Below are some photos that I took of two games between African League teams. I was told that the games were friendlies and that the league itself will start next weekend. I will be returning to the league to do features on several of the teams. Check back soon for that!

Game #1

Dharee Oromo, the Ethiopian team

San Diego United, the Somali Bantu team

Game #2

Black Lions, the Southern Sudanese team

Africa United, a team with an accurate name (its players are from Congo, Nigeria, Somalia, Ethiopia, Sudan, Burundi, Cameroon, along with two Mexican-Americans)

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The concept for the film became crystallized in November of 2008, during qualification for this summer’s World Cup. Miralles was talking with some Mexican friends of his and suggested that, based on form at the time, it was possible that the US could beat Mexico in the Azteca. Their shocked response, he says, showed him that “there is something really deep and important here.” He wondered to himself how a victory over their fiercest rivals could mean something so different to fans on either side of the Rio Grande. “Why is that different for an American fan, who might say, ‘that would be cool!’ versus a Mexican fan, who would describe the same result as ‘catastrophic’?”

Miralles got in touch with two old UCLA film school classmates of his, Mike Whalen, based in Santa Clara, andRoberto Donati, in Mexico. Together, they have been working for nearly two years to make their vision reality. Gringos at the Gate, as the in-progress trailer shows, explores what soccer means to citizens of the two North American neighbors, especially in light of the US teams dramatic improvement in recent years.

The scope of the project has expanded as the filmmakers have worked on it. At various points, they have wanted to finish filming, but opportunities to interview important people have come up, and they have continued to shoot. “The thing with documentaries is that they keep going and going and going,” says Miralles. He says they have ten interviews left and intend to wrap up shooting in the next couple of months.

Asked what the main message he has taken so far, Miralles answers in two parts. For the United States, he refers me to an interview Bruce McGuire of DuNord did with This is American Soccer. McGuire told Adam Spangler: “I’ve told people for years that soccer in America is like a glacier. It’s moving slow, and most people can’t see it, but there is no stopping it. And it’s going to destroy everything (laughing) in its path eventually. It might take 1000 years, but it’s going to do it.” Miralles says he concurs with McGuire, noting that making this film has “made me very optimistic about the future of soccer in the United States. There are so many diverse people who are so interested in the sport. It goes deeper than I ever imagined.” The growth in of knowledge and sophistication among US fans in recent years has amazed Miralles. As an example, Miralles told me about wearing a retro Johann Cruyff LA Aztecs jersey to last summer’s LA Galaxy vs. Barcelona friendly and having fans come up to him saying, “Oh, that’s so smart because Cruyff played for both teams!”

Johann Cruyff LA Aztecs jersey (photo: Toffs)

Mexico, on the other is a country that Miralles describes as a “classic soccer culture.” Given the predominance of soccer in the Mexican sporting landscape, so much of many Mexicans’ identity comes to be tied up in the performance of the Tricolor. Though soccer may seem to be unrelated to more “serious” matters, Miralles believes it is intimately tied up with national identity and self-esteem. He quotes Mexican commentator, who says that soccer is “the most important of things that have no importance.” This importance is especially acute because Mexico has “the misfortune to be next to the richest, most powerful country in the world,” and much of the film documents how Mexicans have dealt with the fact that their rich, powerful neighbor has started to care about, and often beat them in, the one thing in which they always had an advantage: soccer.

The Mexican collaborator on the film, Roberto Donati is also a psychologist, and Miralles told me that he has said that if the two countries were individual people, he would describe Mexico’s feeling of inferiority toward the US as a “psychosis.” Losing to the US, then, takes on far more importance than a loss to any other opponent. The rivalry, Miralles says, “is much more intense for a Mexican than an American could ever understand.”

Mexico and the US today are tied even more intensely than ever through immigration. With millions of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans in the US, the question arises of whom these fans choose to support. Miralles notes a game played in the Rose Bowl in 1994 (leading up to that year’s World Cup) in front of 80,000 produced images of mostly Mexican fans that led many in the national media to take note. In an interview, Gustavo Arellano, satirical writer of Ask a Mexican fame, told Miralles that it was on that day that people said, “Holy shit there are a lot of Mexicans in our country!” and it spurred talk of increased border enforcement (legislation was enacted in 1996).

Mexico fans at the 2009 Gold Cup final in New York (photo:  Every Joe / Newscom)

It’s not surprising, Miralles told me, that children of immigrants, many of whom, he notes, grow up in households dominated by Mexican culture, would come to support Mexico. However, the US victory over Mexico in the 2002 World Cup marked a turning point, “the beginning of the cracking of solidarity” among Mexican-American fans. It was then, when the US beat Mexico on the biggest stage of all that many Mexican-Americans really took notice of the Americans as a power, and many started to see them as a team worthy of supporting. This trend has persisted, Miralles believes, and as the US continues to improve, its support from second and later generation Mexican-Americans will grow.

