Within anthropology (the discipline in which I am doing my PhD), and indeed through the social sciences, there has been an emphasis in recent years to get away from previous modes of inquiry whose basic thrust was to figure out “the culture” in some society. This earlier emphasis on figuring the single cultural system led anthropologists to ignore the diversity within cultures. Today, anthropological writing is replete with assertions of heterogeneity in what would have previously been assumed to be homogenous cultures (often so much so that the reader is left to wonder if there are any cultural rules at all).

I have done much thinking about what American soccer culture is, and the main realization I have come to is that there is no such thing. Instead of talking about American soccer culture, we are better served to look at the diversity that exists among those who are involved in the game in the United States. There is no single American soccer culture, but there are many American soccer cultures.

What follows is my initial attempt to think about the various American soccer cultures that exist. I present this list with the disclaimer that: 1) it is just a beginning and I don’t claim to cover every single American soccer culture that exists, 2) many people fit in more than one culture, although the separate nature of some cultures leads to the impression – false, I believe – that soccer is not popular in the United States. If you have other ideas for American soccer cultures, please leave a comment!

Suburban soccer

When many people think about American soccer, the first culture that comes to mind is the game that kids in the suburbs play. Drive around nearly any suburb in the United States and you are likely to encounter fields full of children playing soccer. Soccer is one of the most played sports among children in this country, and the US has the most registered youth players of any country in the world. And who can forget the archetypal soccer mom?

The professional game

Most people are focused on MLS these days, with Real Salt Lake having just won the title. 15 teams makes up MLS, though 3 more will join the league in the next two years, with more expected to follow them. The league has made steady progress since its inception in 1996, growing to a level of prominence on the American sports scene many never thought possible. The league’s success in recent years has come as it has switched away from Americanizing the sport by gimmicks such as hockey style shootouts to settle ties and embraced a more traditional brand of soccer. Although the league’s popularity is still well behind that of professional baseball, basketball, and American football, MLS is growing steadily and will likely continue to do so. (he newly announced “competition” for MLS – the name-appropriating NASL – will likely go the way of so many other professional leagues in the US (see, for example, this article on failed American football leagues) that have tried to compete with their more established competition: nowhere.

College soccer

For years, college soccer was looked down on by those who saw it as less than serious preparation for the professional game. But in recent years, the college game has produced more and more players who have been successful in MLS and abroad (e.g. Maurice Edu and Charlie Davies). College soccer does not attract the rabid following of college basketball and American football, but under the radar, some teams have begun to attract decent crowds (Maryland is known for having good atmosphere at its games and Akron’s coaching recently boasted about the 2700 fans who attended their game against South Florida). College soccer may still not be the preferred option for those on the fast track to stardom, but it does provide a viable option for many young and talented players.

Euro snobs

Despite the growth of MLS, there is a significant group of American soccer fans who care not one iota about the domestic league. But ask these fans about goings-on in England, Spain, Italy, France, Germany, etc and they can give you the latest standings, top scorers, and upcoming games in each league. Referred to disdainfully as “Euro snobs” (I am not sure how they, presumably less disdainfully, refer to themselves), they insist they are only interested in truly top-level soccer no matter where it is played.

Liberal elite

Many Euro snobs come from Sarah Palin’s favorite group: the “liberal elite.” Their cosmopolitanism extends from their media preferences (National Public Radio, the New York Times) to their food choices (local and organic or imported and exotic), and into their sports viewing habits (soccer). In his book How Soccer Explains the World, Franklin Foer writes, “I’ve been around enough of America’s soccer cognoscenti to know that they invite abuse. They are inveterate snobs, so snobbish, in fact, that they think nothing of turning against their comrades. According to their sneering critique, their fellow fans are dilettantes without any real understanding of the game; they are yuppies who admire soccer like a fine slab of imported goat cheese; they come from neighborhoods with spectacularly high Starbucks-per-capita” (246).

Immigrant communities

Discussions of American soccer often fail to include one of the largest segments of American soccer fans: immigrants. Even excluding the groups I’ve mentioned so far, the number of immigrants who are involved in soccer is huge. Television ratings for any game involving Mexican soccer (the league or national team) are huge on Spanish-language channels. GolTV has also made a point of showing Latin American leagues with large audiences of US-based immigrants. And these are just television channels catering to newer immigrants. There are also many immigrants throughout the country who have formed soccer clubs and leagues that continue to attract much interest, albeit relatively local. Take a look at the names of the teams that make up the National Soccer League in Chicago, for instance, and you will get a sense of the immigrant groups that have come to the Windy City over the years.

A video of FK Republika Srpska in Chicago’s National Soccer League

Women’s game

One soccer culture that is stronger in the US than in many other countries is the women’s game. Although the days of US dominance at the national team level are long gone, the US team continues to be among the world’s best. More significantly in terms of numbers are the many girls who play the game. Weekends on suburban soccer fields often bring equal numbers of female and male players. Title IX has helped women’s college soccer programs to boom. While the fate of the newly reconstituted professional soccer league, the WPS, is not clear, it is certain that women’s soccer will be one of many American soccer cultures for years to come.

