“Many conservative and progressive scholars find football (and sports) research superficial and banal; the former dismiss it as the embodiment of ‘low culture’, while the latter denigrate it as an ‘opium of the masses’, a distraction from engaging with truly pressing concerns such as poverty and class struggle, environmental degradation, gender inequality, unemployment, homelessness, the HIV/AIDS pandemic, crime, corruption and so on.”

Perhaps as a consequence, Alegi and Bolsmann also note “the output of academic studies of football in South Africa has been inversely proportional to the game’s relevance in South African society.”  The same could probably be said more generally about the study of sports in Africa, though many academics around the world are working to correct that imbalance.  And Peter Alegi is certainly doing his part.

A historian at Michigan State University who is spending this propitious year as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, Alegi has been a busy man.  Having published “the first academic monograph on football” in South Africa in 2004 (Laduma! Soccer, Politics and Society in South Africa), in 2010 Alegi is publishing two books that should be of interest to thinking fans: both the aforementioned South Africa and the Global Game and African Soccerscapes: How a Continent Changed the World’s Game—a short but comprehensive book published by Ohio University Press as part of their Africa in World History series, which is intended to offer scholarly but accessible perspectives on “the particular and valuable ways in which Africans have experienced, and expressed, universal human experiences.”

Alegi has also been a go-to guy for media looking for intelligent perspectives on soccer in South Africa, and if you are paying attention to the social and political side to this ‘Year of African Football’ you will likely run across his voice (as one example, he makes an appearance in the interesting recent BBC radio documentary series on African football).  But amidst it all Alegi was kind enough to respond to some questions I had after reading African Soccerscapes (our ‘interview’ is included below after a brief review), and to help me consider his book in relation to broad questions about what is at stake this year in the world of ideas: Beyond soccer, what does South Africa 2010 mean?

Alegi is a regular contributor to www.footballiscominghome.net

The Books

Both South Africa and the Global Game and African Soccerscapes are worth reading for intelligent perspectives on African soccer, though South Africa and the Global Game is an edited collection oriented more towards specialists.  I was able to preview the contents of that collection since they have also been published as part of a special issue of the academic journal Soccer & Society, and for a set of academic essays it looks to be a good read (it is particularly nice to get perspectives from an impressive group of South African scholars—a group too often missing from the media coverage I’ve seen). But for present purposes I’m focusing primarily on African Soccerscapes which, while certainly more academic than journalistic in tone, is likely to be of greater interest to a general reader.

African Soccerscapes presents an overview of the history of the game on the continent through essentially chronological themes—starting with the introduction of the game around the turn of the 20^th century (through colonialists, missionaries, and merchants), and progressing through the ‘privatization’ of  football from the 1980s to the present.  There is also an interesting epilogue specifically about the 2010 World Cup—arguing that “South Africa’s hosting of the World Cup represents the latest and most ambitious attempt by an African country to use football to showcase its political achievements, accelerate economic growth, and assert the continent’s global citizenship.”

Many of the chapters are necessarily eclectic in the countries and regions they cover.  Documentation on the history of African football is tough to come by, and you take what you can get.  Nevertheless, I particularly enjoyed some of the more extended narratives such as those in ‘Chapter Three: Making Nations in Late Colonial Africa, 1940s-1964,’ which uses case studies from Nigeria, Algeria, and South Africa to demonstrate the ways independence politics often became linked with the game.  Local clubs provided politicians such as Nnamdi Azikiwe (also known as ‘Zik’—the first president of an independent Nigeria) chances for community organizing, while ‘national’ teams such as that organized by the Algerian National Liberation Front offered chances for colonized societies to negotiate new identities.

Such examples represent the basic theme of African Soccerscapes: Africa both shapes and has been shaped by the game in ways that too often go unrecognized.  Seeing those patterns in the broad scope of modern history is most helpful to understanding soccer and Africa—as is evident in the final chapter’s discussion of contemporary issues around the game.  In regard to controversies around the migration of African players to Europe (often at the expense of local leagues) and the explosion of youth academies (often at the expense of children’s rights), for example, Alegi makes a convincing case that we have the World Bank (at least partially) to blame.

The imposition of ‘Structural Adjustment’ requiring drastic cuts in African governments’ social spending essentially destroyed any hopes that local leagues or youth development programs might flourish as part of the greater good.  Instead, the global ‘free’ market has been allowed to run amuck, meaning that the already rich leagues and agents hold disproportionate power.  And while that mostly privileges Europe in the soccer world, Alegi also importantly notes that within the continent South Africa itself often serves as the hegemon—due to its relative economic strength, South African companies, media outlets, and personalities have huge influence across the whole of Africa (something Alegi describes as “South Africa’s increasingly subimperial role on the continent”).

Interestingly, however, African Soccerscapes also points out some ways in which the ‘privatization of football’ has had positive effects.  With the women’s game, for example, local versions of the ‘old boys’ network have long been reluctant to promote soccer for both genders—historically soccer has been closely identified with masculinity in much of Africa, and when girls and women have been allowed to play sports it is often netball, basketball, or athletics.  But with the proliferation of NGO’s using sports as part of development and with funding from multi-nationals such as FIFA requiring at least some attention to the women’s side, things are looking a bit better for the women’s game.

Overall, by putting the game in Africa in social, political, and historical context African Soccerscapes serves as a valuable reminder to be skeptical of simple narratives about South Africa 2010.  It is not, as Sepp Blatter might like us to believe, just a happy story of the game uniting the continent for celebrations benevolently sponsored by FIFA and its corporate partners.  But nor is it, as some critics might like us to believe, just about South Africa being used as the dupe of a frivolous game.  It is all much more complicated, and much more interesting, than that.

The Interview

While the history described in African Soccerscapes offers much to think about on its own, after reading the book I was also interested to follow-up with Alegi on his work and on how it all applies.  Since he is in South Africa for the year and I’m stuck in Portland for now, the below is a very slightly edited version of our interview by email:

Guest: If it is possible to describe in short form, what do you see as the major intellectual/academic issues at stake with the major African soccer events this year?  And do you see those issues overlapping with more general issues in African Studies as a field?

