In 2008, I featured a piece on siblings Alexis and Amber Hernandez. Mexican-Americans who have grown up in the Central Valley of California, they had at the time both recently been called up to play for Mexico’s U-17s. Today, I return to this story by focusing on the club which helped them to develop. The South Valley Chivas Academy in Porterville, California has, for the past several years, been developing young players against tremendous odds, including poverty, isolation, and cultural differences. Yet despite these challenges, the academy has succeeded in developing several promising young players, including Amber and Alexis, and become an official academy for Mexican powerhouse Chivas.

The academy formed as part of Chivas’s sangre nueva (new blood) effort to develop young talent. While at a player identification try-out in 2005 for young players that Chivas Guadalajara put on in San Bernardino (it drew 15,000 players and showed the top brass in Mexico that there was the potential for a US-based team; later that year Chivas USA was founded), Alexis was identified by then scout Dennis te Kloese. Esmaldo and Gilbert kept in contact with te Kloese and when Chivas decided to establish actual affiliated academies in the United States, South Valley Chivas become the second one.

Photo: South Valley Chivas Academy

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Fans often attempt to show their dedication to their club by claiming that it is truly a part of who they are. In most cases, this is simple cliché. But not with the fans of Swedish club Assyriska. Many of these supporters are members of Assyrian diaspora living around the world. Assyriska has come to represent them, as a national team for minority group with no nation.

Assyriska fans hold up a giant Assyrian flag in support of their team

Assyriska was founded in 1974 by Assyrian immigrants to Sweden. Most of the founding members worked at a local truck factory who formed the club to play soccer in their free time. From those modest beginnings, the club slowly rose through the ranks of Swedish soccer.

In 2003, they made it to the Swedish Cup final, losing to established power Elfsborg. One year later, the team of founded by Assyrian immigrant factory workers won promotion to the Swedish Premier Division. The reaction was pure jubilation. The club marketing director Robil Haidari said, “At that moment we just felt such enormous joy, I figured everybody in the world is Assyrian now, even God is Assyrian, or at least a supporter.”

Assyrian residents of the town of Södertälje, the Swedish town where Assyriska are from, were similarly overwhelmed. Local resident Abraham Staifo attempted to explain his emotions:

It encouraged the young ones to feel pride in being what they are, and brought tears to the eyes of the elderly. It was so much more than just football. The Assyrian people have few opportunities to express themselves. We felt our hearts would shoot out from our chests. That is why the elderly cried.

Reaching these dizzying heights brought recognition to the team, not least among the estimated 2 million Assyrians living around the world. Club president Zeiki Bisso told FIFA’s website, “For all of us who were oppressed in our home countries for many years … this felt superb, it was something every Assyrian wanted to take pride in.”

Indeed, at times it seemed like nearly every Assyrian did take pride in the club’s success. Its matches were broadcast in 83 countries and the diaspora spoke about the team in glowing terms. Assyriska team scarves began to appear far from Sweden, including by Nick Dinkha, a Toronto resident.

The pride fans around the world expressed in Assyriska has everything to do with the often sad history of the Assyrian people. The Assyrians are indigenous to current-day Iraq and have lived there for thousands of years. They were one of the first groups to convert to Christianity. Even as many around them in the Middle East later converted to Islam, Assyrians continued to practice their religion.

Assyrians’ historical relationship with their neighbors is fraught with flare-ups of violence. Assyrians have been the subject of campaigns of oppression that has risen to the level of mass murder on several occasions. In 2003, political analyst Jonathan Eric Lewis wrote in Middle East Quarterly that of the events of 1915 when up to two-thirds of the Assyrian community of southeastern Turkey and northern Iran was physically decimated in a matter of months. Lewis also documents a 1933 event in which nearly 3000 people were killed by Iraqi and Kurdish fighters, the anniversary of which is a national day of mourning for Assyrians around the world.

Ottoman soldiers stand over the bodies of murdered Assyrians

In Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, things were not much better. Speaking the Assyrian language and advocating Assyrian nationalism were both criminalized. Many left the country and this exodus has accelerated since the US overthrew Hussein in 2003. The violence in Iraq is often described as a battle between Sunnis and Shiites, but Iraqi Christians have been intimidated and murdered across the country. When prominent Iraqi Assyrian leader Isaac Esho Alhelani was murdered earlier this month, he joined the ranks of many Christians targeted for their beliefs or their perceived wealth. Assyrians account for only three to five percent of the Iraqi population, but have accounted for roughly 40 percent of that country’s refugees.