Although he continues to find interesting people to talk with and stories to tell, Miralles says he and his collaborators are hoping to finish what will be a 95-minute movie by the summer. They hope to have a release right after the World Cup in order to take advantage of the excitement the tournament will generate. It is a project that Miralles has poured his heart and soul into despite the fact that it is only a side project on top of his regular work in television and film. He has also opened his wallet to make his dream reality – he has funded much of it himself with the hope that it might get picked up by a distributor after completion. What would his greatest hope be for the film, I ask. “I have a fantasy that it is such a mind-blowing film that we take it to Sundance and it wins audience favorite. And then of course HBO Films picks it up, it does a cable run …” He trails off, smiling, aware that it is, after all just a fantasy for what is still, despite the growth of soccer in the United States, an esoteric topic. No matter what happens, Miralles says he has been happy to be involved in making the film.  “It’s been very enlightening – and fun!”

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The Football Supporters’ Federation protest sign against the 39th game (photo: Football Supporters’ Federation)

The strength of connection between teams and their place of origin may come as a bit of a surprise to American fans. Professional sports in the US became “franchised” so early on that Americans learned quickly that no club was too closely tied to its home to avoid being moved if its owner saw fit. Baseball’s Brooklyn Dodgers fans were heartbroken in 1957 when owner Walter O’Malley took the team 3000 miles west to its new home in Los Angeles. The same fate befell the American football Baltimore Colts, whose owner moved the team to Indianapolis in the middle of a snowy 1984 night. While I don’t want to deny the often strong connection between American sports teams and their homes (Red Sox nation, hold your fire), we in the US have seen teams ripped from one place and moved to another often enough to become quite cynical about the connection between clubs and their homes. Professional sports in the US are, and long have been, as much about business as anything else.

This is not the case in much of Europe, where clubs, from their beginnings, came to be strongly associated with the place from which they sprang. The late rise of professionalism in the UK, in particular, meant that clubs’ players often came from the local community and lived in it the same as any other member. Clubs’ identities came to be closely tied to those of the local community, and separating the club from its community was largely seen as a non-starter (that said, Arsenal’s move from South to North London in 1913 is a huge exception). Indeed, clubs more often served to incorporate arriving immigrants into their new communities. Many Irish men in Glasgow found a home at Celtic, for instance, just as many migrants from southern Spain found a home at Barcelona FC. One recent migrant, Eseteban, told the website The Travel Rag: “When I came here from Andalusia one of the ways I was able to feel part of the city and part of Catalonia was to support Barça. It was hard being a migrant but the club gives you an identity. Now I feel Catalan and I’m proud to live in Barcelona.”

If club teams are closely tied to their homes, one might imagine national teams would be even more so. It can be argued that especially in these times of increased globalization, sports are one of the few arenas in which people can continue to feel a strong connection to their countries. But in the 21^st century, the connection between nations and their national teams is changing dramatically. The bond between national teams and the nations from which they come is, in many cases, no longer as strong as it once was.

At the conclusion of World Cup qualifying last month, Tim Vickery noted that many South American fans must now wait a long time before they will see their teams play at home. Vickery points out that a “gentleman’s agreement” means that European clubs release their players for friendlies as long as these matches are played in Europe. Having the chance to gather their best players is one reason that many national teams play matches outside of their home countries, but it is far from the only one. Often just as important is the chance to make money. When Brazil played England in recent friendly, the game did not take place in London or Rio de Janeiro. It was played instead in Doha, Qatar. Brazil has outsourced the scheduling of its friendly matches to Swiss company Kentaro, leading the seleçao jetting off in recent years to destinations such as Chicago, Boston, Seattle, Dortmund, Montpellier, Dublin and London. Brazil has clearly capitalized on its global appeal, though it is an interesting question to wonder how Brazil’s image may change it the team never plays in Brazil.

Brazil vs. England in Qatar (photo: Who Ate All the Pies)

Other countries have played abroad in the hopes of improving their national teams. This is the approach that New Zealand has employed in recent years, as Colin Peacock outlined on a recent Football Weekly podcast after that country qualified for the World Cup: “They decided: look, no one ever comes to New Zealand to play so we will assemble our team of journeymen from the second tiers of various leagues across the world and Ryan Nelsen if he can make it and play a few games across Europe. They absolutely targeted this opportunity and now they’ve done it.”

