Maradona gives in

February 1, 2008


So, Diego Maradona did cheat.

Well duh. We all know that. Still, this is pretty big news. This is Pete Rose admitting he gambled. This is Barry Bonds admitting he juiced. (That last one hasn’t happened yet, and probably never will, but you never know.)

Maradona is about as vilified an athlete as you can find in England. He’s the man that stole England’s 1986 World Cup Final appearance. He’s lied about cheating for over 20 years. And he’s an easy target - a sports star fallen from grace, fat and formerly coked out.

A little background on why I care about this.

I’ve always fancied myself “sort of” a soccer fan. I’d love to call myself a fanatic, following every game and screaming at the top of my lungs for a goal, but in reality I am nearly fanatical in my indifference. I root for England’s national team because, as an unabashed anglophile, I’m supposed to. If you ask me, I’ll instantly tell you I’m a Liverpool fan, even though I couldn’t name three players on the team (especially since Michael Owen left).

I was a fan, once. I went through a phase in college - a phase that corresponded perfectly with a cable provider that included the Fox Soccer World channel - where I actually got to watch soccer. And it was fun. I’ve even got the flag of St. James to throw out on the flagpole during the World Cup.

So as an England National Team “fan,” I know of two years that stand out more than any other in English soccer history: 1966, the only year England won the World Cup tournament, and twenty years later - 1986, the year that Diego Maradona cheated England of its World Cup hopes.

Even I’ve seen footage of Maradona’s two goals during the 1986 World Cup. His second - an amazing feat of dribbling that proved his worth as one of the world’s best players at the time - led to a 2-1 win over England in the Semi-Finals. The first, though, is the real star - a goal scored as Maradona palmed the ball into the goal.

Duh. Hands are illegal in soccer.

When asked, he claimed it was “a little with the head of Maradona and a little with the hand of God”. Every Englishman with a passing fancy of soccer hated the man. Argentina loved him.

Then he got fat. Addicted to coke, he nearly died. But he never admitted that he cheated.

Until now. From an article in The Sun:

“If I could apologise and go back and change history I would do. But the goal is still a goal, Argentina became world champions and I was the best player in the world.

“I cannot change history. All I can do now is move on.”

I have a feeling that it’s going to take more than this sudden revelation for England fans to finally move on.

Tags: Soccer, Sports |

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The new sport of racism

January 21, 2007


Soccer is an international game – one that connects hundreds of cultures and strengthens the lives of millions of children worldwide.

Take 50 children of different nationalities, cultures, races, languages and backgrounds and you can find 50 children who understand soccer and can start a game up with just a ball and some crudly carved out goals.

Except in Clarkston, Georgia.

In Clarkston, the mayor has banned soccer from the town park. Because the residents have started complaining about an influx of refugees. Because the park is better used for more “white” games like baseball and football.

I wish I was making this up. But I wouldn’t be so angry about something like this if it wasn’t true. From Warren St. John’s article in the New York Times:
(May have to sign up, but as of now, it’s sign-up free)

Refugees Find Hostility and Hope on Soccer Field

CLARKSTON, Ga., Jan. 20 — Early last summer the mayor of this small town east of Atlanta issued a decree: no more soccer in the town park.

Members of the youngest Fugees team, from left, Jeremiah Ziaty, Grace Balegamire, Qendrim Bushi, Josiah Saydee and Santino Jerke and Coach Luma Mufleh celebrate Josiah’s 13th birthday at the Saydees’ apartment in Clarkston, Ga.

“There will be nothing but baseball and football down there as long as I am mayor,” Lee Swaney, a retired owner of a heating and air-conditioning business, told the local paper. “Those fields weren’t made for soccer.”

In Clarkston, soccer means something different than in most places. As many as half the residents are refugees from war-torn countries around the world. Placed by resettlement agencies in a once mostly white town, they receive 90 days of assistance from the government and then are left to fend for themselves. Soccer is their game.

