Take My Ball and Go Home: USA, FIFA and What to Do Next

The old poker sharp’s maxim says that if you can’t spot the sucker at the table, you’re the sucker. On Monday, when I read reports of the technical strength of the United States’ proposal for hosting the 2022 World Cup, I could only but shake my head, knowing that at FIFA decisions are not made on the basis of any sound process. With the naïveté of lamb being walked to the slaughter, Sunil Gulati expressed confidence in the bid and the propriety of the selection process.

So, I woke up early Thursday morning with the dread of a man facing a death sentence; disaster seemed inevitable. In a few hours, FIFA would announce the hosts of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, and by 7am I already knew what to expect. A year ago, the betting favorites to host the tournament were England and the United States, respectively. By Wednesday, the lines had shifted dramatically, with Russia a prohibitive favorite (2/7, if you care about such things) for 2018 and Qatar heavily picked (2/5) to take the 2022 World Cup.

In the aftermath, American fans have been incandescent with rage on internet chatboards, and people have second-guessed what we did, wondering how such a tiny dot of a country had outmaneuvered us. People pointed to Bill Clinton’s rambling presentation, or to the fact that Morgan Freeman accidentally skipped a page in his speech. Others in the media noted the slick CGI stadiums presented by the Qatar delegation and the presence of Zinedine Zidane and a host of paid celebrity endorsers, but it still made little sense. Sure, Qatar had very pretty stadiums rendered wonderfully on a computer, but the United States had twice as many rendered in brick and steel, not to mention every other logistical matter ironed out.

There was an unseemly aspect to it, as two petro-rich nations took the prize, despite real doubts over important aspects of their respective bids. In Sports Illustrated, Grant Wahl, a reporter not known for hyperbole, spoke what everyone suspected when he said, “Choosing Qatar and Russia is the biggest indictment possible that FIFA is not a clean organization. The message here is that petrodollars talk.” (http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/writers/grant_wahl/12/02/3thoughts.wcbid/index.html#ixzz172FP09JQ)

Let me be blunt. In the next twelve years, all manner of defenses will be given for awarding Qatar the World Cup, but the simple fact remains that FIFA’s choice was not unorthodox, or outside the box, or about leaving a legacy. No, selecting Qatar is a completely indefensible decision. In fact, as a host nation, it is so incomprehensibly insufficient that, not only should it not have won, but no honest body should ever have taken it seriously. Before my making my larger about where to go from here, it is important to understand that Americans have a right to be outraged. This is not sour grapes or being a sore losing; had the United States lost to Australia, for example, that might make sense. But, for several reasons Qatar’s bid simply does not pass muster.

First, size does matter. Qatar has a population the size of metropolitan Austin, Texas, three-fourths of whom are workers imported, mostly from Pakistan, and eek out meager livings. Final numbers are not yet available, but most estimates are that at least 350,000 people went to South Africa for the World Cup. If we assume similar numbers for Qatar, that means that a country of 1.7 million people will need to accommodate a 21% increase in its population over night. As a point of comparison, this would be the equivalent of the United States having the entire nation of France show up for a month.

Moreover, there is a ludicrous aspect to the fact the airport will need to triple in size, nine additional stadiums will need to be built in a state the size of Connecticut, and one of the host cities does not even exist yet. Lusail, a city ten miles north of Doha currently exists only on paper. Qatar had such a dearth of hosts for potential matches that they had to create a city from scratch. While Qatar’s reported $50 billion budget may allow this, it is not ideal and, at any rate, FIFA should have ethical reservations about burdening any nation with these kinds of white elephants.

Second, lest we forget, this is soccer tournament, and some mention should be given to the fact that there would be an enormous competitive advantage to all of the nations placed in Group A along with Qatar. Critics of this argument note that in 1994 the United States was not a soccer power, nor was South Africa in 2010. Both of these nations had much more illustrious footballing pedigrees than Qatar, though. The USA had qualified on its own merits in 1990, and South Africa had also been to previous World Cups and won the African Cup of Nations. Qatar, the 89th best team according to FIFA rankings, has never gone to a World Cup, never placed in the top four in the Asian Cup, and has not even won a match in the Asian Cup since 1988. Though twelve years is a long time to build a team, without an embarrassing bevy of Brazilian imports, Qatar certainly looks to get run over rather substantially in what has likely become realistically a 3-team group.

Much has also been made of the heat, and rightly so. All of Qatar’s stadia are outdoor venues. The plan to keep players and, to a lesser extent, fans cool in games relies upon an as yet untested solar-powered carbon-neutral air conditioning system. Even supposing that it works, there are still real concerns about the health of players during training, and as several observers have pointed out, you cannot air condition the entire nation. With temperatures in July and July usually topping 110 degrees, this is a legitimate concern.

Finally, there are some vexing political complications. Qatar’s bid played up the tournament’s ability to transform a region. Qatar is among the more progressive states in the Middle East, but that is very faint praise indeed. Israelis still may not travel there, and unmarried women under the age of 35 are typically required to have a male escort in order to receive entry. Israel performed well in its 2010 qualifying campaign, and it is not beyond the realm of possibility that FIFA may well face the sticky situation of having to persuade Qatar to allow a team from a nation that it does not recognize to participate in contravention of its own laws. When faced with similar situations, such as Shahar Peer being barred from participating in the WTA’s Dubai Open because she was Israeli, many sports bodies have not shown the courage one would hope and expect.