While the examples given so far all involve distancing national teams from their fans, there is also an interesting trend of teams going to places where migrants have settled. Mexico is perhaps the best example of this. The Mexican national team often takes advantage of the millions of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans in the United States and plays friendlies north of the border. A look at recent results shows Mexico lining up against Peru, Colombia, and Argentina on American soil, not to mention regular friendlies against the United States itself, all of which sell out huge stadiums. The appeal of playing its games abroad for the Mexican federation is two-fold: it gives Mexican fans abroad the chance to see their team play while giving the federation the opportunity to rake in huge sums of money. Indeed, this combination leads many countries with immigrant populations in the United States to stage matches here (see, for example, a recent friendly between Honduras and Peru played in Florida).

Sports are about creating community, as Simon Kuper has pointed out recently. He quotes Michael Oriard, who writes in his new book about college (American) football, that “a college football game at Michigan or Alabama, with its bands and cheerleaders, its pre-game tailgating, and its postgame partying, is something like a folk festival providing a sense of community, meaningful ritual, and sheer pleasure for millions of Americans each weekend in the fall.” Yet what happens when those games occur far from the place from which the team springs? Increased ease of communication and travel, key features of the contemporary wave of globalization, are changing the connection between soccer teams and the places from which they come. While the strong connection that many European clubs have to their place of origin has made moves such as that of MK Dons the exception to the rule, national teams throughout the world are increasingly playing matches wherever they can top-quality opponents, émigré fans or oodles of cash. Ironically, the national teams, whose existence is in part predicated on their connection to specific places, are coming to be less and less tied to their homeland than are club teams.

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This development is perhaps not all that surprising given that the United States is a nation of immigrants. Many of the players who have developed their skills in the US and played for other nations are children of immigrants. The most notable such example is Giuseppe Rossi. Born in Teaneck, New Jersey to Italian parents, Rossi traveled to his parents’ homeland at age 13 to begin playing for Parma. He would later sign for Manchester United before moving on to his current club, Villarreal. Intrigue surrounded Rossi, with American fans holding onto hope that he would choose to play internationally for the US despite his assertions that he wanted to represent Italy. His call-up for the Azzurri in October 2008 sealed his international fate (and, to rub salt in the wounds of American fans, he scored twice against the US in last summer’s Confederations Cup).

Other Americans born to immigrant parents to have played for other the national teams of other countries include Espen Baardsen, and Arturo Alvarez. Baardsen was a goalkeeper for Tottenham, Watford and Everton from the mid-1990s until he retired in 2003 (quoting the BBC: “American-born Norway international who retired aged 25 in 2003 after a spell with Everton, saying he had lost his passion for the game. Spent a year travelling the world and now works in London as a financial analyst for a hedge fund. His preferred reading is Milton Friedman and Immanuel Kant.”). Born in California to Norwegian parents, Baardsen played for youth national teams in the US before representing Norway at the senior level, despite the fact that he never lived in that country.

Espen Baardsen (photo: Spurs Odyssey)

Arturo Alvarez is a Salvadoran-American midfielder currently plying his trade for the San Jose Earthquakes in Major League Soccer. Born in Houston to Salvadoran parents, Alvarez played for the US at youth level, but chose to represent El Salvador at senior level. He took advantage of FIFA’s changed restrictions making it easier for players to represent a country at senior level even if they played for another country at youth level.

The Balkan wars of the 1990s spread people from the former Yugoslavia around the world (many of their children have gone on to become soccer stars), and the United States received many immigrants from these countries. Two players who passed through the US have since gone on to become major stars in Europe, and both chose to represent other countries rather than the Americans. Bosnian-born Vedad Ibisevic, striker for German feel-good club Hoffenheim, came with his family to St. Louis (a city that has received a huge number of Bosnian immigrants) and became a star high school player before going on to St. Louis University. He was then signed by Paris St. Germain, spending one season in the French capital before moving on to 2^nd division club Dijon. He moved across the border to Germany, playing one season for Alemannia Aachen before being signed by Hoffenheim. Ibisevic made his international debut for Bosnia in 2007, but he told the New York Times that he would have considered the US if he had heard from them. “I was happy in St. Louis, got a green card, but I never really heard from anyone from the U.S. national team. I would have considered it.”

Vedad Ibisevic (photo: bundesliga.de)

Like Ibisevic, Neven Subotic is the child of parents from the Balkans, in his case Serbian. The Subotics settled in the US in the late 1990s and Neven played for teams in Utah before being called up to the U-17 national team. He represented the US at that level as well as the U-20 level, but a falling out with coach Thomas Rongen led him to turn his back on the Americans and represent Serbia. He made his debut in March of 2009 and has amassed 7 caps since then.

