Eight World Cups

by George Vecsey

  Olympic Stadium is located in a lovely greenbelt just outside downtown. I was pleased to note that a road outside the stadium is named after Owens, who used to claim he waved at Hitler after each gold medal. In fact, Hitler ducked a medal ceremony for two other black Americans, and the International Olympic Committee requested that he not congratulate any winners after that.

  I was creeped out by two large statues of athletes outside the stadium—Aryan art from the Nazi era. Then I climbed the inner stairway to the press box, recalling how Hitler bolted down the stairs, fleeing the medal ceremony.

  That was where he sat, somebody familiar with the stadium told me. That was where he departed.

  What would the Führer have thought of this French team, more than half of them men of color from far-flung French islands or the projects ringing French cities? I recalled how Jean-Marie Le Pen had mused in 1998 that the World Cup champion was a fine football team, although not necessarily French. I bet the Führer and Le Pen would have understood each other.

  Now Les Bleus were back in the finals, led by the old master, Zidane, who was about to play his last match, and his new target, Henry, a little-used sub in 1998 but a superb striker now. They would test the defense of Italy—Cannavaro, the muscular defender who was abandoning Juventus as it faced banishment to the lower depths, and Buffon, the emotional keeper who insisted he had stopped his gambling when the authorities asked him and was sticking with Juve.

  One thing I had come to feel about any World Cup: by the final, much of the energy and wonder has been expended on outsiders and hot teams and adventures along the road. There is almost never a true surprise team in the finals; the question is how they can possibly produce something beyond the sum of their two parts. I hoped these two squads would play an artistic match but acknowledged the alternate possibility, based on their familiarity with each other, that the final could deteriorate into the dives and fouls that had marred that World Cup.

  Almost right away, on a muggy afternoon, the chin of spindly Thierry Henry collided with the shoulder of sturdy Fabio Cannavaro. There is an Italian theory called dietrologia, meaning there is usually more beneath the surface. It is safe to say that the Cannavaro-Henry collision was not an accident.

  Referee Horacio Elizondo of Argentina presumably wanted no more of that, and three minutes later, he awarded a penalty kick after the hard-edged Italian defender Marco Materazzi bumped a French player from behind.

  That set up a classic confrontation—Zizou Zidane against Gigi Buffon. The two knew each other from when Buffon was at Parma and Zidane was at Juventus. Buffon guessed low, and Zidane calmly chipped the shot high, almost too high. It hit the bottom of the crossbar and softly dropped just inside the line to put France ahead, 1–0, as Zidane became only the fourth player to score in two World Cup championship matches.

  Both teams showed high energy and creativity for a while. In the nineteenth minute, Andrea Pirlo, the Beckham of Italy, bent a perfect corner kick from the right side, and Materazzi, in a perfect act of atonement for his foul, found a seam in the defense and headed the ball past Fabien Barthez, the bald, twitchy French keeper.

  So much for energy and creativity. The long season and the hot July weather and the fear of failure kicked in. With Henry trudging along, Zidane appeared to be the only player on the field capable of raising the level, but he was hounded by the buzz bomb Gennaro Gattuso and growing in frustration. Several times Zidane gestured to the official that he was being manhandled, but the ref waved him off. Zidane’s body language was nothing compared to the histrionics of born whiners like Cristiano Ronaldo or Wayne Rooney, but in retrospect his frustration was evident.

  The game slogged into extra time. Zidane disentangled himself in the penalty area and jogged upfield, trailed by a blue-shirted shadow, Materazzi, who liked to refer to himself as the Matrix. Materazzi seemed to be tugging at Zidane’s shirt, standard stuff; Zidane shrugged and shuffled a few feet away.

  Then, in the center of the field, in the center of the universe, with two billion people watching, Zidane performed a crisp little about-face and advanced on Materazzi, tucking his head down slightly. Moving forward, he drove the top of his head into the chest of Materazzi, a blatant assault, designed to injure, nothing subtle about it.

  Materazzi, trained by twenty years of Italian soccer to flop to the earth, arms and legs flailing, actually had reason to fall down. No Totti simulazione here. The ref flashed a red card at Zidane, who was watching impassively. Zidane did not protest or explain. He walked straight off the field, passing the glittering Jules Rimet Cup, the trophy of the World Cup, only a few inches from his right elbow. If this were professional wrestling, Zidane would have dashed the trophy to the ground, but he just kept walking, his career over.