England and the United States are rightly outraged to be on the outside looking in, and this is particularly vexing because there is real reason to doubt the legitimacy of the process. When, last month, reporters from England duped two FIFA Executive Committee members into soliciting bribes, what was shocking was not so much that they did it, but how eagerly and easily they made the demands. For more than a decade, very serious allegations of bribery and payouts have tainted FIFA. By all accounts, the bids for the United States and England were clean, fair and by the book, which sadly may have meant that they were, by the nature of the process, doomed from the start. I understand fully that observers around the world will point to the anger in London and Chicago as evidence, not of a corrupt process, but of two petulant powers who are miffed that they did not get their way. Despite this, the United States and England are right to want a process that is transparent and fair. If the United States was punished because it did not line selectors’ pockets with lucre, or if England was penalized for having an honest and aggressive press, then these are legitimate areas of concern that go beyond just bruised egos.

The question now is, “now what?” There are three paths that England and the United States can take. The first option is to simply acknowledge the nature of the game, accept the unwritten rules and develop a more, shall we say, creative approach to bringing in bids for major sporting events. The United States is not without sin when it comes to buying sporting events; the Salt Lake City Olympics demonstrate this. That said, the aftermath of that scandal, which included mass resignations, Congressional hearings and federal prosecutions, demonstrated that if nothing else the United States government cares about bid impropriety.

Getting into the corruption business carries with it a particular danger for Americans, though. The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act places uniquely stringent rules on Americans doing business overseas. In other words, Qatar does not violate its own laws by bribing or attempting to bride a FIFA official in Zurich, but an American would. This has often been a bone of contention among American businessmen who point out that “bribe” is a very culturally-specific idea for a practice of gift-based respect-showing that plays a crucial part in many African and Asian cultures. The argument goes that if buying a Rolls-Royce for a Tahitian or Cameroonian FIFA member would not violate the recipient’s own cultural sense of propriety, what harm is there in such a transaction? More aggressively put, it may be a net moral negative for Americans to be disadvantaged because federal regulations require us to more aggressively export our sense of morality beyond our shores.

Setting aside the question of its legality, morality or propriety, there is the very practical point that this is a fight we likely cannot win. After all, if Qatar is willing to spend $50 billion to host the World Cup, how much of their seemingly endless supply of petrodollars would they be willing to secure the votes of the people who decide the Cup’s host? The World Cup will be the biggest thing in the Qatar’s short history, and it could never mean that much to America. We would lose bidding wars because, though we have a lot more money, we tend not to want to waste it on vanity projects and bribes.

It would seem, then, that perhaps the only way forward is to work to clean up FIFA. The problem, though, is twofold. First, FIFA claims that it is not subject to the jurisdiction of any courts and will impose harsh sanctions on nations that attempt to subject FIFA to its laws and rules. There are some exceptions to this that FIFA has allowed, and many kinds of disputes are handled, by agreement, at the Court of Arbitration for Sports. That said, FIFA claims, as the IOC has before it, that it may not be compelled to answer subpoenas or to appear before legislative tribunals such as Congressional Hearings. As a legal matter, the veracity of this claim is somewhat murky. In the 1990s, American sprinter Butch Reynolds was involved in a lengthy court battle with officials from track and field’s international governing body and the IOC. Though the case was ultimately dismissed on a procedural technicality regarding jurisdiction, the courts seemed to suggest that, while an international body such as the IOC may remain beyond the reach of American courts, its sponsors that do business in the United States can have their funds seized or attached.

Again, the law in this area remains murky, but if the US Soccer Federation wanted to engage in a legal battle over the propriety of bid process, and it could meet certain jurisdictional thresholds, it could force FIFA to cooperate with such a suit because if it did not, FIFA could lose a default judgment and have the judgment taken directly from its sponsors, like Adidas, VISA and Budweiser that have substantial business interests in the United States.

If US Soccer did not want to become involved, there are ways for the United States government to take on FIFA corruption. Statutes like the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and RICO provide federal prosecutors with broad and powerful weapons for bringing down corruption, and because the United States takes a much more aggressive stance on the limits of its jurisdiction that other countries do, FIFA’s actions involving American entities (US Soccer) could well make it subject to US law. Again, there is the question of FIFA simply refusing to cooperate or threatening to ban the United States for interfering in FIFA functions, but such an approach would prove foolhardy since, ultimately, FIFA cannot win a game of chicken against the US government because America is not as fearful of being suspended or expelled from FIFA as other nations might be and the financial repercussions, which would include lost revenues from the United States (the largest purchaser of tickets to the last World Cup) and severe penalties for FIFA sponsors who do business in the United States would utterly devastate FIFA. The doomsday scenario would be that entities such as Adidas, XEROX, VISA, Budweiser and all of the other FIFA sponsors might have to make a choice between continued association with FIFA and doing business in the United States.

The more substantial problem with attempting to clean up FIFA, though, is that it will likely backfire. An astute observer will note that the United States has not won an Olympic bid since the federal government investigated the IOC in 2002, with New York City losing out to London for 2012, and Chicago losing out to Rio de Janeiro for 2016. Many of the higher-ups in the IOC were apoplectic that they had to answer for their practices, and the suspicion is that the United States may not receive another Summer Olympics for a very long time as a way of punishing our temerity. One can imagine that if Sepp Blatter were dragged in front of Congress or, worse yet, into federal court, that the US might never host another World Cup.

Neither cheating nor reforming FIFA through investigations are viable options, but there is one more radical move that could work to make international soccer more fair and open: the United States could simply leave FIFA. On its face, this may sound outrageous, but there is some precedent for this. In the early 1990s, the fourteen biggest club teams in Europe banded together because of frustrations with how UEFA, the governing body of Europe, ran international competitions. The key breakthroughs for this group came when they began making plans to form their own midweek European league that would largely be beyond the control of UEFA, and for which UEFA would receive no revenues. Seeing this as a threat to its financial position, UEFA acceded to many of this group’s demands.

If the United States could muster enough support from among the most important soccer nations, then threatening to leave FIFA might produce productive results. Nations like England, Spain and Italy have long expressed frustrations that FIFA does not properly recognize that a very small minority of nations produce the overwhelming share of revenues. Add this to the growing concern over ethics, and it may be feasible to put together a bloc of 5-6 important nations willing to threaten leaving FIFA.