These types of quandaries in which players eligible to represent multiple countries must choose between them are not, of course, unique to the United States (German international Kevin Kuranyi, for example, could also have represented Brazil and Panama). Increased flows of people across national boundaries in recent years are creating many novel problems to be dealt with throughout life, and soccer is merely one area in which these problems manifest themselves. That said, there have often been debates about players’ eligibility for various national teams, especially in the early 20^th century when European nations such as Italy and Spain made a habit of recruiting South Americans for their national teams. It was this poaching that led FIFA to tighten restrictions on players switching their allegiances. It is only now, with players who represent one country at the youth level having previously lost the right to represent another at senior level, that FIFA has loosened these restrictions. Finding appropriate definitions for defining nationality and determining eligibility has long vexed FIFA and will almost certainly continue to be a problem in the future.

When  Schalke midfielder Jermaine Jones announced recently that he intends to switch his national allegiance from Germany to the United States, it was notable because it has been so long since the United States has had the potential to call on players such as him (Edgar Castillo, a Mexican-American who has previously played for Mexico, may also suit up for the US). The US has arguably become more of an exporter of talent in recent years. The United States’ status as a nation of immigrants means that it is likely to continue to develop players who are eligible and choose to represent other countries. It is less clear, however, how long it will take the US to shed its image as an importer of players and be seen as a country that also develops players for other nations.

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Alexis and Amber Hernandez with Mexican youth national team coaches (photo courtesy of Hernandez family)

At just 14, Amber is a year younger than her brother Alexis. She was the first to be noticed by Mexican coaches at an ODP (Olympic Development Program, which, in theory at least, is the pathway to the US national team) tryout in California in 2007. After watching Amber in action, the coaches sought out her father, Esmaldo, and said they were interested in bringing Amber to Mexico to try out for the U-17 national team. Amber says she was surprised. “I’ve always wanted to be a professional soccer player,” she says, “But as soon as I heard that I was surprised because I didn’t think it would happen to me so soon.”In February of last year, 13 year-old Amber headed to Mexico City to try to win a spot on the team. The tryout, she says, was “really hard and exciting at the same time.” The altitude of the Mexican capital was a particular challenge for her, but young Amber showed a mature attitude, saying simply that she “had to push herself through everything.” Push she did, and Amber won a spot on the U-17 team.

Amber says one of the most memorable parts of her time with the U-17s came after the games themselves. “After games the fans would come down and ask for autographs and pictures.” Amber says it was exciting, but a bit surprising to the 13 year-old. Afterwards, all she could think was, “Oh god, they asked me for my autograph.”

The Mexican U-17 girls team (Amber is in the middle row, second from the right)

Amber’s achievements alone are incredible, but less than a year later her brother matched them. After taking part in the Copa Chivas, a youth tournament hosted by parent team Chivas Guadalajara, Alexis impressed Mexican youth national team coaches enough to earn a tryout with the country’s U-17s. Like his sister, Alexis was surprised to get this call-up from the Mexican federation. “With my sister, they called her and we thought it was a prank call. I thought it was going to be the same for me.” But the Mexican federation was serious and before long Alexis was making the same trip his sister had just months before, flying to Mexico in an attempt to earn a spot on the country’s U-17 national team.

The team was training in Acapulco and when Alexis first joined them, some of the other players did not take kindly to him. “They didn’t think I was that good at first, when they heard there was an American player coming.” That changed, Alexis says, “when I showed them I could play. Then I got respect from all of them.” He earned a spot on the team and played for Mexico in several games.

Alexis with Mexican youth national team boss Jesus Ramirez

It’s been quite a journey for Amber and Alexis. They have lived most of their lives in Porterville, California, a small city in the largely agricultural and poor Central Valley. Both grew up playing AYSO (American Youth Soccer Organization), which supports soccer that is more for recreation and generally less competitive than leagues affiliated with USSF (United States Soccer Federation). Both quickly outgrew this level of competition and joined the South Valley Chivas Academy. This academy, begun by their father Esmaldo and his brother Gilbert Hernandez, has helped both to develop, and in Alexis’ case, enabled him to play in the Copa Chivas tournament that showed him off to the Mexican national team.

It can be hard for players in areas like the Central Valley to get noticed, says Esmaldo Hernandez. Money keeps a lot of players from joining organized teams (he says that there are many orange pickers in the area with buckets of talent) and those that they do join are not the elite clubs to which the US national team program has traditionally looked for players. Hernandez says he’s been frustrated to see his kids go through the ODP program, but never reach the national level. “What we noticed is that they made it to state, to regionals, but that’s as far as they would go.” He wonders whether politics may have played a role, as the ODP coaches already knew players from the elite youth clubs.