Peter Alegi

Alegi: The 2010 World Cup presents Africanist academics with a tremendous opportunity to speak to a massive audience and to spread more widely our still largely neglected work.  With African Soccerscapes I hope to educate general readers about how Africa fits into broader patterns of the world’s recent history, including globalization itself. For the journalists, academics, media producers, business people seeking to better understand Africans’ intense passion for and participation in soccer, I offer insight into the sometimes conflicting priorities of private investment and public support, of play and profit, of club and nation, of tradition and modernity. The book aims to “mainstream” specialized knowledge and, hopefully, will lead to new collaborative projects with scholars in Africa and beyond, including the creation of a center for soccer research on African soil.

Guest: It was interesting to read in introduction to South Africa and the Global Game that historical documentation on football is particularly hard to find—partially because it often got wrapped up in politics.  What was your process like for getting together all the material for African Soccerscapes?

Alegi: Lack of evidence is a massive problem for scholars of the African game.  There is an almost complete lack of archival records for clubs, associations, and leagues, especially before 1990. Government documents, where they exist, say little, if anything, about the game and the same applies to missionaries’ documents. So for African Soccerscapes I relied mainly on a growing body of academic literature in English and French. With the help of two research assistants and Peter Limb, Africana Bibliographer at Michigan State. I spent a year digging for dissertations, journal articles, book chapters, and monographs on African soccer. At the same time, I mined African newspapers and magazines collected by the Cooperative Africana Microfilm Project (CAMP) in Chicago, and also used some oral history interviews. I then applied and won a grant that gave me time to make sense of this mountain of evidence and to prepare the manuscript for publication before the World Cup kickoff in June.

Guest: One theme that seems to underlie the history you write about in the book is the tension between soccer elaborating on the diversity of both Africa as a whole and within African nations, and soccer as a unifying force for countries and the continent.  I wonder about that with things like Puma’s marketing an “African Unity Kit.”  On balance, do you see soccer as more unifying or divisive for Africa—or how do you think about that tension?

Alegi: As is the case everywhere in SoccerWorld, the game unites while it divides.  This paradox is at the heart of the global game’s history, culture, and popularity. It’s hard to generalize about Africa and even harder to reliably say whether soccer has been more unifying or divisive across 12 million square miles of land, with nearly a billion people speaking 2000 languages in more than 50 countries. As a historian my aim is to provide context, explore where, when, and why unity or division occurs and to connect what happens in soccer with what is happening in society.

Guest: In the book you also show how there is a long history of soccer being promoted as doing one thing (eg, ‘civilizing’ or ‘nation building’) from a top-down perspective but actually working as a form of resistance from the bottom-up. So I enjoyed the examples in your work of “Africanization” and how the game takes on “indigenous characteristics.”  Do you see that happening now around the World Cup?  Are there ways that despite the rhetoric of FIFA and the organizers, South Africans themselves are/can adapt it all towards their own ends?

Alegi: Africans are not passive, faceless, powerless victims. Soccer was originally a colonial game but it is now synonymous with Africa. The power of Africans is visible in soccer’s continuing cultural Africanization.  Just the other day, an official of AmaZulu FC, a Premier Soccer League side in Durban, was quoted in our local newspaper stating proudly that magicians and traditional medicine (umuthi in isiZulu) are still an important part of the team’s match preparations. Fan culture is another example of soccer “going local.” In southern Africa, for example, the makarapa—a hard hat decorated with the club’s colors and symbols—is a better example than the vuvuzela of how local people infuse the game with indigenous characteristics.  When I started going to games in South Africa in the early 1990s there were no vuvuzelas (thankfully) but I saw fans wearing beautifully adorned makarapas. These hard hats are a symbol of black working class men’s long experience working underground in the mines, in factories and constructions sites in South Africa. The emergence of the makarapa has to do not only with modernity and the urban industrial experience, but also with African traditional culture. The adornment of the head was a very important feature of precolonial societies. One’s headgear expressed status, power and prestige. So as black men migrated from the countryside to the city, soccer became a cultural weapon for self-definition and empowerment in a racially oppressive context.

But Africanizing the 2010 World Cup is going to be extremely difficult.  The tournament is a FIFA corporate event.  The passion, warmth, and generosity of South Africans will impress the world, but it is a pity that few ordinary Africans will make it into the stadiums. Most people in South Africa (and Africa) cannot afford match tickets even at reduced prices. Moreover, the local vendors and microentrepreneurs that contribute much to the festive atmosphere at domestic matches will be excluded from “restricted zones” around the World Cup stadiums, which are the preserve of FIFA corporate sponsors. Black South Africans may be reduced to providing “African” flavor in the Fan Parks and in the streets.

Guest: So is the commodification of African football you describe in African Soccerscapes part of an inevitable march? Are there signs of hope you see for football becoming more of a people’s game in Africa, or is the power dynamic too far gone?

Alegi: As the old saying goes, “The only things that are inevitable are death and taxes,” but the process of turning professional soccer into another entertainment “product” is unlikely to go away any time soon, in Africa or anywhere else. I do see hope for people to take charge and win some small victories. For example, Africa is the only continent in which TV rights to World Cup matches were awarded to free-to-air public broadcasting networks to allow as many people as possible to watch.  Even in South Africa, the only African country where a private satellite provider had initially secured the rights to 2010, pressure was brought to bear by FIFA and the South African government to ensure that SABC—the national broadcaster—would also show all 64 matches live.  Signs of hope also come from the growth, despite gargantuan obstacles, of women’s soccer and NGOs using soccer for social development goals.  By struggling to broaden access to the game, whether on TV or at the local ground, people and communities are building alternatives to corporate soccer.

Guest: In general it strikes me that much of the academic literature around South Africa hosting the World Cup is pretty critical of the way it is being done.  That is a valuable role, but I’m curious if overall it means you wish SA had never been awarded the Cup.  Or how do you balance the criticism with the potential of it all?

Alegi: Only African countries could bid for the 2010 World Cup as a result of the 2002 FIFA decision to rotate the finals on a continental basis. As much as I respect North African soccer, I had to support South Africa! I was in Soweto on May 15, 2004, when FIFA made the hosting decision. It was a beautiful, joyful day that I’ll never forget.  It was as if South Africa had won the Cup and not just the right to host the finals. This year I am fortunate to be a Fulbright Scholar at the University of KwaZulu-Natal where I am learning from South Africans and giving something back as well. Getting back to the potential benefits of the 2010 World Cup for South Africa, there are likely to be two main positive effects. First, elite South African football will benefit from engagement with soccer’s international networks of knowledge, which Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski identify in Soccernomics as one of the keys to closing the gap between soccer’s First World and Third World. Second, emotional benefits are possible, such fun and once-in-a-lifetime memories for a soccer-obsessed people; short-term feelings of pride and unity; an improved global image for South Africa and Africa as a whole; and greater confidence among some foreign investors.

