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 News from Around the Americas | July 2006 
We Can't Win 'Em All
 Michael Garcia - nydailynews.com
| | Anxious fan : A French fan waits for the quarter-final World Cup football match between Brazil and France to begin at Frankfurt's World Cup Stadium. (AFP/DDP/Marcus Brandt) |
Although the U.S. team was eliminated from the World Cup, fans clearly got swept up in the passion of rooting for their team on a grand stage.
If the World Cup is a sporting metaphor for global war, then gringo soccer might unintentionally serve as a humble gift of peace to all. Who needs metaphors anyway? Soccer is for sissies, right?
I changed my ways when I moved to Mexico and discovered what I was missing. I won't ever forget my first Copa Mundial (1998). It was like my freshman year when an unsuspecting UMass basketball team stayed No.1 for an entire season and turned the campus upside down. Everyone was so happy. Even the Marxist club got loose and freaky on game nights.
American ex-pats around the world are generally expected to be ambivalent about the World Cup, but experiencing the World Cup in Puerto Vallarta, you see an amazing energy from tourists from all over the world.
Now I understand the joy of "the beautiful game" and watch the matches, study the squads, discern quality and class. Each team is an All-Star team.
Each player has a Web site and pro squad. Even the guys sitting on the benches are gods to someone out there. It is a beautiful thing to take in, the enormity of emotion encapsulated in each goal, each save or penalty.
Whole cities stop and the streets are empty for hours.
During that 1998 World Cup, I watched USA vs. Iran with an Irishman, a kind and docile friend of the family visiting with his three children. I confessed to him that "I would love to see the U.S. play well and move on to glory, but if Iran won, that would be cool, too."
I felt an odd desire to see the Iranians enjoy beating us - it would be satisfying, from a human perspective: "We don't always need to have everything, ya know?"
The Irishman (whose team was in that World Cup) looked at me like I had three heads.
"Bollocks! This is war!"
I understood, but still somehow empathized with "the enemy." I guess it is easy to be charitable with such low hope, or no hope at all, for World Cup glory. We're just lucky to be there. The USA didn't score one goal and was out in the first round, finishing dead last, as the French somehow beat Brazil and celebrated in the streets in a multicultural show of national unity the world had rarely seen.
I was changed forever. I learned that it wasn't the sport in particular, but the passion and scope of the event.
The 2002 World Cup was more complex, much like America's increasingly complex relationship with the world.
The American team started out in a weak grouping and got through to the quarterfinals, beating Mexico in the Round of 16. It wasn't easy to talk about soccer anymore with my Mexican friends. We weren't supposed to be good at futbol.
We play "soccer." Our game is supposed to be cute. We show up, we try really hard, our baby steps are noticed gratuitously, we go home humbled.
For the Mexicans, the blow was a case of demoralizing the demoralized. The sporting metaphor lies in not so distant memories of real war, the loss of half the country and subjugation of a culture. But Americans know less of that than they do of the World Cup.
In the previous match, the Mexicans had beaten Italy in a classy game of tight organization and clear reverence for the Italians. Against the U.S., they expected little and gave less, ending in a loss with embarrassing and violent outbursts that brought everyone down to the current ugly metaphor: the reality of the intensely frustrating U.S./Mexico relationship.
Since Bill Clinton left office, I have lost much of my national pride and must work extra to not be singled out as a jerk. I often find myself in the "blame America first" crowd just to negotiate my relationships. I can either sew a maple leaf on my hat, or keep a low profile. The world still likes Americans as individuals, but the world also gleefully hates us, as if we are the '90s Dallas Cowboys.
So the other morning as I watched the U.S. lose to a talented Ghana squad while eating breakfast in downtown Puerto Vallarta, I found myself happy for the upstart and very deserving Africans, but not like I felt for Iran in '98.
There was a black couple in front of me, clearly Americans, but when Ghana scored first, they both cheered. That made me instantly angry. Who do they think they are? The husband wasn't so vociferous but was supportive of his bleeding heart wife who sympathized with the Africans. Doesn't she know this is war?
When the U.S. scored (its second goal of the entire tournament as an Italian defender scored the first), the husband cheered, and that made me feel better. Then, on a late free kick just outside the box, Landon Donovan had a chance to show his quality and kicked the ball into the cheap seats. I left in disgust.
To watch so much amazing play, fine finishes, cool composure and control under pressure from so many other teams, to see our skill players show how clearly separate we are from the real talent absolutely disgusted me. Let's keep this simple. Soccer is not American. The game is called futbol, as in screw you gringo soccer and your contrivances, corporate confections and exclusive concessions cabal. The next rounds are going to be phenomenal and it is sad that most Americans won't care, but it is probably for the best.
The world now knows for certain, with a huge sigh of relief, that the USA can't have everything so easily. |
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