July 1, 2010--Futbol
Like most Americans I have difficulties getting myself crazy about soccer. Including the currently happening World Cup.
Is it just because I didn't play it as a kid or listen to it on the radio back in the day and thereby do not have it's sounds and lore etched in my emotional memory? Or is it because, like most Americans, I find it hard to get into being enthusiastic about a game in which you are forbidden to use your hands; and, though you do use your head, it is more as a physical offensive and defensive weapon than because it contains your brain. Thus, in our lingo, "using your head" (or "noodle") means being smart and not, as with football, being adept at headers, redirecting the ball to a fellow player or, more significantly, toward the goal. Not that being smart is not essential to being a good soccer player. The best ones are very smart and very strategic.
More than anything, I think we don't get too excited about a sport in which there isn't a lot of scoring. Among all the current World Cup games that have been concluded a few have wound up, at the end of the alloted time for play, tied at 0-0, with no goals at all being scored. And most have concluded with fewer than five goals between both teams. 1-0 or 2-1 is not an uncommon final total.
And though in World Cup play, if the score at the end of regular and additional or overtime is still tied, there is a penalty-shot shoot-out system that allows for a way to break the tie. So there is a conclusion. Though a jerry-rigged one. At it's essence, and until recent years when TV became more important, in league play ties were not only possible but to aficionados often considered them an appropriate way to end a game. Both teams played too well to lose. Or too poorly to deserve to win.
Americans abhor ties. We demand clear conclusions. Though in the early days our version of football also used to be able to end in ties, since we require definitiveness, sudden death was instituted to resolve them. We have a need to see the world in winner-loser terms. Just as we do in our foreign policy and wars--we hate the idea of stalemates and quagmires, though we seem, since Vietnam, to have developed a propensity to get stuck in them.
We Americans, on the other hand, generally like our basketball games to be full of nonstop scoring and our baseball games to be slugfests. In fact, to assure more home runs (many fans' favorite baseball moments) teams have brought their ballpark fences in and juiced up the baseball to assure that it travels further when struck. Only old-fashioned baseball fans prefer pitchers' duels. And football too thrives best as high-scoring affairs. Only our so-called fourth "major" sport, ice hockey, remains low scoring, but how popular is it among the U.S. population? Not very. Case closed.
But while down in Florida for a week, the place where we gather for coffee in the morning, the Green Owl, is full of folks from other countries where soccer or futbol is their only national sport and World Cup fever, thus, is running high. I got a fascinating earful each day from Ron and especially Ernst about the matches from the day before and those upcoming.
I learned about the beauty of the game (especially Brazil's samba-style) and the cultural metaphors soccer expresses in countries other than the U.S. If baseball remains our most metaphoric game, with basketball and football in recent years supplying more metaphors, soccer around the world, importantly in countries where scarcity is the norm (low-scoring, you the see, reflects this) is the only game that yields so much cultural meaning.
For example, Ernst the other morning was telling me why the faulty refereeing that has plagued World Cup matches this year is so upsetting. Not only does disallowing a goal that was clearly scored or allowing one where players were obviously offside profoundly affect the score since one goal is frequently enough to win a game or shape it outcome, but it goes against the grain of life as it is lived in many places in the world.
When there is little and considerable struggle is required to sustain life, when one somehow manages a small measure of success, to have it taken away can have catastrophic consequences. Where there is plenty, as in America (and relatively there still is in spite of the nagging Recession and where for too many having little defines life), a basketball referee's missed call on a three-point shot (it should have been three points rather than the two the ref called) is most often rendered insignificant the next trip down the floor. Games that typically end 102-98 are usually not affected by bad calls. And even when there are a lot of them they tend to even out over the course of a game--both teams are equally affected. There is so much to spread around that bad calls are more a distraction than a devastation as they usually are in soccer.
And both low scoring and the possibility of things ending in a tie are also clear metaphors for countries such as Ghana and Paraguay, still alive in World Cup competition among football and comparative economic giants such as Spain, Germany, and of course Brazil. Getting something is better than nothing and often a tie means that. Though resources are meager and lmost everyone is effectively in the same boat, at least we have something to feel good about that is sustaining.
So I'm beginning to get it and can't wait to see Argentina face off against Germany and maybe, in the finals, for the Cup, Spain-Brazil.