The lack of interest from the US youth national teams may be about to end, though. Soon after Alexis returned from Mexico, Chivas USA coaches called to let him know that the US was now interested in bringing him for a tryout for their U-17 national team. Alexis will travel to Florida later this month to try to impress the American coaches.

Alexis has another major tryout coming up this spring. In May, he will travel to Guadalajara to try to earn a spot with Chivas. He has impressed coaches there in previous trials and this is the final cut, which will determine whether the team will offer him a contract. Playing for Chivas is a goal of his, especially because everyone in his family supports the team and he grew up watching them. (Alexis’s father says that some people have called Alexis a “Padilla,” referring to Jesus Padilla, the player whose American birth recently caused a stir in Guadalajara, but that Alexis is not resentful. Alexis met Padilla on his recent trip to Guadalajara – he describes him as a “nice guy” – and says that he is a bit anxious at what type of reception he might receive as the latest American-born player, but his love of Chivas overwhelms any concerns.)

Amber’s aspirations are less focused than those of her brother, though in no way less lofty. She is currently training with the Mexican U-17s, preparing for World Cup qualifying. Reaching the tournament is a goal of hers, Amber tells me, but not the only one she harbors. “I hope to go to the World Cup someday. After that, I hope to get a scholarship to university and to play pro. But I also want to be a pediatrician.” (Her father tells me later that her career goals all “depend what day you catch her on.”) Having a set career path is not something expected of most 14 year-old girls, and in this way Amber is no different from her peers.

But in so many ways, both Amber and Alexis are unlike most American teenagers. They wake up each day at 5:00 to run 5 miles on the treadmill and finish with a 2-mile nightcap (there is, of course, school and soccer practice sandwiched in between). If the Hernandez siblings don’t achieve their goals, it will not be for lack of effort.

Stories like those of Alexis and Amber Hernandez are becoming more and more common. Mexican-American players are increasingly showing up on the rosters of Mexican club and national teams, including Michael Orozco of San Luis, Jose Francisco Torres of Pachuca, Edgar Castillo of Santos, and several others. Esmaldo Hernandez is simultaneously proud of his kids – seeing their development gives him “joy, a lot of joy” – and perplexed that they were noticed by Mexican youth national teams before those of the US. “How could another country pick up on a kid that should have been given a shot here?” he wonders.

But Alexis and Amber are happy to play for either national team. Amber says that if she had the opportunity to play for the US, she would “have to make a big decision,” but she’d be happy to represent either country. When asked the same question, Alexis laughs, pauses, and answers: “Well, it would be good if I could play for both.”

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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.

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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?”

Luis told me that being Hispanic gives him a unique perspective in covering American and Mexican soccer. And being a journalist gave him the ability to see things from the point of view average American sports reporter (i.e. non-soccer fan):

I can relate to how my parents grew up in their culture (they are from Mexico) and especially their love of soccer. I see how soccer can appear to press people who don’t know or understand the game. So I can see it from both sides. I think that’s helped out. If nothing else, my familiarity with the Mexican league and the national team [has helped out]. Long before I ever thought I’d be a journalist, I was watching games with my dad.

When asked about the popularity of soccer in LA, Luis told me that the sport “huge.”

It’s kind of strange in that teams like the Lakers and the Dodgers … Chivas Guadalajara probably has as many fans as they do here in LA. … It’s not true that people don’t care about soccer in LA. Because people speak a different language, they don’t read the LA Times, they don’t watch ESPN. the assumption is that it’s just Lakers and Dodgers in LA. But it’s not like that at all. There are communities here that are mostly Hispanic and [soccer] is their passion.

Despite the popularity of soccer in Hispanic communities in LA and elsewhere, few Hispanics represent the US national team. Luis told me that this is a problem in getting potential Hispanic fans to support the US.

Last year I think there were 3 [Mexican-American] players and they had more than 50 players on the US national team. The only ones who had any Mexican descent were Carlos Bocanegra, Jonathan Bornstein and Herculez Gomez. Gomez was more filler than anything, Bocanegra and Bornstein are solid first-choice players. So I think to capture that market, especially with young kids who are just starting to become fans, I think if they had some guys named Hernandez or Suarez, they might relate to them more.

When I asked him how this was possible, given that Hispanics are the largest minority group in the country and many are more into soccer than the average American. He said that until recently, he didn’t see US Soccer taking the issue seriously.

