Letter Three | 11/22 | Russ
Cape Town
Dear Lack,
I’m laughing. On Sunday evening I went to a restaurant called Peddlars in Constantia, a suburb of Cape Town. It’s a family-friendly bistro with a bar at the center: children kitted with colorful headphones and iPads next to a table of six slamming Jägerbombs. I watched the Ecuador/Qatar match with a colleague named Brian who recently moved to Cape Town after teaching in Ecuador for four years.
The game began. Two and half minutes elapsed. The Qatari goalkeeper made a complete mess of a punch. Enner Valencia scored. Brian and I erupted in cheer and applause. The referee waved off the goal. The broadcast showed the replay. Valencia’s kneecap was caught offside. Oh man, Lack is going to have some things to say! I thought.
As I write this on the second day of the tournament, I have watched three of the four matches. Qatar were abysmal. Aside from an attempted header at the end of the first half, Qatar showed no sign of looking dangerous. The thing I found most amusing the entire night from a Qatar perspective was a brief shot of their fans (all men?) replicating Iceland’s Viking Thunder Clap.
Ecuador on the other hand played better than I expected. They fashioned a collective, workhorse style of soccer that I think you’d appreciate. I also like teams that celebrate together. After Valencia’s second goal in the 31st minute, a header into the bottom left corner, the whole team made a circle, dropped to their knees, and raised their hands to the heavens.
The Netherlands/Senegal match was physical and sloppy. Senegal, I think, were unlucky to lose 2-0. They were easily the more dynamic team in the second half and created the match’s few moments of excitement. I specifically remember an absolute rip of a volley from a Senegalese player that the Dutch goalkeeper managed to parry away. My thoughts and prayers go out to that man’s wrists.
The Netherlands took their whole style of play from center-back Virgil van Dijk: 20% headers, 80% being a brick wall. And in the 84th minute after a costly mistimed punch from the Senegalese goalkeeper, substitute forward Cody Gakpo directed a glancing header goalward: 1-0. The Netherlands then simply saw the match out until a late counter nine minutes into added time. 2-0, full time.
I’m curious to hear what listening to USA/Wales’ 1-1 draw on the picket line was like. Rather than very good or very bad, did your Welsh friend end up having a very fine day? Some brief thoughts about the match: USA were the dominant team in the first half but couldn’t put the game away when they needed to; Tim Weah had a slick finish to score the USA’s lone goal; Wales played well enough in the second to deserve a draw. Moving on.
I am inclined to begin every letter from here on out with an excerpt from Sally Rooney.* Much like you, I am a fan (let’s be real: I would read a collection of Rooney’s grocery lists). Normal People recounts the ebbs and flows of a relationship between two young Irish folks as they enter early adulthood. But what captivated me (and many others, I venture) were Rooney’s thoughts on vulnerability, mental health, life under capitalism, and purpose.
In the opening of your last letter you touched upon the necessity of language to make emotional expression possible. You are spot-on in your connection between this idea and our own lives (for the record, you are, in my view, a very nice player). To this day there is something ineffable about finding something else that allows me to express how I feel. This, of course, most often comes by way of reading, through language. Something clicks. The weight of those feelings is released. They’re still there, but they exist outside of the body. I can’t explain it, but hopefully you understand a little of what I’m trying to say.
The most recent example of the click came after I finished Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism. The core of the text is summarized by the following quote attributed to Fredric Jameson and Slavoj Žižek: “It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.”(You, of course, know this already. After all, you were the one to recommend Fisher to me. But here is as good a place as any to spread Fisher’s work.) I’ve been thinking a lot about this phrase over the past few days as FIFA and Qatar continue to be scrutinized by fans and media. People are rightfully outraged by FIFA’s corruption and greed, by Qatar’s human-rights abuses. However, what irritates me greatly is people’s apparent surprise at this occurring at all. Did they not think that similar injustices happened in previous World Cups? Moreover, what can be done to ensure that such things don’t happen again?
Thus: It is easier to imagine the end of the World Cup than it is to imagine the end of capitalism.
This is not intended to be profound. Rather, it is meant to ask people to think less—or not only—about criticizing FIFA and Qatar and instead start thinking about the larger issues that made the situation possible in the first place.
So—what can be done? I’m afraid I’m a little too cynical to believe that fans will simply stop watching the World Cup. Those in power have too much money and influence and can too easily sportswash the tournament. FIFA, of course, have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. Why wouldn’t they? It makes perfect sense that FIFA president Gianni Infantino would come out to implore supporters to focus on the matches and “not allow football to be dragged into ideological or political battle that exists.” Which is a ludicrous thing to say.
What about the players? I deliberately avoided discussing the England/Iran match until now because I think it remains the most compelling match of the tournament so far. Not because of the 6-2 scoreline, but because of politics.
On the one side you have the Iranian team taking a political stand against the country’s leadership by refusing to sing the national anthem before the match. This act of solidarity with the anti-government protesters back home, whose outrage at the Iranian government’s use of their “morality police” to suppress women—often violently, as in the recent case of the tragic death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, killed for noncompiance with the country’s head-covering rules—is obviously political.
On the other side you have England, a nation where soccer is intrinsically linked to the working-class. And, as the country faces an energy crisis, it is the working-class who will suffer while the Tory government shrugs. I was happy to see Marcus Rashford get on the scoresheet. After the government made the callous decision to not extend a free-school-meals program during the height of COVID, Rashford launched a campaign to “end child hunger” in the UK (the country with the sixth-highest GDP in the world). His work placed enough public pressure on the government to see it enact a £120 million food fund.
I would never expect the players to be the ones to take on FIFA and the wrath of global capitalism. But reading about players like German left back Paul Breitner, who pulled out of the 1978 World Cup four years after winning the tournament in 1974 because he morally objected to the Argentinian military junta, under whose leadership tens of thousands were killed, or Brazilian midfielder and medical doctor Sócrates who co-founded the Corinthians Democracy movement in opposition to the military government—it does raise a little bit of hope.
I have gone on long enough.
I’ll leave you with this: there is a great piece by former Manchester United striker Eric Cantona that he wrote for The Players Tribune in 2018. In it, he details his family’s legacy as escapees from Franco’s regime, as immigrants in flight from poverty. On the back of these personal stories he shares the following:
“We are living through times of widespread poverty, war, and immigration…Football is one of life’s great teachers. It is one of life’s great inspirations. But the current business model of football ignores so much of the world…Football should be for the people. This does not have to be a utopian idea.”
That, my friend, is language that clicks.
Until next time,
Russ
*I won’t begin each letter with an excerpt by Sally Rooney. Zach would roast me.