Online communities

The Internet has changed the world in many ways, and soccer is no exception. For American fans, the Internet has enabled a connection to soccer around the world in ways that were impossible previously (as a child, I remember sorting through newspapers for European results days after games were played). The proliferation of websites has made it as easy to follow soccer from Los Angeles as from London. There is now also a thriving community of websites focused on American soccer as well. The Internet is today, of course, where anyone with an offbeat passion finds a community, but American soccer fans perhaps appreciate it even more because of the years we spent unable to get any information (see, for example, this interview by Adam Spangler of This is American Soccer with Bruce McGuire of DuNord). The Internet has enabled Americans to truly enter the worldwide community of soccer fans.

* * *

What becomes clear when we break down American soccer culture into American soccer cultures is that soccer very much does have a passionate following in the United States, albeit one that is quite fractured. I chuckle to myself when people insist that “Americans don’t like soccer.” It is just not true. In many ways, it is not a question of when soccer will “make it” in the US; rather, soccer already has made it in this country, but we can only see this is we acknowledge the diversity of the many American soccer cultures that exist.

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Gretna players celebrate their promotion

The town of Gretna is best known as the wedding capital of Scotland, a distinction it initially gained by catering to underage English couples looking to take advantage of the Scots’ less restrictive marriage laws. Gretna FC also has a history of eloping, as the club played until 2002 in the Northern Premier League of England. Since returning to Scottish football, the Weddingmakers, as Gretna are affectionately known, have moved quickly through the ranks and next year will play the likes of Rangers and Celtic. But Gretna, it turns out, is not the only top division team from a small town.

Compared to Gretna, Mattersburg is a relative metropolis. The Austrian town of 6,300 is known for the wine its local vineyards produce as well as the food company Felix Austria. The town is also home to local club SV Mattersburg, which plays in the Austrian Bundesliga. The team was led to a 5th place finish last season by former German international (and winner of the most intimidating player ever award) Carsten Jancker.

Carsten Jancker will eat you for breakfast

Austria’s Bundesliga also has SV Ried, from the town of Ried im Innkreis (population 11,500). The club, which boasts former Feyenoord defender Tomasz Rzasa, won the Austrian Cup in 1998.

Across the border in Switzerland, the town of Aarau (population 15,500) has a top division team FC Aarau. The club boasts a grand total of zero players I’m familiar with, but the town is, apparently, where Albert Einstein went to high school.

The town of Paços de Ferreira has a population of 8,500. Located half an hour from Porto, the town is best known as the furniture capital of Portugal and home of FC Paços de Ferreira, whose nickname is, creatively enough, Os Pacenses, or “those from Paços.”

FCV Dender may not be world beaters, but coming from a town of 17,500, that they are in Belgium’s Jupiler League is in itself an achievement. Through the grapevine I’ve heard that “the inhabitants of Denderleeuw are nicknamed schiptrekkers (ship pullers) because before the age of mechanic propulsion the villagers of the borough of Huissegem were professional boat and ship pullers.” Today, FCV Dender boast former Ajax midfielder Stanley Aborah, who also seemed like he was going to be something special for me on Football Manager.

Across the border in France, one the more successful clubs is also from a small town. That club would be Sochaux, from the town of Montbéliard (at 27,570 people, it almost seems too big to make this list). Montbéliard borders Sochaux, which is best known as the location of a Peugeot car assembly plant (indeed, the company started the club, which is officially known as FC Sochaux-Montbéliard, in 1928 to provide entertainment for its workers). The club are experiencing a bit of a renaissance in recent years and even beat Olympique Marseille to win the 2007 French Cup.

Sochaux celebrate their French Cup victory

The highest concentration of top division clubs from small towns, though, goes to the Scandinavian countries. As Hans Honestad points out in his article Viking and Farmer Armies: The Stavanger-Bryne Norwegian Football Rivalry, “rural community life maintains its position as a vehicle for national virtues in Norwegian public discourses.” Perhaps that is why Lillestrøm SK, based in a town of 14,000 with the same name, boasts the Norwegian record for permanence in the Tippeligaen, having been in the top division since 1975.

Just across the North Sea, Denmark also has a top division club from a small town. That would be FC Nordsjælland, which hails from the town of Farum (population 18,000). If you get bored of watching American left back Heath Pearce play for FC Nordsjælland, you can always pop into Farum to see the nearly 1,000 year old church.

Farum’s famous church

No country can match Finland for its successful small town clubs. The land of the Finns has four clubs in its top division that come from towns of under 20,000 people. Those clubs are IFK Mariehamn (from Marienhamm, population 19,000), MyPa (Anjalankoski, 17,000), FF Jaro (Jakobstad, 19,000), and FC Haka (Valkeakoski, 20,000).

Do you know other top division clubs from small towns? I’ll admit, I got bored after looking through the major countries of Western Europe, Brazil, and Argentina, but I’m sure there are others scattered throughout the globe. Leave a comment if you know where they are.

The Irish Independent, for example, ran a story on Brazilian maestro Kaká revealing his “I Belong to Jesus” t-shirt after AC Milan won the Champions League. As I have previously written, Kaká is perhaps the most high profile evangelical Christian soccer player. Given his incredible skill, Kaká is often given a platform to share his religious views and he never fails to do so. Hopefully, though, this doesn’t mean that God approves of the cynical catenaccio that Milan used to win the final (Spanish newspaper AS had a headline the day after the match reading Campeón sin Fútbol, roughly meaning “Champion Without Playing.”)