  While the crowd buzzed at this inexplicable act, the teams concluded the final ten minutes and prepared for the shoot-out. Given Italy’s three straight failures in 1990, 1994, and 1998, there was no reason for confidence. Then again, just about every soccer power has a complex about shoot-outs—we never win them. Yet somebody must.

  With no Zidane available, France was shorthanded. David Trezeguet, who had replaced the weary Henry, went second, and pinged his shot off the crossbar. Grosso calmly made the fifth straight, and Italy was the champion for the fourth time. In the soccer way of thinking, the Italians won a “just” victory because, although devious, they did not lose their minds.

  Why did Zidane do what he did? The French manager professed not to know but clearly did not appreciate the self-destructive act by that great player. Zidane did not come anywhere near the media to explain himself. And when Materazzi marched through the mixed zone, he was carrying a boom box, with the volume turned up.

  Some journalists invited lip-reading experts to analyze the video of the head-butt. A few said Materazzi was speaking Italian, which Zidane spoke, and had dropped a yo-mama comment on Zidane. Maybe also a yo-sister remark.

  None of that excused Zidane’s meltdown. It was not exactly a military secret that Zidane had lost his cool before—his two-game suspension in the 1998 World Cup for stomping on the head of a Saudi player, a five-game suspension for a similar head-butt in the past.

  The French fans cheered him when the team returned to Paris and he appeared in public. Three days after the final, Zidane appeared on the French cable TV network Canal Plus and calmly gave his version: “He grabbed my shirt and I told him to stop,” Zidane said in conversational tones. “I told him if he wanted I’d swap it with him at the end of the match.”

  Zidane continued: “That is when he said some very hard words, which were harder than gestures. He repeated them several times. It all happened very quickly, and he spoke about things which hurt me deep down.”

  Zidane told the interviewer that he apologized to children and people around the world for his behavior. When asked if that meant he would not do it if he had the chance again, he said politely but adamantly: “I can’t regret it because if I do it would be like admitting that he was right to say all that. And above all, it was not right.”

  This match never had good vibes. Maybe it was the long march to the final; or maybe it was statues, the whiff of the sulfurous past. Either way, 2006 will be remembered not for Italy’s play but for Zidane’s balding head, a human projectile.

  16

  NELSON MANDELA MEETS FIFA

  NEW YORK, 2008

  Danny Jordaan, the chief executive of the South African World Cup committee, was flying to New York on November 4, 2008. Jordaan was of mixed race, part Dutch and part Khoikhoi, a pastoral tribe that has been called one of the most oppressed in South Africa.

  On the long flight from Johannesburg, Jordaan learned that Barack Obama was leading the U.S. presidential election and was about to become the first black American president.

  That reminded Jordaan of another election. “I was forty-six when I cast my first vote in 1994,” Jordaan said, after arriving in New York. Then he added the punch line: the first time he
was able to vote, “I was elected to Parliament.”

  Both nations had come a long way. South Africa had been banned from many sporting competitions because of apartheid, but now it was preparing to host the World Cup in 2010, mostly because Nelson Mandela was probably the most respected human being in the world.

  Mandela demonstrated grace and wisdom while enduring twenty-seven years in prison. He shared the Nobel Peace Prize and became the first black president of South Africa. He also had to put up with the machinations of FIFA.

  In 2004, two and a half months shy of his eighty-sixth birthday, Mandela was pressured to fly across the ocean to serve his country once again. To the people who run FIFA, he was just another public figure who needed to be manipulated before his country could be honored. According to Sepp Blatter, it was time for Africa to stage the World Cup, but South Africa had lost out four years earlier when a FIFA delegate mysteriously left Zurich and Germany won the election, 12–11.

  Now it was time to vote for the 2010 host, but first Mandela had to fly to Port of Spain, Trinidad, to pay homage to Jack Warner, the leader of the regional confederation, CONCACAF. Yes, the same Jack Warner who had sold over ten thousand extra tickets to the big match in 1989, putting people in danger in an overcrowded stadium.

