Football is more than a game
Football against the Enemy - Simon Kuper
(An Arsenal related book review)
by Gary Jacob
FEATURES
THE ARSENAL AGM - FULL WRITE UP
FIVE REASONS: ARSENAL COULD WIN IN BARCELONA
CARLTON AND ITV UPSET US AGAIN
JEKYLL AND HYDE PLAY THE NOU CAMP
Imagine it's Saturday. Your team is playing. They win. What do you feel? Elation? Does it make or break your Saturday night? Suppose now, they lose. What do you feel? Sorrow? Do you laugh it off and tell everyone, ``it's only a game.'
Football is never just a game.
As the late Bill Shankly once said, ``football is not a matter of life and death, it's far more important than that.''
Kuper discovers that football helps make wars, it fascinates mafias and it provides a forum for ethnic hatred. Ask an Englishman what does football and politics have to do with each other. Their response is likely to be, ``nothing''. Ask an Argentinian, and they will say, ``everything''.
Kuper travelled for nine months, visited 22 countries on a budget of £5000 and asked two questions:How does football affects the life of a country? and how does the life of a country affects its football?
You don't have to look very far to find an example of how football affects the life of a country. Scotland. The old firm rivalry between the Protestant (Prods) fans of Rangers and Catholic (Tim) fans of Celtic fans, is more than just rivalry. It is sectarian hatred, as a recent television programme `Clash of the Titans' confirmed. Just what was Graham Roberts thinking of when he joined in with the crowd singing? Or for that matter Paul Gascoigne, when he gestured playing a flute to Celtic fans during the derby game in January 1998?
The catalogue of incidents between the teams reads like the charge sheet of the Kray brothers. In October 1988, Terry Butcher, Chris Woods and Graham Roberts of Rangers were all charged with breach of the peace along with Celtic's Frank McAvennie. In 1991, Mark Hateley, Terry Hurlock and Mark Walters --- were sent off for violent conduct, along with Peter Grant of Celtic.
This year, the house of the referee between the teams was attacked hours after he was injured by a missile during a violent clash between Rangers and Celtic.
Even more recently, in June, the vice-chairman of Rangers, Donald Findlay, was forced to resign after being filmed singing anti-Catholic songs. He had been celebrating his club's Scottish Cup final victory over rivals Celtic.
These are just some of the incidents.
Football is never just a game.
Among the ways Kuper acquainted himself with the history of the rivalry between Rangers and Celtic, was using the club's fanzines. He quotes from the Rangers' fanzine:"Only one of Hitler's main henchmen was a Prod, the foreign minister von Ribberntrop...The three most distinguished non-Jewish ant-Nazi resisters, Raoul Wallenberg, Dietrich Bonnhoffer and Pastor Niemoller were all Prods. And let's not forget that Hitler was a Tim"
Being Jewish, this is a strange quote to me, and perhaps also to Kuper, who is always Jewish. One section of a religion, makes a point about another section of the same religion using another religion as the vehicle, i.e. the Protestant fans of Rangers are attacking the Catholic fans of Celtic, because Hitler's main men were Catholic, his enemies, Protestant, and the Jews the victims.
At a pitch level, the old saying that Rangers never field any Catholic players was broken by Maurice Johnston who signed from Nantes in 1989, and himself had previously played for Celtic. What's more, a week before Rangers had signed Johnston, Celtic had claimed that they had signed him.
It is said that the enemy of your enemy must be your friend. Johnston was hated by Rangers and Celtic fans alike. He rubbed salt into the Celtic fans' wounds by famously grabbing a last-minute winner against Celtic which helped the club launch their nine-in-a-row title wins.
The nine-in-a-row was very significant. Celtic had also previously achieved nine titles in-a-row. Had Celtic not won the title in 1998, thereby stopping ten-in-a-row, the historians may well have been writing about the Glasgow riots in May 1998.
Amazing, on the Clash of the Titans programme on BBC2, Graeme Souness, the Rangers manager who had bought Johnston, said ``I saw us signing--- poaching if you like --- Maurice Johnston as dealing them an almighty blow. And I think it was correct because it took them until last year to win the championship. I think part of their problem was that it took so long for them to get over the Maurice Johnston saga."
The change in policy towards playing Catholics was due to David
Murray, the Rangers Chairman. Murray took over at Ibrox in November
1988 and set about freeing Rangers from being tainted as a club
based on religion, not football. It would be the only way to market
Rangers around the world.
Kuper's journey to Glasgow comes towards the near the end of his
book, and it gives him the chance to compare how his allegiance
to a team differed from supporters in other countries. Kuper was
born in Holland and
lived in Germany. For years, he considered himself a neutral fan,
until he noticed a mild pang whenever Ajax lost. Only a mild pang?