Indeed, the success of the Qatar bid presents the potential for an ominous future for FIFA’s larger members. More and more small federations are beginning to flex their muscles in international soccer. From the inclusion of more teams from marginal leagues in the Champions League, to the death of the United States – Mexico rivalry brought on by the desires of CONCACAF’s Lilliputian members to have a structure that allows them to play more games, the rise of micro-teams threatens the quality of the sport. The idea of one nation, one vote has proven to be quaint, in the worst sense of the word. That Barbados has the same number of votes as Germany, or that Qatar occupies equal (or, apparently, superior) station with the United States does not make sense, particularly given that the revenue that sustains international soccer comes from a few select large and wealthy nations to the many small poor nations.

By threatening to break FIFA’s monopoly, large nations can restore order to the system. Transparent bidding that takes into account the quality of the product and the interests of players and fans and a leadership structure more akin to the United Nations, with something like a Soccer Security Council consisting of the nations that support the game financially and organizationally, is the only system that makes real sense going forward.

This is admittedly a real long-shot, but in the aftermath of their disasters, the United States and England need to think about finding ways to take the kind of drastic steps needed to reform FIFA. Qatar’s successful bid is nothing short of an international scandal, and as the press in England has set their teeth to the issue, it seems likely that more impropriety will be uncovered. FIFA has to change, and if it will not change willingly, it must be forced to.

Juan Williams: My Thoughts on a Completely Silly Controvsery

Occasionally in life you find yourself siding with people with whom you would rather not be allies. In a limited sense, the recent Juan Williams mini-conflagration has put me in this position. I have thought about what Juan said, and in the end, I just cannot find anything wrong with it. I know that NPR’s stated justification for firing him was that he had stepped beyond his role as a news analyst and violated the terms of his contract that prevented him from engaging in punditry. This is a naked post facto justification, and one that really does not get at what, to me, is the only interesting question in this whole mess: was Juan Williams wrong to say what he said? I say ‘no.’

To recap, on FOX’s O’Reilyey Factor, said the following:

“I mean, look, Bill, I’m not a bigot. You know the kind of books I’ve written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.”

When I read this, it comes across to me as an honest statement that could serve as a productive first step in a dialogue about tolerance. In fact, by all accounts Juan Williams is someone whose actions and words demonstrate that he has a genuine respect and compassion for Muslim-Americans, and nothing either in this statement or the totality of his body of work would suggest that he would in any way abridge any right or privilege that Muslims have.

What is true is that his initial feelings on encountering a Muslim on an airplane are not perfectly in line with his actions. In other words, in his statement he says that he gets nervous… and that’s it. At some point those rational aspects of his brain kick in and he understands that his fear is largely unwarranted. This is an entirely normal process, and one, frankly, that we as a society should *want* to have happen.

I travel probably more than just about anyone I know, and I’d like to think that I do treat people with a genuine respect, and I can tell you that, particularly 8-9 years ago, I experienced something just like what Juan Williams experienced. But, upon realizing what I was thinking, I chided myself, put on my headphones, read SkyMall and went to sleep. As I thought about it later, I didn’t at all beat myself up for what I thought and felt because those feelings were uncoupled from any action that actually hurt anyone, and I had at least the bare minimum of intelligence to understand that that initial reptilian response was not the most important mental function that occurred with respect to my encounter. At some point, something a little more complicated than my limbic system kicked in and replaced fear with reason.

In a world in which we are trying to get people to be more accepting and respectful of others, it is both stupid and counterproductive to castigate people for their initial feelings. Stupid because it is largely a fixed biological response based on the enormous amount of (often incorrect) information that leads to fear, and counterproductive because it makes people feel bad about that one single part of their behavioral process that neither harms another person in itself nor necessarily has to lead to an action that does.

One of my favorite stories to tell is how, many years ago, I was kicked out of the Los Angeles Museum of Tolerance. The basics of the story are these: in order to enter the museum, you have to pass through one of two doors: one marked “racist,” the other marked “not racist.” Obviously, everyone will attempt to pass through the “not racist” door… but, it’s locked and you *have* to pass through the “racist” door. We’re all racist...or so they say. We’ll, sometimes I get in a mood, and on that day, I was in a mood. I told the tour guide that the doors were bullshit, that I wasn’t a racist. She replied that we all think racist thoughts and know racist stereotypes. I said, “so what? If I say the phrase ‘sex with dead people,’ and you hear it, and that phrase goes through your mind, it doesn’t make you a necrophiliac.” Thoughts uncoupled from any action are simply not relevant; as human beings, it is our ability to use logic and reason in a way that supersedes basic emotions like fear that separates us from the lower species. Lust does not make me an adulterer or rapist; rage does not make me a murderer; fear does not make me a bigot. Well, like I said, I was in a mood. The “not racist” door had, for some reason, a lock at the bottom that allowed it to be opened (fire hazard?), so I opened it and went through. The tour guide was irate, and security escorted me out and asked me not to come back. Museum of Tolerance indeed. In my snarky letter that I wrote when I got home I suggested that they change the name to “Museum of Irony.”

People are free to feel whatever they want, and we should actually encourage people to express how they overcome their fears and trepidations and find it within themselves to treat people as equals. I will tell you honestly that if there is some kind of thought purity test, I would fail it. Vile, angry, mean-spirited and ugly thoughts pop into my head more often than I would like to admit, but I rarely act on them. Had Juan Williams’ fears been paired with an action, then he would be in the wrong. But, just feeling something is never wrong. In almost all arenas of life, feelings are almost completely irrelevant; actions are the thing.