I heard Steve Sampson once on a conference call when he was coach of the Galaxy say something like, “Oh, all Mexican-Americans support Mexico.” If that’s the attitude of the former US national team coach … That’s not to say Sampson hasn’t done a lot, he actually has. … If any American coach knows about Hispanics, it’s him. Yet it kind of surprised me. Why would he say that? Does US Soccer feel like that entirely? Does Bruce Arena? Bob Bradley? Do they see the importance of it or are they just saying, “Well, we’re just missing this whole wealth of talent.” We don’t know. There could be the next Landon out here, the next Altidore. We don’t know since it’s something that’s never really been explored.

When I asked Luis how MLS could attempt to reach out to Hispanic fans, he told me the league would be well advised to target those born in the US.

I think they need to target more Mexican-Americans than Mexicans. I always use the comparison of my dad. My dad’s a big Chivas Guadalajara fan, but I don’t know that he’s ever watched a Chivas USA game. When I told him that they signed Claudio Suarez, he was like, “Oh, this is about his speed. He couldn’t play down in Mexico any more so he came up here.” I think that’s a common perception. But if you get American-born children of Mexican parents who follow Chivas or whatever club, I think those are the ones who are more apt to watch MLS games.

With the arrival of Chivas USA, I have long wondered how the 2 teams have become identified within LA. I asked Luis if he thought there was any danger that the Galaxy would become the “white” team and Chivas the “Mexican” team. He agreed that this is a danger, noting a fight between supporters of the two teams at the end of last season. But even more than that, Luis told me that the Galaxy roster may indicate a shift in how the team is seen in LA.

When you look at the players, there’s Carlos Ruiz and, um, (laughs). It’s kind of funny to think about it. In LA, how is that possible? I talked to Mauricio Cienfuegos last year when they didn’t have a single Hispanic player on the roster. … The perception is really there, though, that the Galaxy is the “white” team. I would hope that’s not really how it goes.

Kosovo’s Prime Minister Hashim Thaci plays soccer with ethnic Serb boys (photo: Visar Kryeziu /AP / Christian Science Monitor)

The 1990s were a particularly bloody period in the history of the Balkans, but far from the first time the region has gone through instability. It is perhaps because of this instability that countries in the Balkans have sent so many of their people abroad. Among these Balkans living outside of their ancestral homeland are quite a number of talented soccer players. Some were born in the Balkans, others to parents who have left their homelands.

If Kosovo does become an independent nation, it will have the right to forms its own national team. As Steve Menary writes in his book Outcasts, the unofficial Kosovo FA has been fielding a team for years. One player they would hope to bring in to the team is Crystal Palace striker Shefki Kuqi. Kuqi was born in Kosovo, although he later moved to Finland, a country for which he earned 52 caps. Should the country of his birth be recognized by FIFA, Kuqi would be able to switch his allegiance to Kosovo.

Barcelona’s 17 year-old phenom Bojan Krkic was recently called up to the Spanish national team. Illness prevented him from becoming the youngest ever player to represent la Furia Roja, but it is only a matter of time before he pulls on Spain’s famous red shirt. Bojan, as he is commonly known, was born to a Serbian father, who played for Red Star Belgrade in the 1980s. Though undoubtedly talented (Bojan Jr. is considered one of Barcelona and Spain’s best young players), the call-up was seen as a way to tie the youngster’s loyalty to the country of his birth. Serbia has made inquires to the Barcelona forward, but it seems likely he will snub his father’s country in favor of Spain.

Perhaps the most talented of all players of Balkan descent is Inter’s Swedish forward Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Zlatan was born in Malmo to a Bosnian father and Croatian mother, who had left their homeland independently and met in Sweden. Zlatan began his career at Malmo FF, a club noted for its many multiethnic players (they currently have Swedish-Ghanian, Swedish-Iranian, Swedish-Greek, and a Swedish-Kosovar player on their books).

Zlatan Ibrahimovic (photo: BBC)

Sweden is a country noted for its welcoming immigration policies. The country has quite a large immigrant population today, including many from the Balkans. It is perhaps not surprising, then, that the country has had several such players represent its national team. These include center back Daniel Majstorovic, midfielder Dusan Duric, and striker Rade Prica, all of whom have families from what is now Serbia.

Australia, as I have written previously, has quite a number of ethnic Croatians in its national team, reflecting the historical connections between the two countries. Aussies of Croatian descent include Mark Viduka, Jason Culina, Tony Popovic, Josip Skoko, Ante Covic, Zeljko Kalac, and Mark Bresciano.

Argentina has traditionally been a country with a large amount of immigration, including many from the Balkans. Some fairly prominent Argentine players of Balkan descent today include Velez Sarsfield defender Mariano Uglessich, Universidad Catolica (of Chile) goalkeeper Jose Maria Buljubasich (try saying that 10 times fast), and San Lorenzo midfielder Daniel Bilos. Bilos was approached by Croatia prior to the 2006 World Cup, but turned down his ancestral homeland, preferring to represent Argentina.