Guest: Is there other stuff on African football (writing, film, etc..) that you’d particularly recommend to the thinking fan who is not necessarily an academic?

Alegi: I would recommend these films: Le Ballon d’Or based on Salif Keita’s story (winner of the first African Golden Ball in 1970); Zanzibari Soccer Queens on a team of women determined to better their lives and define new identities through playing the game in East Africa; and the South African documentary Pitch Revolution about soccer’s influential role in the anti-apartheid struggle in the 1970s. Among non-academic books, I would recommend Filippo Ricci’s Elephants, Lions, and Eagles and Peter Auf der Heyde’s Has Anybody Got a Whistle?, which describe the contemporary worlds of African soccer from the perspectives of sport reporters, an Italian and a South African respectively.

[note: For anyone interested in other academic reading, in their introduction to South Africa and the Global Game Alegi and Bolsmann also note the following as “important books on African football”: Africa, Football and FIFA by Paul Darby; the collection Football in Africa edited by Gary Armstrong and Richard Giulianotti; the FIFA produced Le Football en Afrique by Paul Dietschy and David-Claude Kemo-Keimbou; and the “three-chapter long treatment of Africa” in The Ball is Round by David Goldblatt.]

Why, after several failed attempts at European glory, has Landon Donovan with Everton finally performed at a level appropriate to one of the top leagues in the world (barring the occasional ‘horror miss’)?  Is he a different player physically from his depressing stints with Bayer Leverkusen in 2000 and 2005?  Maybe a little bit—but probably not much.  If anything he was likely a bit more spry back in 2000 and 2005.  The most dramatic difference is his confidence, composure, and attitude.  Donovan is not a very different physical player, but he seems very different psychologically.

Even on a game by game basis, what makes the difference for a player between brilliance and uselessness?  What, to continue the hypothetical example, was the difference between Donovan against Manchester United and Donovan against Sporting Lisbon?  If you ask quality players, and make them choose between the percentage of difference that is down to the physical side and the percentage that is down to the psychological side many will tell you the difference is mostly psychological.  As Yogi Berra proclaimed in one of his fabled sports malapropisms “Ninety percent of this game is half-mental.”

But if you ask those same players the percentage of their training time that they spend preparing physically and the percentage of time they spend preparing psychologically, it is usually somewhere in the 90% physical range.  That logical inconsistency has been the basis of many claims that in modern sports and with elite teams players need sports psychology.  Claims that, despite their seeming sensibility, have gone largely unheeded.  As far as I can tell, clubs such as Everton often have sports psychology as part of diverse programs for performance enhancement but they rarely have individual sports psychologists in prominent roles with the first team.

Yet for several decades smart people have maintained that sports psychology is the future, that any good team, club, or program will eventually employ full time sports psychologists.  But with a few exceptions (perhaps most notably, British sports psychologist Bill Beswick who has had prominent roles with the likes of Manchester United and the English National Team) sports psychology still operates at the margins of the modern game.  Most top level teams (including MLS teams and American college athletic departments) now have full-time fitness trainers or strength and conditioning coaches, but if the psychological side is given any attention at all it is usually on an ad-hoc basis.

So why hasn’t sport psychology really taken off?  My suspicion is that it has to do with an intriguing combination of broader social attitudes towards psychology as a discipline and the culture of modern sports.  And that suspicion is biased by personal experience—years ago, when I finished my liberal arts bachelor’s in psychology (an intellectually great but practically useless degree), I thought I’d give sports psychology a try.  I did a Master’s Degree in ‘Sport Studies’ in combination with some playing, coaching, and teaching, and found myself surprisingly disaffected with the performance enhancement side of sports psychology.  I liked it in concept, never quite bought it practice, and continue to be fascinated by what it can and can’t do.

Sports psychology may also be on my mind at the moment because it received a fair bit of hype around the Vancouver Winter Olympics—garnering some of the credit for various medal counts.  But the prominence of the Olympic examples has also prompted noteworthy push-back: as a Christian Science Monitor article reported, in Scandinavia the fact that the Norwegian team brought four full-time sports psychologists to Vancouver prompted ridicule from columnists: “There are only losers who use sports psychologists. My God, when athletes start to scream for psychologists is when we know that they have already lost.”

And then there was the ongoing satire by Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert who, in exchange for helping fundraise for the US Speed Skating team, was named as an “Assistant Sports Psychologist” for the Olympics.  He proceeded to put together a number of typically amusing segments lampooning sports psychology—complete with references to “Freud rage,” Rorschach ink-blot tests, pointless repetitive questions of “how does that make you feel,” and inane advice about the need for speed skaters to get around the rink faster than their opponents—maybe with the benefit of imagining that their skate suit had been stuffed with meat and they are being chased by ravenous dogs.

One of the “real” sports psychologists working with the US Olympic team claimed the satire was legitimating: “It is an indication that the field has made it when Stephen Colbert is able to mock it.”  But I’m not so sure.  Certainly much of Colbert’s mockery comes with a degree of respect, but as any good psychologist will tell you it is also true that most jokes are funny because they convey a degree of truth.

Reactions to the aforementioned Bill Beswick’s work with the English National Team may be illustrative here.  Originally a basketball coach, Beswick began working with Steve McClaren at Derby, moved along to Manchester United, Middlesbrough, and eventually became McClaren’s assistant with England.  But as he himself noted “The players recoiled in horror at the idea of working with a shrink” (though, in fairness, he also noted that they quickly warmed to the endeavor, and that the continental players were always more interested than the Brits at taking “every possible advantage to get the most out of their game”).

Comments on a post about Beswick’s role with England, however, highlight the challenges to integrating sports psychology with the game.  One noted “England players have been performing as though they have a shrink on their backs.  Duh – They HAVE!  Doesn’t seem to work, just like it didn’t work at Boro.  Not really rocket science is it?  Dump the shrink and let the players be free to play!”  Another dismissed the need for a specialist: “The best Sports Psychologist that ever was involved in Football was Bill Shankly.”