One hilarious response to Kaká’s I belong to Jesus shirt came via an email in the Guardian’s The Fiver tea-time email. Ross Williams wrote, “So Kaka belongs to Jesus, does he (Kaka’s T-shirt, yesterday’s Big Cup final)? I wonder what Dave Whelan [the Wigan chairman who raised a stink over the still-murky details of Carlos Tevez's loan deal with West Ham] thinks about that particular third party loan arrangement?”

I wrote last week about the growing number of ethnic Turkish players in Germany. Most are children of Turks who came as guest workers, but ended up settling permanently. I could have just as well written about Moroccans in Holland, many of whom came in similar circumstances. Just as the assimilation of Turks into German life has not been entirely smooth, Moroccans in Holland have struggled to find their place. The often-simmering animosity that exists between native Dutch and Moroccans boiled over this past week at a U-21 match between the two countries. A state of emergency was declared in the city of Tilburg, which hosted the match, as Moroccan fans stormed the field and clashed with stewards. 26 people were arrested. The head of the Dutch FA has said he will not schedule friendlies between the two teams for the next five years. Right-wing Dutch politician Geert Wilders used the incident to promote his anti-immigrant views in suggesting that Dutch-Moroccans be banned from attending Morocco games played in Holland for the next five years. Wilders’s words make it less likely that relations between the Moroccan community and the native Dutch population will improve during that time.

Violent scenes at the Willem II Stadium in Tilburg

A small minority of fans in Holland may be violent, but in Qatar there are enough supporters to start a riot, let alone support the national team. So, what is the wealthy Arab nation planning to do? Why, hire them of course! What better way to get support than by paying fans? Qatar tried this ploy in attempting to pay players to turn out for its national team, but FIFA wouldn’t allow the move. Will FIFA step in the way of the latest potential mercenaries? And will it make a difference to the Qatari national team, which has never done anything in world football except to pay for the retirements of aging stars?

Gabriel Batistuta and Frank Lebeouf get their fat paycheck on

Nike put out a press release this week saying that it had found a new subcontractor to produce its soccer balls. The sportswear giant had suspended its contract with its chief supplier, Saga Sports, due to allegations of child labor and other mistreatment of workers. Many worried, however, that ceasing all production would throw the impoverished Kashmir region of Pakistan into even deeper poverty. It was, as I wrote at the time, a difficult dilemma for Nike.

Nike’s new contract, with subcontractor Silver Star Group, will return many jobs to the country. And Nike says it has put into place structures that will prevent the type of labor practices which forced it to pull out in the first place. We can only hope that the subcontractor and Nike itself follow through on their promises.

Seeing oneself from someone else’s perspective is always interesting. So, I’m continually fascinated to read Tom Dunmore’s musings on American soccer at his blog If This is Football. This week, he discussed lower league, indoor, and women’s soccer, all of which have long histories in this country. The first “professional game” I ever attended, in fact, involved the Dayton Dynamo of the old NPSL (an indoor league).

Another outsider’s perspective came from Chuck Culpepper, who wrote in the LA Times about the crazy singing ways of Liverpool fans at the Champions League final. Culpepper was particularly fascinated by the way that old American songs were given new life as fan anthems. What would Rodgers and Hammerstein think if they heard “You’ll Never Walk Alone” belted out by the Kop?

The Kop in full voice (I assume)

Chris Oakley does an excellent job at his blog Some People are on the Pitch. I particularly recommend his post this week looking at the number of foreign players playing in the top leagues in Europe. Some interesting tidbits: 1) the Premier League has players from 70 different countries, 2) the Premier League has the smallest percentage of native-born players (i.e. Englishmen) in its ranks of any of the top leagues in Europe, and 3) Serie A has the highest percentage of native-born players in its ranks and Italy also won the last World Cup. Coinedence? Methinks not.

A few quick hits to finish off:

• Note to self #1: When in Lichinga, Mozambique, don’t celebrate too loudly after the away team scores a goal. One fan did this past week and was stoned to death. Yikes.
• Note to self #2: If I ever need a kidney transplant, first become coach of the Vietnamese national team. Alred Riedl, boss of the Asian nation’s team, received a kidney from a fan. That’s support.
• And finally, for a bizarre sport, how about bicycle soccer? The Offside reports on the game taking one Tokyo school by storm.

Soon to be seen on David Beckham’s feet

The first recorded pair of football boots came when Henry VIII of England ordered a pair from the Great Wardrobe in 1526. The royal shopping list for footwear states: “45 velvet pairs and 1 leather pair for football.” At that time, boots were made from cowhide.Throughout the early development of soccer, cowhide continued to be used to make cleats. The large bovine population in the UK, where soccer was codified, led to the wide adoption of cowhide to make boots. This material was also well suited to players’ requirements at the time, which were more about self-protection, rather than improving touch on the ball. The Wikipedia article on football boots says that they “were originally heavy boots with protection for the ankle, and these remained the standard style of boot in northern Europe for many years where the boots needed to stand up to the rigours of use on muddy winter pitches.”

An old school football boot, likely made of cowhide

But as soccer spread to areas with different climates, a new type of boots came to be used. “A lighter boot without ankle protection and resembling a studded shoe became popular in southern Europe and South America where pitches were generally harder and less muddy and this eventually became the standard style.”

The Puma Super Atom, the first screw-in boot

In addition to making the switch from hi-tops to low-tops, European and South American practitioners of soccer brought about a style of play that valued touch on the ball. As anyone who has used a pair of boots made from cowhide can attest, the material is relatively stiff. To advance the game, new materials were needed.

