When I've talked to people about the World Cup, they often object to is the idea that the repeating patterns in the tournament mean anything. So what, for instance, if there haven't been any new winners who weren't hosts since 1958? Yet even if this sequence is ended on Sunday - and after today's result there's now a two in three chance that it will be - it doesn't invalidate the remarkable consistency up until now, over thirteen tournaments and 52 years. (One pattern has definitely been ended this World Cup: for the first time there will be a European winner outside Europe.) Even now, in a comparatively anomalous World Cup - which, however, could still be won by Germany of course - the semi-finalists included two former winners and one two-time finalist. If Spain make the final, they will be the first new non-host finalist since Holland first made it in 1974.
We've talked here a great deal about the importance of "belief". But the kind of "belief" that must be involved is of an uncanny type; it isn't a question of individual psychology, nor even of collective psychology in any simple way - we're not dealing with something like crowd behaviour, after all, where spatial and temporal proximity can account for influence. No: what we have to account for are persistences over long periods of time, in conditions where the causal mechanisms are obscure.
Tabloid-vernacular discussion of football will often invoke "ghosts", "hoodoos" and "bogey teams". Now, commonsense might want to dismiss such phenomena as mere happenstance (it just so happens that, year in, year out, Team X loses to Team Y), yet - as is often the case with commonsense - such a dismissal risks being far more absurd than trying to explain how they have happened.
One dimension here must be self-fulfilling prophecy, which Ben has discussed most recently in terms of Brazil. In his crucial 1942 essay "Voodoo Death", Walter Cannon showed how self-fulfilling beliefs can literally kill. Cannon studied victims of shock and of voodoo sorcery, discovering that, in both cases, the victims were caused to panic themselves to death. One of the values of Cannon's work is that, far from being some vacuous New Age nonsense about the "power of the mind", it goes into precise detail about the physiology of belief, the way beliefs are instantiated in the autonomic nervous system. At the same time, these self-destructive states cannot be triggered unless the individual in question already has certain background beliefs - it is only someone who believes in the power of sorcery who will die when a sorcerer points a bone at them, for instance. But it's not possible not to "believe" in Brazil's success ; it's a matter of brute factual record. And this history of success is not some neutral record which can be consigned into the past once the match starts - it forms part of the "psychological" texture of the match itself.
If it's a final between Spain and Holland then there are ghosts on both sides. But Spain might feel that, having gone two rounds further than they've previously managed, they've already laid the ghosts of their past failings, and now all bets are off. Holland's spectres, meanwhile, can only be confronted in the final. Holland's grinding progress through the tournament recalls that of Brazil in 94. As Loki pointed out on twitter, that Brazil team was "haunted by ghosts of a brillliantly skillful, but ultimately failed past", the 82 side, just as this Dutch side is stalked by the spectres of 1974. Will the Dutch exorcise that ghost even if they win the tournament?(One thing that occurred to me tonight: is football nostalgia like music nostalgia, forever stalled in the 60s and 70s? Beyond their own team's fans, there doesn't seem to be much nostalgia for any of the World Cup winners of the 80s or 90s, and except, perhaps, for the France of 98, it's hard to imagine such nostalgia developing in the future.)
Tuesday, 6 July 2010
Relevant and Irrelevant Histories
An interesting thought as we approach the end of this World Cup: although Uruguay have won World Cups in the past, and Spain and the Netherlands have not, Uruguay winning this year would be a 'newer' thing - more of an Event.
Spain finally lifting the trophy is a narrative that already carries a sense of inevitability - it's a triumph that has already been written, and held back from general release for two years. Now that Brazil have no longer already won the tournament, there's a case for saying that Spain have already won it. The same narrative can be quickly adapted and refitted for the Dutch - 'the long wait is finally over'. There is no comparably comfortable frame in which to fit a Uruguayan victory.
Granted, Uruguay's glories were a long time ago. But when has that ever been relevant to the expectations placed on football teams? Brazilian players are still being feted for what their team did forty years ago; England are judged (and judge themselves) every four years by the standards of 1966; African teams are still labelled as naive and impetuous based on the performance of Zaire in 1970. German teams and Spanish teams are just about still viewed in the context of their past representatives as villainous mecha-men and talented bottlers respectively, although these two seem to be finally losing their grip this summer. In the group stages, the BBC wheeled out an excruciating montage showing clips of past German triumphs interspersed with footage of pistons and machinery - but even they have since realised that this German team represents something different. These three-time World Cup winners would be fresher faces on the podium than the Spanish or Dutch.
Putting aside the two unfolding exceptions above - and progress on these fronts will be immediately undone if either team reverts back to historical type for even one game - these images seem impervious to the passage of time, and are held to remain true no matter how much contradictory evidence amasses. The fact that Uruguay have underachieved since 1950 doesn't explain the strange discrepancy about them; they are the only World Cup winners whose achievements have been definitively consigned to the history books, and deemed not relevant to modern analysis. You can never write off the Germans because of their past wins - but I don't believe I've ever heard a pundit say 'Well, I'll tell you what... I think Uruguay might be dark horses to win back their title this year. End the sixty years of hurt.'
In this country, the cutoff point for the relevance of sporting historical precedent is 1966. To us, tournaments before that period are quaint, sepia-tinted, and faintly comical. Two reasons - firstly because the World Cup only became a serious matter after we validated the tournament by going out and winning it. Secondly, the images teams made for themselves in the sixties and seventies have endured because those were the formative years of the people who have run, broadcasted, and commented on football in this country, certainly since the late eighties. Their ideas have bled into the minds of the population through sheer unchallenged repetition (and, lately, nostalgic replaying of said repetition - twice removed from new thought). Uruguay themselves are represented by a construction of this period - as temperamental foulers and cynics - and this seems to have replaced their earlier status as heroic two-time champions, leaving no trace of the older idea behind.
The relevant half-life of historical events must vary between countries. Uruguayan players surely don't go to tournaments still feeling burdened by the achievements of their predecessors, but Brazilian football fans still believe in a Uruguay hoodoo that dates back to 1950. Speaking to a Bosnian friend recently, I tried to draw out his opinion of the Stojkovic-inspired Yugoslavia team of 1990, but he was far more keen on regaling me with his admiration for the overachieving all-Serbian team at the first World Cup in 1930...
...who, it turns out, have been the subject of a recent film.
I doubt that a hypothetical English team sent upriver in 1930 would be the subject of such strong, enduring identification.
Spain finally lifting the trophy is a narrative that already carries a sense of inevitability - it's a triumph that has already been written, and held back from general release for two years. Now that Brazil have no longer already won the tournament, there's a case for saying that Spain have already won it. The same narrative can be quickly adapted and refitted for the Dutch - 'the long wait is finally over'. There is no comparably comfortable frame in which to fit a Uruguayan victory.
Granted, Uruguay's glories were a long time ago. But when has that ever been relevant to the expectations placed on football teams? Brazilian players are still being feted for what their team did forty years ago; England are judged (and judge themselves) every four years by the standards of 1966; African teams are still labelled as naive and impetuous based on the performance of Zaire in 1970. German teams and Spanish teams are just about still viewed in the context of their past representatives as villainous mecha-men and talented bottlers respectively, although these two seem to be finally losing their grip this summer. In the group stages, the BBC wheeled out an excruciating montage showing clips of past German triumphs interspersed with footage of pistons and machinery - but even they have since realised that this German team represents something different. These three-time World Cup winners would be fresher faces on the podium than the Spanish or Dutch.
Putting aside the two unfolding exceptions above - and progress on these fronts will be immediately undone if either team reverts back to historical type for even one game - these images seem impervious to the passage of time, and are held to remain true no matter how much contradictory evidence amasses. The fact that Uruguay have underachieved since 1950 doesn't explain the strange discrepancy about them; they are the only World Cup winners whose achievements have been definitively consigned to the history books, and deemed not relevant to modern analysis. You can never write off the Germans because of their past wins - but I don't believe I've ever heard a pundit say 'Well, I'll tell you what... I think Uruguay might be dark horses to win back their title this year. End the sixty years of hurt.'
In this country, the cutoff point for the relevance of sporting historical precedent is 1966. To us, tournaments before that period are quaint, sepia-tinted, and faintly comical. Two reasons - firstly because the World Cup only became a serious matter after we validated the tournament by going out and winning it. Secondly, the images teams made for themselves in the sixties and seventies have endured because those were the formative years of the people who have run, broadcasted, and commented on football in this country, certainly since the late eighties. Their ideas have bled into the minds of the population through sheer unchallenged repetition (and, lately, nostalgic replaying of said repetition - twice removed from new thought). Uruguay themselves are represented by a construction of this period - as temperamental foulers and cynics - and this seems to have replaced their earlier status as heroic two-time champions, leaving no trace of the older idea behind.
The relevant half-life of historical events must vary between countries. Uruguayan players surely don't go to tournaments still feeling burdened by the achievements of their predecessors, but Brazilian football fans still believe in a Uruguay hoodoo that dates back to 1950. Speaking to a Bosnian friend recently, I tried to draw out his opinion of the Stojkovic-inspired Yugoslavia team of 1990, but he was far more keen on regaling me with his admiration for the overachieving all-Serbian team at the first World Cup in 1930...
...who, it turns out, have been the subject of a recent film.
I doubt that a hypothetical English team sent upriver in 1930 would be the subject of such strong, enduring identification.
