In the semifinals of the ’82 World Cup, France lost to Germany in a penalty shootout. That was a duel between Platini and Rummenigge, who was injured but leaped onto the playing field anyway and won the match. Then, in the final, Germany lost to Italy. Neither Platini nor Rummenigge, two players who made soccer history, ever had the pleasure of winning a world championship.
Pagan Sacrifices
In 1985 fanatics of unfortunate renown killed thirty-nine Italian fans on the terraces of the old Heysel Stadium in Brussels. The English club Liverpool was set to play Juventus from Italy in the European Cup final when hooligans went on the rampage. The Italian fans, cornered against a wall, were trampled among themselves or pushed into an abyss. Television broadcast the butchery live along with the match, which was not suspended.
After that, Italy was off-limits to English fans, even those who carried proof of a good upbringing. In the 1990 World Cup, Italy had no choice but to allow fans onto Sardinia, where the English team was to play, but there were more Scotland Yard agents among them than soccer addicts, and the British minister of sport personally took charge of keeping an eye on them.
One century earlier, in 1890, The Times of London had warned: “Our ‘Hooligans’ go from bad to worse … the worse circumstance is that they multiply … the ‘Hooligan’ is a hideous excrescence on our civilization.” Today, such excrescence continues to perpetrate crimes under the pretext of soccer.
Wherever hooligans appear, they sow panic. Their bodies are plastered with tattoos on the outside and alcohol on the inside. Patriotic odds and ends hang from their necks and ears, they use brass knuckles and truncheons, and they sweat oceans of violence while howling “Rule Britannia” and other rancorous cheers from the lost Empire. In England and in other countries, these thugs also frequently brandish Nazi symbols and proclaim their hatred of blacks, Arabs, Turks, Pakistanis, or Jews.
“Go back to Africa!” roared one Real Madrid “ultra,” who enjoyed shouting insults at blacks, “because they’ve come to take away my job.”
Under the pretext of soccer, Italian “Naziskins” whistle at black players and call the enemy fans “Jews”: “Ebrei!” they shout.
Rowdy crowds that insult soccer the way drunks insult wine are sadly not exclusive to Europe. Nearly every country suffers from them, some more, some less, and over time the rabid dogs have multiplied. Until a few years ago, Chile had the friendliest fans I’d ever seen: men, and women and children too, who held singing contests in the stands that even had judges. Today the Chilean club Colo-Colo has its own gang of troublemakers, “The White Claw,” and the gang from the University of Chile team is called “The Underdogs.”
In 1993 Jorge Valdano calculated that during the previous fifteen years more than a hundred people had been killed by violence in Argentina’s stadiums. Violence, Valdano said, grows in direct proportion to social injustice and the frustrations that people face in their daily lives. Everywhere, gangs of hooligans attract young people tormented by lack of jobs and lack of hope. A few months after he said this, Boca Juniors from Buenos Aires was defeated 2–0 by River Plate, their traditional rival. Two River fans were shot dead as they left the stadium. “We tied 2–2,” commented a young Boca fan interviewed on TV.
In a column he wrote in other times about other sports, Dio Chrysostom painted a portrait of Roman fans of the second century after Christ: “When they go to the stadium, it’s as if they had discovered a cache of drugs. They forget themselves entirely and without a drop of shame they say and do the first thing that comes into their heads.” The worst catastrophe in the history of sport occurred there, in Rome, four centuries later. In the year 512, thousands died—they say thirty thousand, though it’s hard to believe—in a street war between two groups of chariot-racing fans that lasted several days.
In soccer stadiums, the tragedy with the most victims occurred in 1964 in the capital of Peru. When the referee disallowed a goal in the final minutes of a match against Argentina, oranges, beer cans, and other projectiles rained down from the stands burning with rage. The police responded with tear gas and bullets, and provoked a stampede. A police charge crushed the crowd against the exit gates, which were closed. More than three hundred died. That night a multitude protested in the streets of Lima: against the referee, not the police.