Pimpin' Ain't Easy

The USA Today Coaches’ Poll was released this morning, with Alabama predicted to repeat as BCS Champions. In the NBA, Las Vegas has installed the Miami Heat as the heavy favorite. These two teams, on the surface, are very different: the Heat a composition of high-priced free agents come together to bring fun, flair and excitement to the NBA, and the Crimson Tide, a much more joyless and disciplined bunch captained by a taskmaster coach who would rather scowl than smile, glare than wink.

What unites them, though, are a series of news stories over the past month that revealed and complicated how we think about athletes in America and how to judge the complex relationship between players and the entities for which they play. Two metaphors were used, each outrageous in its own way, that demonstrate how those who control teams and athletes still see them in highly problematic ways. Alabama head coach Nick Saban, bemoaning the role of agents in players’ lives, referred to them as no better than, “pimps,” while Jesse Jackson in response to Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert’s impolitic letter brought up the spectre of slavery.

Taking the Saban example first, in order to fully appreciate this metaphor, we should be clear about what it is that a pimp does and is. A pimp is such an odious figure because he profits off of using the bodies of those he controls for the enjoyment of others. The abused give most of the money back to the pimp, and in the end will almost invariably end up washed up, strung out and used up, but this of no concern because there is a steady pipeline of new people to replace the old. Does this sound familiar? Indeed, from this perspective, Saban is right to point out the presence of pimpery in college football, but he should have pointed the finger at himself, not the agents.

This is an explosive charge to level, and the natural response is to point out just how shady these agents are, skulking about campuses trying to lure players to sign with them. Again, it bears mentioning just what it is that these odious agents do. The agents who find themselves in violation of NCAA rules usually get into trouble for giving players money in exchange for some additional consideration when they turn pro. To find this morally objectionable is to have thoroughly bought into the foolishness offered by the NCAA. Put another way, in what other area of life is it wrong to give someone money as part of a bid to get them to sign with you. For example, law students at elite schools often take summer jobs paying them up to $2,000 a week, mostly to do a few easy assignments, play golf and go on firm trips, all with the purpose of trying to get that student to sign with the firm upon graduation, at which point they generally get a hefty signing bonus. Yale Law School does not decry the role of legal recruiters in spoiling their students, but the NCAA would want you to believe that a player agent who gives a player money in order to convince them to sign a representation contract with them is somehow an odious and reprehensible person.

This naturally begs the question: what is the purpose of the NCAA rule prohibiting agents from contacting players or giving them money? These rules exist as a system of control designed to maintain the power of the institution over the players. Both basketball and football are littered with successful college coaches who failed at the professional level. These failures usually have much less to do with X’s and O’s, and more to do with the fact that a professional athlete generating and earning millions of dollars will not tolerate a control freak yelling into his ear, nor should they. If you look beyond even this narrow argument to the broader structure of the NCAA, you see myriad rules concerning things like transferring to other schools and prohibitions against alumni giving players money that are designed to put the player in a clearly subordinate position to the coach and the university.

This is not to bring up the debate about whether college athletes should be paid by universities. This money does not come from schools, but rather circumvents the school, which is of course precisely the danger that the schools fear. The natural retort is to point out that students are compensated well enough, given a free education, room and board. Setting aside the fact that many of these athletes are in fact on partial scholarships, there are two major points here.

First, there is the question of what is “enough.” Nick Saban is set to make $16 million over the next your years. At the University of Alabama, the cost of tuition, room and board is roughly $19,000, or $76,000 over the course of four years. To those of you without a calculator handy, Nick Saban’s compensation is 210 times larger than that of a scholarship player. I understand that coaching is a difficult job that requires very rare and specific skills –after all, Ice-T reminds us that “Pimpin’ Ain’t Easy”- but to suggest that his contribution to the success of the Alabama football team is 210 times greater than, say, Heisman Trophy winning running back Mark Ingram is to strain credulity beyond belief. Second, compensation in the form of goods and services is not really a defense. The payment-in-kind argument that says because the athlete is fed, housed and taken care of he needs nothing more ignores the fact that he cannot negotiate his terms and smacks of a certain uncomfortable kind of servitude, which brings us to the related case of Lebron James…

The first thing that must be said about Jesse Jackson’s comments regarding slavery is that in many obvious and important respects, Lebron James’ situation differs acutely from that of a slave. Slavery was an all-encompassing system of abject evil and depravity that by design broke the body, mind and spirit of blacks for the purpose of white wealth. It was a comprehensive system –physical, psychological, mental, sexual. Lebron James may well die with a billion dollars in the bank, will have traveled the world, met many famous and wonderful people and had a wonderful life. Obviously, to speak loosely of Lebron and slavery in loose terms is to do grave injustice to Mr. James’ own forefathers’ suffering.

That said, beyond the court, the Lebron-Wade-Bosh combination speaks volumes about how the modern athlete is less willing to allow circumstances to dictate their career. What is becoming increasingly clear is that the creation of this NBA Superteam was largely the brainchild of the players and their agents. In a very real way this represents a victory of labor over ownership. That Dan Gilbert was irate was no doubt partly fueled by the fact that his franchise lost tens of millions of dollars in value the moment that Lebron spoke his infamous words to Jim Gray, but it also stems partly from a sense of ownership that Gilbert felt he had in Lebron himself.

What complicates Jesse Jackson’s slavery comments is the larger truth that the tumultuous relationship between owners and players is not really a racial one, and in fact extends back to a point where blacks were not even allowed to play in the major white leagues. In 1911, the great pitcher Walter Johnson wrote an article entitled, “Baseaball Slavery: The Great American Principle of Dog Eat Dog,” in which he decried the lack of player power within the major leagues. He characterized baseball as an example of, “the employer tr[ying] to starve out the laborer.” Unable to ever become a free agent, he joined many others in the short-lived Federal League that gave players greater power and higher pay. Going back into the 19th Century, the earliest teams were run and owned by the players themselves. In other words, one can view Lebron’s Decision as the culmination of a long process within sports in which players have slowly fought for the lion’s share of the money that their skill, intelligence and muscle produce. It was, in this sense, particularly poignant when Curt Flood’s widow noted that her husband would have been proud.