Sunday, 4 July 2010
'Underdogs don't play'
I wrote this piece before Brazil crashed out of the World Cup in a generally similar manner to a bunch of staggering, indignant drunks being thrown out of a pub at closing time.
There wasn't exactly a World Cup Final in 1950, but the final pool game between Brazil and Uruguay effectively amounted to one. Uruguay only needed a draw - Brazil had to win the match to finish top. Waiting in the dressing room underneath the Maracanã, hearing the noise made by some 200,000 Brazil supporters, Uruguay manager Juan López Fontana called his team together and gave a speech along the lines of "Okay, lads, we're the underdogs here, we're playing away, so let's keep it tight and try to hold on for a draw." After Fontana had left, captain Obdulio Varela addressed his team-mates in a rather different tone: "Underdogs? Pfah. Underdogs don't play. Let's put on a show."
I've taken liberties with the wording and the whole story may be apocryphal - but as with all good stories, being fictitious wouldn't make it any less true. Varela was more right than he could have realised. The record of World Cups since that day in 1950 has shown that underdogs don't play - at least, not against Brazil. They seem to have the unique ability to intimidate smaller teams into all but eliminating themselves.
Brazil - great teams, average teams, desperately dull teams, it doesn't seem to matter - have finished top of their first round group in every World Cup since 1982. In six of those eight groups, they kept a perfect three-wins record. The only times they dropped points were in drawing with Sweden in 1994 and losing to Norway (thanks to a last minute penalty) in 1998. Even that isolated defeat didn't seem to break their stride: they still won the group and strolled past Chile in a routine second round game.
The list of teams who've actually knocked Brazil out of World Cups contains Hungary in 1954, Portugal in 1966, Italy in 1982, Holland and Argentina at various times, and France in two recent tournaments. There are no less illustrious names. For Brazil, there is no equivalent of Senegal-France, Croatia-Germany, USA-England. Or even Slovakia-Italy.
Looking past the calamitous defeats, the other major footballing nations have all struggled to beat theoretically weaker teams in difficult campaigns. Brazil seem uniquely able to cruise through World Cups without breaking sweat . A banana-skin exit at the hands of lesser opposition would be as unthinkable to them as failing to qualify.
What these statistics cannot convey is just how perfunctory the Brazilians' runouts against less illustrious opponents appear to the viewer. Mark has written about this before: it's almost as if, at some point after the playing of the national anthems, the opposition collectively realise that they cannot win, they're only playing for pride, and that the best they can hope for is an honourably narrow defeat with perhaps a consolation goal. The actual relative quality of the two teams becomes an irrelevance. The underdogs huff and puff, but believe that the game is over. And the mass hypnosis that affects the players seeps through to the broadcast team, who present the match in the same terms. "Chile almost deserve a goal, for their pluck," commented Clive Tyldeseley in the closing stages of Monday's game - at least he didn't call it "their World Cup final".
Recent victims of this self-fulfilling acceptance of defeat include Belgium (and arguably England) in 2002, Ghana in 2006, Chile in 1998 and 2010, the US on their own turf in 1994... many of these were talented teams, examined in isolation, and stood a decent chance in theory - but that was of no relevance once the Brazil-determinism of the knockout stages swung into effect.
Mark ended his Brazil post by asking who could possibly stop them this time round. Well - the one team who seem to unsettle Brazil, and who are able to turn the historical record against them, are Uruguay. They may not be among the tournament favourites, but it would be nicely fitting if they held on to their fortitude and turned the psychological pressure on the seleção.
With hindsight, I'd add that the bewildered way Brazil reacted to being behind and under pressure against the Dutch showed just how much even they rely on this 'self-fulfilling defeatism'. When the script doesn't go as expected, Brazil don't seem to have any additional sources of mental strength - they simply fold. For the amateur-hour defending and petulant tantrums in the second half against Holland, read the dazed performance by the whole team against France in 1998.
I agree with various contributors here that the power of belief in football is a subject that deserves to be explored in more depth.
There wasn't exactly a World Cup Final in 1950, but the final pool game between Brazil and Uruguay effectively amounted to one. Uruguay only needed a draw - Brazil had to win the match to finish top. Waiting in the dressing room underneath the Maracanã, hearing the noise made by some 200,000 Brazil supporters, Uruguay manager Juan López Fontana called his team together and gave a speech along the lines of "Okay, lads, we're the underdogs here, we're playing away, so let's keep it tight and try to hold on for a draw." After Fontana had left, captain Obdulio Varela addressed his team-mates in a rather different tone: "Underdogs? Pfah. Underdogs don't play. Let's put on a show."
I've taken liberties with the wording and the whole story may be apocryphal - but as with all good stories, being fictitious wouldn't make it any less true. Varela was more right than he could have realised. The record of World Cups since that day in 1950 has shown that underdogs don't play - at least, not against Brazil. They seem to have the unique ability to intimidate smaller teams into all but eliminating themselves.
Brazil - great teams, average teams, desperately dull teams, it doesn't seem to matter - have finished top of their first round group in every World Cup since 1982. In six of those eight groups, they kept a perfect three-wins record. The only times they dropped points were in drawing with Sweden in 1994 and losing to Norway (thanks to a last minute penalty) in 1998. Even that isolated defeat didn't seem to break their stride: they still won the group and strolled past Chile in a routine second round game.
The list of teams who've actually knocked Brazil out of World Cups contains Hungary in 1954, Portugal in 1966, Italy in 1982, Holland and Argentina at various times, and France in two recent tournaments. There are no less illustrious names. For Brazil, there is no equivalent of Senegal-France, Croatia-Germany, USA-England. Or even Slovakia-Italy.
Looking past the calamitous defeats, the other major footballing nations have all struggled to beat theoretically weaker teams in difficult campaigns. Brazil seem uniquely able to cruise through World Cups without breaking sweat . A banana-skin exit at the hands of lesser opposition would be as unthinkable to them as failing to qualify.
What these statistics cannot convey is just how perfunctory the Brazilians' runouts against less illustrious opponents appear to the viewer. Mark has written about this before: it's almost as if, at some point after the playing of the national anthems, the opposition collectively realise that they cannot win, they're only playing for pride, and that the best they can hope for is an honourably narrow defeat with perhaps a consolation goal. The actual relative quality of the two teams becomes an irrelevance. The underdogs huff and puff, but believe that the game is over. And the mass hypnosis that affects the players seeps through to the broadcast team, who present the match in the same terms. "Chile almost deserve a goal, for their pluck," commented Clive Tyldeseley in the closing stages of Monday's game - at least he didn't call it "their World Cup final".
Recent victims of this self-fulfilling acceptance of defeat include Belgium (and arguably England) in 2002, Ghana in 2006, Chile in 1998 and 2010, the US on their own turf in 1994... many of these were talented teams, examined in isolation, and stood a decent chance in theory - but that was of no relevance once the Brazil-determinism of the knockout stages swung into effect.
Mark ended his Brazil post by asking who could possibly stop them this time round. Well - the one team who seem to unsettle Brazil, and who are able to turn the historical record against them, are Uruguay. They may not be among the tournament favourites, but it would be nicely fitting if they held on to their fortitude and turned the psychological pressure on the seleção.
With hindsight, I'd add that the bewildered way Brazil reacted to being behind and under pressure against the Dutch showed just how much even they rely on this 'self-fulfilling defeatism'. When the script doesn't go as expected, Brazil don't seem to have any additional sources of mental strength - they simply fold. For the amateur-hour defending and petulant tantrums in the second half against Holland, read the dazed performance by the whole team against France in 1998.
I agree with various contributors here that the power of belief in football is a subject that deserves to be explored in more depth.
Saturday, 3 July 2010
The Good Soldier Suarez
"Luis Suarez - hero or villain?" - it's an obvious question to ask after last night's events in Johannesburg. But maybe we need to look beyond the "unadulterated fist-pumping joy" of Suarez, after he "saved" Uraguay's World Cup dreams against Ghana, to see another dimension of the piece, a dimension that comes most starkly into view when we (quite naturally) compare it to that other infamous handball. So, tongue ever so slightly in Zizekian cheek, I would like to suggest that, in comparison to Diego Maradona's 'perverse' Hand of God, Senor Suarez's intervention was a far more radical and destabilising act....
In contrast, the Suarez event is more radical, more real, more disturbing, for it all happened within - the gaze of - the law. The law was not transgressed, it was followed to the letter, and thereby its failure - its groundlessness and absurdity - was revealed, its ultimate impotence laid bare for all to see.** As an arbitrary and violent imposition of order onto contingency the law makes the game (all games) possible but we need to be reminded of its all too human origins, that it is not all-powerful (is 'non-all') and cannot legislate for all eventualities. This opens up the possibility of our taking some minimal distance from it, appreciating once more that we, and not the gods, are responsible for the law, and that, at the end of the day, while "you've gotta take each game as it comes", you mustn't let that blind you to the fact that it is a game and as such reliant on an ineliminable element of chance (not to mention violence - as many Ghana fans would no doubt testify today).
Ergo, the Good Soldier Suarez is a radical hero!
* "Maradona lifted the World Cup trophy, ensuring that he would be remembered as one of the greatest names in football history. In a tribute to him, the Azteca Stadium authorities built a statue of him scoring the "goal of the century" and placed it at the entrance of the stadium" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maradona#1986_World_Cup ) - in granting the official Genius of his other goal, the "authorities" were clearly quite happy to turn a blind eye to his act of transgression....
