official in charge of cinema in Iran that this was out of the question, and that I would not allow a single soldier during the final days of the shoot. Luckily, there were only a few scenes left to shoot, inside a minibus, so we just left the military zone and continued filming sixty kilometers outside of Tehran.

But the difficulties Panahi faced from overzealous authorities is nothing compared to those encountered by the subjects of his movie. They are the female football fans who so desperately want to watch Iran play Bahrain in a 2005 match that would decide which team would go to the World Cup.

The movie opens on a bus, as Iranian fans make their way to the Azadi Stadium to see the crucial qualifier against Bahrain. The scene is joyous, with fans hanging out the windows and singing, psyching themselves up for the game. But one fan is more nervous than excited. This fan, it turns out, is a she and shes are not allowed into stadiums in Iran.

The female fan (we never find out names of any of the women in the film) is going in disguise, trying to avoid the glare of police at the stadium. But her cover is blown by her own nervousness and she is taken to a holding pen, along with other female football fans.

It’s in this holding pen, which is really just metal barricades shaped into a rectangle, that the majority of the movie takes place. The action of the movie, if it can be called that, is mostly the captive female fans attempting to persuade their captors to let them watch the game. Those looking for dramatic shots of the action on the field will be sorely disappointed; this is a movie about the repressive realities of contemporary Iranian life that just happens to have a crucial World Cup qualifier as its background.

The Azadi Stadium is as good a place as any to show many of the injustices that exist in Iran today. The rationales that the female fans are given for not being allowed into the stadium are as numerous as they are absurd: women will be harmed by the coarse language in the stadium, they should not be looking at attractive young male players, soccer is just not a women’s game, etc. The most argumentative of the detained female fans points out that Japanese women were allowed in to a game at the same stadium and wonders if “my only problem is I was born in Iran?”

The soldiers who become the women’s captors are hardly enthused with having to keep the fans from watching the game. One soldier is completely disinterested in his work, another continually sneaks peeks at the game, and a third laments that his conscription has taken him so far from his family farm. The root of the problem does not lie with the soldiers; they are merely forced to carry out the unjust laws created by those above them.

That seems to be the point Panahi is most interested in making. Individually, Iranians may support female fans’ right to go to the stadium, but the authorities in the country create a system that forces some citizens to oppress others.

Panahi also clearly hopes that Iranians might take collective action to stop these injustices from occurring. When a female fan escapes from her captor with the aid of some male fans, it is impossible not to see Panahi’s desire that more Iranians take a stand against injustice in their country. As the famous quote goes, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”

Jafar Panahi

Offside is undoubtedly an interesting, it is not the most engaging movie. Its topic may be unique, but the film itself is all too predictable. The soldier least interested initially in the female fans’ plight comes to see their perspective by the end of the film. The women are detained, but in the end are released onto the streets of Tehran to celebrate with their countrymen and women. Watching Offside, you’ll rarely be surprised by what’s coming next.

The one surprise in the movie is how little soccer there is. Leaving the theater, my friend and I concurred that we would have liked to see shots of what sounded like an intense game. Of course, as we quickly realized, not showing the game was an intentional decision on Panahi’s part and that we had little right to complain. We, two twenty-something American men, had been denied a peek at the game during the ninety-minute movie; women in Iran have been denied the right to watch soccer for their entire lives.

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.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, to use its official name, has long had a conflicted relationship with the outside world. 75% of government revenues come from oil exports, but these funds are used largely to maintain an insular and extremely conservative society. Women, for example, are not permitted to drive and cannot travel outside the country without a male family member escort.

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 Evo Morales was elected president of Bolivia in 2005, he promised to be a different kind of leader. As the first indigenous president of a country whose population is over 50% Indian, Morales said he would govern for those who had been ignored. Morales’s style has differed from that of his predecessors, he wears traditional Bolivian sweaters to formal events with other world leaders. Morales is perhaps unique in the lofty heights of world power in that he continues to play soccer. Playing soccer on his local team, the Bolivian leader has suffered injuries, such as in 2006, when he had his nose broken by an opponent.

What position does Evo Morales play? I’m guessing he’s a left winger.

Bolivia’s neighbor also has a soccer fan installed as its leader. Argentina’s Nestor Kirchner is a fan of Racing Club de Avellaneda. Interestingly, his wife Cristina Fernandez, whom some think may try to take over from her husband, is known to be a fan of Gimanasia de la Plata. A Soccernet article last year talked of the Kirchners receiving Juan Sebastian Verón on his return to Argentina, despite the fact that La Brujita would be playing for Gimnasia’s city rivals, Estudiantes de la Plata.