There are several less well-known players internationally, but who have made their name around the world playing in smaller leagues. Former midfielder Dejan Petkovic has played for many years in Brazil and is considered a legend there (quite an achievement for a non-Brazilian). Dragan Stojkovic was revered during his time playing for Japan’s Nagoya Grampus Eight and he is now manager of that team.

Stojkovic is far from the only manager from the Balkans playing his trade outside of his homeland. Vladimir Petrovic is currently in charge of China’s national team, a position previously held by one of the most famous Balkan managers of all time, Bora Milutinovic. Bora holds the distinction of being the only coach ever to be in charge of five different teams at the World Cup (Mexico in 1986, Costa Rica in 1990, the United States in 1994, Nigeria in 1998, and China in 2002).

The latest stop on Bora’s coaching tour of the world is Jamaica (photo: TheReggaeBoyz.com)

Know other famous soccer exports from the Balkans? Post them in the comments below.

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Steve Menary (photo: Play the Game)

How did you get the idea to write Outcasts?

I’m just a self-employed freelance journalist. There’s no career structure: you write an article and then you write another one and then you write another one and it goes on. I wrote an article about football in the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man and Jersey, and why they didn’t play international football. When I’d done that, I thought, “this is quite an interesting idea and no one’s ever written about this.”

Not everyone who applies to FIFA can get in or there would be the FA of David Keyes [ed note – not a bad idea!] and anyone could join. When I looked into it, they had turned some places down. FIFA would admit they turned someone down if I could find them out, but I asked them many times for a list of people who they’ve rejected and they would just ignore me.

I wrote a few chapters and I realized there were a few things like the Island Games … that I could go to and I could meet Greenland. They don’t even play in Greenland anyway and the flight there would have been about 1,000 pounds. The Falklands would have been about 2,000 pounds. But I realized I could go to the [2005 Island Games in the] Shetlands and I could see these people.

Shetland’s Steven Umphray during the Saaremma vs. Shetland match (photo: Shetland Islands Council / Steve Lindridge / www.idealimages.co.uk)

I sent it out to some big publishers and they said, “It’s very good, but we don’t know how much we’ll sell.” The publishers were okay, they gave me pretty encouraging rejections, if there is such a thing.

I knew David Conn and he said, “Why don’t you try to get in touch with World Soccer?”So I had a chat with [World Soccer’s] Gavin Hamilton and he said to me, “Come along, write something for us [on a non-FIFA “country”] each month.” World Soccer paid me fairly and he said, “If you get a book deal, don’t worry about [the rights]. It’s fine.” So that meant, for about a year, I could carry on researching the book. Each month I’d do an article [for the non-FIFA section] and I’d amass so much information, more than I could fit in a 500-word article. Then I found a smaller publisher after that, Know the Score.

Tell me more about the research you did for the book. Did you do it mostly at tournaments?

Yeah, I realized that the Greenland and the Falklands were good stories. I decided I was only going to do a chapter on a team if I could go see them play, meet with them in person, or have substantial dealings with them on the phone or by email. It’s very easy in this day and age to go on the Internet and cobble something together, but I just thought that was a cop-out. That was a quality control I set for myself.

I didn’t go to the Northern Marianas, which you probably guessed. The guys there, Vince [Stravino] and Peter [Coleman], were fantastically helpful. We exchanged a lot of calls and emails.

But I pretty much met [everyone else]. I went to the Island Games, I went to that tournament on the Isle of Man, I went to Gibraltar, I went to the Wild Cup in Hamburg, I went to the Occitania vs. Cyprus game, I took the whole family down to Montpellier. I went to a couple of NF Board meetings, one in London and one in the Hague.

Northern Cyprus and Zanzibar face off in the 2006 FIFI Wild Cup final (photo: FIFI/Corbis)

I went to the [2006 ELF Cup in] Northern Cyprus, which was a great bonus. They wanted to invite some journalists out there and they invited me and the guy who did the photographs for the book. That was great because the problem was the cost. I could have blown the advance I got for the book just going to the Falklands. You kind of had to have an imaginative way.

I also got some commissions. I did a thing for Guardian Unlimited about the Sami Cup. The great thing about that is that I’m in the journalist union and I was flipping through the magazine. There was a little ad in the bottom corner that caught my eye. It said that the Norwegian Embassy in London funds journalists’ trips to Norway. At the time I was thinking, “How am I going to get to Lapland? I’m never to be able to find another magazine to pay me to go up there.” I got in touch with a guy at the Norwegian Embassy and he said, “Right, when do you want to go?”

I had to make each thing pay. I wasn’t going to lose money going anywhere. It was more fun that way anyway.