** similar arguments could be made about the Lampard and Tevez "goals" last weekend perhaps....?
Maradona's gesture was, properly speaking, 'perverse' in that it was a direct - obscene - transgression of the rules which effectively re-inforced the status of the law: after the event "Maradona" could indeed be accorded a simple, binary, symbolic significance - as hero or villain, redeemer or cheat - whose actions merely proved the necessity of regulation. He got away with it (much like every pilled-up hedonist "gets away with it" every weekend) and there was considerable collective jouissance to be had as a result (especially given the Falklands and all that). And what was it that he and his hombres were really glorifying in if not the perverse pleasure of successful naughtiness, the 'obscene superego supplement'? His was an act of symbolic transgression; an attempt to prove that he was 'above' the law - thereby revealing his implicit reliance on the law as the constitutive ground for his own megalomaniacal ego - and one that the law, for its part, was quite happy to go along with, knowing its authority was in no real way being challenged.*
In contrast, the Suarez event is more radical, more real, more disturbing, for it all happened within - the gaze of - the law. The law was not transgressed, it was followed to the letter, and thereby its failure - its groundlessness and absurdity - was revealed, its ultimate impotence laid bare for all to see.** As an arbitrary and violent imposition of order onto contingency the law makes the game (all games) possible but we need to be reminded of its all too human origins, that it is not all-powerful (is 'non-all') and cannot legislate for all eventualities. This opens up the possibility of our taking some minimal distance from it, appreciating once more that we, and not the gods, are responsible for the law, and that, at the end of the day, while "you've gotta take each game as it comes", you mustn't let that blind you to the fact that it is a game and as such reliant on an ineliminable element of chance (not to mention violence - as many Ghana fans would no doubt testify today).
Ergo, the Good Soldier Suarez is a radical hero!
* "Maradona lifted the World Cup trophy, ensuring that he would be remembered as one of the greatest names in football history. In a tribute to him, the Azteca Stadium authorities built a statue of him scoring the "goal of the century" and placed it at the entrance of the stadium" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/** similar arguments could be made about the Lampard and Tevez "goals" last weekend perhaps....?
The rearview mirror, the big Other, and the persistence of the past
When will Lionel Messi have had a mediocre tournament? One of the most irritating things about commentariat "common sense" is the way that judgements that are presented as universally accepted are silently reversed. All of Messi's touches have been greated with expectant rhapsodies of awe, even though he has never exploded into anything like the form of which is he is capable. And in the last couple of games, especially today, he has for large parts of the match been a flickering shadow; not as bad as Rooney, for sure, but certainly no better than Lampard against Germany, who did at least hit a shot across the line. Note: I am not, ludicrously, saying that Messi is overrated. But, with its usual bout of self-loathing sado-masochism, English media have been very quick to conclude that Rooney's desperately poor showing here means that he is overrated, often comparing him unflatteringly to Messi. Messi had the advantage of playing in a side that - until today - was winning easily; Rooney was playing in a team that was labouring. Note also: I am not saying either that Rooney is as good a player as Messi, only that Messi has been given the benefit of the doubt far more than Rooney was.
Partly, what I'm describing is due to what McLuhan called rearview mirror thinking. Commentators and pundits filter what they are seeing according to models rooted in the past, bending their perception to fit their expectations rather than adjusting their expectations in line with the facts. This syndrome used to be screamingly evident in the treatment of Brazil, and, twenty years after they converted to dour pragmatism augmented by occasional flair and predatory goalscoring, their reputation for playing Samba football remains astonishingly resilient - even if only the most selective of viewers could eulogise their organisation, backfiring backheels and packed defence this tournament.
Partly, it's a matter of what the big Other is held to acknowledge. With Brazil, the big Other was only supposed to notice their flicks and flamboyance. With Messi this tournament, the commentariat have been like courtiers trying to conceal shoddy workmanship from a monarch, as they sought desperately to keep Messi''s many patches of indifferent and ineffective play from the big Other's gaze. But the defeats of Brazil and Argentina over the last couple of days have been shock moments which have a retrospective impact, shattering the official narrative, and allowing what was always in fact the case to be recognised as such. When I suggested that "Brazil have already won the World Cup" I wasn't saying that they would win it, rather that if they did win, the victory would have been inevitable. Nothing would have happened. The officially constituted (and Nike sponsored) reality would have confirmed itself. But as soon as they hadn't already won it, they couldn't do enough to earn the win.
This brings us back to the role of belief and expectations. Germany started today's game with the evident conviction could beat Argentina, which already sapped the Argentines of much of their power. The same thing happened in the second half of the Netherlands-Brazil game, when Brazil's invincibility crumbled like Ceauşescu's tyranny; there was no gradual transition from inevitability of victory to defeat, just a sudden and total disintegration. But Ghana yesterday and Paraguay today palpably lacked that belief; like many of the less fancied teams, their strikers came up against what was in effect an invisible forcefield when they closed in on the opponents' goal, shooting wildly over the bar or uselessly into the keeper's body. It's no accident that both Paraguay and Ghana went out because they failed to convert penalties. In the penalty shoot-out against Japan, the Paraguay players looked like they could have scored penalties all night - but today Cardoso, like Gyan last night, seemed so paralysed by nerves that it was impossible to imagine him scoring. They had come up against the belief barrier.
Argentina's defeat today was comprehensive by any standards. They probed lislessly without really pressing, and, besides the clearly and indisputably offside goal, they created far fewer clear goalscoring opportunities against Germany than England did. Must we now conclude that there is a "gulf in class" between Argentina and Germany? The one thing that this World Cup has definitively proven is that this "gulf in class" does not exist; there are not South American and Spanish Deities on another technical plane to other teams. What Germany had over England and Argentina was not a technical advantage, but a manifest superiority in pace and discipline. As Zone argued, Germany's destruction of England was a consequence of Germany literally beating England at their own game - and that "English-style" football requires a pace and energy that was physically and mentally far beyond the England players, who, in a horrible vicious circle, tried to compensate for indiscipline and disorganisation with the very bluster that produced the organisational collapse in the first place. Argentina, meanwhile, found it impossible to run the game at their tempo, and, like Brazil, they were unable to adjust to being behind in a game. Spain have survived this far in the competition not because of their vaunted passing game, which has sparked only sporadically in the last couple of games, but because of their tenacity and Villa's opportunism. I'm not sneering at these things - they are exactly the qualities Spain needed to develop in order to face down the very daunting ghosts of their past under-achievement. Ominously for Germany - who by any metric are far and away the most exciting team this tournament - Spain are now playing badly enough to win the World Cup. However, Spain still have massive hauntological obstacles to overcome - not least the fact that Germany have never gone more than twenty years between World Cup wins since they first won in 1954. As I've already pointed out, Spain would be the first new winner of the World Cup who wasn't the host since 1958; they would be the first reigning European Champions to win the competition since West Germany's victory on home soil in 1974 (which was in fact the only occasion so far on which the winners of the European championships have gone on to win the World Cup); and they would be the only team ever to lose their first game and end up winning the tournament (this last fact makes them more closely resemble Argentina in 1990 - who lost to Cameroon in their opening game - and West Germany in 1982, who lost to Algeria in their first game: what do these teams have in common? They ended up losing in the final. Remember also that Holland in 1978 might not have lost their opening game, but they did suffer a shock defeat in the first round - to Scotland - and they too ended up losing in the final.) Spain would also be the first European team to win outside Europe. The Netherlands run up against many of the same precedents, these eerily repeating patterns. As for Uruguay - well, even though they seem to be the underdog of the four remaining teams, they are not similarly ill-starred. And, unlike Spain and Holland, they have won the World Cup before, twice in fact.
Partly, what I'm describing is due to what McLuhan called rearview mirror thinking. Commentators and pundits filter what they are seeing according to models rooted in the past, bending their perception to fit their expectations rather than adjusting their expectations in line with the facts. This syndrome used to be screamingly evident in the treatment of Brazil, and, twenty years after they converted to dour pragmatism augmented by occasional flair and predatory goalscoring, their reputation for playing Samba football remains astonishingly resilient - even if only the most selective of viewers could eulogise their organisation, backfiring backheels and packed defence this tournament.
Partly, it's a matter of what the big Other is held to acknowledge. With Brazil, the big Other was only supposed to notice their flicks and flamboyance. With Messi this tournament, the commentariat have been like courtiers trying to conceal shoddy workmanship from a monarch, as they sought desperately to keep Messi''s many patches of indifferent and ineffective play from the big Other's gaze. But the defeats of Brazil and Argentina over the last couple of days have been shock moments which have a retrospective impact, shattering the official narrative, and allowing what was always in fact the case to be recognised as such. When I suggested that "Brazil have already won the World Cup" I wasn't saying that they would win it, rather that if they did win, the victory would have been inevitable. Nothing would have happened. The officially constituted (and Nike sponsored) reality would have confirmed itself. But as soon as they hadn't already won it, they couldn't do enough to earn the win.