But to many longtime residents, soccer is a sign of unwanted change, as unfamiliar and threatening as the hijabs worn by the Muslim women in town. It’s not football. It’s not baseball. The fields weren’t made for it. Mayor Swaney even has a name for the sort of folks who play the game: the soccer people.

Most of us will chalk this up as yet another act of not-very-subtle racism in the South, an area that has a reputation of being more redneck than receptive.

Something about it resonated in me today, however. After reading two books that tied in with the immirgrant experience, I’m beginning to understand how frightening it can be to be torn from your home country and placed into a strange land – especially one that makes immigrant-shunning a common practice.

In the United States, we celebrate our ancestory. But we want our immigrants and refugees to stay in our past. We’re quick to tell stories of our ancestors – of the people who fought to get out of the bad situations they were in and brave a New World with next to nothing. We praise the ingenuity. We honor the old customs. We cling tightly to the fact that our family roots are stationed firmly in another country.

That’s all fine in the past. But keep today’s immigrants out, thanks. We live in a culture that tolerates cultural diversity, but prefers to keep it an arms length away. The only good immigrant is a historical immigrant.

The lineage of every white resident of Clarkston can be tied to immigrants. Not one person of non-Native descent can consider themselves free from that fact. A good majority of those immigrants – all the way back to the Revolutionary War – found themselves under tremendous strife in their home countries. Religious persecution. War. The same things that are driving today’s refugees to the United States.

These aren’t illegal immigrants. They’re refugees. They’re legal, and they’ve chosen Georgia as their home. And now they’re being treated as if they’re third class citizens.

The residents of Clarkston are forgetting that the immigrants in their own family tree were also persecuted for being different. They hated it. They fought to gain ground in a culture that didn’t want them.

Instead of righting the wrongs that their own history brings to light, they simply turn their backs.

It doesn’t matter that the local soccer program is helping shape these children’s lives by making them better students and giving them a support system the city itself would never bother considering. What matters is that the Good Ol’ Clarkston residents are too afraid of a different way of life – one that includes putting aside their irrational biases and blatent racism and living in harmony with their brothers and sisters.

I’d be willing to guess the Christians among them support this claim. And it’s always amazing how many of those Christians draw a line as to who they treat as they would like to be treated. For a highly religious area of the country, it’s disheartening to see so many go against one of the basic principles of The Bible – love everyone.

The mayor should be ashamed. Every citizen that fought to rid the town of a soccer league should be ashamed. But it won’t happen. There’s no way they’d even consider what they’re doing to be wrong. What’s the point?

After all – these immigrants are around today. They’re insufferable. They’re not historic, and they’ve got a long way to go before they’re held up on a pedestal – an example of the American Dream and the lengths some go to live it.

And what a Dream it’s turning out to be.

Tags: Journalism, Politics, Soccer, Sports |

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Rooney and the Cross

June 23, 2006


This is not a mock crucifixion.

This is Wayne Rooney – the most important player to England’s success – wearing the St. George Cross and mimicking his goal scoring celebration.

If you think this is a crucifixion, you are not only out of touch with professional soccer, but you’re out of touch with modern culture. You are a person looking for a fight. You are searching high and low for something to complain about, something to be offended by.

Here’s a little hint to everyone that feels it’s their place in the world to foist their moralistic views around on the rest of us – check your facts. Do some research. If you want to yell and scream about hot button issues with instant viewpoints based solely in emotion, you’d have done better going into journalism and working for Fox News.

Hell, if you’re offended by this ad, you should stop reading BMOWP right now. I’ve got my very own St. George’s Cross hanging from the front door. I’ve got my very own red cross on white background. See? Not only am I a blasphemer, but I’m also un-American.

I, for one, love this image. Thank you, Nike, in all of your globalistic ways, for making yet another classic advertising image.

And to those of you who are offended, keep it to yourself.

