Thursday, Aug 21, 2008
Italian white trash spitting! Hot British lads wearing G-strings! Aging French stumbling to a Foreign Legion-like doom! It must be the European soccer championship.
Jul 3, 2004 | On Sunday, around the time America turns on the barbecue grills to celebrate its independence, Europe will turn on the TV to celebrate the new champions of the sport America knows as "soccer." For everybody else, of course, it's still and always will be football, the world's primary entertainment and a business that hasn't stopped growing since its marriage with television half a century ago.
Euro 2004 has been an interesting tournament, though hardly as electrifying as the previous edition, which connoisseurs consider one of the best football (OK, soccer) competitions ever. What's been interesting about it is, above everything else, the collective fall of the superpowers. All teams that boast World Cup titles (Italy, Germany, England, France) were eliminated either in the first round or in the quarterfinals. The four semifinalists were home team Portugal, Holland, Greece and the Czech Republic. While at least three of these teams (the exception being Greece) have been knocking on heaven's door for decades, nobody would have predicted all four of them in the semis -- or that Greece and Portugal, two of Europe's poor Southern relations, would meet in Sunday's final. Factor in that Porto won the European title for clubs (over the much more rich, famous and decorated likes of Real Madrid, AC Milan, Manchester United, Juventus, Bayern Munich and Arsenal -- the ruling elite of Euro soccer), and it's apparent that this was the year of the underdog.
The European championship isn't the World Cup, but European fans care about it almost as much. Bragging rights in their own playground are at stake, and the tournament has a reliably high standard of quality. (European fans can be real snobs, and many don't feel quite right about tournaments played at noon in the dead of summer, such as the U.S.-hosted '94 World Cup, or in stadiums full of Korean fans in uniform blowing plastic trumpets.) Moreover, European clubs have so diluted their national identity that their performance in international games can't possibly mean the same as it once did for the country they belong to. Real Madrid doesn't have more than a handful of Spanish players; Arsenal (one of the historic London teams) is half-French, including the coach. Therefore, in the age of globalization and the European community, national team soccer plays an important role keeping national identities in shape. For the last hundred years, soccer has defined what it means to be Italian, English, Dutch or German as well as any other national endeavor. Club soccer may offer the absolute best of the game, but national team soccer retains the ability to express some of its essential values and archetypes.
And so: Everyone knows that the Italians are defensive-minded, and lure the opponent forward to stun them with crafty fast breaks; the English love to tackle and crisscross the field with long balls; the Dutch stress possession and versatility, their typical player being a jack-of-all-trades; the Germans rely on pace, power and simple geometries. Much can be written (and has) about the ways these styles of play reveal fundamental truths about a nation's history and character. The Italians have always been smaller than Northern Europeans, and ever since the Roman Empire, Italy has been invaded by just about everybody, hence its defensive mentality; Italy also has rich artistic traditions, hence its taste for creative counterattacks. By the same token, England being an island, Holland being a hub of commerce, Germany being landlocked, etc., could be imaginatively connected to their game.
Of course, each national style can be perceived as a virtue or a sin, according to the changing fortunes of the respective teams in international competitions.
Take the Germans: Though always lacking in flair, their relentlessness and machinelike organization have made them a consistently dominating force. "Football is a simple game," famously said former England player Gary Lineker, "where 22 players play against each other and in the end Germany wins." Except it no longer does. And spoiled of its aura of invincibility, Germany now appears joyless and gray, painfully aware of its shortcomings and longing for new inspiration. Its coach Rudy Voeller was the first to resign after the elimination from the tournament, daunted by the looming task of leading the team in the next World Cup campaign on its own home turf. There was always something militaristic about the German game, a triumph of discipline and physical might. Suddenly this feels old-fashioned and obsolete: If Germany is an army, it's an old-school one in a new type of war. To be German today is to learn self-deprecation and contemplate the strange notion of hiring a foreign coach; in other words, to look at the world with very different eyes.
Italy, which was an early favorite to win the trophy, was another crushing disappointment, and its campaign was marred by the tournament's big scandal. On their first game against Denmark, Italy's star player Francesco Totti was caught on camera spitting on a Danish defender, and was promptly labeled "the Italian llama" by the Danish press. UEFA had no choice but to disqualify him for three games. The Italian team plunged into chaos and paranoia, and flew home after just two more lackluster performances. Spitting is not unheard of in soccer (Germany coach Voeller, once an outstanding player, was literally showered by Dutchman Frank Rijkaard in the most egregious such incident), but the amount of coverage a game of this level receives makes it most unwise. Totti's spit was unequivocally documented and available to see 24/7 all over the Internet.
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