This brings us back to the role of belief and expectations. Germany started today's game with the evident conviction could beat Argentina, which already sapped the Argentines of much of their power. The same thing happened in the second half of the Netherlands-Brazil game, when Brazil's invincibility crumbled like Ceauşescu's tyranny; there was no gradual transition from inevitability of victory to defeat, just a sudden and total disintegration. But Ghana yesterday and Paraguay today palpably lacked that belief; like many of the less fancied teams, their strikers came up against what was in effect an invisible forcefield when they closed in on the opponents' goal, shooting wildly over the bar or uselessly into the keeper's body. It's no accident that both Paraguay and Ghana went out because they failed to convert penalties. In the penalty shoot-out against Japan, the Paraguay players looked like they could have scored penalties all night - but today Cardoso, like Gyan last night, seemed so paralysed by nerves that it was impossible to imagine him scoring. They had come up against the belief barrier.
Argentina's defeat today was comprehensive by any standards. They probed lislessly without really pressing, and, besides the clearly and indisputably offside goal, they created far fewer clear goalscoring opportunities against Germany than England did. Must we now conclude that there is a "gulf in class" between Argentina and Germany? The one thing that this World Cup has definitively proven is that this "gulf in class" does not exist; there are not South American and Spanish Deities on another technical plane to other teams. What Germany had over England and Argentina was not a technical advantage, but a manifest superiority in pace and discipline. As Zone argued, Germany's destruction of England was a consequence of Germany literally beating England at their own game - and that "English-style" football requires a pace and energy that was physically and mentally far beyond the England players, who, in a horrible vicious circle, tried to compensate for indiscipline and disorganisation with the very bluster that produced the organisational collapse in the first place. Argentina, meanwhile, found it impossible to run the game at their tempo, and, like Brazil, they were unable to adjust to being behind in a game. Spain have survived this far in the competition not because of their vaunted passing game, which has sparked only sporadically in the last couple of games, but because of their tenacity and Villa's opportunism. I'm not sneering at these things - they are exactly the qualities Spain needed to develop in order to face down the very daunting ghosts of their past under-achievement. Ominously for Germany - who by any metric are far and away the most exciting team this tournament - Spain are now playing badly enough to win the World Cup. However, Spain still have massive hauntological obstacles to overcome - not least the fact that Germany have never gone more than twenty years between World Cup wins since they first won in 1954. As I've already pointed out, Spain would be the first new winner of the World Cup who wasn't the host since 1958; they would be the first reigning European Champions to win the competition since West Germany's victory on home soil in 1974 (which was in fact the only occasion so far on which the winners of the European championships have gone on to win the World Cup); and they would be the only team ever to lose their first game and end up winning the tournament (this last fact makes them more closely resemble Argentina in 1990 - who lost to Cameroon in their opening game - and West Germany in 1982, who lost to Algeria in their first game: what do these teams have in common? They ended up losing in the final. Remember also that Holland in 1978 might not have lost their opening game, but they did suffer a shock defeat in the first round - to Scotland - and they too ended up losing in the final.) Spain would also be the first European team to win outside Europe. The Netherlands run up against many of the same precedents, these eerily repeating patterns. As for Uruguay - well, even though they seem to be the underdog of the four remaining teams, they are not similarly ill-starred. And, unlike Spain and Holland, they have won the World Cup before, twice in fact.
Friday, 2 July 2010
The Art Of The Non Spectator
An Imaginary Art Installation
The World Cup final. At the whistle, the crowd fall silent. Sit for ten minutes in complete silence, each feigning a different form of shock and awe. Then, row by row, still in silence, everyone files out the ground. By half time, the stadium is empty. The players have to come back out for the second half to an empty stadium. 5 mins into the second half, all the spectators run back into the stadium mouthing wordless obscenities and doing an odd dance like they've developed a 24hr strain of autism. Sit down and watch in silence for the rest of the game.
The Goalkeeper's Fear Of The Penalty
As the World Cup circles get tighter and tighter then the question of penalties raises its head. Quarter Finals now and who would bet against them occurring somewhere...
Now that England are out and the autosuggested fear of missing becomes less of an issue (though of course the Dutch are still in the competition), attention has switched to the fears of the goalkeeper, who is often assumed to be the only one in a penalty shootout with nothing to lose.
Not so, or so this article suggests.
Ofer Azar, a Behavioural Economist, argues that the goalkeepers have a very real fear during a penalty which can be roughly (perhaps wrongly) translated as the fear of being seen to do nothing. Although it's statistically better for them to stay in the middle of the goal, they tend to feel the need to dive spectacularly one way or another even if they know this is a strategy doomed to failure.
This is a kind of inverse Omission Bias (the tendency to judge harmful actions as worse than equally harmful omissions or inactions) which could be argued as an emotional flaw in logic which dogged England, France et al at this World Cup - the fear of being seen as inactive (i.e. uncaring, lacking in passion) led to players overdoing things (think of all those long raking aimless balls from Gerrard, the bizarre crossfield dribbling of Ribery).
The Game Never Ends
I've enjoyed the last couple of game-less days. The plan to watch all of the fixtures was a fine one in principle, but it had begun to seem a bit of a chore to be honest. Not that I'm complaining about the level of play: I think it's been a good tournament so far. At the time of writing the two most exciting attacking teams - Spain and Argentina - are still in it, whilst Germany, Brazil and the Netherlands are playing with less obvious flair but still quite entertainingly. It's great to have Ghana in there and the two Guays are adding a bit of dark horse vivacity to the whole thing. So I won't complain. Still, there's only so much football you can take before a certain element of drudgery creeps in, to coincide with what is pointedly referred to as the 'business end' of the competition. None of the teams that are left in the tournament are in it to entertain at this point, if they ever did. Not even Argentina. They're all in it for the bottom line, and that is to win or, in the case of the lower-ranked three, to make a historic semifinal at least.
Success and failure. One of the side stories of South Africa 2010 has been the early exit of most of the Nike stars, the chaps who were supposed to write the future. I actually didn't think that the campaign was has bad as it has been made out to be. There was more than a little cheek in Ronaldo's dream of a colossal bronze statue to match the size of his ego and the sculpted iconicity of his Mussolinesque pout, and you wouldn't put it past that character to spit at a cameraman on his way out of the tournament if things didn't go to plan. It was always going to be either the triumph of the will or the fall of the ungracious.
The ad starring Cannavaro was genuinely funny, chiefly thanks to the brilliantly cast Bobby Solo, but I was intrigued by the extended version of Rooney's story, the only one to write in the prospect of failure. In this one the two alternative finales - with Roo either ending up living in a trailer park or bear-hugging the Queen and having all male boys of the realm named after him - was refreshingly open to the possibility that the future would be written by the non-Nike-wearing anonymous player mob. I felt that you could do something with that, that it wasn't as tightly controlled and depressingly closed a text as most sports ads are at this level.
I'd also caution against sneering at the Nike campaign because they might get the last laugh yet -
But by far the more emblematic tagline of the tournament to my mind belongs to this commercial.
There it is, the drudgery, in a formulation that is a concise as it is soul-crushing: The Game Never Ends. And: Keep Playing. Moreover, it applies not only to professional footballers, but to the rest of us as well, who are left with no choice but to embrace that philosophy of sacrifice, that commitment to the ultimate effort, even in our streets, in our parks, on our beaches. No more of that old “that’s it for me, I think I’ll be heading home” business. The game never ends.
In panning cleverly from one country and one culture to the next, the Powerade commercial paints a vivid picture of global joylessness. It is not so much the other side of top sporting events as it is integral, central to it; it is the very serious business of winning, which is the thing that sport has in common not just with the military but also with corporations. Obvious as it is to remark, that’s why you’ll find motivational management strategies used in sports teams, and ‘team-building’ exercises and a whole host of sports metaphors, gestures and tics featuring prominently in the workplace. And for capitalism to reach maximum efficiency, it is necessary that leisure and work be as indistinguishable as the transition between the two is seamless. Work is play, and play is work.
I wrote that Argentina is as much in it to win it as the others, but I must also note Maradona’s very careful strategy to project the image of a team that is capable of having fun. It’s as if he has chosen to be the anti-Dunga, and for Argentina to be the antagonist of the reality principle that is Brazil, encouraging us to read this new and in some respects surprising chapter of the great South American rivalry as a struggle for the very soul of football. That’s the narrative that the shrewd Maradona is offering to us, at any rate. And it is a fiction, to be sure, but a useful one, if only to combat the feeling that what we’re about to do in the next ten days or so - when the game will end - is not to so much to enjoy a series of games as to conduct a review: without enjoyment, without passion, writing a future that is pre-determined by the objective and measurable superiority of the winning team.
You can watch the Powerade commercial in its full, exhausting four-minute length here.
Peter Lorre On Legs
England should immediately disband all Under 21 matches. This team should be the full England team, with maybe a few old heads, willing to stay in the side as the Gary McAllister figure(s). Maybe these 'old' guys might even have a few final hurrahs like McAllister did for Liverpool - Houllier described him as his "most inspirational signing" and you can hardly disagree.
Which old heads? You'd have to ask them; "Hands up, who wants to be the fading star? It really is a better role than you seem to think..."
Or: "Who wants to be the Schweinsteiger?" - they don't have to be literally old.
Next, we should ditch all expectations for at least 2 years. Don't worry about winning. Winning doesn't really seem to help (reference our World Cup qualifying campaign). Forget winning. Winning is overrated.
Insert Karl Popper here.