In the meantime, after McClaren’s ouster as manager of England, Beswick continues to be a sought-after consultant—even making a visit to FC Dallas last year that drew similar reactions in the MLS blogosphere: one commenter noted “One thing comes to mind; the scene in ‘The Natural’ where the psychologist is talking to the team and Redford rolls his eyes and leaves. This is what losers do.”  Another claimed “Sports psychologists are in general a bunch of shysters. And isn’t part of being a head coach getting the players to be mentally tough?  This is so Mickey Mouse.”

Of course these comments are not entirely representative—Beswick has been successful because he offers something worthwhile, and many players value sports psychology (FC Dallas and sometimes US forward Jeff Cunningham responded to Beswick’s visit by repeating the claim that “Sports are 10 percent physical and 90 percent mental”).  But the criticisms do seem to me to offer a few reasons why sports psychology may not quite fit with the culture of the game:

The primary techniques of sports psychology are not magic: The types of things sports psychologists actually do with players are fairly commonsensical: goal setting, visualization, relaxation, self-talk, etc..  Some of these techniques work better than others, and it is worth being guided through systematic practices that have been validated by research.  But sometimes it just seems like common sense.  On one team I was associated with, for example, one of the best players had a serious problem with anger management—he’d get distracted by the referees, by opponents, by his teammates.  So after talking with the team’s sports psychology consultant, they devised a system where the player would wear a rubber band on his wrist and snap it whenever he found himself losing his temper as a reminder to focus on what mattered.  It helped.  But, as the commenter above noted: “Not really rocket science is it?”

Players vary dramatically in their attitudes towards sports psychology: For sports psychology to do any good the players have to buy in.  Some do.  But many don’t.  Unlike fitness training—which not everyone likes, but most everyone agrees is necessary—mental training is easy to write off as “mumbo jumbo.”  And, as the above comments suggest, it is also easy to write off as a sign of weakness—antithetical to the toughness required of elite athletes.

Sports psychology may not make sense as its own specialty: Idealizing an individualized “toughness” in sports also means that players often feel unable to admit they might need help with the types of psychological challenges many of us face at various points in our lives—an issue tragically illustrated by the recent suicide of Robert Enke.  Soccer players have no special immunity to psychological distress.  So while there is a special (and fairly rigorous) process for becoming a ‘certified sports psychologist’ (along with some uncertified hucksters willing to promise miracles), some psychological issues are probably best dealt with by general mental health clinicians (clinical psychologists, psychiatrists, etc.).  But these services are very different from the types of performance enhancement work that would be most analogous to fitness training.

Some of the best intuitive sports psychologists are coaches: Any good coach knows well that a significant part of their work is down to creating the right psychological environment for their players to thrive.  Managers win and lose their jobs based on what they get out of the talent given to them—with an emphasis on the fact that at the highest levels of the game the talent is already there.  A David Moyes or a Bruce Arena doesn’t change much about Landon Donovan’s physical abilities, but each manager does contribute much to creating an atmosphere where Donovan’s abilities work.

The idea that great managers have an intuitive grasp of sports psychology was reinforced for me by a recent analysis of Fabio Capello’s relative success with England.  Written by a “leading sports psychologist” the article argues that Capello has focused on “four key areas of mental toughness,” and while the specifics are a bit axiomatic (“Belonging,” “Feeling in control,” “Feeling valued,” and “Safety”) they also offer a decent analytic breakdown of what matters to high level performance.  In my reading, the article suggests that the value of sports psychology is not in its application with individual players but in its usefulness for framing how the game works.

As such, for me the best uses for sports psychology are in contexts such as coach training programs—where bodies of accumulated knowledge can provide coaches the chance to think through what matters for performance in a sophisticated and systematic way.  Where, ultimately, you can take it or leave it.  And so that is what I’ve tried to do with my own training in the field; to use sports psychology primarily as a tool kit that is available when needed (and which may also lead me to write some future posts about the ‘mental game’ with an emphasis on interpreting specific phenomena that psychology as a social science can help explain).

So could a sports psychologist have made a difference for Donovan during his earlier European forays?  Could a sports psychologist make a difference for the next young prodigy that comes on the scene?  Maybe.  But I suspect we’ll never really know.

Courtesy of jlmurtaugh on Flickr.

Last week, as Peter Wilt discussed in his column here, I was elected as the new Chairman of Section 8 Chicago, the Independent Supporters’ Association (ISA) for the Chicago Fire Soccer Club.  The ISA is a non-profit organisation that aims to represent all Fire supporters, working with the club to represent the supporters’ viewpoint, organising tifo displays, trips to away games, social events, and selling a lot of merchandise and a lot of tickets.

How the hell did I end up being the volunteer sucker taking all that on?  I wasn’t even born in Chicago, or even the United States, and I wasn’t even a Fire fan, or even a fan of MLS, when the club was founded in 1997. I plan to post each week here on my experiences as Chair of the ISA, and so I thought I’d better start with a long but hopefully helpful explanation of how I ended up in this position in the first place. Take a deep breath, and read on.

Goldstone97

In 1997, the home ground of the club I had grown up supporting on the south coast of England, where I had stood on the terraces week in week out since the age of 11, was demolished. The Goldstone Ground, Brighton and Hove Albion’s stadium since 1902, was the victim of the club’s spiral into near extinction at the hands of owners mendacious and brazen enough to try and stiff the club and sell off the property for profitable development to line their own pockets.

Protests marked the final two years of the Goldstone Ground; pitch invasions, poetry and people power ruled the day. Most of it was peaceful, some of it disturbed the police. The Fans United day at the Goldstone, which saw supporters from dozens of clubs travel down to Brighton in support of the fans faced with the Albion’s plight, was one of the greatest days in the history of supporter solidarity.

It was those dying days of the Goldstone, with the club only saved from extinction by the active, creative protest movement that saw Brighton fan and businessman Dick Knight buy out the hounded and chastened owners that same year, that made me realise there was more to being a football fan than standing on the terraces and singing.

cf97

Two thousand miles away, while Brighton were veering on the precipe of extinction, a new club was being born: the Chicago Fire of Major League Soccer. The MLS expansion team’s first employee, Peter Wilt, spent the early part of the year convincing the owner of the team, Phil Anschutz of AEG, that calling it the Nike Rhythm as the sporting goods company wanted it to be was a bad idea. Instead, Peter thought, the team needed to have an identity conneced to the history of Chicago, to become a lasting part of the community.