One material stood out among the various options. It was kangaroo leather, a material whose properties had been recognized since the 19th century, as former British citizens settled en masse in Oz. That Australia stayed a member of the Commonwealth even after independence in 1901 meant that trading connections with the UK remained strong. Australia has been a relatively small contributor to the world game in terms of players, but in terms of materials, its exportation of kangaroo leather fundamentally changed the production of footwear.

Kangaroo leather caught on because it is light, strong, and soft. According to the website Soccer-Boots.com:

Kangaroo hide is the toughest and most durable available and been used to produce quality sports shoes for rugby, American football, baseball, basketball, tennis and cycling shoes for over a century. It is lightweight yet very strong and many times stronger than the same thickness of cowhide. Comfortable and supple it requires no break-in period and gives the player a tight fit with optimal feel for the ball.

There is a scientific rationale for why kangaroo leather has these properties:

The skin of the Kangaroo does not contain sweat glands or erector pili muscles, which would weaken the skin surface. The yellow elastic fibres (elastin) are evenly distributed throughout the skin thickness which gives the leather greater tenacity.

Soccer-boots.com quotes a study that found “kangaroo leather retains between 30% and 60% of its original tensile strength, as compared to a retention rate of 1% -4% for calf and bovine leathers.”

Lotto Stadios, my favorite kangaroo leather cleats

As kangaroo leather has become more and more common in soccer cleats (see this list for some of the most well known ones), some complaints have been raised. Most vociferous is the group Viva!, (Vegetarians International Voice for Animals) which fills its website with complaints that focus primarily on inhumane treatment of kangaroos and the impact that widespread killing of the indigenous Australian animals has on the ecology.

A Viva! protest

Viva! claims that kangaroo harvesters routinely ignore government guidelines on humane killing of the animals. They say, for example, that a “million “joeys” die – battered to death or left to starve when their mothers are killed.”

The large numbers of adult and baby kangaroos killed (Viva! says that, at a minimum, 100,000 kangaroos were killed to make the 500,000 pairs of Predator Mania boots that Adidas sold in 2002) are also an ecological problem. Viva! claims that the so-called kangaroo harvest undertaken to reduce overpopulation is simply an excuse for companies to kill the animals for profit. The effects of reduced kangaroo populations, which are well adapted to the Australian environment, are not completely understood.

Hilariously, an article in The Independent on Viva!’s efforts finishes with a recipe for sauteed kangaroo. It reminds me of this t-shirt I once saw in the butcher’s department of a grocery store.

Viva!, not surprisingly, promotes the use of synthetic materials to make soccer cleats. Until recently, this would have been unthinkable, but several boots have been produced with man-made materials (see, for example, the Nike Mercurial Vapors)

The Danish company Hummel has gone a bit retro in their use of materials. Rather than using synthetics, they have been promoting a new boot that uses goatskin leather.

Hummel’s 4.2 Concept FGC, made of goatskin

One advantage these shoes have is that ten year olds like me won’t wonder if they are really made of hopping marsupials. There is also the benefit that animal rights organizations are unlikely to raise a stink over the use of goatskins in soccer cleats (the cuteness equation goes: goats < kangaroos). Whether they succeed, however, will ultimately depend on their quality. If goatskin can be used to make boots as high-quality as those available today, they may be become commonplace. If not, expect to see kangaroo leather boots for a long time to come.

When former NBA player John Amaechi recently announced that he was gay, he knew it would be controversial. In his soon to be released book, Amaechi writes,

Coming out threatens to expose the homoerotic components of what they prefer to think of as simply male bonding. And it generally is. It’s not so much that there’s a repressed homosexuality at play (except for a small minority), only that there’s a tremendous fear that the behavior might be labeled as such. Or, as I heard the anti-gay epithets pour forth that gay men in the locker room would somehow violate this sacred space by sexualizing it.’

Amaechi knew he would get some negative responses to his decision to come out and another former NBA player, Tim Hardaway, obliged, letting fly on a Miami radio station. Hardaway ranted, “yeah, I’m homophobic,” insisted he “hate[s] gay people,” and said that “[homosexuality] shouldn’t exist in the world or in the United States.”

Amaechi took it in stride, telling ABC News he wasn’t surprised. “To me, it’s astonishing that anybody would be surprised to hear them,” he said.

Amaechi’s lack of surprise probably came, at least in part, because he is almost surely aware of another English athlete who came out. When the former Norwich City striker Justin Fashanu came out in an interview with British tabloid The Sun in 1990, he did not expect the response he received. “I genuinely thought that if I came out in the worst newspapers and remained strong and positive about being gay,” he was quoted as saying, “there would be nothing more that [people] could say.” In fact, the opposite occurred.

The denunciations began with Justin Fashanu’s own brother, John, himself a professional soccer player. John Fashanu said bluntly, “My gay brother is an outcast” and disowned him. His manager, the often-lionized Brian Clough, followed suit calling Fashanu a “bloody poof.” Fashanu was denounced by many blacks in England for “bringing shame on their race.” Tony Sewell, columnist for black weekly magazine The Voice, wrote,

[We] are sick and tired of tortured queens playing hide and seek around their closets. Homosexuals are the greatest queer-bashers around. No other group of people are so preoccupied with making their own sexuality look dirty.