  The survivor of Robben Island had to visit Trinidad to prove that Jack Warner was a big man, a very big man.

  Other soccer officials now wanted to get in on the act. Warner’s longtime ally in the confederation, Chuck Blazer, the American who, as general secretary of CONCACAF, handled television contracts and other business, flew in from New York for the festivities. Sepp Blatter rushed in from Zurich to make sure he was in the group pictures.

  Mandela—blacks and whites reverently called him Madiba, his tribal name—had survived prison by being able to control circumstances. Toward the end of his captivity, he had been negotiating his release and the future of his country from upgraded living quarters within prison. He walked out not only a free man but a national leader. So, yes, he understood the use of power.

  He also understood sports, boxing as a young man and also playing tennis, later admitting his lack of speed and power in both. As a prisoner at Robben Island, he negotiated with the guards to paint tennis lines in the yard and hang a net for regular matches among the prisoners. Later, guards and politicians were eager to play against the famous prisoner.

  Mandela never played rugby, which was regarded in South Africa as the white man’s sport, but he understood the importance of that game. In 1995, as South Africa prepared to be host of the Rugby World Cup, the first black president was presented with the green peaked cap of the Springboks and he wore it proudly as the national team improbably won the World Cup in Johannesburg. He was building a nation.

  In 2004, Mandela understood the message from FIFA that soccer and Africa needed to grow together. He knew he was being manipulated, but he got on the plane to appease the regional bosses, to give them the photo opportunity their egos needed.

  “This is my last trip abroad—I am here to plead,” Mandela said upon arriving in Port of Spain on April 29. He posed for pictures, spoke for fifteen minutes, and went to his hotel to rest.

  On May 15, Mandela was in Zurich for the vote, along with the country’s current president, Thabo Mbeki, and his fellow Nobel Peace Prize winners F. W. de Klerk and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Mandela said the World Cup would be “the perfect gift to celebrate ten years of democracy in South Africa.”

  South Africa’s chief rival for the bid was Morocco, whose champion was Alan Rothenberg, the previous head of the U.S. federation and, before that, the leader of the 1994 American World Cup. “We all appreciate him and his place in history, but that is it—Mandela is not a man of the future. He is a man of history,” Rothenberg said.

  The “man of history” was a major reason his homeland won the FIFA vote, an affirmation that FIFA was expanding the club to include Africa. Now South Africa had to prepare for a monthlong party in 2010. It had to perform the ruinous dance of the World Cup and Olympics: grovel first, overspend, throw a great party, and after the final whistle try to figure what to do with all those buildings and all those debts.

  The talent, will, and money of South Africa went to work on infrastructure that would help the nation far more than stadiums ever would—roads, buildings, air terminals, rail lines. And the talented younger cadre of the organizing committee began going out into the world to tell the nation’s story.

  As a young man, Jordaan had gotten an education, advanced in soccer just far enough to be rebuffed by the white establishment of the pre-Mandela time, and became an activist against apartheid. He never went to jail but waited decades to become anything close to a full citizen. Now Jordaan was in charge of the 2010 World Cup. The venerable Nelson Mandela had done his duty with his long trips to Trinidad and Zurich. It is safe to say that FIFA officials were not embarrassed.

  17

  SPAIN MAKES A BREAKTHROUGH

  SOUTH AFRICA, 2010

  I don’t usually indulge in predictions, too many things can happen, but just before the 2010 World Cup I wrote, “I’d like to see Spain meet the Netherlands in the final—two pleasing contenders, one new champion—but in the end I see Brazil. I always see Brazil, until proven otherwise.”

  Fair enough. Spain was the great slacker, always coming into the World Cup with artistic scorers from one of the top leagues in the world, and then getting whacked before the semifinals.

  I once read an article by a social scientist or psychologist who theorized that Spain’s national players seemed to lack corazón, heart, perhaps because Spanish mothers doted too much on their sons, rendering them not tough enough, not resourceful. Okay.

  Now, before our eyes, Spain had become something else. All the strengths had finally kicked in—the talent, the passion, the money, the rival cultures of Castile and Catalonia, the artistry of Barça, the influence of the Galácticos of Real Madrid, and the legacy of the Dutch.