In the mid 1990's, us Arsenal supporters received so many pangs, that we felt like we lived in the doctor's surgery.
But we are different to Kuper. We are Nick Horby in Fever Pitch. In Fever Pitch, Horby's years of affiliation with Arsenal from a child is so evident. The highs. The lows. We have all been there. We can identify with many of the things Horby says. He is us.
Why the difference? Kuper makes the observation that being a fan in Holland or Italy is different --- it is a rather passive affair, where you want your team to win, but you do not care if the opposition's fans outflag you.
Perhaps the passive affair, now rings true in England. After all, with the soccer boom, and with the success of Manchester United, we have bred a nation of fickle supporters.
Supporters that make sure you know who they support when their team wins. But they go noticeably quiet when their team loses. And if you ask them who they support, they say ``oh I follow, Manchester United, but not that passionately.''
That is, until Manchester United win the league, and there they are, with their new scarf, ``Oh, I've been a fan all my life, you know.''
We all know that person. We have worked with them. I have come across many while being at University. Sadly, many are Manchester United supporters. In my five years at Oxford, I have only come across two Arsenal fans in my college; both came in my last year of being here. But scores of United fans.
The Liverpool, Newcastle, Southampton and Luton fans were like me. Fans. Fans since a child. We are all Hornby. We shout and scream at the television when the game is on. During the game, our bodies make movements as if we were playing. When Riccardo Villa made that mazy run and then slotted the ball under Joe Corrigan of Manchester City in the FA Cup reply in 1981, the player to watch on television replays is Garth Crooks. Crooks is standing outside the box, and as Villa is about to slot the ball home, Crooks sees himself in Villa's position; his right foot shoots into thin air, just like a spot-the-ball competition.
We are Crooks, but sitting in front of the television. An easy side footer into the back of the net. A right foot volley. Easy. The new breed of fickle supporters sits there relaxed. Their feelings for a club are, at best, tenuous.
In Scotland, the sectarian divide enforces team loyalty. Fickleness is not an issue.
Kuper's journey begins in Holland, where he had spent the best part of ten years of his life in Leiden near the North sea. In 1994, the greatest grudge match may well have been when Holland played Germany. The Balkans war has changed that. Roll on Crotia and Serbia. Let's hope that Kosovo do not form a team.
Germany invaded Holland in 1940. But it took a further 48 years for Dutch emotion to overflow with a feeling that they had been set free.
On the 21st June 1988, Holland beat Germany 2-1 in the semi-final of the European Championships. To make things sweeter, the tournament was held in Germany, and the Dutch went on to win the championship. A Dutch book of poetry appeared, with entries from poets and professional players alike.
Can you imagine a book of poetry in honour of England beating Scotland? Or the Republic of Ireland beating England, as they did in the same European Championships? A poem by Paddy Bonner or John Adridge hardly conjures up a great image of superb literary delight in the mind.
Likewise, you can hardly think of David O'Leary, swapping shirts with Tony Adams, and then proceeding to use the shirt as toilet paper. Kuper tells us that Ronald Koeman did with Olaf Thon.
What is odd is that the Dutch had met Germany in the 1974 World Cup final, losing 2-1. But the anti-German feeling was not evident.
Is it really fair for the Dutch to hate Germans for something that happened forty year previous? No.
Before the 1974 final, Bild, the German's equivalent to the Sun, without the Royal front page, ran a false story about Cruyff and naked girls. The night before the 1988 game, Gullit was woken during the night up by German journalists, by phone, and then at his door. A bewildered Gullit found the answer the following day, as his opponents sneaked glances at him before the game.
Justice was done. ``Holland Super'', the headline in Bild, following the Dutch win.
Kuper's book is full of similar stories to this. Some are rather funny. Others sad. Kuper retells a story of Ethiopia's attempt to qualify for the World Cup in 1994.
"The team's first game was away to Morocco. The Ethiopians flew to Rome, where their best players sought political asylum. That left a squad of eight players to play the match. The reserve goalkeeper, the assistant-manager and a friend filled in, and Ethiopia began the game with a full side. By half-time, however, two of the ringers had dropped out exhausted, and Morocco led 5-0. Early in the second half three more Ethiopians gave up, and with just six away players left standing, the referee stopped the match. Ethiopia did not qualify for the World Cup"
The Second World War had affected Germany too. The secret police of the GDR, the Stasi, were a nasty bunch. Even football was not safe from them, as Klopfleisch, an east Germaner, who had a passion for western football, found to his cost.
The Stasi kept a file on Klopfleisch's football activities, and when Klopfleisch had applied to emigrate to the west, the Stasi had waited until Klopfleisch's mother was on her deathbed, before granting permission --- `now, or never' was the Stasi's stance. Klopfleisch said `now', and his mother died five days later. Only a few months later, the Berlin wall fell.
