Many trace the origins of many aspects of Western society to ancient Greece (though not all: in his essay Anthropology and the Savage Slot, Rolph-Michel Trouillot claims that “Greece did not beget Europe. Rather, Europe claimed Greece” [21]). The beginnings of democracy, philosophy, and debate as they are practiced today, it is claimed, can be seen in the lives of ancient Greeks.

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

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A relatively small, but growing trend in Europe involves Christian converting to Islam. Despite the heated “clash of civilizations” rhetoric that 9/11 has provoked, many people are stepping across the Christian-Muslim divide. Peter Ford wrote in the Christian Science Monitor that “[a]lthough there are no precise figures, observers who monitor Europe’s Muslim population estimate that several thousand men and women convert each year.”

In recent years, several I the ranks of these converts to Islam have come from the world of soccer. Most have come from France, the country with the largest Muslim population in Europe.

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very once in a while, stories pop up in the Western press about odd goings-on at a soccer match in a remote part of the world. These stories contain sordid details of spells placed by witch doctors, animals sacrificed by fans, or objects burned by those seeking to affect the outcome of a game.

An African witch doctor (photo: Moonbattery.com)

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Before the year 2000, Carlos Roa never would have expected to be playing for Argentine club Olimpo today. He didn’t think he’d be alive today, let alone playing football for a living.

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.

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Argentines are nothing if not passionate. They attack tango, wine, and politics with gusto. But none of these things compares with their true passion: fútbol.

Soccer connoisseurs worldwide are familiar with the passion at Boca Juniors matches, where the players’ entrance is greeted with enough toilet paper to wipe the asses of a small country.

The scene at Boca Juniors’ La Bombonera Stadium

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Jafar Panahi is a reknowned Iranian filmmaker who chooses to deal with controversial topics in his work. His movies (Crimson Gold, The Circle, among others) have been heralded abroad and banned at home. In many ways, then, it’s incredible that Jafar Panahi was able to make his latest movie, Offside, about women trying to sneak into an Iranian stadium to watch a soccer match.

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.