  Spain openly acknowledged its debt to the Total Football of the Netherlands that had not quite won the World Cup in 1974 and 1978. Rinus Michels and Johan Cruyff had imported the style from Ajax to Barcelona, and now it was embedded in the Spanish national team.

  “I am Dutch,” Cruyff would tell El Periódico of Spain during the World Cup. “But I will always defend the football Spain play.”

  The Spanish coach was Vicente Del Bosque, an unassuming former Real player and coach, who used a quorum of Barça players with everybody buying into the premise of keeping possession with short, intricate forward passes. The players did not need to make hipper-dipper runs through the defense or dump the ball downfield and try to muscle it away from the other side. Spain believed in possession, enlightened possession. With that talent, it looked simple.

  And Spain was coming into this World Cup with credentials as a champion. In 2008, I watched the Euro finals in a Manhattan tapas restaurant with Reggie Williams, a former star linebacker in the NFL, who was in town recuperating from his latest knee surgery. (Reggie stuck his Velcro antibiotic pouch onto the wall of the restaurant to ensure maximum flow. The waiter was not about to ask a man that large to hide his antibiotics pouch; he brought us our tortillas and chorizo and cerveza. The surgery and medication saved Reggie’s knee.)

  On that warm afternoon in New York, the tapas patrons cheered the blond, ruddy-faced whippet, Fernando Torres, as he infiltrated the German defenses and won the European championship for Spain. Now the Spaniards were trying to take their edge from the Euros to the World Cup. Give them this: the Spaniards were one of seven nations that had qualified for six consecutive World Cup tournaments. Those powerhouses, those dynasties, were Argentina, Brazil, Germany, Italy, South Korea, Spain, and (roll of drums, please) the United States.

  Of course, the United States had been helped to some degree by the automatic inclusion as host in 1994, but so had Germany, Italy, and South Korea in the same period. It could be argued that the Yanks were qualifying from a less
er confederation, but try pushing that theory on a nasty afternoon in Central America while dodging missiles and maledictions.

  At any rate, the Yanks were back, with a new coach. Bruce Arena had moved on to coach the Red Bulls (and later would win championships with the Galaxy). Sunil Gulati wanted to hire Jürgen Klinsmann, who had stepped down as German coach, but Klinsmann was not ready to deal with all the soccer jurisdictions in this sprawling democracy, or maybe there was a financial gap.

  So Gulati hired a homegrown coach, Bob Bradley, from New Jersey and Princeton and MLS, who was smart, experienced, in great shape, and wary. I’m old enough and secure enough to understand public figures who put up a wall. I liked Bradley. When he responded with clichés, I found myself smiling. He was in there, somewhere.

  Not that this got Bradley the job, but his son Michael, a midfielder with an attitude, was working his way from MLS to Europe and was clearly going to be a mainstay on the national team for years to come. Michael once filled out a team questionnaire that asked him to name his favorite player, and he answered “Roy Keane,” the Irish former captain of Manchester United. The kid wanted to be a hard-ass like Keane-o. That could win a match sometime.

  The qualifying began on February 11, 2009, in that winter soccer haven of Columbus, Ohio, with weather right out of The Wizard of Oz—evil green clouds, snow, rain, thunder, lightning, wind, warnings to seek shelter, a full crowd, and Mexico as the opponent. Michael Bradley roamed the field, whacking opponents and scoring both goals in a 2–0 victory, and nobody was blown away by the weather.

  There was another epic qualifier in El Salvador on March 28. The United States fell behind, 2–0, but Jozy Altidore got one back. Then the United States played a long ball into the box, presumably for Altidore, who is six foot one, but long-haired Frankie Hejduk, all of five foot eight, vaulted on the back of his taller teammate and planted the goal for a draw and a point on the road. In August, the United States lost, 2–1, in Azteca, with Mexican fans reviving their hatred of Landon Donovan, particularly since he had been filmed urinating on the field during a practice in Guadalajara in 2004. By now, many Mexican fans believed Donovan did it during a qualifier in Azteca—all part of the lore, false or accurate, of the Hex. The Americans clinched a spot in the World Cup with a 3–2 victory in Honduras on October 10.