The 1986 World Cup
Baby Doc Duvalier was fleeing Haiti, taking everything with him. Also stealing and fleeing was Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, while U.S. sources revealed (better late than never) that this much-praised Philippine hero of World War II had actually been a deserter.
Halley’s Comet was visiting our skies after a long absence, nine moons were being discovered around the planet Uranus, and the first hole was appearing in the ozone layer that protects us from the sun. A new anti-leukemia drug was being released, the daughter of genetic engineering. In Japan a popular singer was committing suicide and, following her, twenty-three of her fans were choosing death. An earthquake was leaving 200,000 Salvadorans homeless and a catastrophe at the Soviet nuclear plant in Chernobyl was unleashing a rainstorm of radioactive poison, impossible to measure or to stop, over who-knows-how-many miles and people.
Felipe González was saying sí to NATO, the Atlantic military alliance, after having screamed no, and a plebiscite was blessing his about-face, while Spain and Portugal were entering the European Common Market. The world was mourning the death of Olof Palme, Sweden’s prime minister, assassinated in the street. A time of mourning for the arts and letters: among those taking their leave were sculptor Henry Moore and writers Simone de Beauvoir, Jean Genet, Juan Rulfo, and Jorge Luis Borges.
The Irangate scandal was exploding, implicating President Reagan, the CIA, and Nicaraguan contras in gunrunning and drug trafficking, and exploding as well was the spaceship Challenger, on takeoff from Cape Canaveral with seven crew members on board. The U.S. Air Force was bombing Libya and killing a daughter of Colonel Gaddafi to punish him for an attack that years later was found to have been perpetrated by Iran.
In a Lima jail, four hundred prisoners were being shot. Well-informed sources in Miami were announcing the imminent fall of Fidel Castro, it was only a matter of hours. Many buildings without proper foundations but with lots of people inside had collapsed when an earthquake struck Mexico City a year before, and a good part of the city was still in ruins when the thirteenth World Cup got under way there.
Participating were fourteen European countries and six from the Americas, as well as Morocco, South Korea, Iraq, and Algeria. “The wave” was born in the stands at the Cup in Mexico, and ever since it has moved fans the world over to the rhythm of a rough sea. There were matches that made your hair stand on end, like France against Brazil where the infallible Platini, Zico, and Sócrates failed on penalty kicks. And there were two spectacular goalfests involving Denmark: they scored six on Uruguay and suffered five scored by Spain.
But this was Maradona’s World Cup. With two lefty goals against England, Maradona avenged the wound to his country’s pride inflicted in the Falklands War: the first he converted with his left hand, which he called “the hand of God,” and the other with his left foot, after having sent the English defenders to the ground.
Argentina faced Germany in the final. It was Maradona who made the decisive pass that left Burruchaga alone with the ball when the clock was running out, so that Argentina could win 3–2 and take the championship. But before that another memorable goal had occurred: Valdano set off with the ball from the Argentine goal and crossed the entire field. When Schumacher came out to meet him, he bounced the ball off the right post and into the net. Valdano talked to the ball as he came upfield, begging her: “Please, go in.”
France took third place, followed by Belgium. Lineker of England led the list of scorers with six. Maradona scored five goals, as did Careca of Brazil and Butragueño of Spain.
The Telecracy
Nowadays the stadium is a gigantic TV studio. The game is played for televisio
n, so you can watch it at home. And television rules.
At the ’86 World Cup, Valdano, Maradona, and other players protested because the important matches were played at noon under a sun that fried everything it touched. Noon in Mexico, nightfall in Europe, that was the best time for European television. The German goalkeeper, Harald Schumacher, told the story: “I sweat. My throat is dry. The grass is like dried shit: hard, strange, hostile. The sun shines straight down on the stadium and strikes us right on the head. We cast no shadows. They say this is good for television.”
