Soccer in Sun and Shadow

The 2006 World Cup

As usual, CIA aircraft were flying in and out of Europe without permission or notice or so much as a hello — good-bye, ferrying prisoners to torture chambers around the world.

As usual, Israel was invading Gaza, and in order to rescue a soldier held hostage was holding Palestine’s freedom hostage with guns blazing.

As usual, scientists were warning that the climate was coming unhinged and sooner rather than later the polar icecaps would melt and the oceans would swallow seaports and shorelines. But the ones poisoning the atmosphere and unhinging the climate continued, as usual, to turn a deaf ear.

As usual, the fix was in on the Mexican election, where the computer system for the official vote count was impeccably programmed by the brother-in-law of the candidate of the right.

As usual, well-informed sources in Miami were announcing the imminent fall of Fidel Castro, it was only a matter of hours.

As usual, human rights violations in Cuba were making headlines. This time at the U.S. military base in Guantánamo, where three of the hundreds of prisoners held without charge or trial were found hanged in their cells. The White House said the terrorists were just trying to attract attention.

As usual, a scandal was erupting after Evo Morales, the first indigenous president of Bolivia, nationalized the country’s oil and gas resources, thus committing the unpardonable crime of keeping his promises.

As usual, killings were continuing in Iraq, a country guilty of harboring oil, while Pandemic Studios of California was announcing a new video game in which the heroes invade Venezuela, also guilty of harboring oil.

And the United States was threatening to invade Iran, yet another country guilty of harboring oil. Iran was a menace because it wanted a nuclear bomb. Remind me, was it Iran that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

Bruno, too, was a menace. Reared in captivity in Italy then released, the bear was frolicking in the forests of Germany. Although he showed not the slightest interest in soccer, the agents of order were taking no chances. They shot Bruno to death in Bavaria just before the opening of the eighteenth World Cup.

* * *

Thirty-two countries from five continents played sixty-four matches in twelve attractive, well-designed, even majestic stadiums across a unified Germany: eleven in the West and just one in the East.

This World Cup had a theme: before each match the players unveiled a banner decrying the global plague of racism.

A hot topic: on the eve of the tournament, French political leader Jean-Marie Le Pen declared that the country could not see itself in its players, for nearly all were black, and he added that its captain Zinedine Zidane, more Algerian than French, refused to sing the national anthem. The vice president of the Italian senate, Roberto Calderoli, echoed the sentiment saying that the French team consisted of blacks, Islamists, and Communists who preferred “l’Internationale” to “La Marseillaise” and Mecca to Bethlehem. Earlier, the coach of the Spanish team, Luis Aragonés, called French player Thierry Henry a “black piece of shit,” and the president in perpetuity of South American soccer, Nicolás Leoz, opened his autobiography by saying he had been born “in a town populated by thirty people and a hundred Indians.”

At the end of the tournament, in practically the final moment of the final match, a bull charged: Zidane, who was saying farewell to soccer, head-butted a rival who had been needling him with the sort of insult that lunatic fans like to shriek from the upper decks. The insulter got flattened and the insulted got a red card from the referee and jeers from a crowd poised until then to give him an ovation. And Zidane left the field for good.

Still, this was his World Cup. He was the best player of the tournament, despite that final act of insanity or integrity, depending on how you look at it. Thanks to his beautiful moves, thanks to his melancholy elegance, we could still believe that soccer was not irredeemably condemned to mediocrity.

* * *

In that final match, shortly after Zidane was sent off, Italy beat France on penalties and was crowned champion.

Until 1968 ties were decided by the toss of a coin, since then by penalty shots: more or less another way of leaving it to chance. France was better than Italy, but a few seconds obliterated more than two hours of play. The same thing had happened in the match that put Argentina, a better team than Germany, on the plane home.

* * *

Eight players from the Italian club Juventus reached the final in Berlin: five for Italy and three for France. Juventus was the club most deeply implicated in the rackets uncovered on the eve of the Cup. Italy’s “Clean Hands” campaign became “Clean Feet”: judges found evidence of a vast array of deceptions, including paying off referees, buying journalists, falsifying contracts, cooking the books, raffling off positions, manipulating TV coverage … Also implicated was Milan, property of Silvio Berlusconi, the virtuoso who has so successfully avoided prosecution for his fraudulent practices in soccer, in business, and in government.

* * *

Italy won its fourth Cup and France came second, followed by Germany and Portugal. You might say Puma won out over Adidas and Nike.

Miroslav Klose of the German team was top scorer with five goals.

South America and Europe were tied: each continent had won the Cup nine times.

For the first time in history the same referee, Horacio Elizondo, blew the opening whistle in the inaugural match and the closing whistle in the final. He proved to be the right choice.

Other records were set, all of them Brazilian. Ronaldo, chubby but effective, became the highest scorer in World Cup history; Cafú became the player to win the most matches; and Brazil became the country with the most goals scored (an astounding 201) as well as the country with the most consecutive victories (an equally astounding eleven).

Nevertheless, in the 2006 World Cup Brazil was present but not visible. Superstar Ronaldinho provided neither goals nor glamour, and angry fans transformed a twenty-foot statue of him into a pile of ashes and twisted steel.

* * *

By the final stages, the tournament had become a Eurocup without a single Latin American, African, or any other non-European team.

Not much imagination was on display. Except for the Ecuadoran team, which played beautifully even if to little effect, this was a World Cup without surprises. As one spectator summed it up: “The players were on their best behavior. They didn’t smoke, they didn’t drink, they didn’t play.”

Artists made way for weight lifters and Olympic runners who every once in a while kicked a ball or an opponent.

The strategy now embraced as common sense paid off: nearly everyone back, practically no one forward; the Great Wall of China defending the goal and the Lone Ranger hoping for a breakaway. Only a few years ago teams played five men forward. Now there is but one, and at this rate we’ll soon be down to none.

Argentina’s cartooning zoologist, Roberto Fontanarrosa, drew the inevitable conclusion: strikers are like pandas, an endangered species.