Given the response of family, coaches, and members of the media, it is hardly surprising that the British public’s response to Fashanu’s coming out was largely negative. The groundwork for the homophobic chants that would follow from the terraces of stadiums across England was laid by the attitudes of those in power. Fashanu committed suicide in 1998 and the response to his coming out surely played a part in the tragic end to his life.

(Fashanu was a very troubled man, however, and his sexuality was not the only reason for his suicide. At the time of his death, there was also a warrant out for his arrest in Maryland for having sex with a 17 year-old boy.)

So, will John Amaechi in 2007 be treated in the same way as Justin Fashanu 17 years ealier? The United States and Britian have moved forward on issues of gay rights, to be sure, and there is much wider acceptance of homosexuality in society at large. But if Amaechi’s announcement shows us anything, it may be that homophobia retains a strong presence in sports.

Tim Hardaway was not the only NBA player to make his feelings known about gay players. Oliver Irish writes on the Guardian Unlimited sports blog about the responses of several current NBA stars. He quotes the Sixers’ Steven Hunter saying “As long as he don’t [sic] make any advances toward me I’m fine with it.” LeBron James insisted it is all a matter of trust:

With team-mates you have to be trustworthy, and if you’re gay and you’re not admitting that you are, then you are not trustworthy. So that’s like the No1 thing as team-mates – we all trust each other. You’ve heard of the in-room, locker room code. What happens in the locker room stays in there. It’s a trust factor, honestly.

Irish adroitly analyzes the underlying attitudes present in such pronouncements:

You don’t need to be a master of the subtext to see that Hunter, like so many athletes, is pretty far from cool with sharing a locker room with a gay man. It speaks volumes for the rampant vanity of many sports stars today that Hunter would qualify his tolerance – and it is mere tolerance, rather than acceptance – of Amaechi’s sexuality in such terms: “Sure, I’ll play ball with the guy. We’ll just be two sweaty, muscular black men trying manfully to get a rubber ball through a hoop… but if he tries to touch my balls in the showers, boy, there will be a ruckus.”

Even in Britian, a country that legalized gay marriage in 2005, attitudes among athletes toward homosexuality remain stuck in the past. Homophobic chants remain common in stadiums there. When the BBC’s radio program Five Live attempted to poll Premier League managers on homophobia, none returned the survey. The Independent had more luck in getting responses to its survey of professional players in England. The results were not promising, however: 57 percent of all players and an astonishing 77 percent of League One players said that football is homophobic.

There have been efforts made to change attitudes. The English FA recently organized a conference aimed at eliminating homophobia. Barcelona recently announced the formation of its first gay fan club. Three teams in Germany (Hertha Berlin, Borussia Dortmund, and Stuttgart) also have gay fan clubs (see picture below), as do the NHL’s Vancouver Canucks.

But these remain isolated examples in a sports environment which remains, by and large, wary of homosexuals, if not overtly hostile toward them. In December, Simon Kuper of the Financial Times reported on three gay players in Germany who were set to come out of the closet. As of yet, none has. John Amaechi is to be applauded for having the courage to announce he is a gay athlete. But sadly, the response to John Amaechi’s coming out may indicate not how far the world of sports has come in its attitudes about homosexuality, but how far it still has to go.

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While soccer has often helped to heal rifts, soccer fields have also been the sites of political violence. Unfortunately, nearly every example of peace brought about in a stadium can be matched by an atrocity perpetrated on the pitch. Such atrocities have occurred throughout the world. Given soccer’s unrivaled global popularity, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the best and worst of human nature has been witnessed on its fields.

I began writing this post on political violence on the soccer field with a few examples in mind (Afghanistan, Chile, and Rwanda). With just a bit of research have come up with many, many more. I am sure there are examples I have not documented here; I had to stop looking in order to share what I have compiled.

I have broken the examples of political violence on soccer fields into the regions in which they occurred. I want to stress that these are all examples of political violence on the field. We all know about hooligans who bring violence to stadiums, but they are not what I am focusing on here.

Asia

Long before the Taliban gained worldwide notoriety as the hosts of terror network Al Qaeda, it was primarily known for its brutal human rights violations. Chief among these was the public execution of violators of its extreme interpretation of Islamic law. In 1999, a woman named Zarmeena was accused of murdering her husband with a hammer as he slept. Zarmeena was brought to the national stadium and publicly executed on the dirt field, which still had soccer markings. The AP reported at the time:

Zarmeena was taken from the back of a pickup truck that drove into the sports stadium. Two female police officers, both in deep blue burqas, held Zarmeena’s arms. Witnesses said the convicted woman walked slowly, each step followed by a pause. When she reached the center of the field she was ordered by one of the women to sit.

Behind her a young Taliban soldier, his head wrapped in the traditional turban, took aim with his Kalashnikov rifle. But suddenly Zarmeena stood up and tried to flee. A policewoman stopped her and forced her to sit, said witnesses.

The Taliban soldier moved closer and shot her three times.

Afterward from the crowd several people shouted “God is great.”

The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan has the full AP report, complete with photos and a video (warning: it’s very gruesome).

After overthrowing the Taliban 2001, the ISAF (Internationl Security Assistance Forces) realized how potent the image of the soccer stadium is. What better propaganda coup than replacing public executions with an actual soccer match? They organized a game in 2001 between an Afghan team and a group of their forces.