Tags: Advertising and Marketing, Soccer |

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A Worldly possession

June 14, 2006


“There are many beautiful things about being an American fan of World Cup soccer—foremost among them is ignorance. The community in which you were raised did not gather around the television set every four years for a solid, breathless month. The U.S. has never won. You have not been indoctrinated into unwanted yet inescapable tribal allegiances by your soccer-crazed countrymen. You are an amateur, in the purest sense of the word. So when the World Cup comes around, you can pick whatever team you like best and root for them without shame or fear or reprisal—you can spend the month in paradise.”
Sean Wilsey, The Thinking Fan’s Guide to the World Cup

Yes. The World Cup is here. It has been for nearly a week now, though I’ve been counting down for quite some time. And thanks to The Thinking Fan’s Guide to the World Cup, I’m ready for it. My thoughts have been focused. My knowledge, honed. I’m more excited this year than I was four years ago – that would be World Cup 2002, my first foray into World Cup soccer – because the team I’ve arbitrarily picked (England, of course) has a chance to win.

Yeah. A real chance. Of the 32 teams that qualified for the World Cup, England sits as the club with the second best chance to win (after the Yankees of international soccer, Brazil). Wayne Rooney. David Beckham. Michael Owen. I should break out the old Liverpool FC jersey, though I’m not sure if Stephen Gerrard is playing. He’s nearly 45 by now, I’d guess.

In 2002, I watched England lose a tight game to Brazil in the quarterfinals. I woke up at 2:30 am, laid in bed as I was bathed in the glow of Korean grass on the television, and watched England lose. It was heartbreaking. I thought they had a chance. I’ve gotten use to my professional sports teams-of-choice choking in the playoffs – if they even make it – but this was a new hurt. The type that comes from realizing great potential, yet not being accustomed to seeing that potential squandered. Foiled by the very team that took England’s invention and turned it into the “beautiful game.”

I will never admit to knowing a lot about the World Cup. But am fascinated by it. I’m from the United States, and there’s no bigger freedom than being a World Cup fan in a country with little to lose. There’s no need to root for the United States. For the most part, I’m an England man. Call it a little bit of Anglophilia. Listen, Kerrie’s adopted the country of her distant heritage – the Czech Republic – and rooted against the U.S. in their meeting with the Czechs. Of course, beating the States 3-0 in international soccer might not be much of a feat.

As Sean Wilsey says in the intro to The Thinking Fan’s Guide to the World Cup, we don’t have to root for the U.S. because our country simply doesn’t care enough about the sport to create any sort of vested interest in our national team. We know their names. They’ll go on Wheaties boxes if they win. But they won’t, so why bother?

It’s kind of nice having a competition, whether it is war, economy, or sport, where the United States isn’t the prospected winner – the leader for all time. It’s nice to see us fail at something. I’m not being anti-American. It’s just that there’s a swagger involved in rooting for the U.S. in everything, all the time.

And it’s a simple fact that since our nation isn’t good at soccer, we’re not going to bother with paying attention to it. We consider it a secondary sport. Not worth our time. Not even worth the smallest bit of energy. Sure, every single other nation on the Earth loves the game, embraces it and uses it as a form of unorganized religion. But not us. Why would we? We’re not that good at it on an international level. We have better things to spend our nationalistic energy on – war, for example.

(end political rant, please)

Here’s the deal – soccer is simple. It’s basic. It’s pure energy, at all times. It’s a lot more difficult than it looks, but it’s a lot easier to imagine yourself being a great player while watching on television. It’s fans are rabid – completely involved. There’s a real buzz when you watch soccer.

There are a lot of people that don’t care for it. That’s fine. I’m not going to pretend that a sport that’s barely on the radar in our country should suddenly become the nation’s sport of choice. It will never be that way. It’s constantly made fun of in the United States. It’s too slow, and it doesn’t have enough scoring, blah blah. Oh well – I’ve found it to be incredibly subtle. Exciting even without a score. I gave soccer a chance because it was a very European thing to do. But it hooked me. For those of us that really get the fever, the true nationalistic fervor that far exceeds anything the Olympics or the World Baseball Classic could ever come up with, this is a time where anything is possible.

