Just Kickin’ It

Just Kickin’ It

“Felices unidos, el fútbol del mundial.

Nos dan de comer goles en vez de frijoles…"

Patético cuadro, Tijuana No!

Sunday. For many football fans it’s nothing but a splendid day to sit on their couches and watch football. Forget the NFL or any other “weekend nation” you have in mind. It’s the one you actually play with your feet. Yeah, yeah, ok, soccer. But, as Brit comedian Eddie Izzard puts it, “This is football we're talking about here, which you [Americans] call bananas and you're reluctant to play it.” Let’s straight things out, how can you call football a game in which you handle the ball with your hands 99 percent of the time, huh? There’s already a handball, so refrain yourself from jumping to any deductive reasoning and face the facts.

Well, enough of that. And back to Sunday sunny Sunday and to the delicacies of world-class football that cable services around the globe cater, after a “reasonable” fee, to patrons in bars, in pubs, in cantinas, and in the “intimacy of your home,” just to quote many of the cheesy anchors and sportscasters on radio, TV, and the Internet. It’s not only the delight fans feel out of watching top-notch athletes in shorts doing magic with the ball on the screens or from the stands; to many, their tricks bring back childhood memories of games played in the street along all those faces and names they won’t see or recall ever again. Those were times in which team identities were created and every body shared the pride of being player number 12 in the roster of such and such squad. Children with the only purpose of enjoying the game and somehow thinking of once running on the same pitches our heroes did, defending the colors they defended, the tradition we shared with them, the team that made us one. Boys that ran on pavement fields behind the ball, turning into what Eduardo Galeano describes as the “dancer prancing with a ball as light as a balloon that flies away in the air and the ball of wool, playing not knowing that it’s playing, without a reason and without a clock and without a referee” (Galeano, 2002). It was primeval freedom.

Kids, hence, knew little about globalization, transnational corporations, and the invisible hand of the market. With the passing of time, these horsemen riding, and guiding us all, toward the abyss appeared. Soon many things, unexplained before, found answers. Teams play at certain hours not because of a kabalistic tradition: It’s all marketing, babe, just a bit of what lies behind the spectacle. They know y’all watching. In “The Postmodern Adventure,” Steven Best and Douglas Kellner, state the following: 

"Megaspectacles also include sports events like the World Series, the Super Bowl, World Soccer Cup [sic], and NBA championships, which attract massive audiences, are hyped to the maximum, and generate accelerating record of advertising rates. These cultural rituals celebrate (bourgeois) society’s deepest value (e.g. competition, winning, success, and money) and corporations are willing to pay top dollar to get their products associated with such events” (Best and Kellner 2001)."

It’s just that same globalization the one that builds super teams that make fans around the world gape in awe at the almost-chorographical games taking place in the distant European fields. Tournaments and domestic leagues depict what many call the “passion of man.” And, as the whore all passions are, it is money-driven. Though these teams “represent” certain cities in Holland (Amsterdam), England (Manchester, London), Germany (Munich), Italy (Milan, Turin), or Spain (Madrid, Barcelona), they rarely include local players in their starting lineups. It’s a matter of building profitable teams, attractive to fans and shareholders, and, why not, to nation states as well. This trend has been around for several years now, and they create shows around them.

The Fédération Internationale de Football Association is the central entity of global football. “With 207 associations affiliated to FIFA today, world football’s governing body has rightly been dubbed the ‘United Nations of Football’, ” reads a message in the FIFA web page. Gathering so much power, this athletic organism is even the envy of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, so says German sports web magazine Spiegel. An article published right before the 2006 World Cup, hosted by Germany, the publication indicates that in an interview with Annan, the soon-to-leave UN secretary, was quoted saying that FIFA is “is one of the few phenomena as universal as the UN. You could say it's more universal.” Contrary to what the UN claims to be doing in order to better the world and to the adherence to which its members follow its guidelines, FIFA pushes forward a “development” in world football and announces itself as an international peace crusader capable of stopping wars. 

In 2006, Ivory Coast was one of the African nations representing the continent in the World Cup. One year before the tournament, the team made headlines when it qualified to the World Cup defeating Sudan and stopping for just some time the then three-year war dividing the country. It certainly would make everybody happy to find this kind of solution to every conflict, but, paradoxically, one also has to wonder how, alongside this “miracle” of sport, a country like Sudan, with a government supporting and providing militias with weapons to attack and exterminate its own people in the Darfur region, is even allowed not only to participate, but also to be a proud member of FIFA, as shows the most recent listing on the federation’s website. Another, and perhaps more intriguing example, is the case of Argentina, FIFA’s member since 1912. In 1978, the world of soccer gathered in Argentina to celebrate, thanks to the junta in power, the eleventh World Cup. To spice up and validate the tournament, the pope sent his blessings and Henry Kissinger was quoted stating that Argentina was a country with brilliant prospects. Just as the games were taking place, the regime was killing and throwing from helicopters dissidents to the sea. And FIFA, well, was not in the business of stopping atrocities.