Soccer returns to Afghanistan’s National Stadium

The Taliban may have gotten the idea of using stadiums for public executions from the Chinese, who used the tactic for years. Although capital punishment in China is now carried out in private by lethal injection, for years the Communist government used very public ceremonies to execute its criminals.

The Ottawa Citizen reported in 1994 that “In Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province, photographs from a September sentencing at a sports stadium were displayed prominently in the city centre for at least two months.” In 1998, 30 people were killed in the soccer stadium in the southern city of Shenzhen. 2001 saw public executions in stadiums, again in Sichuan province. A report by Amnesty International in that same year suggested that mass executions were occurring at the Beijing Workers’ Stadium, which will host games at the 2008 Olympics.

Condemned criminals are paraded before a crowd in a stadium in Chengdu in 2001

East Timor was the site of extreme political violence during the 1990s, as it fought for independence from Indonesia. A soccer stadium in Dili, capital of the former Portuguese colony, was the site of alleged torture by Australian troops sent there to stabilize the country. The Sydney Morning Herald reported in 2003 that members of an anti-independence militia group “were marched by their Australian Army captors from the Aitarak headquarters in Dili to an empty football stadium. There they were forced into the wasp-infested toilets and had their heads pushed down toilet bowls.”

Africa

Political violence and soccer have been prevalent throughout Africa’s history. In 1979, the Toronto Globe and Mail reported on refugees from Angola who claimed that “public mass executions took place frequently at a soccer stadium near the Angolan capital of Luanda.”

15 years later, Rwanda was the site of extreme political and ethnic violence. During the 1994 genocide, 500,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were murdered. Many of these murders took place in soccer stadiums. A report titled “A Quantitative Analysis of Genocide in Kibuye Prefecture, Rwanda” lists 4,500 people killed at Kibuye Stadium and nearly 3,500 killed at Gatwaro Stadium. Thousands of others were murdered at stadiums across Rwanda.

Trials against leaders of the genocide led to many death penalty sentences. In 1998, the Globe and Mail reported that the first 33 people convicted of being involved in the genocide were themselves put to death in a public execution in a soccer stadium in the capital, Kigali.

Latin America

One of the most well known instances of political violence occurring in a soccer stadium occurred in Chile. Shortly after seizing power in a military coup, dictator Augusto Pinochet rounded up many thousands of his political enemies and took them to the National Stadium, where they remained for several months. Conditions in the stadium were awful, with torture common. Many murders were also carried out at the stadium. A Chilean commission studying the torture later offered even more details:

• [T]he room for medical treatment was sometimes used for [torture]. Firing squads were simulated and other cruel techniques were employed. As a rule the prisoners were subjected to constant and intense interrogation.
• The representatives and medical representatives of the IRCC (International Red Cross Committee) have found that many prisoners show signs they have undergone psychological and physical torture.
• This Commission also concluded that a number of executions took place inside the National Stadium.

Prisoners stand on the terraces of Chile’s National Stadium in 1973

Chile’s National Stadium, site of the 1962 World Cup final, would return to its sporting roots. The Chilean national team as well as club team Universidad de Chile play their matches there today. There is now a monument to remember the many people who were tortured and killed in the stadium which once served as a concentration camp.

Chile’s National Stadium today

Chile’s neighbor Argentina also had a ruthless military dictatorship in the 1970s that was keen to use soccer to maintain its power. Although no evidence exists that stadiums themselves were used as torture centers like in Chile, the violence in that country could not be hidden when it hosted the 1978 World Cup. The military junta’s policy of “disappearing” its political enemies was known around the world, leading Dutch superstar Johan Cruyff to boycott the tournament. Those players who made the trip to South America may have tried to shield their eyes from the brutal policies of the Argentine rulers, but they were closer than they may have realized to sites of torture in the country.

[N]ear the World Cup stadium there were hidden concentration camps — they were so close that the fans’ shouts of celebration when the Argentine national team scored a goal could drown out the screams of the tortured people.

Europe

The break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s lead to a period of brutal violence, as people in the Balkans fought to establish the borders and identities of their newly independent republics. Soccer played a part in sparking the conflict and soccer stadiums often were the sites of violence.

As Franklin Foer documents in his his book How Soccer Explains the World, “a match between Red Star and Dinamo “was the first time in fifty years that Yugoslvia had seen its ethnic groups openly battle one another.” A brawl exploded between fans of the Serbian team (Red Star) and Croatian team (Dinamo), which spilled onto the field itself. As Serbian police beat a Dinamo fan, Zvonomir Boban made himself into a hero of the Croatian people by directly a flying kick at the cop, as seen in this video.

Of the many countries which attained independence during the 1990s Balkan Wars, the one which experienced the most violence was Bosnia. Massacres there have since become well known, especially that which occurred at Srebrenica. Of the nearly 9,000 Bosnian men murdered in that town, many were executed in a local soccer stadium. David Rohde, a reporter for the Christian Science Monitor who would later win a Pulitzer for his investigation, found that “At a soccer stadium in a nearby town, human feces, blood, and other evidence indicated large numbers of persons were confined, and perhaps shot.”Middle EastIt will probably surprise few that there has been violence in soccer stadiums in the Middle East. The region has both a passion for the game and governments far from averse to using violence.

