Soccer in Sun and Shadow

The 2010 World Cup

Iran was fast becoming the gravest threat to humankind, thanks to an international campaign declaring it might have or maybe even does have nuclear weapons, as if it had been the Iranians who dropped the bomb on civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Ships in international waters carrying food, medicine, and toys to Palestine were being machine-gunned in one of the habitual criminal acts by which Israel punishes the Palestinians, as if they, who are Semites, were to blame for anti-Semitism and its horrors.

The International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and numerous governments were humiliating Greece, obliging the country to accept the unacceptable, as if the Greeks, and not the bankers of Wall Street, were responsible for the worst international crisis since 1929.

The Pentagon was proclaiming joyfully that in Afghanistan its experts had discovered a trillion dollars’ worth of gold, cobalt, copper, iron, and especially lithium, the coveted essential ingredient in cell phones and laptops, as if after nearly nine years of war and thousands of deaths the invading country had finally found what it was looking for in the country it had invaded.

In Colombia a common grave was revealing more than two thousand nameless bodies which the army had thrown there as if they were guerrillas slain in combat, although people living nearby knew they were union members, community activists, and peasants defending their lands.

One of the worst ecological catastrophes of all time was turning the Gulf of Mexico into an immense puddle of oil, and a month and a half after it began, the petro-volcano at the bottom of the sea was still in full eruption and the company responsible, British Petroleum, was still whistling and looking the other way, as if it had played no part in the disaster.

In several countries, a flood of accusations of sexual abuse and child rape was inundating the Catholic Church, and traumas hitherto repressed by fear were coming to light everywhere, while certain ecclesiastical sources were defending themselves by saying that such atrocities also occurred outside the Church, as if that could excuse it, and by claiming that in many cases the priests had been provoked, as if the victims were the guilty parties.

Well-informed sources in Miami were still denying that Fidel Castro was alive and kicking, as if he weren’t giving them new cause for bitterness every day.

Two irreplaceable writers were taking their leave, José Saramago and Carlos Monsiváis, and we missed them as if we did not know they would keep returning from the dead just for the joy of tormenting the owners of the world.

And in the port of Hamburg, a multitude was celebrating the return to Germany’s first division of the St. Pauli soccer club, which, impossible as it seems, has twenty million fans under the club motto: “Say No to Racism, No to Sexism, No to Homophobia, No to Nazism.”

Meanwhile, far away from there, in South Africa, the nineteenth World Cup got under way, wrapped in one of those banners: “Say No to Racism.”

* * *

For a month the world stopped spinning and many of its inhabitants stopped breathing.

Nothing out of the ordinary, since this occurs every four years, but what was extraordinary was that this was the first World Cup held on African soil.

Black Africa, scorned, condemned to silence and oblivion, could bask in the spotlight of world attention, at least for the short while the championship lasted.

Thirty-two countries did battle in ten stadiums that cost a fortune. Nobody knows how South Africa will manage to keep those concrete behemoths running, a multi-million-dollar extravagance easy to explain but hard to justify in one of the most unjust countries in the world.

* * *

The most beautiful of the stadiums, in the shape of a flower, opened its immense petals above a bay named for Nelson Mandela.

This World Cup was a well-deserved homage to the founder of South Africa’s democracy. The fruits of Mandela’s labors can be seen in one way or another all over the globe. Nevertheless, in his country blacks are still the poorest and the most punished by police and plagues, and black were the beggars, prostitutes, and street kids who on the eve of the Cup were hidden from view to ensure that visitors did not get a bad impression.

* * *

Throughout the tournament, one could see that African soccer had conserved its agility but lost its inventiveness and daring, lots of running but little dancing. There are those who believe the managers, nearly all of them from Europe, cast a chilling effect. If true, they did scant favor for a soccer that promised so much exuberance.

Africa sacrificed its flair in the name of efficacy, and efficacy shone by its absence. Only one African country, Ghana, came to be among the eight best; and soon Ghana too was sent home. Not a single African team survived, not even the hosts.

Many African players worthy of their heritage of good soccer live and play on the continent that enslaved their ancestors.

In one of the World Cup matches, the Boateng brothers, sons of a Ghanaian father, played against each other: one in a Ghanaian shirt, the other in a German one.

Of the players on the Ghanaian side, not a one played in Ghana’s national championship.

Of the players on the German side, every single one played in Germany’s national championship.

Like Latin America, Africa exports working hands and working feet.

* * *

“Jabulani” was the name of the soapy, half-crazed tournament ball that eluded hands and flouted feet. The World Cup was obliged to embrace this novelty from Adidas, even though the players did not like it one bit. From their castle in Zurich, the owners of soccer do not propose, they impose. That’s their way.