In retrospect the verification bias after the Croatia matches sent us spinning; sent Capello into an odd mysticism, gave him more self-belief than was required. He knew this at some deep unconscious level, tried admirably to deal with it himself by ditching Walcott at the last minute.
It was just Croatia. It was just Croatia...
Capello saw this coming. He's a good manager. He saw this. But the expectation of England is differently intense to the expectation of Italy or Madrid or whoever. It's expectation tinged with no expectation. We're the best apart from the best.
We're still worrying about never being Brazil even when Brazil don't care about being Brazil.
So...
Let the young uns get thumped a little by the older, more experienced sides (I'm not convinced that experience is that much of a factor anyway at International Level because there's just not enough planning time to get the team together). Let us even fail to qualify for the Euros. Let's instead work on figuring out a way to play before the next World Cup.
Let them find their way around the pitch a little. See who emerges. See where they emerge. Let them make some mistakes (could they make more than the seniors?).
I know our U-21s got fairly roundly beaten by the, er, Germans in the 2009 U-21s final but, hey, who was man of the match?
Yep. Ozil. Petter Lorre on legs.
I think there's something to be learned.
Thursday, 1 July 2010
tipping point in America
I'm fairly certain that, despite the USA's missed opportunity against Ghana, the 2010 World Cup was *finally* the tipping point for soccer in America. It's a major sport for us now.
No further evidence is needed than today's column at ESPN by Bill Simmons, probably America's liveliest sportswriter in recent years (and also a Tottenham Hotspur fanatic, which is no longer an Anglophiliac affectation in the USA of 2010 as it might have been even 5 years ago). As his remarks indicate, part of the problem is that we are simply sick and tired of American sports. I certainly am, and it was my primary personal recreation from about 1975-2000 before moving to Egypt.I agree with every word of the following, for instance:
"I love the Cup because it stripped away all the things about professional sports that I've come to despise. No sideline reporters. No JumboTron. No TV timeouts. No onslaught of replays after every half-decent play. No gimmicky team names like the 'Heat' or the 'Thunder.' (You know what the announcers call Germany? The Germans. I love this.) No announcers breathlessly overhyping everything or saying crazy things to get noticed. We don't have to watch 82 mostly half-assed games to get to the playoffs. We don't have 10 graphics on the screen at all times. We don't have to sit there for four hours waiting for a winner because pitchers are taking 25 seconds to deliver a baseball."
Anyway, here's the link to the whole article:
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/100701
No further evidence is needed than today's column at ESPN by Bill Simmons, probably America's liveliest sportswriter in recent years (and also a Tottenham Hotspur fanatic, which is no longer an Anglophiliac affectation in the USA of 2010 as it might have been even 5 years ago). As his remarks indicate, part of the problem is that we are simply sick and tired of American sports. I certainly am, and it was my primary personal recreation from about 1975-2000 before moving to Egypt.I agree with every word of the following, for instance:
"I love the Cup because it stripped away all the things about professional sports that I've come to despise. No sideline reporters. No JumboTron. No TV timeouts. No onslaught of replays after every half-decent play. No gimmicky team names like the 'Heat' or the 'Thunder.' (You know what the announcers call Germany? The Germans. I love this.) No announcers breathlessly overhyping everything or saying crazy things to get noticed. We don't have to watch 82 mostly half-assed games to get to the playoffs. We don't have 10 graphics on the screen at all times. We don't have to sit there for four hours waiting for a winner because pitchers are taking 25 seconds to deliver a baseball."
Anyway, here's the link to the whole article:
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/100701
The Compulsion to Repeat
Danny Baker has talked about English fans and experts being "too quick to call an autopsy without a body". It's hard to disagree. But while our patient isn't dead, he is starting to exhibit some very strange symptoms...
The betting market for the next England manager is throwing out some uncannily familiar names. Almost every single one of our past managers is quoted. This isn't new - every time we look for a new manager, we seem to be consumed with nostalgia for one or more previous incumbents. So go on, take a punt on Kevin Keegan at the numerically significant price of 66-1. How about Terry Venables, who's been in the running every time since 1996? Or even... Steve McClaren, who's as short as 20-1 at one place? He seems to be going through levels of hurried reappraisal as quickly as the newspapers can put out new editions.
Why would there be any kind of call for McClaren to retake the job, only two years after he was laughed out of it? It would nice to think that this phenomenon was due to a sincere reappraisal of his worth following his success in the Eredivisie. But the press, who had fun at his expense for so long (how they crowed at his adopted Dutch accent), have never been ones to revise their opinions so quickly. When Twente took their first steps toward the title, it was reported (generally in thumbnail-sized articles in the inside pages) with a kind of detached amazement/amusement, with the implication that the progress said more about the Dutch league than about the manager's skill. The serious reconsideration of McClaren is a phenomenon that only dates back to the trauma of the last week.
The logic being used to build the man up by the same people who relished knocking him down is tortuous. The pundits are spinning a narrative of how quickly he has learned the ropes, and how the England job came 'just a couple of years too soon for him' - but managers don't go from imbecilic to ingenious in the space of twenty-four months. The fact that McClaren and even Kevin Keegan are now considered as serious - albeit outside - candidates to return to the England job calls for some kind of deeper explanation. This isn't just rose-tinted nostalgia - this is the desire for repetition.
We can turn to Freud, who identified one of our most powerful and overriding desires - the compulsion to repeat. We unconsciously re-enact earlier events in an impossible attempt to be able to go back and change them - and we feel compelled to do this even when the experience will be painful and cannot possibly affect the original, traumatic event. Repetition does not even help us deal with the trauma - it simply extends it. Freud could find no self-interested explanation for this behaviour, and reluctantly classed it as one of the few motivations that could override the otherwise dominant pleasure principle. We repeat even we know it will cause us pain.
We want McClaren back in charge because, hey, he's turned out not to be a laughable mug after all, and we aren't sure how a man like that failed with our Golden Generation. We want Terry Venables back in charge because we aren't entirely sure how we failed to win Euro '96, when things seemed to be going so well - surely, if we repeated it all, everything would come good? We want Glenn Hoddle back in charge because we aren't sure when, or how, he lost his good relationship with the players (close to them in age, respected by them for his enduring ability on the training pitch) and became an unpopular laughing stock in the dressing room. Surely it should have ended better? Surely it would end better a second time?
But acting out traumatic events in this way precludes remembering them. The more we become caught up in repetition, the further we get from being able to analyse and learn from the events of the past. English football isn't a corpse on the autopsy table, but it might help to think of it as a patient on a psychiatrist's couch - and re-enacting the past isn't going to help him get over his problems.
"Maybe... just maybe."
The betting market for the next England manager is throwing out some uncannily familiar names. Almost every single one of our past managers is quoted. This isn't new - every time we look for a new manager, we seem to be consumed with nostalgia for one or more previous incumbents. So go on, take a punt on Kevin Keegan at the numerically significant price of 66-1. How about Terry Venables, who's been in the running every time since 1996? Or even... Steve McClaren, who's as short as 20-1 at one place? He seems to be going through levels of hurried reappraisal as quickly as the newspapers can put out new editions.
Why would there be any kind of call for McClaren to retake the job, only two years after he was laughed out of it? It would nice to think that this phenomenon was due to a sincere reappraisal of his worth following his success in the Eredivisie. But the press, who had fun at his expense for so long (how they crowed at his adopted Dutch accent), have never been ones to revise their opinions so quickly. When Twente took their first steps toward the title, it was reported (generally in thumbnail-sized articles in the inside pages) with a kind of detached amazement/amusement, with the implication that the progress said more about the Dutch league than about the manager's skill. The serious reconsideration of McClaren is a phenomenon that only dates back to the trauma of the last week.
The logic being used to build the man up by the same people who relished knocking him down is tortuous. The pundits are spinning a narrative of how quickly he has learned the ropes, and how the England job came 'just a couple of years too soon for him' - but managers don't go from imbecilic to ingenious in the space of twenty-four months. The fact that McClaren and even Kevin Keegan are now considered as serious - albeit outside - candidates to return to the England job calls for some kind of deeper explanation. This isn't just rose-tinted nostalgia - this is the desire for repetition.
We can turn to Freud, who identified one of our most powerful and overriding desires - the compulsion to repeat. We unconsciously re-enact earlier events in an impossible attempt to be able to go back and change them - and we feel compelled to do this even when the experience will be painful and cannot possibly affect the original, traumatic event. Repetition does not even help us deal with the trauma - it simply extends it. Freud could find no self-interested explanation for this behaviour, and reluctantly classed it as one of the few motivations that could override the otherwise dominant pleasure principle. We repeat even we know it will cause us pain.
We want McClaren back in charge because, hey, he's turned out not to be a laughable mug after all, and we aren't sure how a man like that failed with our Golden Generation. We want Terry Venables back in charge because we aren't entirely sure how we failed to win Euro '96, when things seemed to be going so well - surely, if we repeated it all, everything would come good? We want Glenn Hoddle back in charge because we aren't sure when, or how, he lost his good relationship with the players (close to them in age, respected by them for his enduring ability on the training pitch) and became an unpopular laughing stock in the dressing room. Surely it should have ended better? Surely it would end better a second time?
But acting out traumatic events in this way precludes remembering them. The more we become caught up in repetition, the further we get from being able to analyse and learn from the events of the past. English football isn't a corpse on the autopsy table, but it might help to think of it as a patient on a psychiatrist's couch - and re-enacting the past isn't going to help him get over his problems.
