Monday, June 19, 2006

Sometimes a match is just a match

We had hoped to keep all our World Cup postings to a single sentence each, a kind of adjustment for all the excess bloviating that the tournament is otherwise drawing. But we'll go into a longer post to acknowledge what is surely a once-off event -- our complete endorsement of this post from Powerline. In it, "Hindrocket" provides the valuable service of extensive excerpts from a WSJ article offering Henry Kissinger's insights on watching the World Cup. And thus providing the evidence that the whole phenomenon of relating soccer to geopolitics has officially hit bottom.

Dr. K's insights are the kind of hackneyed cultural determinism that were getting John Motson laughed at 10 years ago -- it's not quite the "Teutonic efficiency/Latin flair" drivel but it's pretty close:

The traditional English style focuses on winning through athleticism -- kicking the ball deep and long and then outrunning the opponent, with defenders and attackers well-defined. With the European style, six players typically move forward and pass skillfully and four players remain back ... His favorite is the Latin approach, which is about style as much as substance ... Dr. Kissinger worries that globalization is "brutalizing" the Brazilians, who have lost some of their Latin panache

Now of course the World Cup is a tournament of nations, so aspects of the teams -- but moreso their supporters -- will reflect national characteristics, and so provide grist for the mill for The New Republic's Goal Post blog. But as Powerline's "Deacon" then adds to the post, this has nothing to do with what happens on the field:

In my view, the identity of a national team's coach (and how he perceives the stengths and weaknesses of his players) has more to do with how a team plays than the country's culture does. There have been World Cups (though admittedly not many) when Brazil has played cynically and Argentina has turned on the style, and World Cups when it's been the other way around. ... England often plays artistic football when Wayne Rooney is present and fit, but tends to revert to the long ball into the box when 6'7" Peter Crouch replaces him.

We can go on. Take for instance Argentina. If they win the World Cup, then it's going to be easy for the geo-footers to say that it's yet more evidence of a country showing that it has bounced back from the debt default and crisis of 2002 by doing things its own way. But if the economy was still in the tank, then they'd say that it's because sporting success is the only thing that the country has left.

Similarly, that supposed Latin flair of Brazil has been missing in action so far, and the usual cliche of African teams -- talented but technically deficient -- has been upended by Ghana who gave Italy a tough game and completely outclassed the supposed exemplars of the eastern European technical style, the Czechs. Playing their club football in England for Liverpool seems to have had no effect on Spain for Xabi Alonso and Luis Garcia -- contrary to Dr. K's theory -- who had plenty to contribute to Spain's demolition of Ukraine last week.

Last but not least: instead of asserting some claim about belated proof for the efficacy of the Atkins diet, as someone surely will, for Argentina's dazzling futbol collectivo, how about just using the explanation of a good manager and a superbly talented and enthusiastic set of players?

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