Just as Lebron’s wealth complicates any metaphorical relationship to slavery, so too does it make it hard for the average working man to see Lebron as a working man whose crafting of his own career’s destiny is a victory for labor over ownership. Nonetheless, in the end that is what it is.

With the NFL and NBA collective bargaining agreements set to be negotiated over the course of the next year, we will likely see this century-old fight between athletes and owners press forward. At the college level, athletes are also influenced by this new ethos of dog-eat-dog capitalism, and will want their fair share of the monies that their efforts have generated. Just as I do not fault Lebron for making his career his own, I will never impugn the Reggie Bushes of the world for breaking a rule that should never have existed. Reggie’s only sin was getting caught, and when measured against the larger exploitation that occurs on college football fields, I simply have no patience for the sanctimony of the Nick Saban’s of the world who would line their own pockets with lucre earned by the sweat and blood of another’s brow, only to prevent that person from seeking a coin of their own. Lebron James and Nick Saban are both two insufferable egos, but I prefer the preening self-congratulation of Lebron James over the sneering condescension of Saban because at least Lebron’s solipsism does not come coupled with hypocrisy.

Unhappy About Dutch Tactics? Get Over It.

As soccer pundits put together their post-mortems on this World Cup, media around the world are piling on the Dutch for their tactics in the Final. From every sports page across the world have come lamentations and protestations that Holland did not play the game the right way; they did not play (ugh… I hate this phrase) the beautiful game. To these people and their histrionic protestations, I offer this advice: get over yourselves.

It has become accepted gospel in soccer circles that two of the great teams in soccer history did not win the World Cup: the Netherlands in 1974 and Brazil in 1982. I remember sitting at a bar in Salvador listening to a Brazilian go on and on about Socrates and the rest of Brazil national team, and how it was a great injustice that the better team did not win against Italy. My only reply, which produced some incredulity in my drinking companion, was, “Better team? Apparently not.”

I like pretty passing and flair as much as the next guy, but if Brazil didn’t have the guile or onions to unlock or break the Italian defense, then how good could they really be? And, while ‘Total Football’ (as annoying and overused a phrase as ‘the beautiful game’) might have been an important leap forward in the evolution of soccer, how good were the Dutch really if they lacked the discipline and killer instinct to finish off West Germany instead of trying to put on a clinic. Those were flawed teams, and we know this because they lost.

With proper respect to Herm Edwards, you play to win the game. Not to be pretty, not to “play the right way,” and not to impress the fans in the stadium and a worldwide audience- no, the object is to kick a ball into a net more times than your opponent. As overwrought sportswriters have become enamored with particular styles and displays of flair, they have forgotten the central truth that these things are incidental –and not central- to the game of soccer. To say that the 1982 Brazil or 1974 Holland teams were among the great teams of all time is only slightly less ridiculous than saying that the 1979 Harlem Globetrotters were among the great basketball teams off all time because Meadowlark Lemon could hit half court hook shots or bounce in free throws between his legs.

Getting back to Holland, they saw that Switzerland had beaten Spain by playing rough. The Spanish midfield is immensely talented and quick of foot and mind, but they are also diminutive to the point of effeminacy and do not hold up well to tough physical challenges, often becoming too in love with play-acting and diving. The Switzerland-Spain game was not pretty, but it provided a useful template. It would not make for pretty soccer, and the 700 million people watching around the world would likely not like what they saw, but the obligation of the Dutch team was not to ESPN or the fans around the world; their principle obligation was to each other to find a way to win. So long as the Dutch did not seek to hurt anyone (which obviously excludes Nigel De Jong’s Bruce Lee moment in which he chopped down Xabi Alonso with a kick to the chest), the accumulation of yellow cards by Holland does not bother me. Spain plays a quick-passing game based on timing and flow. Put their little midfielders on the ground a few times, and this gets broken up.

No sport is as obsessed with its style of play as is soccer. In football, we appreciate nasty defensive teams, and even respect the aesthetic of a low-scoring defensive struggle. Though the NBA changed its rules to prevent it, most hoops fans will give at least begrudging respect to the Bad Boy Pistons and Riley Knicks for playing dirt- er, I mean, giving a hard blue collar effort. Sure, most fans would prefer Lakers Showtime, but the problem is that there was only one Magic Johnson, and it would have been unfair to force to every team to play a style in which they could not win simply because the television audience preferred it. Similarly, Holland did not have an Iniesta or Xavi, but it does hav van Bommel and de Jong, so it would have been folly for the Dutch to engage in a flowing and pretty game with the Spanish when they had the thugs to play differently.

Of course, the reason that soccer fans are so particular about style is that, with so few goals scored in a game, if you are going to appreciate the sport you have to love the thousand moments that do not necessarily lead to a goal but that slowly tilt the tactical advantages one way or another. A basketball game will give you 100 or so made shots, a football game will usually provide you with 6-8 touchdowns, etc. But a soccer match might require you to commit two hours to see one or no goals. If the long goalless stretches are not compelling, soccer can be a truly awful game to watch. Nonetheless, the obligation to produce these kinds of games is with FIFA, not on the individual teams. No manager should ever eschew a tactic (again, provided that it places no player in too great a danger of injury) that will maximize his chances of winning. If FIFA decides that particular tactics hurt the marketability of its game, then outlaw them. Otherwise, if a team chooses to use them, deal with it.