Italy’s former prime minster, Silvio Berlusconi, was able to rise to the highest office in the land largely because of his soccer connections. Berlusconi rose to fame in Italy as president of AC Milan and used this name recognition to launch himself into political office. Running in the Forza Italia party (a name which literally means “Go Italy”) previously connected to national team supporters, Berlusconi ran Italy from 2001 – 2006. While in office, some questioned whether Berlusconi’s dual role as prime minister and president of AC Milan was a conflict of interest.

China’s current leader Hu Jintao has no apparent interest in soccer, but Premier Wen Jiabao (#3 in the country’s political hierarchy) claims to be a fan. In the lead-up to the 2006 World Cup, Wen told German chancellor Angela Merkel “China has a massive number of football fans who will stay up to watch the matches (with the six-hour time difference), and I’m one of them.” Merkel also claimed to like soccer, even saying she “had arranged her schedule so that she could watch any match Germany plays, including the final.” Yeah, shame about that.

Occasionally, a world leader’s interest in soccer has gotten him in trouble. After being elected in a shock result in 2005, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad got his country’s soccer program suspended from FIFA for allegedly installing his own people into positions at the Iranian FA. Though Ahmadinejad denied the charge, FIFA suspended Iran from international play for nearly a month in late 2005 until the apparent government interference into Iran’s FA (a big no-no in FIFA’s eyes) was stopped.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad actually looks like he knows what he’s doing (in soccer, that is)

These leaders appear to be genuine fans of soccer, though they are forced to share company with those who use the sport merely for their own political gain. Tony Blair, for example, claims to be a Newcastle United supporter, but as the blog Liberal England shows, his devotion is probably not genuine. And anyone who has seen Blair attempt to play soccer knows he was never likely to play in the Premier League (then again, Newcastle is pretty poor this year).

Glenn Roeder, he’s out of a job soon, sign him up!

There is perhaps no better way for a politician to be seen as a man (or woman) of the people in most of the world than to claim interest in soccer. But doing so when one lacks interest in or knowledge of the game is simply another way in which a politician can confirm people’s worst suspicions about their leaders being disingenuous. Perhaps other world leaders should take their cues from George Bush (did I really just write that?). The self-styled cowboy leader said in 2006 about his fellow Americans: “[A] lot of us grew up not knowing anything about soccer, like me. I never saw soccer as a young boy. We didn’t play it where I was from. It just didn’t exist.”

Hey kids, what sport do y’all play again?

Know of any other world leaders who are soccer fans? Please leave a comment and let me know.

A recent Adidas advertisement makes the link between soccer and religion

A USA Today headline on Iraqis watching the 2006 World Cup screamed out “When World Cup’s on, the only religion is soccer.” 1970 Brazilian national team captain Carlos Alberto Torres has said that “football in Brazil is like a religion.” Even Italy, home of the Catholic church, has seen its obsession with calcio compared to matters of faith, with the AP describing it as “a country where soccer is a religion for many.”

Some have wondered whether Europe’s rise in soccer attendance and the drop in church-going are related. In a 2002 opinion piece in Rutgers University’s student newspaper, the Daily Targum, Thomas Mitchell asked whether soccer had become “Europe’s substitute religion.”

In pure numbers of adherents to their faith, soccer may actually be more popular than religion. Writing during the 2006 World Cup, Chicago Tribune writer Tom Hundley quantified the comparison:

Christianity, with more than 2 billion believers, ranks second among the major religions of the world. Soccer is first.

Devotees of soccer don’t necessarily see it as competing with religion for their faith. But some religious authorities do.

Some Islamists see the game as a direct threat to their values and have gone to great lengths to restrict it. In 2005, Saudi Arabian newspaper Al Watan published an anti-soccer fatwa. The fatwa went to great lengths to condemn the world’s most popular sport (including great popularity within the Kingdom of Saud itself). The fatwa is below followed by a few choice morsels of its condemnation.

You should spit in the face of whoever puts the ball between the posts.

Play in your regular clothes or your pyjamas or something like that, but not coloured shorts and numbered T-shirts, because shorts and T-shirts are not Muslim clothing.

Do not play in two halves. Rather, play in one half or three halves in order to completely differentiate yourselves from the heretics, the corrupted and the disobedient.

Do not call “foul” and stop the game if someone falls and sprains a hand or foot or the ball touches his hand, and do not give a yellow or red card to whoever was responsible for the injury or tackle. Instead, it should be adjudicated according to Sharia rulings concerning broken bones and injuries.