"Maybe... just maybe."Wednesday, 30 June 2010
England: Not Anarchist Enough
After John Barnes' extraordinary claim that England's footballers don't have enough of a socialist mentality comes Germany's two-goal hero Thomas Müller, who makes a similar point (minus the political metaphor)- arguing that England have 'too many chiefs and not enough Indians'.
pic: Toby Price
Both, I feel, are on to something. Perhaps the most prominent example of what they're getting at was Steven Gerrard's incessantly hopeless long-range shooting: a marked feature of England's World Cup campaign (and noted in this post of Mark's). He frequently persisted with it even when there were better placed teammates, so it's easy to support Barnes and Müller and note that a rather more 'collective' mentality might have served England a little better.
Yet to my mind this analysis rests on a troublesome dichotomy: that of the individual versus the collective. To overcome this- and think how a football team should match individual 'talent' with collective strength- we might turn again to political theory, appealing this time to anarchism rather than socialism.
For 'classical' anarchists, there is no inherent tension between the individual and their society; the relationship is one of mutuality in which the interests of the individual are best served by working as part of a collective. Kropotkin's Mutual Aid is perhaps the best known proponent of this work arguing for this, portraying a convergence of the interests of the one and the many:
George Woodcock, meanwhile, argues that anarchism is to be distinguished from Marxism in its insistence that collectivity is not privileged over the individual: anarchist but survive because each individual retains their freedom, but sees that it is in their interests to keep the bonds strong.
Of particular interest to me, though, is the 'post-left' guise of anarchism: a strongly individualist current which flows through Nietzsche and Stirner through Deleuze (& Guattari) and on to thinkers like Alfredo M. Bonnano and Hakim Bey. It is a strand of thought with which I have a number of problems (particularly in the anti-civilisational guise of John Zerzan), but there's much I find to admire in its urgent calls for individual liberty*.
Suspicious of the essentialism inherent in Kropotkin's appeal to the 'laws of nature', post-left anarchism further muddies the boundary between the individual and the collective: individuals are both 'fully a part of the crowd and at the same time completely outside it', as Deleuze and Guattari would have it. It is not possible to say that 'the interests of the individual tally with the interests of the collective', because it is not possible to discern where the interests of the individual and the interests of the collective begin and end. As Hakim Bey puts it, 'Individual vs Group- Self vs. Other [is] a false dichotomy propagated through the Media of Control...Self and Other complement and complete one another.'
To me, this speaks loudly to the needs of a football team. Supremely disciplined collective play can be successful (and, in its own way, fascinating)- Greece's Euro 2004 triumph and Inter Milan's success this season just finished are testament to that- but all too often well-drilled, disciplined teams are too predictable in attack and struggle when the onus is on them to make something happen (Greece v Argentina and Portugal v Spain would be prime examples at this World Cup). To answer this problem- and the problem of England's lack of solidarity- I would argue for a form of anarchist football in which attacking players are allowed to express their creativity in full (of course, defensive players need to be somewhat more disciplined and team-spirited- curbing any attacking urges to prevent the opposition from exploiting space they leave unoccupied). Revelling in their freedom, attackers see no need to try the ridiculous in order to prove themselves or give themselves a feeling of legitimacy (this echoes Max Stirner's account of the 'union of egoists' in The Ego and Its Own).
The point for a manager, then, is not to deny their attacking players their egos- but to get players' egos to co-operate; to pull in the same direction. There must be no competition between the attackers in a team; each member must be happy for his teammates to retain their individuality and happy that their own individuality is respected. There is no need to shoot from ridiculous angles and distances merely to show (to themselves as much as anyone) that they can do it. Gerrard and Lampard no longer need to compete to show who is most worthy of playing; Rooney does not need to prove to himself how good he is.
Manchester United's triumvarate of Rooney, Tevez and Ronaldo was perhaps the ultimate expression of this form of football: the three of them swarming forward and retaining their individual flair but acting as a devestating unit. You cannot tell me that any of them tempered their egos- rather they followed them through to the full and strengthened their bonds as they did. They were fully a part of the team and yet fully outside any notion of 'collectivity': there is nothing 'collective' about a sharp turn of pace, a stepover, an improvised chip into the corner**. As I discuss here, Carlos Alberto Parriera's claim that the formation of the future is 4-6-0 resonates strongly with this form of 'anarchist' football.
The problem for England is not that they have too many chiefs and not enough Indians, but that they have too many players who want to be chief and rule over the other Indians. They're worried about their place in the team; scared of each other; fearful of not being as good as they could be. It's a problem of Nietzschean ressentiment- a 'slave mentality'. Rather than having more Indians, England needs more Chiefs. Rather than being socialist, England need to be more anarchist.
*though I do quite like Colin Ward's scathing riposte (in Talking Anarchy, with David Goodaway) that he'd known a good few 'individualist' anarchists and found them all to be startlingly boring people.
**I once saw an interview with a footballing legend- it may well have been George Best- and he said he didn't really care whether his team won; he just wanted to play beautiful football. But of course him playing beautiful football would make it more likely that his team would win, and his team winning would make it more likely he would have the time and space to play beautiful football.
pic: Toby PriceBoth, I feel, are on to something. Perhaps the most prominent example of what they're getting at was Steven Gerrard's incessantly hopeless long-range shooting: a marked feature of England's World Cup campaign (and noted in this post of Mark's). He frequently persisted with it even when there were better placed teammates, so it's easy to support Barnes and Müller and note that a rather more 'collective' mentality might have served England a little better.
Yet to my mind this analysis rests on a troublesome dichotomy: that of the individual versus the collective. To overcome this- and think how a football team should match individual 'talent' with collective strength- we might turn again to political theory, appealing this time to anarchism rather than socialism.
For 'classical' anarchists, there is no inherent tension between the individual and their society; the relationship is one of mutuality in which the interests of the individual are best served by working as part of a collective. Kropotkin's Mutual Aid is perhaps the best known proponent of this work arguing for this, portraying a convergence of the interests of the one and the many:
'On our mutual relations every one of us has his moments of revolt against the fashionable individualistic creed of the day, and actions in which men are guided by their mutual aid inclinations constitute so great a part of our daily intercourse that if a stop to such actions could be put all further ethical progress would be stopped at once. Human society itself could not be maintained for even so much as the lifetime of one generation'.
George Woodcock, meanwhile, argues that anarchism is to be distinguished from Marxism in its insistence that collectivity is not privileged over the individual: anarchist but survive because each individual retains their freedom, but sees that it is in their interests to keep the bonds strong.
Of particular interest to me, though, is the 'post-left' guise of anarchism: a strongly individualist current which flows through Nietzsche and Stirner through Deleuze (& Guattari) and on to thinkers like Alfredo M. Bonnano and Hakim Bey. It is a strand of thought with which I have a number of problems (particularly in the anti-civilisational guise of John Zerzan), but there's much I find to admire in its urgent calls for individual liberty*.
Suspicious of the essentialism inherent in Kropotkin's appeal to the 'laws of nature', post-left anarchism further muddies the boundary between the individual and the collective: individuals are both 'fully a part of the crowd and at the same time completely outside it', as Deleuze and Guattari would have it. It is not possible to say that 'the interests of the individual tally with the interests of the collective', because it is not possible to discern where the interests of the individual and the interests of the collective begin and end. As Hakim Bey puts it, 'Individual vs Group- Self vs. Other [is] a false dichotomy propagated through the Media of Control...Self and Other complement and complete one another.'
To me, this speaks loudly to the needs of a football team. Supremely disciplined collective play can be successful (and, in its own way, fascinating)- Greece's Euro 2004 triumph and Inter Milan's success this season just finished are testament to that- but all too often well-drilled, disciplined teams are too predictable in attack and struggle when the onus is on them to make something happen (Greece v Argentina and Portugal v Spain would be prime examples at this World Cup). To answer this problem- and the problem of England's lack of solidarity- I would argue for a form of anarchist football in which attacking players are allowed to express their creativity in full (of course, defensive players need to be somewhat more disciplined and team-spirited- curbing any attacking urges to prevent the opposition from exploiting space they leave unoccupied). Revelling in their freedom, attackers see no need to try the ridiculous in order to prove themselves or give themselves a feeling of legitimacy (this echoes Max Stirner's account of the 'union of egoists' in The Ego and Its Own).
The point for a manager, then, is not to deny their attacking players their egos- but to get players' egos to co-operate; to pull in the same direction. There must be no competition between the attackers in a team; each member must be happy for his teammates to retain their individuality and happy that their own individuality is respected. There is no need to shoot from ridiculous angles and distances merely to show (to themselves as much as anyone) that they can do it. Gerrard and Lampard no longer need to compete to show who is most worthy of playing; Rooney does not need to prove to himself how good he is.
Manchester United's triumvarate of Rooney, Tevez and Ronaldo was perhaps the ultimate expression of this form of football: the three of them swarming forward and retaining their individual flair but acting as a devestating unit. You cannot tell me that any of them tempered their egos- rather they followed them through to the full and strengthened their bonds as they did. They were fully a part of the team and yet fully outside any notion of 'collectivity': there is nothing 'collective' about a sharp turn of pace, a stepover, an improvised chip into the corner**. As I discuss here, Carlos Alberto Parriera's claim that the formation of the future is 4-6-0 resonates strongly with this form of 'anarchist' football.