Secret police or KGB's are not only found in Eastern Europe. Argentina had one too. The barras. Kuper explains that on occasions, the barras are used by clubs to destroy a player, for example, when the player was trying to negotiate a pay rise or if the club has had enough of him. The barras would stand behind the goal and heckle the player. I wondered if Arsenal had employed barras when Stephen Morrow and David Hillier were playing in the centre of midfield. Then, I realised, no, they were George Graham type players.
Graham had used the barras on the skillful players he destroyed: Mickey Thomas, David Rocastle and Paul Davis.
In the book, Kuper retells an incident from a 1993 FA Cup game between Arsenal and Leeds, played at Highbury.
"David Hillier, the crowd's, least favourite Gunner, made his umpteenth clumsy challenge and was booked. "Send him off, ref!" shouted one fan. "Ban him for life!" advised another. "Or longer if possible!" added a third. The game ended in a 2-2 draw. The football was dreadful, but five months later Arsenal had won the FA Cup.
This was Graham. The barras in tune with skillful football had lost. The Graham barras had won.
To be fair to Graham, he may well have learnt his football from Helenio Herrera, who was the man who taught the world how to play defensive football.
In his three years at Barcelona, Herrera won two Fairs Cups and two Spanish titles. At Inter Milan, he won two European Cups and three league titles, based on a system called Catenaccio, which means `padlock' in Italian. The mirror of Graham.
Whatever bung charges were made against Graham, at least Graham hadn't paid any bribes. If he had, we would have seen John Jensen get more goals.
But in the old USSR, Kuper found bribery. In Russia, bribes were paid to referees by teams, to simply get a matched judged fairly. In the Ukraine, Dynamo Kiev had a licence to export nuclear missile parts and gold.
Kuper also found curses in abundance. You can hardly imagine the north bank at Highbury singing, "Referee, fuck your wife in front of Piccadilly Circus", or in the case of the Armenian who shouted it, "the Lenin Mausoleum". Or "Referee, I piss on you". The closest English supporters get to this, is "The referee's a wanker". Mild, by comparison.
It is said that if you go to Russia, you can sell your Levis, Adidas trainers and anything western on the black market. In Latvia, Kuper found a man wearing a shirt which read "Royal Mail --- Stoke on Trent".
Perhaps courtesy of a rather clever Staffordshire postal worker?
One of the more successful English exports of the last 20 years was the hooligan. Kuper watches a European match between Ferencvaros of Hungary and Slovan Bratislava of Slovakia, played in Hungary. Many of the supporters of Ferencvaros wore English scarves and waved Ferencvaros flags in the shape of Union Jacks. The legacy of the trouble caused by English supporters abroad was evident. Here, they were revered.
This was the return leg. In the first game, Meciar, the President of Slovakia, a nasty piece of work, chose to use a football game to show the Hungarians and Slovaks, he meant business. 600,000 Hungarians live in Slovakia. A political problem. Slovaks and Hungarians don't get on, and the game was in Slovakia. Slovak troops beat Hungarian football fans.
UEFA are waiting for a game between Red Star Belgrade and Crotia Zagbreb.
Twenty years earlier, and across the other side of the North Atlantic sea, at the time of the 1978 World Cup in Argentina, the country was run by Argentinian generals.
They were not much better than Meciar. They had seized power in 1976 and football was a vehicle for telling the World how great Argentina was. And a way to impress their own people. Argentina had to win the World Cup. And only Argentina could have won the World Cup.
The generals were not stupid. They knew that while every Argentinian may not know about politics, they did understand football. Brazil is the same. The Argentinian generals attached themselves to football. They wanted to be seen as the people.
This is not too dissimilar from what westen leaders do. In October 1996, Tony Blair knocked a ball about with Kevin Keegan, then manager of Newcastle United. Ronald Regan used Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA, but failed to understand the meaning of the song.
Kuper also points to the fact that John Major was often seen at sporting spectacles, such as test matches, and at Chelsea. Kuper even suggests a rather amusing theory that Major is in fact an Arsenal supporter.
Kuper argues that Major fits in with the Arsenal profile --- Major is lower-middle class, lives in Hertfordshire, and seems to enjoy dullness. Kuper writes pre-Wenger, of course.
For the Argentinian generals, everything was about winning the World Cup: the 6-0 victory over Peru was bought, and the drug injection given to players in the final, indicated one was pregnant. The same generals invaded the Falklands.
To impress the World and their own people, slums were destroyed. The generals could not have outsiders seeing poverty. The generals built a wall, painted with the facades of nice houses, to hide the city's slums from the view of passing foreigners. It didn't work. The concrete slabs were stolen by the slum-dwellers for their own houses.
At least Arsenal were only covering up the building work behind the North Bank at Highbury.