Do you have an overall goal for the book?

I kind of wanted to try and look at how nationality is defined on the football pitch. I come from the UK and to most other places, it’s Great Britian. To us, we’re all English or Scottish or Welsh or from Northern Ireland. I live in a place that isn’t a country to the rest of the world, but it’s a country to us. In terms of football and rugby union, it’s a country.

I knew that I’d end up asking more questions than I answered. But I thought maybe it would just be a way of exploring it and writing something that will make people think in the way it made me think.

What are some of the questions you think you’ve asked?

I suppose, what is nationality? What is that, really? The Tibetian [player Karma Samdup] said: “It’s just a passport and you travel on that passport.” Or the Greenlanders. To them, [Greenland] is a place, [it’s] a country. It’s almost the same as the Faroes, who are in FIFA. There are certainly anomalies and there’s so much madness. It’s all about politics at the end of the day as much as anything else. There’s that idea that sport and politics shouldn’t mix. But clearly, they’re tightly intertwined.

Would you like to see the countries you profiled get into FIFA?

When I started telling people I was doing the book, they all kind of thought I was writing some kind of manifesto. I was never doing that. You couldn’t conceivably have the Falklands playing against Argentina even if [FIFA] let them in, which they never would. It would be ludicrous.

I think some of the places need more help than others. Certainly, Greenland deserves more sympathy than others because it’s been practically abandoned. They couldn’t go [to the Island Games last year] because they didn’t have the money to send the men’s and the women’s team and they thought it was about time the women got to go. They had played in every Island Games since 1989, but they had no money so they said, “Right, let’s let the women go” and [the men] stayed home. That seems madness really.

Greenland (in red) and Zanzibar face off in the 2006 FIFI Wild Cup (photo: FIFI/Corbis)

I don’t think they can all go in, but some of them, like Greenland and Gibraltar, they only want to play amateur football. They don’t want to play in the World Cup qualifiers; they don’t want to play in the Champions League. That was never really their ambition. I think they just wanted some help with the football they were organizing and they weren’t getting any.

Did you ever feel like you were ever covering teams that were too amateurish to warrant your covering them?

Some of the things with the NF Board were more about making a statement. A Lapland journalist, for example, told me that, in his opinion, a West Papuan team had no intention of ever turning up [to the 2006 Viva World Cup]. That was a bit amateurish.

And the Sami team that went out there murdered everyone because they had a lot of good players. They had people who had played international football at the under-21 level. So yeah, some of those teams, you feel, there’s got to be a real team, there’s got to be some basis to it rather than just a political stunt. Some of the teams didn’t have enough substance, but maybe if they got going long enough, they would have some substance.

Clearly, these teams aren’t going to win the World Cup. What, then, do you see as the value of your book?

They’re not going to win the World Cup, that’s true. But if you take some of the teams that are in FIFA, say Luxembourg. It’s 300,000 people, they’re not going to win the World Cup. I think they won a competitive match last year for the first time in 10 years. But they’ve been playing a long, long time. Luxembroug played in the early Olympic games. I think in the mid-1960s they knocked Holland out of the European Championships when it was a two-legged tie. Every dog has its day.

The nature of competition is that someone’s going to win and someone’s going to be last. It doesn’t matter if you’re playing golf or if you’re playing football. Someone’s got to be Arsenal and someone’s got to be Derby, and that’s just the nature of it. But you can’t go around and say, “Derby are really crap so let’s drop them” because maybe next year Derby will be better.

I think if you give people a chance, there’s a chance they’ll improve. I think if you cut them off, which is what’s been done to some of these places, then [the level of play] will just dissipate.

Who were some of the most interesting people you met while working on Outcasts?

I think some of the NF Board people. They’re very interesting. [President] Jean-Luc [Kit] is a very interesting guy. The Sami guy, Leif Isak Nilut, too, when he’s up on stage doing one of his yoiks.

President of the Sami FA, Leif Isak Nilut, in traditional clothing (photo: NRK.no)

And some of the Greenlandic people, too. It’s quite a harsh world out there. There are 15 kilometers of road in the capital and none of them go anywhere.

Probably the best thing about the book was that I met a lot of really interesting people and everyone was really interested in talking to [me]. That was one of the joys of doing the book. [I’d] ring someone up and they’d say, “Yeah, I’d love to speak to you.” The response from people was fantastic.

Do you see potential for change on FIFA’s part in terms of which countries they’ll let in?

UEFA have taken a reasonable stance and said, “You’ve got to be in the UN.” Whereas FIFA have just said, “You’ve got to be in the international community.” They don’t say what international community. It’s whatever international community they want it to be.

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