Fortunately, the young General Manager was able to convince his billionaire employer this was the right move, and the Chicago Fire’s name and logo was announced at a ceremony on the 116th anniversary of the Great Chicago Fire, at Navy Pier in downtown Chicago on October 8th, 1997. In their first season, the Fire won the league and cup double, thanks largely to future Ring of Fire members Piotr Nowak, Bob Bradley, Frank Klopas, Lubos Kubik, Peter Wilt and Chris Armas.

Two thousand miles away, I had no idea this was happening. I knew Major League Soccer existed; I also knew Chicago existed, but I don’t remember hearing of the Chicago Fire Soccer Club. I knew of Michael Jordan, and of the Untouchables. And that was about it. In England, nobody cared much about what they called soccer in the United States.

Meanwhile, I’d left Brighton, and though I didn’t know it, I had essentially left my hometown for good. I went to university in Manchester, going to the odd Manchester City game at Maine Road. On visits home, I couldn’t see Brighton play in Brighton, because we didn’t play there any longer. Without a stadium, we groundshared a miserable few hours drive away around three motorways in Gillingham. It was shit. The first time I went there, we lost 1-0 in front of a shit crowd in a shit ground and I crashed my car on the way home. Again, shit.

After graduating from Manchester in 2000, within a little over a year, I found myself in Chicago, for a Masters degree in social science at the University of Chicago. I was supposed to fly there on September 11th 2001, but, well, you know why my flight was delayed. Little did I know I’d not just be there for the one year Masters program, but end-up staying on to undertake a PhD in history (nope, my dissertation still isn’t done).

Moving to Chicago did not immediately increase my knowledge or awareness of Major League Soccer. I didn’t hear much at all about the league, the country’s sporting culture that fall going crazy over the World Series, and then the Patriots run to the Super Bowl, while the aftermath of September 11th was played out.

For my football fix, I tuned in to Brighton games via a subscription to the club’s internet radio service that autumn, but I don’t recall paying much attention to the Fire making it to the semi-final of MLS Cup that autumn as well.

The next year, the Fire’s own stadium problems became apparent to me, as I learned more about the team: their home, Soldier Field (best known for Bears games, of course), closed for renovation, so the Fire moved to far-out suburb Naperville, playing at Cardinal Stadium, essentially a small college gridiron stadium.

It was there I saw my first Fire game. It was all rather weird; despite all the work of the club, it was little like the experience of watching football I’d had anywhere in England: silly expectations, of course. Despite the best efforts of the hardcore supporters, the whole experience didn’t win me over immediately. Professional soccer seemed an awkward fit in that stadium. But I will say, the quality of play impressed me. Going back for further games, the likes of DaMarcus Beasley and Ante Razov surprised me and interested me: Beasley in particular, with his willingness to beat player after player with his pace, despite the awful hacking his opponents resorted to.

Still, though, I didn’t get to know any other Fire fans, dragging friends there myself, with drinking sessions on the long train ride out there half the attraction for us (not that there’s anything wrong with that). I didn’t feel part of the Fire community, though. I didn’t run into Peter Wilt, sadly, nor any of the friends I’d later make.

The Fire returned to renovated Soldier Field in 2004, and I went to games there infrequently. That I found an even odder experience: the giant stadium hosting small crowds. Now, I’d seen a couple of thousand show up for Brighton games at the Goldstone, and that was a pretty miserable experience on a wet Tuesday night in January, but somehow 15,000 in a 65,000 capacity stadium seemed worse. I still couldn’t call it a passion that matched what I had grown up with the Albion. I would regret this attitude later.

The Fire moved to their own stadium in 2006, Toyota Park, thanks to the work of Peter Wilt (AEG had already shown their appreciation by dismissing him, to the dismay of fans). It was there, from my first visit on, that I became a Fire supporter in the true sense of the word. The Fire had a home, and I felt at home again, a decade on from the crisis at the Goldstone. The 20,000 capacity stadium was intimate, the grass was made for football. And at the middle of the Harlem End, in an area known as Section 8, I was more impressed than in the past by the in-stadium displays, the dedication to singing non-stop, and began standing in the middle of it.

In 2007, I bought my first Fire season ticket.

Those early weeks of ‘07 saw my initial encounter with the leadership of Section 8 Chicago, the Fire’s Independent Supporters’ Association. They were encountering problems that piqued my curiosity.

Despite moving into their “own” stadium, I soon learned the Fire didn’t actually own the stadium. It was owned and had been paid for, at a cost somewhere around $100m, by the Village of Bridgeview, a suburb just slightly outside Chicago. The stadium management was unhappy with the behaviour by a small minority of fans, particularly alcohol being sneaked inside, and had decided to institute pat-downs at the gate where the supporters who stood in what was known as “Section 8″ (then section 118 at Toyota Park) usually entered.

This selective targeting was extremely questionable from a legal standpoint. The supporters were incensed. I had a blog on the Offside at the time, and looked into the controversy, getting in touch with Ben Burton, the new head of Section 8 Chicago, and making a phone call to Peter Wilt, by now the ex-GM, who gave me some very interesting insight into both sides of the dispute.

Section 8 Chicago got in touch with the mayor of Bridgeview, and realising the embarrassment and legal liability the Village faced, the mayor very sensibly killed the selective pat-downs. Instead, the supporters collectively worked to police behaviour themselves.

I was very impressed by the organisation of the supporters. Over the year, I got to know more and more of them personally. An away trip to Toronto with 300 other Fire fans the 600 odd miles away for the grand opener at BMO Field brought me further into the fold. These guys were not fucking around, it became apparent to me. The pride in the club and the city so many shared became obvious to me, and I wanted to be part of that.

Some beer, some whiskey, plenty of hours shooting the shit about the Fire and football far and wide, and suddenly I was part of a community, meeting people who would become close, close friends. I joined a supporters group, Whiskey Brothers Aught Five; motto, “drinking, cursing, Chicago Fire.”

WB05 is just one of many supporters’ groups that stand together in Section 8, and come under the umbrella of the Section 8 Chicago ISA (people always get confused by this and think “Section 8″ is one group, but the whole point is that it isn’t; it’s made up various groups and independents, with support available from the democratically elected ISA liaising with the front office). This, it seemed to me, was a wonderful way for supporters to have a collective structure and voice with the club whilst allowing groups and individuals to follow their own path for supporting the Fire. Some groups are serious, some are jovial, some are large, some barely constitute the Wikipedia definition of a group.