Two Concluding Notes:

In the run-in to the World Cup, South Africa took more than its share of criticism. To be fair, I will admit that I myself had doubts that they could pull it off. People questioned the ability of an African nation to handle the immense logistical challenges, as though the tournament were being held in the DRC. There was sometimes a whiff of racism to the worries, and almost always a haughty Western condescending tone.

Well, egg on my face; this has been a spectacular World Cup. The organization passed the tests, and more importantly the citizens of South Africa were committed to making the Cup an overwhelming success. No violence, no huge organizational snafus, and stadiums that were mostly filled. (no World Cup is all sold out) Only a genuinely grumpy bear would find fault with this tournament. Maybe the vuvuzelas were a little annoying, but to be honest by the end of the tournament I had come to almost… like them.

Really, most of the things that people complained about were not South Africa’s fault. Speaking of which, here are my suggestions for improving the 2014 World Cup:

1. After the group stages, the eight group winners and 8 runners-up should be re-seeded from 1-8 and 9-16, respectively. One problem that plagues the final games of the group stage is that often teams have no reason to look for a win. I remember sitting in Durban’s glorious stadium watching a genuinely awful match between Portugal and Brazil. This should have been a marquee match-up, but these two teams were content with a draw that would send them through to the next round. It ended in a terrible 0-0 draw. If Brazil or Portugal had an incentive to win so as to avoid playing a tougher playoff opponent, they might actually have pressed for a goal. To many of the last group stage matches involve eliminated or all-but-eliminated teams or teams that have already secured their place against a team actually playing for something. This would help to alleviate that. It would also help to provide more balance to the knockout stages. Really only Holland and Brazil were on one half, while the other half had Germany, England, Spain, Portugal and Argentina. There is no reason that Holland-Brazil, for example, should be a quarterfinal match, except that that was what the ping-pong ball said might happen.

Had FIFA used this method and used its standard tie-breaking methods the tournament would have looked like this:

Winners
1. Argentina
2. Holland
3. Uruguay
4. Brazil
5. Germany
6. Spain
7. Paraguay
8. USA


Second
9. Japan
10. Chile
11. Portugal
12. England
13. Mexico
14. Ghana 4
15. Korea
16. Slovakia

The playoff match-ups:

1 Argentina
16 Slovakia

8 USA
9 Japan


4 Brazil
13 Mexico

5 Germany
12 England

2 Holland
15 Korea

7 Paraguay
10 Chile

3 Uruguay
14 Ghana

6 Spain
11 Portugal

2. Fix the officiating. Use an electronic ball that automatically records a goal or use instant replay of goals. This is common sense and doesn’t require much more comment. FIFA also needs to use stricter standards for picking its officials. No offense to the Malian professional soccer scene, but the US was robbed of two points against Slovenia because it had a ref who had no experience with matches at this level. This just isn’t acceptable. Players wait their entire lives for a chance to play in the Cup, and they should have the benefit of excellent refereeing irrespective of confederation politics.

3. Fix the ball. I actually doubt that Jabulani was that bad or different. Most soccer players miss most of the shots that they take on goal, and having a ball to blame is all too convenient. That said, FIFA should have its ball ready and available for the entire World Cup qualifying campaign. Give teams two years of playing with it in a variety of conditions. If everyone has used the ball, it doesn’t matter what new technological innovations Adidas adds –target seeking radar, wings, thrusters- if everyone knows and has played with the ball, it’s fair.

Also, a small thing: let people in the stands keep the ball. Whenever a ball went into the stands, the people are expected to throw it back. People who tried to keep the ball got a quick visit from armed security guards. This seems heavy handed. You paid for a ticket, and FIFA is practically printing cash on the World Cup. They can afford 5-6 extra balls per match.

4. Fix the Ticketing. I’ve written about this before, but FIFA’s ticketing system is idiotic, counterintuitive, frequently crashes and is in need of an overhaul. FIFA as an organization is massively corrupt and nepotistic. To wit: the monstrosity that is FIFA’s ticketing portal is run by Sepp Blatter’s son, and not well. Open it up to bids. If Ticketmaster can sell 500,000 *N’Sync tickets in 15 minutes, you can find someone to manage this.

5. Bring Greater Transparency to the Qualifying and Seeding. In the same way that it makes no sense to unveil the ball just months before the Cup, it also makes no sense to keep many aspects of qualifying and the Cup itself secret or unknown. Before the tournament starts, make clear the formula for who gets seeds and how teams will be allocated to groups. There were rightly cries from small nations in Europe in the final stage of qualifying when the newly unveiled rules helped to give the big powers more favorable routes to South Africa. Similarly, it seems unseemly for nations not to know precisely how to go about earning a seed until just a few weeks before the World Cup draw, particularly since the rules almost always favor established soccer powers. Can you imagine David Stern not unveiling the structure of the NBA playoffs until 75 games into the season? That would be ludicrous. An important aspect of any competition is for all participants to know the rules before the thing begins. This is just basic stuff.

Got Balls?: The Art of the Penalty Kick

As the World Cup Final looms, no clear consensus has yet arisen as to who people think will win it all. What people seem to agree on, though, is that they hope the match will be decided before it comes to penalty kick shoot-outs. Soccer purists hate penalty kick shoot-outs. They seem like an unfair way to settle a match after two hours of often intense play, and the final victor seems a bit arbitrary in the end. Or, so the argument goes. Myself, I have never disliked the penalty kick. Perhaps as an American raised on the idea of free throws deciding basketball games and field goals deciding football games, this just seems normal and reasonable.

In this tournament, we have already seen two matches decided by penalties: Uruguay-Ghana and Japan-Paraguary. In the letter match, I remember watching as Yuichi Komano prepared to take the third penalty kick in Japan’s match against Paraguay. He looked every bit the calm and confident striker, and the kick he took reflected it. He elected to put the ball in the top corner where the goalkeeper couldn’t get it. He wasn’t trying to get the keeper to dive the wrong way, or guess which way the keeper would dive and put it in the other direction. No, he would fail or succeed based on his own ability to strike the ball with purpose and accuracy. In the end, he missed, putting the shot just off the crossbar, but I respected his moxie and, for lack of a better terms, the ballsiness of his shot.