Is it just because I didn't play it as a kid or listen to it on the radio back in the day and thereby do not have it's sounds and lore etched in my emotional memory? Or is it because, like most Americans, I find it hard to get into being enthusiastic about a game in which you are forbidden to use your hands; and, though you do use your head, it is more as a physical offensive and defensive weapon than because it contains your brain. Thus, in our lingo, "using your head" (or "noodle") means being smart and not, as with football, being adept at headers, redirecting the ball to a fellow player or, more significantly, toward the goal. Not that being smart is not essential to being a good soccer player. The best ones are very smart and very strategic.
More than anything, I think we don't get too excited about a sport in which there isn't a lot of scoring. Among all the current World Cup games that have been concluded a few have wound up, at the end of the alloted time for play, tied at 0-0, with no goals at all being scored. And most have concluded with fewer than five goals between both teams. 1-0 or 2-1 is not an uncommon final total.
And though in World Cup play, if the score at the end of regular and additional or overtime is still tied, there is a penalty-shot shoot-out system that allows for a way to break the tie. So there is a conclusion. Though a jerry-rigged one. At it's essence, and until recent years when TV became more important, in league play ties were not only possible but to aficionados often considered them an appropriate way to end a game. Both teams played too well to lose. Or too poorly to deserve to win.
Americans abhor ties. We demand clear conclusions. Though in the early days our version of football also used to be able to end in ties, since we require definitiveness, sudden death was instituted to resolve them. We have a need to see the world in winner-loser terms. Just as we do in our foreign policy and wars--we hate the idea of stalemates and quagmires, though we seem, since Vietnam, to have developed a propensity to get stuck in them.
We Americans, on the other hand, generally like our basketball games to be full of nonstop scoring and our baseball games to be slugfests. In fact, to assure more home runs (many fans' favorite baseball moments) teams have brought their ballpark fences in and juiced up the baseball to assure that it travels further when struck. Only old-fashioned baseball fans prefer pitchers' duels. And football too thrives best as high-scoring affairs. Only our so-called fourth "major" sport, ice hockey, remains low scoring, but how popular is it among the U.S. population? Not very. Case closed.
But while down in Florida for a week, the place where we gather for coffee in the morning, the Green Owl, is full of folks from other countries where soccer or futbol is their only national sport and World Cup fever, thus, is running high. I got a fascinating earful each day from Ron and especially Ernst about the matches from the day before and those upcoming.
I learned about the beauty of the game (especially Brazil's samba-style) and the cultural metaphors soccer expresses in countries other than the U.S. If baseball remains our most metaphoric game, with basketball and football in recent years supplying more metaphors, soccer around the world, importantly in countries where scarcity is the norm (low-scoring, you the see, reflects this) is the only game that yields so much cultural meaning.
For example, Ernst the other morning was telling me why the faulty refereeing that has plagued World Cup matches this year is so upsetting. Not only does disallowing a goal that was clearly scored or allowing one where players were obviously offside profoundly affect the score since one goal is frequently enough to win a game or shape it outcome, but it goes against the grain of life as it is lived in many places in the world.
When there is little and considerable struggle is required to sustain life, when one somehow manages a small measure of success, to have it taken away can have catastrophic consequences. Where there is plenty, as in America (and relatively there still is in spite of the nagging Recession and where for too many having little defines life), a basketball referee's missed call on a three-point shot (it should have been three points rather than the two the ref called) is most often rendered insignificant the next trip down the floor. Games that typically end 102-98 are usually not affected by bad calls. And even when there are a lot of them they tend to even out over the course of a game--both teams are equally affected. There is so much to spread around that bad calls are more a distraction than a devastation as they usually are in soccer.
And both low scoring and the possibility of things ending in a tie are also clear metaphors for countries such as Ghana and Paraguay, still alive in World Cup competition among football and comparative economic giants such as Spain, Germany, and of course Brazil. Getting something is better than nothing and often a tie means that. Though resources are meager and lmost everyone is effectively in the same boat, at least we have something to feel good about that is sustaining.
So I'm beginning to get it and can't wait to see Argentina face off against Germany and maybe, in the finals, for the Cup, Spain-Brazil.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
5:07 AM
2 Comments:
please
nederlands argentina final,
nederlands to win
you heard it hear first
In your dreams.
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