They may have fundamental disagreements among them, but since the Fire’s original supporters’ groups the Barn Burners and Fire Ultras 98 began to stand together in Section 8 at old Soldier Field over a decade ago, the culture of Fire support has largely been about finding ways to bridge differences and come together in support of the team. That’s why the mission statement of Section 8 Chicago makes sense to most:

Section 8 Chicago, the Independent Supporters’ Association  for the Chicago Fire Soccer Club, encompasses a number of affiliate supporters groups and independent fans. The vision of the ISA is “. . . to unite all Chicago Fire fans, to create a dominant in-stadium force unseen in any American team sport and to establish a home-field advantage whenever the Chicago Fire play.” The ISA exists to supplement the efforts of independent fans, coordinate between the supporters groups and act as liaison between fans and the Chicago Fire Soccer Club. As a non-profit organization, a board of directors is elected yearly at the Annual General Meeting in February by the assembled supporters.

As an independent supporters’ association, we will create an inspiring environment for the Chicago Fire organization and its fans. We will do this through fostering an increased level of passionate support, providing a conduit amongst the fans and with the organization, enabling participation in activities for Fire fans and organizing, coordinating and directing in-stadium support on an unprecedented scale, regardless of where the Fire play.

As I learned more about the mission and operations of the ISA, I started helping out Section 8 Chicago however I could, beginning with the website, since I had some skills there, and then doing some writing.

Then a very bad thing happened in the summer of 2008.  Some members of an Hispanic supporters’ group, Sector Latino, were abused by security guards at Toyota Park, physically and verbally, with unpleasant racial epithets tossed their way for good measure.

Unfortunately, when Sector Latino and Section 8 Chicago leadership approached the club about the unacceptable behaviour by security, it fell on deaf ears.

For some reason, the then Chairman of Section 8 Chicago, Ben Burton, asked me to help him negotiate a solution to the crisis with the Fire’s front office.  It took a lot of work — an ugly meeting, draconian moves by the stadium management, a protest, a reasonable conversation, and a path forward mutually found, to sum up a month of painful initiation for me into supporter-club relations — but I still believe the resolution of that was a turning point in front office-supporter relations. The following turnover in the club’s leadership brought in a new attitude towards supporters that saw slow but steady improvement in relations.

In January 2009, sucked into the vortex, I was elected to the board of the ISA as Vice-Chair. In the course of last year, though we faced new obstacles in some ways, by the end of the MLS eason we had found new ways to work with the club. We agreed a three-year contract on a ticket stipend for the ISA to continue encouraging growth of the supporters’ culture. The club found room to allow us to conduct massive tifo construction projects at the stadium (like the one below), worked on tirelessly by many folks with more creative skills and energy than myself.

We did Q&As and social events with Technical Director Frank Klopas, who reached out warmly to the supporters’ community. We began work, albeit we did not finish, on a Club Charter, a mutually agreed document between supporters and the club defining the club’s values, and the responsibilities and rights of supporters.

Importantly, we also opened up new channels of communication for supporters with Fire owner Andrew Hauptman. I expressed some frustration on these pages last summer about the direction of the club’s leadership, but this soon improved as Ben Burton and I met with Andrew for a frank and productive discussion, followed-up by a public Q&A forum organised by the ISA. Meanwhile, we built a solid and fruitful relationship with our new liaison at the club, Emigdio Gamboa, who has put countless hours of work in to help us.

And meantime, our efforts at promoting the supporters’ culture bore fruit, thankless to the tireless hours of work put in by volunteers manning the growing tailgate, the beer buses to games, the social events, putting together the tifo displays and making sure we could safely visit every stadium in MLS. In 2007, Section 8 barely filled one section of Toyota Park, 118. By the playoffs, Section 8 overflowed from three entire sections, a growth from a few hundred to 2-3,000. On our own, we would sell over 1,000 tickets on our online store to the Conference Final.

Section 8 filling the Harlem End of Toyota Park

After a long year of work for the ISA, it took me a while to decide to run for Chair this year, with the heroic Ben Burton retiring from the position after three years. My wife has been a Fire fan for longer than me (having attended the first game in 1998), but all the volunteer work is extremely time consuming. At the same time, it was through the Fire and Section 8 community that I had met my wife in the first place. And it was through that culture that I had made so many good friends. The future of the club and of the supporters’ relations to it means a lot to me, partly because it means a lot to so many close to me.

Soccer is just a sport that doesn’t matter much at the end of the day, but the people you meet and share these experiences with do. So I decided I owed it to the culture and community I had come to and had been embraced by to give back what I could. Over the year I will share the ups and downs of this here: I’m sure it’ll be fun, frustrating and fueled by plenty of beer, and hopefully capped by the Fire’s first MLS championship since the club’s inaugural season.

Earlier this week, we looked at the Football Association’s muddled efforts in assisting the campaign against homophobia in football, with a last-minute cancellation of a launch event for a new video. A video that was panned by John Amaechi:

The film that was created – starting in February 2009 – doesn’t have any players in it, lacks a cohesive narrative and certainly is one of the most offensive adverts I have seen in a long time.  Maybe I am not cool, or tuned into “the industry” but I was horrified when I first saw it and made sure that I was going to be as far away from London as possible next Thursday, when it was due to premiere to much fanfare and media acclaim.

To confuse matters further, even though the Football Association decided to abandon that high-profile premiere, they still released the video anyway. Or did they? Quite bizarrely, the link from the theFA.com’s press release about the video that reads “Watch the video  (warning this video contains strong language and adult themes)” leads to a YouTube page that when you try to play the actual video, says “This video contains content from MyVideoRights (The FA), who has blocked it on copyright grounds.” So…who knows what the hell is going on with it. Does it work for anyone else? (EDIT: since publication, the FA has fixed the video)

Meanwhile, their press release proudly trumpets:

The FA’s long term equality strategy to battle homophobic abuse in football has received a series of high profile endorsements from the likes of Sir Elton John and Brighton & Hove Albion manager, Gus Poyet.

The call for work in this area was originally raised by supporters of Brighton who contacted The FA via the Football Supporters Federation in 2006 after reports of homophobic abuse from rival fans.

Support for the campaign has also come from Ireland’s first openly gay hurler, Donal Óg Cusack, who is a three-time title winner with Cork and Frances Barron, the CEO of the Rugby Football Union.

The FA has already confirmed that they plan to use the film as a training and education tool for matchday stewards in stadiums around the country.

FA chairman, Lord Triesman: “Both The FA and Kick It Out are committed to challenging all forms of discrimination in football and making the game family friendly and it’s our hope that everyone involved across all levels of the game will give the film’s anti homophobia message their full support.”