Was the sale of the spectacle more important than the quality of play? The players are there to kick not to cry, and Havelange put an end to that maddening business: “They should play and shut their traps,” he decreed.
Who ran the 1986 World Cup? The Mexican Soccer Federation? No, please, no more intermediaries: it was run by Guillermo Cañedo, vice president of Televisa and president of the company’s international network. This World Cup belonged to Televisa, the private monopoly that owns the free time of all Mexicans and also owns Mexican soccer. And nothing could be more important than the money Televisa, along with FIFA, could earn from the European broadcast rights. When a Mexican journalist had the insolent audacity to ask about the costs and profits of the World Cup, Cañedo cut him off cold: “This is a private company and we don’t have to report to anybody.”
When the World Cup ended, Cañedo continued as a Havelange courtier occupying one of the vice presidencies of FIFA, another private company that does not have to report to anybody.
Televisa not only holds the reins on national and international broadcasts of Mexican soccer, it also owns three first-division clubs: América, the most powerful, Necaxa, and Atlante.
In 1990 Televisa demonstrated the ferocious power it holds over the Mexican game. That year, the president of the club Puebla, Emilio Maurer, had a deadly idea: Televisa could easily put out more money for the exclusive rights to broadcast the matches. Maurer’s initiative was well received by several leaders of the Mexican Soccer Federation. After all, the monopoly paid each club a little more than a thousand dollars, while amassing a fortune from selling advertising.
Televisa then showed them who was boss. Maurer was bombarded without mercy: overnight, creditors foreclosed on his companies and his home, he was threatened, assaulted, and declared a fugitive from justice, and a warrant was issued for his arrest. What’s more, one nasty morning his club’s stadium was closed without warning. But gangster tactics were not enough to make him climb down from his horse, so they had no choice but to put Maurer in jail and sweep him out of his rebel club and out of the Mexican Soccer Association, along with all of his allies.
Throughout the world, by direct and indirect means, television decides where, when, and how soccer will be played. The game has sold out to the small screen in body and soul and clothing too. Players are now TV stars. Who can compete with their shows? The program that had the largest audience in France and Italy in 1993 was the final of the European Cup Winners’ Cup between Olympique de Marseille and AC Milan. Milan, as we all know, belongs to Silvio Berlusconi, the czar of Italian television. Bernard Tapie was not the owner of French TV, but his club, Olympique, received from the small screen that year three hundred times more money than in 1980. He lacked no motive for affection.
Now millions of people can watch matches, not only the thousands who fit into the stadiums. The number of fans has multiplied, along with the number of potential consumers of as many things as the image manipulators wish to sell. But unlike baseball and basketball, soccer is a game of continuous play that offers few interruptions for showing ads. The one halftime is not enough. American television has proposed to correct this unpleasant defect by dividing the matches into four twenty-five-minute periods—and Havelange agrees.
Staid and Standardized
Don Howe, manager of the English team, said in 1987: “A player who feels satisfied after losing a match could never be any good at soccer.”
Professional soccer, ever more rapid, ever less beautiful, has tended to become a game of speed and strength, fueled by the fear of losing.
Players run a lot and risk little or nothing. Audacity is not profitable. Over forty years, between the ’54 and ’94 World Cups, the average number of goals fell by half, even though as of 1994 an extra point was awarded for each victory to try to discourage ties. The highly praised efficiency of mediocrity: in modern soccer, ever more teams are made up of functionaries who specialize in avoiding defeat, rather than players who run the risk of acting on inspiration and who allow their creative spirit to take charge.
The Chilean player Carlos Caszely made fun of greedy soccer: “It’s the tactic of the bat,” he said. “All eleven players hanging from the crossbar.”
And the Russian player Nikolai Starostin complained about remote-control soccer: “Now all the players look alike. If they changed shirts, no one would notice. They all play alike.”