Those leaving Iraq today are going to countries with established Assyrian populations. The United States has around 83,000 Assyrians, Jordan 77,000, and Sweden is third among diaspora countries with 35,000 Assyrians. Despite the growing numbers of Assyrians living around the world, many wish for their own country.

It is into this statelessness that a small Swedish soccer club founded by Assyrian immigrants entered. entered. Many claim Assyriska’s popularity is due to it being seen as a pseudo-national team. Club president Zeki Bisso says that “Assyriska feels like a national team for the entire [Assyrian] group.”

Assyriska has since been relegated back to the second division in Sweden. Its importance, however, has not been diminished. For the Assyrian population around the world, Assyriska is not just a soccer team; it is the most visible expression of national pride for an oppressed people without a nation.

Assyriska players celebrate after a goal

Further Information

A movie about Assyriska called A Team Without a Nation was made in 2006. I have not seen it, but would love to hear about it if anyone has.

Yesterday, Athletic Bilbao lost 3-1 to Barcelona. No surprise there as recent times have seen a rise in the fortunes of the Catalan club and relative mediocrity for the team from the Basque country. But watching Bilbao reminded me of how fascinating they are as a team. Wikipedia has an excellent article on the club from Bilbao.

Here are some of the most interesting highlights:

• Athletic Bilbao have been one of the most successful clubs in Spanish history. They have won the Spanish league title 8 times (most recently in 1983-84). Perhaps even more impressive, they have never been relegated from the top division.
• Bilbao are seen as a symbol of the Basque country. Their role in Basque identity is extremely important (indeed, Basque flags appeared to outnumber those of Athletic Bilbao in the stands of yesterday’s game). Fans of the club celebrate the success of the team as if it were a Basque national team (an entity that does exist, but which FIFA has refused to recognize).
• The importance of the club to Basque identity can be seen nowhere more powerfully than in their policy of only playing Basque players. To this day, Athletic have a team comprised fully of players who are ethnically Basque (or, in some cases, born in the region).
• This policy of only employing Basque players is seen by some as overly exclusive and impossible to maintain in this era of globalization in which Athletic’s opponents are buying the best players from all over the world. Many fans cite the case of the club’s refusal to buy the half-Basuqe, half-Equitorial Guinean Benjamin as an example of the overly exclusivist.
• Interestingly, while the club only has Basque players, they have not been shy about hiring non-Basque managers. Recent foreigners in charge of the team include Josef “Jupp” Heynckes, Luis Fernandez, and Howard Kendall. It is also of note that the club was founded by British sailors and only in the early years of its existence did it develop its policy of Basque exclusivity.
  
• A poll in the Spanish newspaper El Mundo in the mid-1990s found that 76% of the team’s fans would rather their club be relegated than give up their policy of having exclusively Basque players. Currently sitting in the relegation zone, this valuing of identity over success may be put to the test.
• The most colorfully named award in all of Europe, the pichichi, given to the top goal-scorer in Spain’s La Liga, is named after an early Athletic player who went by that name (but whose given name was Rafael Moreno Aranzadi).
• Athletic Bilbao play in one of the most famous stadiums in Spain, the San Mames, known by its nickname “The Cathedral.” According to Wikipedia, this moniker comes from the fact that “their stadium was built near a church called San Mamés. Mamés was an early Christian thrown to the lions by the Romans. The lions refused to eat Mames and he was later made a saint.”
• Athletic Bilbao may refuse to employ non-Basque players, but they are one of the few clubs (are there others? I’m not sure) in Spain with a female president. The game against Barcelona was the first for new head honcho Ana Urkijo.
• With Barcelona now sporting UNICEF logos on their jerseys, Bilbao are one of the increasingly few clubs without sponsorship on their uniforms. Last year, the management of the club did get approval to seek a jersey sponsor, but as of yet none has been found which would prove significantly lucrative enough to tarnish the red and white stripes which are a symbol of Basque nationalism.