Soccer, globalization and sportsmanship

This Atlantic Monthly article interviews Franklin Foer, author of How Soccer Explains the World?. Soccer is the most globalized of all sports. It is also, for the most part, the most purely capitalist; almost no (non-American) soccer leagues have cartel-like restrictions on how can own a franchise, minimum individual salaries or salary caps.

Some of Foer's most worthy observation deals with the complex relationship between internationalizing phenomena and local specifics, thus the soccer as globalization metaphor.

There's also a clear difference between American sports franchises and soccer clubs around the world. American sports franchises represent very broad geographic areas. The greatest compliment you can pay an American sports team is that they're "America's team." But soccer clubs represent communities or neighborhoods. And when you're representing a neighborhood, you're representing a very specific segment of the population. Soccer clubs become proxies for ethnicity, class, religion, or social caste. That makes them inherently more political. So soccer matches usually signify a clash of religions, classes, and castes. To me, that's what makes the game so thrilling to watch. There's always some elevated stake to the game...

For all the globalization that it obviously embodies, in most cases soccer is still firmly rooted in the local. Your identification with a particular soccer club has a lot to do with how you define yourself as a human being...

Take the Barcelona soccer club. By all accounts, the Catalans should have no use for their self-identity as Catalans. They're very prosperous members of the Spanish nation. Their history is preserved and protected and under no threat. Yet they still demonstrate this essential human impulse to identify with the group. It's evidenced by their enthusiasm for the soccer club FC Barcelona, which is a great symbol of the Catalan nation.

For Foer, former Argentine star Diego Maradona is everything that's great about the sport. He was short. He was fat. And he was the best in the world. Soccer is a game for everyone, unlike so many American sports. You don't have to be 6'11", or 400 pounds, or take massive amounts of steroids to play. It's so much more about skill and basic fitness—or not even basic fitness, as the case of Maradona proves. One of the great elements of the game's mythology is that you can have these almost semi-professional sides come in and take out the best teams in the world. There should be something refreshing for Americans about a game where a short, fat guy can be one of the best people in it.

Maradona was always a prick of a human being. Soccer's answer to Pete Rose. But he, in his prime, was truly sublime to watch. It's sad that his decline culminated just about the time I started following the sport. Still, he embodied one of the reasons I love soccer so much: normal sized human beings can not only play the sport, but be pretty darn good at it. Maradona was about 5'5"; Pele is around 5'9". Most consider them the two best players who ever lived.


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I admit it's ironic to follow an article mentioning Maradona with an article about sportsmanship, but here goes.

The Christian Science Monitor ran a nice piece about the work the Ripken brothers (Cal and Bill) are doing.

The brothers opened the Ripken Baseball Academy in Baltimore last year, with the goal of increasing baseball participation among youths. Their gospel is simple: Teach parents and coaches to stop wrecking kids' games and start making baseball fun again, leading more kids to play the game longer.

Baseball participation has dropped by a third since 1990. Youth sports experts across the US cite lack of fun as the top reason young players dump baseball, typically when they turn 12 or 13. Overzealous competition and relentless schedules - many elite youth teams play 60 or 70 games a season - ratchet up the pressure and reduce the joy.

The phenomenon of burned-out kids exists in other sports, but is felt most acutely in baseball, says Jim Thompson, founder of the nonprofit Positive Coaching Alliance. Baseball's slower pace, he suggests, may increase scrutiny on the individual.

"Bad coaching intensifies all of this," Mr. Thompson says. "And bad coaching often means paying more attention to winning rather than teaching life lessons. You can win pee-wee baseball games by taking walks and running the bases. But that's not baseball, it's a track meet."

That's exactly the mentality that needs to change in all North American youth sports, not just baseball.

The club soccer team I helped coach this spring (12-14 year olds) could've played in the 3rd or 4th division, since our league lets clubs choose. We could've done so and won most of our games by a comfortable margin. Instead, we played in the 2nd division. We won 3, tied 4 and lost 5 and we were competitive in all but one of our games. By being challenged, the kids became better soccer players. All the kids. And there were no hard feelings created by winning every game 7-0.

I saw the hypercompetitive mentality in some of the other coaches. My co-coach and I strived to avoid this crap. We quite probably could've won more games if we hadn't played certain players or only played them for a few minutes. But that's not really the point. They don't get any better sitting on the bench. And let's face it, no one likes sit on the bench any more than they have to. Just because they're not the best players on the field doesn't mean they have no pride. That's something clueless coaches either don't realize or don't care about.

(Also see my essay Philosophies of coaching youth sports)

If it were up to me, organized, adult-driven youth sports would be banned for kids younger than 10 or 11. Get kids together and let them play pickup or recreationally. Maybe have one adult sitting in the corner, QUIETLY, in case someone gets hurt or whatever. But otherwise, no audience. No lunatics jeering like they're watching a group of highly-paid professionals. No micromanaging coaches barking out orders like they're training dogs. Just let the kids play.

The article adds, While the extreme cases, such as occasional brawls among parents and coaches, grab headlines, the bigger challenge is educating the parents and coaches who stir up trouble with their good intentions.

Amen. Many otherwise good and decent parents don't even realize how totally lacking in perspective they are when their son or daughter is on a sports' field.

Jim Thompson summed it up quite well, "You can't teach life lessons if kids quit."