* * *

The errors and horrors committed by certain officials made obvious what common sense has for many years demanded.

Common sense cries out, always in vain, to allow the referee to check the video replay on decisive but questionable plays. Technology now permits a consultation that is as quick and easy as a glance at that other technological instrument the referee uses to measure the length of the match. It’s called a clock.

Every other sport — basketball, tennis, baseball, swimming, even fencing and car racing — makes regular use of electronic assistance. Not soccer. And the explanation of its owners would be comical if it were not suspiciously convenient: “Mistakes are part of the game,” they say, and we are left slack-jawed at the revelation that errare humanum est.

* * *

The best save of the tournament was the work of a goal scorer, not a goalkeeper: Uruguayan striker Luis Suárez, standing on the goal line in the final minute of a decisive match, blocked the slippery ball with both hands. A goal would have taken his country out of the Cup; thanks to his act of patriotic lunacy, Suárez was sent packing but Uruguay was not.

* * *

Uruguay, which entered the World Cup behind everyone else after a painful qualifying round, played the entire championship without ever giving an inch and was the only Latin American country to reach the semifinals. In the Uruguayan press, several cardiologists warned that “excessive joy can damage the heart.” Many of us Uruguayans embraced the chance to die of something other than boredom, and the country’s streets became a fiesta. After all, the right to celebrate one’s own merits is always preferable to the pleasure some derive from the misfortune of others.

Uruguay ended up in fourth place, not bad for the only country that kept this World Cup from becoming a European championship.

Diego Forlán, our striker, was chosen as best player of the tournament.

* * *

Spain won. A country that had never held the trophy won it cleanly thanks to the marvels of its soccer of solidarity, all for one and one for all, and to the astonishing abilities of a tiny magician named Andrés Iniesta.

The Netherlands came in second, after a final match that gave its finest traditions a swift kick in the pants.

* * *

The first- and second-place finishers of the previous World Cup returned home without even opening their suitcases. In 2006 Italy and France met in the final match. This time they met in the airport departure lounge. In Italy, more and more voices clamored against a soccer played to keep the other side from playing. In France, the disaster provoked a political crisis and set off racist outrage, since nearly all the players who sang “La Marseillaise” in South Africa’s stadiums were black.

Other favorites, like England, did not last long either.

Brazil and Argentina suffered cruel humiliations. Brazil was unrecognizable, except for the few moments when the team slipped free of the cage of its own defensive plan. What was the illness that required such a dubious remedy?

Germany rained goals on Argentina in their final match. Half a century before, other Argentine players were pummeled by coins when they returned from a disastrous performance, but this time they were welcomed by an adoring crowd. There are still people who believe in things more important than winning or losing.

* * *

This World Cup confirmed the remarkable frequency with which players get injured, crushed by the exhausting pace professional soccer imposes with impunity. One could say some stars have grown rich, even fantastically rich, but that is only true for a select few who, besides playing two or more matches a week and besides training night and day, must sacrifice their scant free time to the demands of consumer society, selling underwear, cars, perfume, and shavers, or posing for the covers of glossy magazines. In the end, it only proves this world is so absurd we even have slaves who are millionaires.

* * *

The two most highly publicized and anticipated superstars missed their appointments. Lionel Messi wanted to be there, did what he could, and something shone through. They say Cristiano Ronaldo was there, but no one saw him; perhaps he was too busy looking at himself.

But a new star emerged from the depths of the sea and rose unexpectedly to the topmost heights of the soccer firmament. He’s an octopus and he lives in an aquarium in Germany. His name is Paul, though he deserves to be called Octodamus.

Before each match, he made his prophecies. They gave him a choice of two mussels bearing the flags of the two opponents. He ate the mussels of the winners and was never wrong.

The octo-oracle, who had a decisive influence on the betting, was listened to with religious reverence in the soccer world, and was loved and hated and even slandered by certain resentful souls like me. When he announced that Uruguay would lose to Germany, I accused: “This octopus has been bought off.”

* * *

On the first day of the World Cup, I hung a sign on the door of my house that said: “Closed for soccer.”

When I took it down a month later, I had played sixty-four matches, beer in hand, without budging from my favorite chair.

The exploit left me drained, muscles stiff, throat raw, but already I feel nostalgic. I miss the insufferable litany of the vuvuzelas, the emotion of those goals injurious to bad hearts, the beauty of the best plays repeated in slow motion. I miss the celebration and the mourning too, because sometimes soccer is a pleasure that hurts, and the music of a victory that sets the dead to dancing sounds a lot like the clamorous silence of an empty stadium, where one of the defeated, unable to move, still sits in the middle of the immense stands, alone.