Brazil could, and probably will, win it all. They know the game well, and they’ve held the trophy five times in the past century. Germany’s at home, ready to lock down with excessive defense and raise the temperature with an entire nation backing them up. England is nearly always downtrodden, but they’ll surely make it to the quarterfinals (and, as always, be beaten by the eventual champion.) Of course, we can only hope for an Argentina/England match up – The Falkland War has nothing on Beckham’s kicks (the one that lost the game in 98’ and the one that won the game in 02’) and Maradona’s “hand of God.” Anguish vs. Beauty. Andres vs. Corey.

Some teams (Cote d’Ivoire) stopped a war because of the World Cup. Others are making the trek for the first time (Angola, Ghana) instead of the continent’s usual heavyweights. These are the ultimate in underdog stories. Not just Major League underdogs. We’re talking entire countries. Angola vs. Europe. And South America. And Asia.

Once the ball is kicked off, all teams are on equal footing. No monetary means will secure your team a victory. Rich soccer teams can buy all the talent they want – AC Milan, Barcelona, Manchester United, Chelsea – but only citizenship will get you a World Cup championship. Just the allegiance to your country. Every country can build a team. All you need is a soccer ball and a flat pitch.

It’s called the beautiful game because it’s the joining of athletics and the pure will to win. Sure, there will be 0-0 ties. Sure, the most goals a team will score in a game will probably be the four that Germany put up in the opener. But the defensive stops, the fight to get to the goal, the sheer determination that leads to a cross pass that is beautifully set up by some guy that wasn’t even there ten seconds before and then kicked into the back of the goal – that’s sport.

I’m ready for the World Cup. Even if I don’t see a single game, even if I have to monitor the proceedings through an Ethernet connection on my Mac at work, even if England fails to make it out of the Group Phase and I’m forced to root for France or Spain or the random long-shot of a small country that somehow blasts their way into the tournament, I’ll still enjoy myself.

It’s one team against the world.

Welcome to the World Cup.

“The joy of being one of the couple of billion people watching thirty-two nations abide by seventeen rules fills me with the conviction, perhaps ignorant, but like many ignorant convictions, fiercely held, that soccer can unite the world.”
Sean Wilsey, The Thinking Fan’s Guide to the World Cup

Tags: Soccer, Sports |

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Soccer jones.

August 17, 2005


There’s only 296 days until World Cup 2006.

Just in case you’re keeping track, that is.

I say this only because I’ve felt a renaissance within myself, so to speak – my once superficial attention to soccer (or football as the rest of the world knows it) is swelling up again, threatening to actually become something worthwhile. It seems that everywhere I go something springs up to make me appreciate what many call the “beautiful” sport.

I never liked soccer before. Sorry, let me rephrase that. Like many people in the United States, I didn’t care about soccer. Soccer was a game played in gym class and pushed by over-protective parents who didn’t like the thought of their kids playing American football. I was too young to ever see Pelé play, and I didn’t live in a city that had a Major League Soccer team, so I really had no need to pay attention to it.

Two things changed that. I started to pay attention when:

1. The United States won the Women’s World Cup in the summer of 1999. This didn’t mean much to me at the time, but eventually I realized the significance of a United States team beating everyone else in a sport that the country didn’t even care about. The 1999 World Cup even got a few of us watch our first professional soccer matches on television (spurred by our friend of Argentine decent, Andy – a natural at loving soccer because of his countries almost fanatical devotion to their top ranked national squad.)

That World Cup also became well known for it’s classic images of soccer women tearing their shirts off and revealing their sports bras, but that’s for another time.

2. I visited England, and they apparently like the sport a lot over there. This is what really fueled my sudden “love” for soccer – a desire to be all things “anglophilic” (which, coincidentally, is a word I just made up.) I needed an English team to follow, regardless of how knowledgeable I’d ever become, and I couldn’t possibly root for someone so obvious as Arsenal or Manchester Untied. Instead I chose Liverpool – a team that is perennially in the championship hunt but never quite manages to make it. They’re the Indiana Pacers of the Premier League. They also advertise Carlsburg beer on their jerseys.