Soccer in Iraq under Saddam Hussein was controlled his son Odai. The elder son of Saddam tortured many players based on their performances on the field. A 2003 San Francisco Chronicle article depicted some of the brutal practices Odai used to punish players who failed to win matches. Before the games began, the national team would watch videos of Odai preemptively threatening the team if they lost. The threats were very real as the post-game punishments demonstrate:

• A missed penalty kick could bring a humiliating head-shaving at the Stadium of the People.
• Sometimes players were forced to play “matches” in which they would kick concrete balls around the prison yard in 130-degree heat.
• If a player made a number of poor passes, Odai would sometimes call him into the dressing room, where he would be punched or slapped once for every errant pass.
• Another player, Sharar Haddar, has said that Odai dragged him and his teammates over concrete, pulling skin off their backs, then yanked them through a pit so that sand stuck to their raw skin and made them jump in a vat of sewage.

A device used by Odai Hussein to torture Iraqi soccer players

Since the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the United States, soccer stadiums have continued to witness violence. In 2005, the bodies of 19 Iraqi soldiers were found in the town of Haditha’s soccer stadium. A report in last month’s International Herald Tribune found that the threat of violence has kept many away from stadiums. An Iraqi referee was kidnapped last year just after leaving the Shaab Stadium. And this past December, four members of the Al-Zawra team were injured while training in a Baghdad stadium.

Israel’s 1982 incursion into Lebanon is remembered most for the massacres carried out against Palestinians at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. At least 800 people were killed when the Israeli army, led by then defense minister Ariel Sharon, turned a blind eye as a Lebanese Christian militia rounded up Palestianians in these two camps and executed them. The murders occurred in many places, one of which was the local soccer stadium. The stadium was initially used as an interrogation center, but according to a report by Israeli journalist Amnon Kapeliouk, “28 dead prisoners were discovered on the premises with their hands tied behind their backs.” Thomas Friedman would win a Pulitzer prize for his reporting on the massacre, and he details how soccer stadiums were the sites of torture and murder.

Conflict involving Israel, its Arab neighbors, and soccer fields arose again in April of 2006. The terrorist group Islamic Jihad fired rockets from the Gaza Strip which landed on the Israeli kibbutz of Karmiya. In response, the Jewish state identified the launching pad for these rockets and bombed it. Where did they bomb? A soccer field.

Other Examples

Numerous other examples exist of political violence perpetrated on soccer fields. Amnesty International has a series of reports condemning police forces for brutally cracking down on crowds in stadiums across the world (Tunisia, Turkey, and Syria for example). The 1968 Olympics in Mexico are remembered for the Tlatelolco Massacre, in which 200 to 300 student demonstrators were killed by army of that country. Reporter Susan Bilello described the lead-up to the event, which occurred near one of the world’s great stadiums, which would host the 1970 and 1986 World Cup finals.

Ten days later, the lighting of the Olympic torch in Aztec Stadium peacefully inaugurated the first games ever hosted by a developing country. Outside the stadium, troops and tanks were poised beyond the view of television cameras.

The violence in the breakaway republic of Chechnya spilled over into the soccer stadium when Russian-installed president Akhmad Kadyrov was killed while at a stadium in the capital Grozny (only three weeks after Kadyrov’s death, the local team, Terek Grozny, won the Russian Cup). And Haiti’s bid for stability has been interrupted by periodic violence, which has included massacres in soccer stadiums (in July and September of 2006). Even a “Play for Peace” match organized to help stamp out violence in the Caribbean country descended into violence, with at least six people killed.

Soccer fields have been the site of political violence throughout history. Dictators, armies, independence fighters, rebels, terrorists, and even peace keepers have perpetrated unspeakable offenses on the pitch. Ugliness has stained the fields of the beautiful game far too often.

The article cites a survey of “600 senior-level sports industry executives” in which 44% said that MLS was doing the best job of marketing to Hispanic fans of any American sports league. It mentioned that Hispanics account for 35% of MLS fans and that all teams have Spanish-language radio broadcasts.

But the picture is not completely rosy. As Andrea Canales at Sideline Views points out, not all MLS teams have websites in Spanish, shockingly including the L.A. Galaxy. Either Team Beckham has ceded the Spanish-speaking fans to Chivas USA or the marketing department there needs a wake-up call.

For a while, it was the whole league that needed a wake-up call. MLS’s initial marketing efforts were geared almost exclusively at “soccer moms” and their families. Gimmicks like having the clock count up and the shootout turned of may serious fans, including Hispanics. As MLS has matured as a league, so too has its marketing policy. It now promotes itself to suburban soccer families as well as Hispanics.

Some teams have been more successful in marketing to Hispanics than others. The Galaxy’s failure to even put up a Spanish language website stands in contrast to DC United’s sustained efforts to reach out to the large Hispanic population in the nation’s capital. United boast one of the best fan clubs in the league, which is not coincidentally a mix of white and Hispanics. The Barra Brava takes their name from fan clubs in Latin America and sings in both English and Spanish (they also recently brought their brand of support to a Washington Capitals hockey game to mixed reviews). They have a manager of Hispanic relations, whom I have often seen quoted in Spanish-language media in the area.

One interesting aspect of appealing to Hispanic fans is the language in which it is done. As the Hispanic population in this country grows, so too does the diversity within it. In the year 2007, it cannot be assumed that Hispanic means primarily Spanish-speaking. As the American-born population increases, the number of Hispanics speaking English at home has risen as well. (This linguistic shift has not occurred without controversy: see the furor raised by the magazine Tu Ciudad, which is geared toward a Hispanic audience but published since its 2005 founding in English).