Do not follow the heretics, the Jews, the Christians and especially evil America regarding the number of players. Do not play with 11 people. Add to this number or decrease it.

Though the fatwa had little impact overall (other religious authorities condemned it roundly), it did seem to play a part in influencing some Saudis to travel to Iraq to wage jihad. These players were influenced most by the part of the fatwa which claimed that soccer should only be used as training for jihad:

If you have fulfilled these conditions and intend to play soccer, play to strengthen the body in order better to struggle in the way of God on high and to prepare the body for when it is called to jihad.

According to a translation from the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI),

On August 22, 2005, Al-Watan reported that the soccer players involved in this affair were from the Al-Taif region, and that some of them belonged to the region’s well-known Al-Rashid team.” In another article, Al-Rashid captain Ja’far ‘Attas said that three of his players had left the team. A few days later, team members confirmed that the three had become devout and, under the influence of various fatwas, had begun to believe that soccer was forbidden by religious law.

In the summer of 2006, the World Cup coincided with the rise to power of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) in Somalia. The Islamist group took control of the lawless country and immediately imposed its views on the population. Like the Taliban had done during its rule, the ICU barred its people from watching soccer. According to Newsweek, “open-air video parlors showing World Cup matches were shut down,” making Somalis among the few people around the world not watching the tournament that summer.

Hassan Dahir Aweys, one of the leaders of the soccer-banning Islamic Courts Union

Not wanting to be outdone by Sunni extremists, Iraq’s radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr issued his own anti-soccer fatwa. Citing the views of his father, Mohammed Sadiq al-Sar, and Islamic law (sharia), the young cleric said:

Not only my father but Sharia also prohibits such activities which keep the followers too occupied for worshiping, keep people from remembering [to worship]. Habeebi, the West created things that keep us from completing ourselves (perfection). What did they make us do? Run after a ball, habeebi What does that mean? A man, this large and this tall, Muslim- running after a ball? Habeebi, this ‘goal’ as it is called; if you want to run, run for a noble goal. Follow the noble goals which complete you and not the ones that demean you.

Before returning to Iraq after the US invasion in 2003, Sadr lived in Iran, a country known for barring women from its stadiums. CNN detailed the Iranian policy:

One religious leader, Fazel Lankarani, went further and issued a fatwa against the presence of women in stadiums. Aliabadi, who announced that women would be permitted to attend live games from the start of next season, seemed to backtrack when he told reporters: “The ban on single women still exists and we won’t allow single women to attend any games. Only women who come with their families will be allowed in.” On March 1, Iran’s security forcibly stopped 50 female football fans from attempting to enter Tehran’s Azadi or “freedom” stadium to watch a match between Iran and Costa Rica.

But, as Franklin Foer documents in his book How Soccer Explains the World, passionate fans in Iran have fought against the restrictive rules. Foer tells how the Azadi stadium had, upon Iran’s qualification for the 1998 World Cup, seen thousands of women allowed in to celebrate the achievement (221). The Iranian regime, Foer writes, has a “Roman nose for self-preservation” (219) and going against their own fatwa was not a radical shift in policy, but a temporary move aimed at avoiding confrontation with jubilant fans.

Iranian fans in a special “female-only” section attend a game in 2005

Lest one think that Islam is the only religion to harbor animosity toward soccer, Christianity has its own extremists who critique the sport on religious grounds. Echoing the radical Islamists’ view that sport takes people’s focus away from “higher goals,” the Rev. Metropolitan of Nafpaktos and St. Vlassios Hierotheos of the Greek Hierotheos Vlachos of the Greek Orthodox Church issued this proclamation in 2002:

For many people, soccer is a religion, a worship. Several expressions used are taken from religion. Spectators sit in the stands and their “gods”, the soccer players, contest as another twelve/eleven gods in the field for Victory. Since soccer is considered by many as a new worship, there is certainly their own god, the god of soccer. They pray to this non-existing god.

As anyone who has seen the movie The Cup knows, not all Buddhists love the beautiful game. In the film, based on a true story, boys at a Tibetian Buddhist monestary in the Himalayas work to convince their teachers to allow them to watch the 2002 World Cup final. The outcome of the movie (I don’t want to spoil it but if you can’t figure out what happens at the end of this “feel good” flick something’s wrong with you) gives hope that the religious around the world might see the error in their ways.

From the Korean-language version poster of The Cup

Religious authorities need not see soccer as a threat to their faiths. The young monks who watched Ronaldo toe poke his way to victory have not lost their faith. Soccer is a powerful force loved billions around the world, but it is not powerful enough to challenge true religions.