Eventually, through the help of FIFA 2002 for Playstation 2 and Fox Sports World (the 24 hour soccer and rugby channel) I managed to actually look like a real soccer fan. It all culminated with World Cup 2002. The tournament was being held in Korea, so I would find myself taping England matches at 1:00 in the morning and watching them later. I openly rooted for England despite being a member of the United States, and I even set my alarm for 2:30 in the morning in order to watch the England vs. Brazil semi-final match – a match which England lost, but not before scoring the only goal Brazil allowed in the entire 16 team final tournament.

It was pretty sick. Ask Kerrie. I was obsessing about it, and with the games so early in the morning, it wasn’t healthy for me to be even caring about them. But, for a short amount of time, I was a true soccer fan, even trying to schedule the start of our 2002 vacation to Idaho around the ending of the Brazil-Germany final.

Where does that put me now? Well, through a series of unconnected, but soccer-related, occurrences I am slowly working myself up to the dubious title of “soccer-enthusiast.” I’ve just finished reading a book called How Soccer Explains The World, a piece dedicated to explaining globalization and class violence through the world’s obsession with soccer, and I’ve finally bought Fever Pitch – the original one based on Hornby’s novel of the same name. I’ve slowly started paying attention to how the national teams are doing.

I was surprised to find that our countries’ national squad has managed to reach previously unforeseen heights – they are ranked sixth in the world. The world! We don’t even have a viable professional league for soccer in the United States, and we’ve managed to land ourselves that high in the FIFA rankings? What’s next?

All this has come together to rekindle the soccer hysteria. Thankfully, the World Cup is in Germany this year, so I won’t have to watch games at 1 am. They’ll be on at 7 am instead.

Oh well. I guess I can’t win them all. I’ll just have to get the VCR ready and wait.

After all, there’s only 296 days left.

Tags: Soccer, Sports |

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News update 05.12.05

May 12, 2005


Just a throw away post today – Here are the weird things happening in the news today:

First of all, I guess Comedy Central mainstay Dave Chappelle has checked himself into a mental hospital in South Africa. Nobody really knows the true reason why, but it’s kind of a scary thing to have happen to one of the most talented comics of our generation.

The story is here.

Second – Sometimes I try to get people to believe that I’m a big “football” fan, in the European sense of the word. I am, I guess; I really did enjoy watching English Premiership Soccer back when I had Fox Sports World, and I own a Liverpool jersey (with stylish Carlsberg logo on the front). I don’t get to partake in the sport as much as I used to anymore. It’s on Sirius satellite radio, but it’s on live (which makes it about 7 am here in the States.)

Anyway, the owner of the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers has secured a majority stake in Manchester United – the most popular and richest soccer team in the world. This may not seem like news to you, but to me, it’s kind of a big deal. Imagine if some multi-millionaire from France came across the pond and end up with over 50% of the stock in the Boston Celtics. Or the Green Bay Packers. People would be pissed!

So, unsurprisingly, United fans are pretty pissed about this, considering he’s the type of owner who will sell the naming rights to Old Trafford (will we soon be seeing Man U games in Nextel’s Trafford Stadium of Manchester?) and raise ticket prices. He’s the new sports owner – more concerned about making money than controlling a great team.

Just thought I’d throw some English gossip your way. The article is here.

Third: Only the BBC would bring us stuff like this. It’s a powerful article about a powerful picture – the marriage of photography and the truth. Just like I learned in Baghdad Express, war can be hell. Sometimes the images get mixed.

We certainly didn’t see this picture in the U.S.

Go here. Now.

That’s it. I’m just rounding up the news and delivering it to you in a tidy little package. With blue ribbons. And shiny wrapping paper.

You’re welcome.

Tags: Journalism, Random Links, Soccer |

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