Soccer in Sun and Shadow

A Rolling Flag

During the summer of 1916, in the midst of the World War, an English captain named Nevill launched an attack by kicking a ball. He leaped out from behind the parapet that had offered some cover and chased the ball toward the German trenches. His regiment, at first hesitant, followed. The captain was cut down by gunfire, but England conquered that no-man’s-land and celebrated the battle as the first victory of British soccer on the front lines.

Many years later, toward the end of the century, the owner of Milan won the Italian elections with a chant from the stadiums, “Forza Italia!” Silvio Berlusconi promised to save Italy the way he had saved Milan, the all-time champion superteam, and voters forgot that several of his companies were on the edge of ruin.

Soccer and fatherland are always connected, and politicians and dictators frequently exploit those links of identity. The Italian squad won the World Cups of 1934 and 1938 in the name of the fatherland and Mussolini, and the players started and finished each match by saluting the crowd with their right arms outstretched, giving three cheers for Italy.

For the Nazis too, soccer was a matter of state. A monument in the Ukraine commemorates the players of the 1942 Dynamo Kiev team. During the German occupation they committed the insane act of defeating Hitler’s squad in the local stadium. Having been warned, “If you win, you die,” they started out resigned to losing, trembling with fear and hunger, but in the end they could not contain their yearning for dignity. When the match was over all eleven were shot with their club shirts on at the edge of a cliff.

Soccer and fatherland, fatherland and soccer: in 1934 while Bolivia and Paraguay were annihilating each other in the Chaco War, disputing a deserted corner of the map, the Paraguayan Red Cross formed a soccer team that played in several cities of Argentina and Uruguay and raised enough money to attend to the wounded of both sides.

Three years later, while General Franco, arm in arm with Hitler and Mussolini, bombed the Spanish Republic, a Basque team was on the road in Europe and the club Barcelona was playing in the United States and Mexico. The Basque government had sent the Euzkadi team to France and other countries to publicize their cause and raise funds for defense; Barcelona had sailed for America with the same mission. It was 1937 and Barcelona’s captain had already fallen under Franco’s bullets. On the soccer field and off, the two wandering teams embodied democracy under siege.

Only four of Barcelona’s players made it back to Spain during the war. Of the Basques, only one. When the Republic was defeated, FIFA declared the exiled players to be in rebellion and threatened them with permanent suspension, but a few of them managed to find work with Latin American teams. Several of the Basques formed the club España in Mexico, who were unbeatable in the early years. The Euzkadi center forward, Isidro Lángara, made his debut in Argentina in 1939. In his first match he scored four goals. That was for San Lorenzo, where Ángel Zubieta, who had played in Euzkadi’s midfield, also starred. Later on, in Mexico, Lángara led the list of scorers in the 1945 championship.

The model club of Franco’s Spain, Real Madrid, ruled the world between 1956 and 1960. This astonishing team won four cups in a row in the Spanish League, five European Cups, and one Intercontinental. Real Madrid went everywhere and always left people with their mouths hanging open. The Franco dictatorship had found a traveling embassy that could not be beat. Goals broadcast by radio were more effective trumpets of triumph than the anthem “Cara al Sol.” In 1959 one of the regime’s political bosses, José Solís, voiced his gratitude to the players: “Thanks to you, people who used to hate us now understand us.” Like El Cid, Real Madrid embodied all the virtues of Immortal Spain, even though its famous squad looked more like the Foreign Legion: the Frenchman Kopa, the Argentines Di Stéfano and Rial, the Uruguayan Santamaría, and the Hungarian Puskás.

Ferenc Puskás was called “Little Cannon Boom” for the smashing virtues of his left leg, which could also catch the ball like a glove. Other Hungarians, Lásló Kubala, Zoltán Czibor, and Sándor Kocsis, were stars with Barcelona in those years. In 1954 the cornerstone was laid for Camp Nou, the great Barcelona stadium built for Kubala: the old stadium could not hold the multitude that came to cheer his precision passes and deadly blasts. Czibor, meanwhile, struck sparks from his shoes. The other Hungarian on Barcelona, Kocsis, was a great header. “Head of Gold,” they called him, and a sea of handkerchiefs celebrated his goals. They say Kocsis had the best head in Europe after Churchill.

Earlier on, in 1950 Kubala had formed a Hungarian team in exile and that earned him a two-year suspension decreed by FIFA. For playing on another exile team after Soviet tanks crushed the popular insurrection at the end of 1956, FIFA suspended Puskás, Czibor, Kocsis, and other Hungarians for more than a year.

In 1958 in the midst of its war of independence, Algeria formed a soccer team, which for the first time wore the national colors. Its line was made up of Rashid Makhloufi, Ben Tifour, and other Algerians who played professionally in France.

Blockaded by the colonial power, Algeria only managed to play against Morocco, which was kicked out of FIFA for several years for committing such a sin, and engage in several unimportant matches organized by sports unions in several Arab and Eastern European countries. FIFA slammed all the doors on the Algerian team, and the French soccer league blacklisted the players. Imprisoned by contracts, they were barred from ever returning to professional activity.

But after Algeria won its independence, the French had no alternative but to call up the players the fans longed for.