All well and good, though it doesn’t explain why they cancelled the premiere in the first place.

Perhaps of more importance is the work going on outside the FA by activists such as the Justin Campaign, named after Justin Fashanu, a footballer hounded for his sexuality before his suicide in the 1990s.

They sent out a press release today, announcing an “international day opposing homophobia in football” on February 19th.

Community football teams throughout the UK, Europe and America will be showing their support for the cause by holding a series of football matches and fun events throughout the day under the banner of Football v Homophobia. The Justin Campaign’s football team in association with Norwich LGBT Pride Collective will be kicking off the celebrations with a triage of fun community events throughout the day and a football tournament taking place at Carrow park in Norwich on February 19th where Fashanu began his career. Amal Fashanu, John Fashanu’s daughter will be there to open the event with David McNally Chief Executive of Norwich FC attending to show his support.

The launch of Football v Homophobia comes a week after the FA decided to cancel the launch of their anti-homophobia in football video.

John Amaechi, Former NBA basketball player said: “I have been pleased to watch the continued growth of the Justin Campaign, not only because it honours a fantastic football player whose time was cut tragically short, but also because much of the real work to end prejudice and homophobia in sports, must be done by those fans and participants who are actively involved. The hard task of equality is made easier by the involvement of grass-roots organisations like the Justin Campaign. As I examine the FA’s recent anti-homophobia advert debacle, I am saddened to note that their £10,000 budget would have been far better invested in the Justin Campaign.”

Good luck to the Justin Campaign with this. Perhaps the F.A. can take a cue from them.

Six months ago, we ran a post entitled “The Failure of the Football Association to Tackle Homophobia in English Football.” It featured a report from Stonewall, a lesbian, gay and bisexual rights charity, that highlighted some very depressing findings on the prevalence of homophobia in English football:

• Three in five fans believe that anti-gay abuse from fans dissuades gay players from coming out
• Almost two thirds of fans believe football would be a better sport if anti-gay abuse was eradicated
• Two thirds of fans would feel comfortable if a player on their team came out
• Over half of fans think the FA, Premier League and Football League are not doing enough to tackle anti-gay abuse

We quoted Chris Basiurski, of the chair of the Gay Football Supporters’ Network (GFSN), who called the survey’s results unsurprising and challenged the authorities to provide more support to anti-homophobia campaigners.  “Our own experiences show that many in the football world are in denial over the problem and have been unwilling to help us in our campaigns.”

And it’s now two years on since Jennifer Doyle first addressed the F.A.’s failures in a similar vein on these pages.

Sadly, a long piece today in the Guardian suggests the Football Association is still (to be kind about it) in a total muddle about what to do:

The Football Association’s commitment to tackling homophobia in the game was today called into question by gay rights groups after the launch of a much-heralded film designed to confront the issue was cancelled at the last minute.

Amid some unease about the content of the hard-hitting video, produced by advertising agency Ogilvy to a brief agreed by the FA itself, football diversity campaign group Kick It Out and gay rights group OutRage, Thursday’s planned launch of the film at Wembley Stadium has been cancelled.

The campaign had been in development for almost two years and had been billed as an important moment in an embryonic drive to tackle homophobia among players, fans and administrators.

“This last-minute cancellation is a big disappointment. It has thrown the Football Association’s commitment to tackling homophobia into disarray,” said OutRage campaigner Peter Tatchell.

“Contrary to what the FA is now saying, the video and strategy was agreed nearly two years ago. This postponement comes on top of the FA’s dissolution of the broad-based Tackling Homophobia Working Group,” he added.

He said the group had helped implement many constructive initiatives to rid football of homophobia, but members had now been replaced by a “hand-picked, much smaller and less representative” group. “It no longer includes all interested stakeholders,” he said.

Last year, Ben Summerskill, chief executive of Stonewall, said the results of a survey showing that seven in 10 fans had witnessed homophobic abuse proved that football was “institutionally homophobic”.

The video shows a man abusing workmates, tube passengers and a newspaper seller with anti-gay taunts, before doing the same at a football match. Captions make the point that since homophobic behaviour is not acceptable outside football stadiums, it should not be acceptable within them either. The FA planned to release the viral video via YouTube and its website.

The mess has now encompassed concerns about the video itself expresed by former NBA player John Amaechi, who said the film was “further proof of the FA’s willingness to window-dress its most serious problems.”

On his blog, Amaechi went further, saying:

A lot has heard over the last 18 months about Football’s “groundbreaking” advert to combat homophobia.  People have talking to me about it coming down the line and there were even reports that it would have actual professional players in it.

The film that was created – starting in February 2009 – doesn’t have any players in it, lacks a cohesive narrative and certainly is one of the most offensive adverts I have seen in a long time.  Maybe I am not cool, or tuned into “the industry” but I was horrified when I first saw it and made sure that I was going to be as far away from London as possible next Thursday, when it was due to premiere to much fanfare and media acclaim.

However, today, at about 11:30am,  sitting in a meeting with some members of Kick It Out phones started buzzing around me and the news came that the Chief Exec of the FA had cancelled the premiere.

All in all, just an absolute mess made by the Football Association. Gary Andrews commented here last month on how relatively smoothly rugby player Gareth Thomas became the first prominent openly gay player in that sport: it turned out not to be much of a fuss.

Sadly, in football, such a day still seems far off, and this fiasco from the Football Association will only make any player considering coming out as gay think again, I fear. At best, it certainly won’t help.

EDIT: Just received a press release from the Justin Campaign about all this:

The Justin Campaign are saddened at the FA’s announcement of postponing the launch of their new video aimed at tackling homophobia in football. However after having the opportunity to read John Amaechi’s take on the content of the video; think that the FA have been wise in their decision to seek further consultation on the videos production and subsequent release.

The postponement of this long awaited and much needed video has raised grave concerns regarding the FA’s overall approach to tackling homophobia. The Justin Campaign hope that the FA will see this as an opportunity to review the way they consult on their new strategy and open up this process to include the wider LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered) community.

If the FA’s new strategy is to include anything let it’s priority be the positive portrayal of LGBT people to it’s supporters, players and staff and the introduction of creative educational programmes, their foundation in sport, that engage with youth and adults alike on issues surrounding diversity. The overall message being that homophobia is unacceptable in any form, anywhere.