Playing a staid and standardized soccer, is that really playing? According to those who understand the root meanings of words, “to play” is to joke, and “health” is when the body is as free as can be. The controlled effectiveness of mechanical repetition, enemy of health, is making soccer sick.
To win without magic, without surprise or beauty, isn’t that worse than losing? In 1994, during the Spanish championship, Real Madrid was defeated by Sporting from Gijón. But the men of Real Madrid played with enthusiasm, a word that originally meant “having the gods within.” The coach, Jorge Valdano, beamed at the players in the dressing room: “When you play like that,” he told them, “it’s okay to lose.”
Running Drugstores
In the ’54 World Cup, when Germany burst out with such astonishing speed the Hungarians were left in the gutter, Ferenc Puskás said the German dressing room smelled like a garden of poppies. He claimed that had something to do with the fact that the winners ran like trains.
In 1987 Harald “Toni” Schumacher, the goalkeeper for the German national team, published a book in which he said: “There are too many drugs and not enough women,” referring to German soccer and, by extension, to all professional teams. In his book Der Anpfiff (The Starting Whistle), Schumacher recounts that at the 1986 World Cup the German players were given innumerable injections and pills and large doses of a mysterious mineral water that gave them diarrhea. Did that team represent Germany or the German chemical industry? The players were even forced to take sleeping pills. Schumacher spat them out; to help him sleep he preferred beer.
The keeper confirmed that the consumption of anabolic steroids and stimulants is common in the professional game. Pressed by the law of productivity to win by any means necessary, many anxious and anguished players become running drugstores. And the same system that condemns them to that also condemns them for that every time they get caught.
Schumacher, who admitted that he too took drugs on occasion, was accused of treason. This popular idol, runner-up in two world championships, was knocked from his pedestal and dragged through the mud. Booted off his team, Cologne, he also lost his spot on the national squad and had no choice but to go and play in Turkey.
Chants of Scorn
It’s not on any map, but it’s there. It’s invisible, but there it is. A barrier that makes the memory of the Berlin Wall look ridiculous: raised to separate those who have from those who need, it divides the globe into north and south, and draws borders within each country and within each city. When the south of the world commits the affront of scaling the walls and venturing where it shouldn’t, the north reminds it, with truncheons, of its proper place. And the same thing happens to those who attempt to leave the zones of the damned in each country and each city.
Soccer, mirror of everything, reflects this reality. In the middle of the 1980s, when Napoli started playing the best soccer in Italy thanks to the magical influx of Maradona, fans in the north of the country reacted by unsheathing the old weapons of scorn. Neapolitans, usurpers of prohibited glo
ry, were snatching trophies from the ever powerful, and it was time to punish the insolence of the intruding scum from the south. In the stadiums of Milan and Turin, banners insulted: “Neapolitans, welcome to Italy.” Or they evoked cruelty: “Vesuvius, we’re counting on you.”
And chants that were the children of fear and the grandchildren of racism resounded more loudly than ever:
What a stench, the dogs are running,
all because the Neapolitans are coming.
Oh cholerics buried by quake,
you’ve never seen soap, not even a cake,
Napoli shit, Napoli cholera,
you’re the shame of all Italia.
In Argentina the same thing happens to Boca Juniors. Boca is the favorite of the spiky-haired, dark-skinned poor who have invaded the lordly city of Buenos Aires from the scrubby hinterlands and from neighboring countries. The enemy fans exorcise this fearful demon:
Boca’s in mourning, everybody knows,
’cause they’re all black, they’re all homos.
Kill the shit-kickers,
they aren’t straight.
Throw the bumpkins in the River Plate.
Anything Goes
In 1988 Mexican journalist Miguel Ángel Ramírez discovered a fountain of youth. Several players on Mexico’s junior team, who were two, three, and even six years beyond the age limit, had been bathed in the magic waters: the directors falsified their birth certificates and fabricated fake passports. This treatment was so effective that one player managed to become two years younger than his twin brother.
Soccer in Sun and Shadow Page 13