You can tell a lot about how someone takes a penalty kick. Who can forget the nonchalant chip that Zidane used to beat Bufon in the 2006 World Cup Final. It was an act of supreme haughty arrogance that presaged his oddly calm meltdown later that match. Or, what fan is not frustrated by the run-stop-run-stop-run technique that Cristiano Ronaldo uses to try to get the keeper to move in one direction so that he can put it in the other. This annoyingly cheeky approach perfectly fits with a player whose sublime otherworldly skills are too often overshadowed by his silly antics.

Of course, by now everyone knows that the Ghana-Uruguay match was decided by PK’s. Asamoah Gyan, fresh off of knocking the United States out of the tournament, allowed the moment to get the best of him, rushing his kick and sending it high. To the extent that we value nerve and poise as important ingredients in athletic contests, we could in the end but conclude that Uruguay were the deserved winners, if for no other reason than that they could master themselves and find a place of calm as they took the most important of the likely millions of kicks that they have had in their lives. Watching as the last two Ghanaians offered up lame and almost perfunctory efforts, I felt justified in thinking that the stage was simply too big for them.

Penalty kicks take your measure. What will you do? An effective kick to either of the top corners will beat any goalkeeper, even if they guess right. But, then you risk being the goat who couldn’t put the ball on frame (apologies, Roberto Baggio). You could take a safer shot, and hope that the goalie doesn’t guess right. Safer, perhaps, but then you are leaving the matter to someone else. Is there a more difficult decision to make in sports? The fate of a nation’s hopes and dreams will settle on your level of confidence in your ability to place a ball or fool a goalie. Given my personality, I always prefer players who decide to make the goalie irrelevant, pick a corner and go for it. Be the author of your own destiny. Easy for me to say, though, from the comfort of my desk with no cameras or a stadium full of people who will love you or hate you depending on your next move.

Two of the last four World Cup Finals have been decided by penalty kicks. In 1994, Roberto Baggio’s infamous miss gave Brazil its fourth star. In 2002, had French coach Raymond Domenech not subbed out Thierry Henry for David Trezuguet, France may well be defending champions (Henry missing a PK seems a near metaphysical impossibility). Small moments that changed soccer history. Given Spain’s inability to score goals and Holland’s propensity to make things rather more dramatic than necessary, this final could well come down to the dreaded spot kicks. If it happens, I’ll sit back and enjoy the spectacle, anxious to find out what kind of man David Villa, Carles Puyol, Wesley Sniejder or Mark van Bommel are. To me, this is the essence of sports: put the man to the test and discover his mettle.

Once More, This Time to the Beach

Were you there? Did you sit, pensively but noisily in Lofuts Versfeld Stadium, biting nails while America seemingly wasted its chance at World Cup glory? Were you there? Did you explode with cheers of beer-soaked joy as Landon did perform his magic? Were you there? Did you march into Melrose Arch with Solo cups and ping-pong balls and march out with an comically large bill and local celebrity status? Were you there? We were there. We were there for the matches, the beer pong, the late nights, the braais, the van rides, the shabeens and the too-close encounters with animals that would eat us. We were there.

Life is operatic in its rhythms; you sit and suffer through long stretches of mundane sing-song, awaiting and preparing for the transcendent musical moments that make your patience worthwhile. In those arias, those wonderful moments you cheer for and revel in, you experience a kind of profound joy at having been touched by something almost celestial. This morning, as the last of the World Cup crew headed out the door and back to America, the curtain fell on this performance. As I sat in bed, taking in the silence, I knew that just as all things in life must pass, so too did one amazing month. To say that it was epic would be to do disservice. Homer wrote epics, and this was not that. The Iliad had much less alcohol; The Odyssey much less foolish revelry.

I increasingly get the sense that my life going forward will forever be chopped up into four-year increments, filled with years in which I somehow manage to occupy my time while waiting for the next World Cup. Work, money, love, death, children, job, politics and the myriad quotidian bits of minutiae that fill a life get washed out in the bright light of glorious moments spent with friends. Those things are but interferences and distractions from who we really are and what we were really meant to do and be.

But, with three years and eleven months until the next go-round, I realize that it’s now time to get back to all of the boring things that fill most of a life, but also make the amazing moments possible. I mostly take from this a feeling of deep gratitude that I was one of the few who got to live this wonderful month. If more people could find the courage to break from their lives and live thusly, they would be happier, though perhaps it would dilute the special uniqueness of my own experience. The fewer the men, the greater the share of glory, no? So as I conclude, I offer this bastardized tidbit from The Bard:


Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names.
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Vashi and Karl, Bryan and Aaron,
Loosh, Lloyd, Matt, Curtin, Mike and Christian,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And no World Cup shall e'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember'd;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he today that pours beer with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in America now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That drank with us in South Africa!

For the Love of God, Do NOT Root for Brazil.

When the clock read 120 minutes at Rustenburg, American fans were naturally crestfallen. Americans drawn to soccer for the first time by the spectacle of the World Cup will, I imagine, mostly stop paying attention now that they do not have a national rooting interest. Others, though, will look for new teams to support. Understanding this, I feel compelled to perform a public service: do NOT root for Brazil.

Shocking, I know. Nike commercials in airports and endless streams of idiotic drivel about joga bonito have convinced simple-minded fans that Brazil is a fun, free-rolling and entertaining team that plays soccer the right way. Their fans dance, play drums and bring loads of pretty women in skimpy clothes. What’s not to love? Well, as a dedicated hater of Brazilian soccer, I will offer the soccer newbie five reasons not to root for Brazil. And, since you may be new to this whole soccer thing, I’ll do it in a way that you’ll understand.