The growth in Spanish-speaking Hispanics has been linked with a shift in sporting taste. The same New York Times article quotes a study showing that the NFL is the most popular of all sports leagues among Hispanics who speak primarily English at home. Is this because they speak English or simply because such fans have grown up in this country and feel more connected to American football? According to David Steinberg, general manager of Fox Sports en Español, “the key word is acculturation”

Both the NFL and MLS face a demographic imperative in figuring out how to appeal to Hispanics, both in English and Spanish. The Hispanic population truly arrived in the American psyche when, in 2003, they overtook African-Americans as the largest minority in the country. Today, Hispanics account for “one of every two people added to the population through immigration and birth.” Tomorrow’s America will be more heavily Hispanic than today’s. Whether these Hispanics will become fútbol, football, or soccer fans is the challenge for both the NFL and MLS.

No, Meg White is not having Francesco Totti’s baby (a scary thought indeed); instead, the connection is purely musical. For it seems that Roma’s fan club Roma Boys Ultras has taken the White Stripes song “Seven Nation Army” as a battle cry. The idea to use this song as their own came after being taunted with it during an away game in Belgium. The Roma Boys Ultras thought, like many before them, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. And that’s how it is that the bass line in a song written by a band from Detroit came to be heard in the Stadio Olimpico.

Click here for the full story.

One of the most interesting, or at least funniest, pieces of such speculation is that Chivas USA would soon be sponsored by Bimbo, the Mexican bread consortium. Some on Big Soccer even went so far as to post what such a jersey would look like:

I can’t decide whether I think the idea of putting Bimbo on the Chivas uniforms is a potentially genius move or as ridiculous as it seems on first impression. I mean, the name of the company is Bimbo, for God’s sake. Does the company really think it can break into the American market with that name? It made me think of what I had always heard about the failed attempts by Chevrolet to take its car, the Nova, to Mexico (“no va” means “it doesn’t go in Spanish). So, in doing a bit of research, it quickly became apparent that this story is, in fact, an urban legend. According to the urban legend busting website Snopes, it just ain’t true. The car was sold in Mexico successfully for several years (perhaps until people there realized it was a crappy car, regardless of its name).

So, given this, can Bimbo succeed as the name of a bread company in the US of A? Perhaps. Not only because, if the brand is successful enough to establish itself in the mainstream, people will come to associate the word Bimbo more with the bread than with, say, Kelly Bundy, to use an example provided on Wikipedia. But one major factor playing in Bimbo’s favor is that there is such a large Hispanic population already in this country. Mexicans in this country know Bimbo as bread. Putting it on Chivas USA jerseys is not a risky move because most fans of the team are Mexicans or Mexican-Americans. The Bimbo company may be aiming more for these customers than gringos.

In fact, it turns out Bimbo already has some footing in this country. Just yesterday, I saw a Bimbo truck doing deliveries to stores in my almost exclusively Hispanic neighborhood. There’s a new bread company in town, and its placement on Chivas USA jerseys may just redefine what you think of when you hear the word Bimbo.

Then again, if Chivas USA decides to incorporate the Bimbo sponsorship deal into the uniforms for its Chivas Girls (across the chest, perhaps?), all attempts to redefine the word may be for naught.

P.S. According to the same Wikipedia article on bimbos mentioned above (I love the fact that Wikipedia even has an article on the word bimbo), bimbo is a “derogatory term for a person with african [sic] roots.” So perhaps not the ideal sponsor for Bayern Munich, then.

P.P.S. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the term bimbo originally came from the Italian “bambino” or baby and only took on the connotation of “loose woman.” So any potential transformation of the word bimbo by placing it on soccer uniforms would be its second such change.

1. 1. Athletic Bilbao represents that city in Spain. They also see themselves as representing the entire Basque region and as such only use Basque players (there have been some exceptions, click here for more information).
   2. Chivas of Guadalajara prides itself on using only Mexican players. Throughout its over 100 year history, Chivas have never fielded a non-Mexican (this is contrast to their biggest rivals, Club America, who make a habit of bringing in expensive foreigners). Ironically, Chivas was founded by a Belgian, Edgar Everaert, although their current owner, is Mexican vitamin magnate Jorge Vergara.
   3. Vergara is also responsible for another club exclusively fielding players of one nationality. In 2003, the Mexican purchased the Costa Rican team Deportivo Saprissa and implemented the same policy which had given Chivas such popularity in his home country. Since Vergara took over, Saprissa have fielded only Costa Ricans.
   4. Jorge Vergara also attempted to implement a similar policy when he founded Chivas USA of MLS in 2004. Vergara initially said he would field a team of all Latinos. This policy was quickly scrapped as Vergara realized that it would lead to a rather unsuccessful team.

I’m sure there are other teams with such a strong ethnic identity and which field teams of players exclusively of one ethnicity or nationality, but they escape me right now. In the cases of all the teams above, it is interesting to note that their decision to field only a certain type of player is based on both sporting and business concerns. While they see it as a point of pride that players of a certain stripe succeed, the clubs also gain support from those who agree with their exclusivist policies. Chivas especially has obtained its status as the most popular team in Mexico in part because of its policy of fielding only Mexican players. Ethnic identity is not just a matter of pride, it can also be a money-maker.