Every four years the world’s best 32 teams get together to play the World Cup. This global party, that gathers people from every continent, leaves football aside and becomes a showcase of the many transnational brands that proudly sponsor the competition: breweries, clothing, sporting goods, wineries, lifestyle companies, and the like. With billions of dollars in advertising cashing in, FIFA strengthens and entices more nations to join, first, and ultimately participate in this “celebration.” Expectation is so high, that in 2002 media companies “high jacked” the game and announced that those willing to watch the World Cup in Korea-Japan on TV would have to pay for it. This pay-per-view measure made many think about what football had become. Funny enough is to realize that the main company behind this was directly linked to Joseph Blatter, president of FIFA. There are many stories about his misdoings and how he has the biggest transnational in the world at the verge of bankruptcy. But that’s another story.

Under Blatter’s hand, FIFA has increased the number of international tournaments and “friendly” matches. This is a world where national teams are everything but national representations of a country. Every federation pays its dues and “leases” its name to represent a country that cannot touch an organism claiming to be a national representation. According to FIFA guidelines, not a single State is allowed to interfere with football business. A FIFA press release issued this weekend sent a message stressing the “autonomy” of sports, especially football. Going against this could end the lucrative business soccer means to many governments. Mexican political parties make use oftentimes of this media to show their propaganda. In the past and controversial presidential election Mexico went through, conservative candidate, and now “president,” Felipe Calderon made use of people attending the World Cup in Germany to promote his cause. Furthermore, the rightwing politician constantly used soccer jargon to appear as the cool candidate, but he only showed how rotten this all is.

But this commercialization of soccer exists thanks to the sacrifice of many people, and not precisely FIFA executives. Until a couple of years ago, far and hidden from these competitions, children, women, and men, complete families, worked as stitchers in football factories in Pakistan and southeast Asia. Stefan Szymanski, a professor at Imperial College in London, and a midfielder himself, told British newspaper The Independent the following that characterizes this reality of world football:

"There is a big contrast between the dynamism of the football labor market, where clubs have a big incentive to search globally for players, and the product market, which still remains largely balkanized by country."

And this phenomenon could be, basically, the only reason why so much money is made out of sport in general and soccer in particular. Though international pressure put an end to child labor, cutting with it the so much required income of many families, it is estimated that some 40,000 people alone work at this Pakistani shops, earning less than a dollar per ball stitched. This same ball are sold for at least one hundred dollars in the Western markets and allows companies to easily get back their costs of production. “These people are members of the global proletariat. Their poverty makes products affordable for the rich,” says German magazine Spiegel. And, adding to this, we can also say that this “efficiency” allows big brands to spend more in advertising campaigns promoting their trendy images. And the voices against this are always dismissed. But remembering the product vs. process affair, one could at least claim the exploitation of these people. Nonetheless, and that’s why child labor was stopped, sporting good companies (Nike, ADIDAS, and others) have even established their own monitoring organization to keep an eye on this factories and watch they meet the “minimum” health and humane labor requirements. Not doing so would be, as Peter Singer quotes Leestefy Jenkins and Robert Stumberg, “in effect, free market preempts all other social values” (Singer 2002).

In his book “God is Round,” Mexican writer and journalist Juan Villoro explains this phenomena saying that, “The world of football is in a state of financial dementia. The best example of this defect is the Spanish league, rebaptized as Liga de las Estrellas” (Villoro, 2005). In 2000, Real Madrid, one of the Liga de las Estrellas perennial contenders, spent the humble amount of $125 million just to buy Luis Figo and Zinedine Zidane, both superstars in the football panorama and key players in their national teams, Portugal and France, respectively. It wouldn’t be crazy to assume that this money could easily account to a much-needed help in southern Mexico or Afghanistan. We live times in which delirium is profitable, says Villoro. And he singles out the Spanish team’s acquisition of Zidane. “The day of the signing, Real Madrid recovered $3 million selling team jerseys with Zidane’s name on them,” he claims.

Today’s thought would deem stupid not seeking an increase in profits. That’s basically the reason behind the contemporary idea of success. The World Trade Organization, the FIFA of business (excuse the redundancy), has “the belief [that] free market makes people better off, on average and in the long run” (Singer, 2002). This unleashing of economic forces gives us a gloomy scenario. They are the ones calling the shots and we are only left to kick in.

Bibliography

Best, Steven and Kellner, Douglas. The Postmodern Adventure. The Guildford Press. New York, 2001.

Foer, Franklin. How Soccer Explains the World. HaperCollins. New York, 2005.

Galeano, Eduardo. El Futbol a Sol y Sombra. Ediciones Porrúa en Línea. México, 1995.

Singer, Peter. One World. Yale University Press. United States, 2002.

Villoro, Juan. Dios es Redondo. Planeta. México, 2005.

Spiegel Magazine Online. Germany, 2006.