The problem for England is not that they have too many chiefs and not enough Indians, but that they have too many players who want to be chief and rule over the other Indians. They're worried about their place in the team; scared of each other; fearful of not being as good as they could be. It's a problem of Nietzschean ressentiment- a 'slave mentality'. Rather than having more Indians, England needs more Chiefs. Rather than being socialist, England need to be more anarchist.
*though I do quite like Colin Ward's scathing riposte (in Talking Anarchy, with David Goodaway) that he'd known a good few 'individualist' anarchists and found them all to be startlingly boring people.
**I once saw an interview with a footballing legend- it may well have been George Best- and he said he didn't really care whether his team won; he just wanted to play beautiful football. But of course him playing beautiful football would make it more likely that his team would win, and his team winning would make it more likely he would have the time and space to play beautiful football.
Patterning (or Why Ronaldo spits)
Ronaldo spitting, his (adams) apple bobbing; Gerrard's thousand yard stare; Rooney's simian growl; Torres's odd gait, like an adolescent whose body is growing too fast for his brain; Messi's shocked awe at a team winning without him. So far, these have been the lowlights of the World Cup; the stars going out, the Nike curse...
Why such terrible form for their country?
There's already plenty of data unfolding, theories being unravelled... you just have to peer through the cracks in the fans' hands to see that everyone has a theory. There's a lot of bellyaching in the British Press about honour and national identity and... guff mostly and unsupportable. It seems unlikely that Patriotism or lack of it is responsible. At least 3 of the Germans actively refuse to sing their National Anthem on the grounds that it isn't their National Anthem but their team spirit doesn't seem to be lacking and, if anything their players seem to be displaying the reverse effect; playing better for their country after an indifferent season for their clubs.
People haven't been going crazy trying to buy Klose or Podolski in the close season but...
An idea struck me while watching the Spain vs Portugal game. A simple idea but one I think is worthy of further investigation. In Ronaldo et al's club teams, the team and the tactics are based around them, are for them, are built around their strengths. Man United buy some wingers to whip crosses in and Rooney scores, gulp, lots of headers. Torres has Gerrard can only really play together now, apart all the flaws start to show - Liverpool have to play in a way that gets the best out of them (Kuyt seems to have had a reasonable tournament; the unflashiness helping the Netherlands steady progress). Ronaldo has nippy strikers to play against and with and some serious looking, though skillful, holding players to negate the problem of him losing the ball (to be fair, he often loses the ball but mostly it matters less because his club team mates are able to get the ball back).
In their club teams, the weaknesses in their teams can be bought around, can be coolly considered and weighted against other other concerns - this inevitably makes the star player even more of a star since everything is weighted in their favour. In the National team, the dynamic is different; there are either more stars or less choice and either way this can be a killer for the over-indulged big players, things aren't set up to go their way and, in fact, in the case of the England set up things may even seem to be actively against them - just look at their little faces...
Tuesday, 29 June 2010
"Football is a socialist sport"
John Barnes gives his opinion on the reasons behind England's exit from the World Cup. Worth reading in its entirety.
Via Ed Knock of The Crystal World on Twitter.
"The teams which embrace the socialist ideology rather than having superstars, are the teams that are successful. Or if there are superstars they don't perceive themselves to be that. That's why I use Messi as an example. As much as he's a superstar he respects his team-mates and their collective efforts. [...] Players from other nations when they play for their country are once again a socialist entity, all pulling in the same direction [...] football was different in our day because we had a relationship with the fans and we were normal people [...] England gets by on the individual ability of a Rooney or a Gerrard or a Lampard, rather than collective method or strategy. Now if that individual either isn't playing or he doesn't play well, that means you can't win. Spain has an identity. If you black out the faces and don't know who's playing, you can still say this Spain because of the way they play. You can see Brazil because of the way they play. We haven't got a method. We need to create an identity."
Via Ed Knock of The Crystal World on Twitter.
"The funniest book about football ever written ..."
Deserved praise for David Stubbs' Send Them Victorious from Scott Murray in The Guardian's World Cup blog on Sunday:
- Anyway, the English papers have been embarrassing themselves today, as you'd expect. It's been war this, blitz that, Churchill speeches the other. Any English fan thoroughly sick of this myopic nonsense – and anyone else interested in football, frankly – is advised to read a new book called Send Them Victorious: England's Path To Glory 2006-2010 by David Stubbs. A series of England match reports written by "biased but fair" jingoistic Boer War veteran The Wing Commander, it gives both the Fourth Estate and the players they overhype a right old shoeing, and is pretty much the funniest book about football ever written. Here's a tinder-dry snippet from an England-Germany report:
"It is no exaggeration, but rather an imaginative simile, to compare this game to World War II – World War II, that is, minus the participation of Churchill, Field Marshall Montgomery, Adolf Hitler, Herman Goering, and Douglas Bader, who like our own Frank Lampard, suffered from the handicap of not being able to use his legs in any effective way."
You have got to love this book.
The golden generation's statistical failure
James Lawton makes a spirited defence of Capello in the Independent today, but I fear that the tabloid/ TV narrative has already locked into the familiar pattern that can only end with Capello's sacking. As ever with these artifically-generated "clamours", there's plenty of bloodlust but little thought about who could do the job better. With Hodgson, the only English candidate with any international or European experience, looking as if he will take on the Liverpool job, the FA will have to look for another foreign coach (with an inferior record to Capello's) or turn to a manager with pretty modest record of domestic success like Redknapp, or, God forbid, back to the dark ages with the likes of Allardyce.
The statistics below, listed in Lawton's piece, tell their own story - confirming, for one thing, my long-held conviction that Gerrard is one of the most wasteful midfielders around. I doubt you will find another midfielder in international football so profligate with possession as Gerrard.
Rooney
3 Lost the ball in in tackles 32 times in the Germany game – more than anyone other player
55 Completed only 55 per cent of his passes against Germany, less than any other player
9 Failed to score in his last nine England games, his longest barren spell for the national team
Gerrard
10 Struck 10 shots from outside the penalty area, none of which went in
3 Only three of 16 crosses from Gerrard found another player in a red shirt
64 Gerrard's pass completion rate was the lowest amongst England's midfielders
Lampard
37 The free-kick that struck the bar in the crushing defeat against Germany was Lampard's 37th shot without scoring
16 Has the most shots in this World Cup without scoring
29 Of 197 completed passes, only 29 were to a forward
Terry
8 Was forced to make eight blocks over the course of the finals, more than any other player at the finals
39 Resorted to playing long balls from the back on 39 occasions
4 The defensive display against Germany was the worst since England conceded four against Uruguay in 1954
Capello
19 Fabio Capello has the highest win percentage ratio of any England manager, winning 19 of his 28 games in charge (67.9 per cent)
Monday, 28 June 2010
Options, illustrated
David Beckham, there, placing a strong fourth. That's the David Beckham who has no coaching or managerial experience, and who didn't even seem like a great thinker or communicator as a player. Still, he looks good in a three-piece suit, and he gets angry when things go against England on the pitch. What could go wrong?
(I suppose the logic is that we tried a vastly experienced, decorated coaching legend with a great reputation in the game, and that didn't work, so now it's time to try something different...)
Steve McLaren is on the list, and somebody in the comments thread makes a plea for recalling Glenn Hoddle. As Danny Baker quipped to a caller making a similar argument after the Algeria game, "I hear Walter Winterbottom's available..."
In a way, Hodgson is another name from the past. He's been in the running for this job since the nineties - he was touted as a candidate after Glenn Hoddle's departure, and he made the FA's three-man shortlist to replace Keegan in 2000. He may well be the best of the candidates, but like David James in the No.1 jersey, he seems to have got there by outlasting all of his rivals, rather than through any tremendous effort of his own. What probably put the final gloss on Hodgson's CV from the FA's point of view was the relative success of his current spell with Fulham - managerial achievements abroad still seem to count for little over here.
Hoorah for neo-Victorian insularity!
Brazil have already won this World Cup
Long, long ago, Brazil used to represent fantasy football. Now - everywere but in the minds of commentators, still clogged with mouldering images of 1970 - Brazil are international football's equivalent of the reality principle. Their victories are as inevitable as they are joyless, pulverising not only their opponents but any sense of drama and romance like flowers under the wheels of a tank. This is not a team that has tempered flair with organisation; it is a team whose success is entirely almost based on athleticism and positional discipline. There was a suffocating flatness about Brazil's destruction of Chile tonight; it was if Brazil's remorselessy effective defence - by some distance the most miserly in the competition, protected by a steely shield of two holding midfielders - had drawn the very oxygen from the air.
Brazil are the Terminator of the World Cup. "There is no fate," was the slogan of the latest Terminator film, but Brazil's success in this World Cup seems fated, the script written by their corporate sponsors, Nike, with teams like Chile tonight reduced to the role of background drones in the tediously slick CGI-driven commercials. It feels like Brazil have already won the World Cup, and that anything else will be a triumph for surprise over grim inevitability. That inevitability feels even more fated when you remember that no European teams have won outside Europe, and that Brazil have won all but two of the tournaments held outside Europe since 1958, including both of the tournaments that were hosted outside Europe and South America. Who, if anyone, can stop the inevitable from happening, and restore some sense of surprise and romance to the World Cup?