This week, it was announced that Bobby Robson will become a mentor for younger players taking UEFA coaching badges, such as, Stuart Pearce, Peter Beardsley, Nigel Spackman, Nigel Pearson, Clive Allen and Peter Reid.
Am I the only person that has wondered why?
When Arsenal sacked George Graham in 1995, the names touted as his replacement (after Stewart Houstan's short reign) were Johan Cruyff, Bobby Robson and Arsene Wenger.
I vividly remember one newspaper, the Mirror or Sun, as I recall, even suggesting that Robson was to become the Arsenal manager, and his first signing was to be Paul Gascoigne. A picture of Gascoigne in an Arsenal shirt on the back of the newspaper, accompanied the piece.
English people often wonder at Robson's achievements. They point to his two titles at PSV Eindhoven, the Spanish Cup, Spanish Supercup, and European Cup-Winners' Cup and two league titles at Porto. He has also managed Ipswich and Sporting Lisbon.
But, what Robson didn't understand was that, these all meant nothing to the fans of these clubs. PSV Eindhoven and Barcelona fans expected to win the title. They wanted European success. He never managed that with PSV Eindhoven.
In this years Champions' League, PSV Eindhoven finished third in Group F, with seven points, one less than Arsenal in Group E. They faired little better in his first spell as manager of PSV. In 1995, Porto also finished third in Group A.
That is the difference. Many English journalists and supporters have missed the point. Kuper didn't. His assessment of the Dutch football and Robson was spot-on. The Dutch players he talked to, also understood the point.
The point about Robson is summarised by Kuper's comparison of Dutch and English football.
The qualities that Robson believes in are strength, strength in the tackle and desire. And while these are fine qualities to have, skill should be paramount. That is what the Dutch believe in.
I have watched England schoolboy Internationals against Brazil and Germany. We may beat them. So we must be good? There can't be anything wrong with the national game? Untrue. The Brazilians develop skills foremost. Then physical strength. Winning? An irrelevance at the age of 15. This is in total contrast to the English system. But by the age of 20...where is our Ronaldo?
At the end of the 1997/98 double season, SKY sports produced a tribute to Dennis Bergkamp, called `The Dutch Master.'
Liam Brady was interviewed, and said that ``At the end of the day, he [Bergkamp] was the difference between the club having such great success and between being nearly there. Dennis Bergkamp made all the difference''
We know that.
But he also said ``I think without doubt he [Bergkamp] is the greatest player to have played for Arsenal in the last 30 years, for as long as I can remember.'' And to think in that time, Brady himself had played.
So what? Bergkamp began his a career as a right back!
A right back in the total football system of Ajax. I could not imagine Lee Dixon or Gary Neville suddenly turning into the most creative player in team. Why? Because, English players are taught to play in a set position from an early age. If they are asked to switch positions, at a later age, they have to learn again.
So are Arsenal doing it right? Yes. Liam Brady and Paul Davis have been brought back into the fold. They were probably the most cultured midfielders we had in the 1970's and 1980's. Richardson was also a good player, but he wasn't a midfielder who could split open a defence with one pass. To some extent, neither are Viera or Petit. Both are cultured, but they work too hard to be like a Brady or a Davis.
The strength versus skill argument is also clear in Africa. Some sides are flamboyant with a disdain for physical contact. Others more cautious, and they play like an English third division side. Much of it comes down to who colonised them. Sides like Botswana and South Africa play like England. The Nigerians and Nigeria like France.
In the book, Kuper dispels one myth about Africans. Namely, that whites are good at organising and defending and the blacks good at creating and scoring.
Nwankwo Kunu dispels another. That because shorter players have a lower centre of gravity, they are more agile and more skillful, and can therefore evade challenges easier.
With this theory in mind, can anyone honestly tell me that a player like Stephen Morrow or Eddie McGoldrick, can skip past a player at ease, but Kunu, with his huge frame, finds that difficult?
If after reading all bar the last two chapters, you are doubting that football is more a game, Kuper's trip to the World Cup finals in 1994, re-affirms your view.
During the finals, in Ulster, Protestant gunmen stormed into a Catholic pub and shot dead six Catholics watching the Republic beating Italy, by Ray Houghton's solitary goal.
One of the most gifted teams at the World Cup, Colombia, went out to because of an own-goal by Andres Escobar.
The ball had come in from the left, Escobar stuck out a leg, and inadvertently steered the ball into his own net. A few days later, Escobar was murdered.
Four years on from that, Channel 4's documentary, `Escobar's Own Goal', failed to answer why he was murdered: did a lone nutter do it? Or a syndicate who had big money resting on Colombia's World Cup campaign? Or a gambling syndicate?
Who knows? But one thing is for sure. Football is more than a game.