1. If you hate the Yankees, you should hate Brazil.

Like the Yankees, Brazil is the unquestioned master of their sport. Indeed, their success has been remarkably similar- in 109 years of professional baseball, the Yankees have won 27 titles (a 24.7% championship rate); Brazil has gone to 19 World Cups, winning five of them (a 26.3% championship rate). More than that, both teams act with an air of preening smuggery that is completely unappetizing to all of their fans. Like the Yankees, Brazil seems to get all the calls and all the luck, and will rarely pass on an opportunity to tell you how amazing they are.

2. If you hate the Red Sox, you should hate Brazil.

Having lived in New England for 6 years now, I have grown weary of the angst-ridden articles and news reports about the Red Sox. Boston fans drone on and one about every bit of minutiae involving their team, and lose all perspective about what their team is and means. Similarly, Brazil fans, newspapers and television programs devote endless solipsistic adoration on the every movement and development of their team. Though Brazil has won 5 World Cups, if you spend much time with any Brazilian fan, you’ll begin to forget that they also came up short in 14 others.

3. If you hate Manu Ginobili, you should hate Brazil.

Yes, I know Manu is Argentine, but in his approach to his sport, he is utterly Brazilian. Every NBA fan not in San Antonio hates Ginobili because he refuses to play an honest brand of basketball. Similarly, though there is no doubt that Brazil is massively talented, they are also infuriating in the degree to which they flop about and go to ground at the slightest provocation. The hulking Brazilian centerback Lucio, who is almost always the biggest and roughest player on the field, has no compunction about cynically throwing elbows or kicking ankles, but the moment a 150 pound midfielder breathes on him, he falls to the ground as though struck by a sniper. He will invariably roll around on the ground for several minutes, making a naïve viewer certain that he had suffered a compound femoral fracture or dislocated knee… But no! Miracle of miracles, the awarding of a free kick has healed him.

More shamefully, against Turkey in the 2002 World Cup Brazil was on the business end of a whooping until Rivaldo drew a mendacious red card by fooling the referee into thinking he had been hit in the face when in fact nobody came anywhere near his ugly mug. American fans might remember that in 1994 Brazil was in a tight 0-0 match against the US. Frustrated at the temerity of the American team to actually try to beat them, Leonardo, the Brazilian left back, unleashed an ugly elbow that broke his skull.

The real Brazil is not Ronaldinho doing tricks or Roberto Carlos dancing with a ball through an airport. No, this team cheats, flops and pulls every dirty trick in the book in order to win.

4. If you hate Tim Tebow, you should hate Brazil.

No sporting figure in America has caused as much division of opinion as Florida’s Hesiman-winning quarterback. People who hate him will often groan at his over-the-top religiosity and the degree to which he was over-hyped. Well, if you are looking for an over-hyped religious zealot, you need look no further than Brazil’s midfielder Kaka.

At one point, Kaka was being touted as the best player in the world. At this World Cup, I have had the pleasure of seeing Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi and Kaka play. Kaka is not even close to being in their class. In fact, he is probably only the 5th or 6th best player on his own team. Ronaldo scares his opponents any time he is on the field; Messi dazzles with the ball at his feet. Kaka… well, he is sometimes pretty okay.

In Brazil, though, Kaka is loved more than any active player. Part of it is because he is pretty, and part of it is because he passes on no opportunity to tell you about Jesus. In fact, under his jersey he wears a shirt that says, “I Belong to Jesus.” That may or may not be true, but what is true is that Kaka does not belong in any discussion of the world’s truly elite players.

5. If you hate Duke, you should hate Brazil.

In my youth, I hated Duke. They made me so angry that when they won, I would sit fuming for hours. No basketball team infuriates more people than Duke, and let’s face it a big part of this has to do with class and race. Duke’s students are (perceived to be?) very rich, very white, very privileged and very smug. I remember that, while working at Duke, the school’s employees were almost all UNC or NC State fans. When I would ask them about it, they would reply almost in an air of bemusement, ask me why in the world any working class black person would root for Duke.

For the Brazil-Portugal match, I sat in the Brazil rooting section. Surrounded by yellow jerseys and green wigs, I noticed something. My brothers and I were the only black people in that section of the stands. For the next few minutes, we played a game of “Where’s Negro?” trying to spot the black people. Not one. In a nation that is, depending on the survey and methodology, between 45% and 75% black, this is shocking. I had sort of expected to see lots of hues of browns and blacks, but the Brazilian crowd was so white that it made a night at the Yale Club seem like a Nation of Islam rally.

In an American context, there is always a bit of an uncomfortable aspect of the fact that so many sporting events involve mostly white people watching mostly black people. In the Brazilian context, this is even more troubling because the mostly white Brazilian upper class has constructed a powerfully efficient hegemonic race system that marginalized blacks, but celebrates their bodies as laborers, sexual beings and athletes. Sitting in an all-white crowd of people from a mostly-brown nation felt very uncomfortable.

At any rate, if Cameron Crazies infuriate you because they are a bunch of privileged, suburban white kids who drive BMW’s and wear Izod, then the rich Brazilians who travel to the World Cup will provide ample fuel for your angry fires.

In many ways, I know that I am fighting a losing battle. Simple-minded fans will always just choose a winner, and because Brazil has become suddenly hip, they will choose the yellow jerseys of the Brazilians. I urge you, though, do not do this. In this World Cup, Germany, Holland and Argentina have all played attractive and attacking soccer. Choose them. Ghana is the last African nation standing. Choose them. Spain plays with class and flair. Choose them. Portugal has the world’s best player. Choose them. But please, just do NOT root for Brazil.