Brazil are the Terminator of the World Cup. "There is no fate," was the slogan of the latest Terminator film, but Brazil's success in this World Cup seems fated, the script written by their corporate sponsors, Nike, with teams like Chile tonight reduced to the role of background drones in the tediously slick CGI-driven commercials. It feels like Brazil have already won the World Cup, and that anything else will be a triumph for surprise over grim inevitability. That inevitability feels even more fated when you remember that no European teams have won outside Europe, and that Brazil have won all but two of the tournaments held outside Europe since 1958, including both of the tournaments that were hosted outside Europe and South America. Who, if anyone, can stop the inevitable from happening, and restore some sense of surprise and romance to the World Cup?
Fairness and Video Technology
Following Frank Lampard's disallowed goal against Germany, and then Carlos Tevez's goal against Mexico which in turn was allowed, despite an impromptu video replay in the stadium showing that Tevez was conspicuously offside, the cry has been renewed for video technology to be introduced into the “multi-million pound” world of football, as a matter of urgent common sense. Frank Lampard wants it. Tim Henman wants it, as does Sue Barker, who interviewed him the day after at Wimbledon. Gary Lineker certainly wants it. (This is far too important an issue for the BBC to maintain its customary effort at impartiality). Smarting redly at England's ignominious defeat against Germany, Lineker muttered to Match Of The Day panellists Hansen and Shearer that video technology was something for which “everyone” was clamouring but which was denied solely because of the obduracy of “Sepp Blatter and his cronies”.
Now, there are doubtless plenty of reasons to narrow one's eyes in the direction of Sepp Blatter, as well as the dubious operations of FIFA. However, in this context, Blatter's role is the nebulous one of greasy, foreign Head Gnome, acting in an arbitrary and high-handed way, his agenda, like that of Michel Platini, to do England down.
However, wrong as he may be in all kinds of ways and about all kinds of things, Blatter is right to rule out video technology. This is not to say that mistakes have not been made, will be made. However, so it has been since the beginning of footballing time. They are a very occasional hazard, rather than fatal occurrences. In 1932, for example, in what became known as the “over the line” final, Newcastle beat Arsenal following an equaliser from a long ball which according to photographic evidence crossed the dead ball line before winger Jimmy Richardson crossed it back into play. Unfortunate, but hardly the ruin of Arsenal, who went on to dominate the decade, winning three successive championships. And one hardly needs point up the disingenuous smirks with which Englanders discuss Geoff Hurst's extra time goal in the 1966 World Cup Final, which are doubtless on the lips of German fans today. In both games, it was clear who ultimately deserved to win.
But then, some argue, now that we have such technology, which is applied in tennis and rugby, why not apply it in football? Well, for one thing, both tennis and rugby are games which are full of pauses in play, changes of end, interruptions. The technology slots in well to such games. In football, which is already increasingly blighted by outbreaks of heated, onfield litigation, you can be sure that the natural flow of the game would be broken up even more.
There is also the principle, cited by FIFA, of expense. It is one thing to have VT installed at the high end of the game, the World Cup, the Champions League. But then how far down into the domestic leagues can such a fundamental change in the way the game is refereed be applied? It is one of the virtues of football that the rules as abided by in organised leagues of pub teams on Hackney Marshes are the same as those abided by at the Nou Camp. In a game that is becoming increasingly high ended and subject to corporate forces, this egalitarian thread feels sovereign. Video Technology would be in breach of that. Sure, it's been argued, there are no fourth officials or technical areas on Hackney Marshes. Fair point, but these are far less radical tools of adjudication. Moreover, despite the claims of VT advocates that they would be sparing in its use, there's little doubt that once introduced it would be the thin end of the wedge – pressure would soon be applied, and succumbed to, for video adjudication on penalties, offsides, free-kicks, off-the-ball incidents. Then you would have a two-tier football – one at the high end, full on interruptions and contested decisions, the other its poor, increasingly detached, video-less relation.
Rugby is a salutary example in other ways. A relatively small sport compared with football, it's been subjected to all kinds of modernisation (Murdochisation?) in order to make a play for a bigger audience, suffering the undignified uprooting of many of its traditions. It isn't just video technology, it's giant hooters in lieu of final whistles and teams renamed The Rhinos. The marketing people, the meddlers, have been able to have their way with it, and to an extent, cricket. They would love to do the same to football and have certainly succeeded in making some inroads in some ways. However, the deep-rooted, worldwide nature of the game has made it fundamentally resistant in other respects. In football, you still get teams called Wanderers and Rovers. There are, as yet, no Super leagues, 39th games. And there is, as yet, no video technology. It's all of a piece.
The most loudly professed concern of those pressing for VT is fairness. However, in the balance of things, a sort of makeshift karma, or simply the laws of chance, ensures that eventually these things balance out – cf, 1966, 2010. The imperfections of the present system should function as a reminder that this is just a game, which should be neither overvalued nor undervalued as such. Moreover, if fairness is the paramount concern, than there are surely far more pressing issues to address in the modern game – the super-privileges of the top few moneyed teams in Europe, and their continued efforts to ensure that the ladder of opportunity is pulled up behind them, with success and access to the best emerging talent exclusive to them in perpetuity. Or the way fans are increasingly squeezed by opportunistic club owners, some of whom are making them pay for their own, ill-advised, leveraged purchases. These represent far larger injustices than the odd bad decision visited on a just wage earner like Frank Lampard.
Now, there are doubtless plenty of reasons to narrow one's eyes in the direction of Sepp Blatter, as well as the dubious operations of FIFA. However, in this context, Blatter's role is the nebulous one of greasy, foreign Head Gnome, acting in an arbitrary and high-handed way, his agenda, like that of Michel Platini, to do England down.
However, wrong as he may be in all kinds of ways and about all kinds of things, Blatter is right to rule out video technology. This is not to say that mistakes have not been made, will be made. However, so it has been since the beginning of footballing time. They are a very occasional hazard, rather than fatal occurrences. In 1932, for example, in what became known as the “over the line” final, Newcastle beat Arsenal following an equaliser from a long ball which according to photographic evidence crossed the dead ball line before winger Jimmy Richardson crossed it back into play. Unfortunate, but hardly the ruin of Arsenal, who went on to dominate the decade, winning three successive championships. And one hardly needs point up the disingenuous smirks with which Englanders discuss Geoff Hurst's extra time goal in the 1966 World Cup Final, which are doubtless on the lips of German fans today. In both games, it was clear who ultimately deserved to win.
But then, some argue, now that we have such technology, which is applied in tennis and rugby, why not apply it in football? Well, for one thing, both tennis and rugby are games which are full of pauses in play, changes of end, interruptions. The technology slots in well to such games. In football, which is already increasingly blighted by outbreaks of heated, onfield litigation, you can be sure that the natural flow of the game would be broken up even more.
There is also the principle, cited by FIFA, of expense. It is one thing to have VT installed at the high end of the game, the World Cup, the Champions League. But then how far down into the domestic leagues can such a fundamental change in the way the game is refereed be applied? It is one of the virtues of football that the rules as abided by in organised leagues of pub teams on Hackney Marshes are the same as those abided by at the Nou Camp. In a game that is becoming increasingly high ended and subject to corporate forces, this egalitarian thread feels sovereign. Video Technology would be in breach of that. Sure, it's been argued, there are no fourth officials or technical areas on Hackney Marshes. Fair point, but these are far less radical tools of adjudication. Moreover, despite the claims of VT advocates that they would be sparing in its use, there's little doubt that once introduced it would be the thin end of the wedge – pressure would soon be applied, and succumbed to, for video adjudication on penalties, offsides, free-kicks, off-the-ball incidents. Then you would have a two-tier football – one at the high end, full on interruptions and contested decisions, the other its poor, increasingly detached, video-less relation.
Rugby is a salutary example in other ways. A relatively small sport compared with football, it's been subjected to all kinds of modernisation (Murdochisation?) in order to make a play for a bigger audience, suffering the undignified uprooting of many of its traditions. It isn't just video technology, it's giant hooters in lieu of final whistles and teams renamed The Rhinos. The marketing people, the meddlers, have been able to have their way with it, and to an extent, cricket. They would love to do the same to football and have certainly succeeded in making some inroads in some ways. However, the deep-rooted, worldwide nature of the game has made it fundamentally resistant in other respects. In football, you still get teams called Wanderers and Rovers. There are, as yet, no Super leagues, 39th games. And there is, as yet, no video technology. It's all of a piece.
The most loudly professed concern of those pressing for VT is fairness. However, in the balance of things, a sort of makeshift karma, or simply the laws of chance, ensures that eventually these things balance out – cf, 1966, 2010. The imperfections of the present system should function as a reminder that this is just a game, which should be neither overvalued nor undervalued as such. Moreover, if fairness is the paramount concern, than there are surely far more pressing issues to address in the modern game – the super-privileges of the top few moneyed teams in Europe, and their continued efforts to ensure that the ladder of opportunity is pulled up behind them, with success and access to the best emerging talent exclusive to them in perpetuity. Or the way fans are increasingly squeezed by opportunistic club owners, some of whom are making them pay for their own, ill-advised, leveraged purchases. These represent far larger injustices than the odd bad decision visited on a just wage earner like Frank Lampard.
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