On February 19th The Justin Campaign are launching an initiative Football v Homophobia, an international day opposing homophobia in football and an opportunity to unite the efforts of all those working to challenge homophobia in football. Let the future of this initiative see the development of partnerships that have the power to bring about much needed change, in a much loved game.

Finally, after an eventful January, I’ve got some answers to the big questions for this year of African soccer.  Was Angola 2010 a success or a failure?  Yes.  Will the World Cup in South Africa be a success or a failure?  Yes.

Let me try to explain.

I was hoping this week I could write something about the games at the African Cup of Nations, or something for fans caught up in a wave of enthusiasm for the coming World Cup.  Instead, while following the 2010 Cup of Nations as closely as possible from the massive geographic and psychological distance of my home in Oregon, I’ve found myself distracted from the fun of the game by the evolving storylines about and judgments of the continent itself.  These storylines and judgments have been building through the various preliminary events in this ‘year of African soccer’: last summer’s Confederations’ Cup, September’s U-20 World Cup in Egypt, and October’s U-17 World Cup in Nigeria.  But in this last month the narrative seemed to erupt.

The real jolt was the pre-tournament tragedy in Cabinda.  When terrorists massacred the Togo team bus, my heart broke and the plot thickened.  The blogosphere came alive, many in the British press did a reasonable job offering analysis, and the American mainstream press did its usual job by barely acknowledging that events in Africa could matter (I’ve rarely felt so disappointed in my beloved New York Times—their coverage of what could have been a fascinating story about geo-politics, sport, oil, terrorism, tragedy, etc. was barely a blip).

And just when the Cabinda tragedy seemed to start fading from the world’s radar (partially justifiable given it was superseded by a much larger tragedy in Haiti), the narrative was taken up by stories of undersold tickets for the main event in South Africa.  The naysayers came alive with absolute judgments of a place many had never been, Sepp Blatter and his crew offered both Pollyanna and recriminations, while quieter but willing fans continued to try and figure out how to afford the trip.

Then, in recent days, the African federation mangled world impressions of the final days of the Cup of Nations by capriciously suspending Togo from the next two tournaments.  And suddenly the evolving narrative acquired a moral fervor driven by the perceived ability of world soccer fans to rail with absolute certainty about injustice.  The Togolese government and football association have never before been so clearly identified as paragons of virtue—even if only by implication.  One brief on-line comment seemed to crystallize what many were thinking: “Africa is crazy. Bats**t crazy.”

If only it were that simple.

Off the continent, Africa tends to be either ignored, romanticized, or pathologized—and in this year of African soccer there has been much of each.  I tend to sympathize more with the romantics (or, more cynically, the apologists), such as the FIFA execs who blindly promote the rightness of hosting the World Cup in South Africa.  And I tend to despair at the critics, particularly when scanning through the fear and loathing promoted on BigSoccer by so many who seem to have never stepped foot on the African continent.  But I’m continually discomforted by the gnawing feeling that neither side is quite right nor quite wrong, and by my inability to make sense of it all.

I do find a small degree of comfort in knowing others seem to be struggling with these same dilemmas.  In recent weeks, for example, I’ve been fascinated to stumble upon blog entries from the Africa Cup of Nations in Angola by Sports Illustrated’s Jeff Bradley (who doesn’t usually write about soccer, but happens to be the brother of US Coach Bob Bradley).  It’s not clear why Bradley went to Angola for the Cup of Nations—on the blog he obscures that info with the reasonable excuse that it belongs to Sports Illustrated—but it is clear that he went with nothing but good intentions.  In fact, he starts on Day 1 with the explicit claim that:  “My theme for this trip is going to be about seeing how good people can be.”

And then it goes downhill.  With each day he seems to become more frustrated with Luanda—the traffic, the dysfunction, the inequality, the hawkers, the confusion.  By Day 6 he writes: Guess it’s time for me to send home a dose of reality.  And the reality is, this is a tough place.”  He grasps desperately onto a deep appreciation for his guide—an Angolan who has spent much of his life in South Africa, and tries to explain to “Mr. Jeff” why it all makes no sense.  The lesson here seems to be that Jeff Bradley is a really good guy, but when it comes to a place such as Luanda good intentions just aren’t enough.

Instead, good intentions in this year of African soccer seem to get overwhelmed by the delicate, frustrating question of representation.  Of course, other things are at stake in the soccer stories that we hear and tell; there is much to learn about geo-politics, infrastructure, development, mega-events, global labor flows, etc..  We may even learn some good stuff about the game.  But underneath it all is the tricky question of how to think about Africa, with soccer as the lens.

The question of representation is an ongoing challenge for many smart non-soccer people who care about Africa—both on and off the continent.  As evidence, take the viral popularity in recent years of a satirical essay by the Kenyan author Binyavanga Wainaina titled “How to Write about Africa” (also available as a sort-of odd video narrated by Djimon Hounsou) that begins: “Always use the word ‘Africa’ or ‘Darkness’ or ‘Safari’ in your title. Subtitles may include the words ‘Zanzibar’, ‘Masai’, ‘Zulu’, ‘Zambezi’, ‘Congo’, ‘Nile’, ‘Big’, ‘Sky’, ‘Shadow’, ‘Drum’, ‘Sun’ or ‘Bygone’. Also useful are words such as ‘Guerrillas’, ‘Timeless’, ‘Primordial’ and ‘Tribal’.”

And continues: “adopt a sotto voice, in conspiracy with the reader, and a sad I-expected-so-much tone…Broad brushstrokes throughout are good. Avoid having the African characters laugh, or struggle to educate their kids, or just make do in mundane circumstances. Have them illuminate something about Europe or America in Africa. African characters should be colourful, exotic, larger than life—but empty inside, with no dialogue, no conflicts or resolutions in their stories, no depth or quirks to confuse the cause.”

Though such satire hits uncomfortably close to home, in highlighting the absence of ambivalence it also suggests to me a glimmer of hope that may sound trite: all the representations and misrepresentations of Africa may well do some good if they ultimately impress upon people the reality of Africa as a big, complicated place.  After the Togo bus massacre, the knee-jerk mis-associations between Cabinda and South Africa were nothing if not a reminder of the persistent admonition “Africa is not a country.”  Any stories of Africa through soccer require attending to the particular local contexts that frame any story anywhere in the world.

This also means that telling stories in this year of African soccer requires confronting the tensions and contradictions of modern life.  Angola’s problems, for example, are not just about poverty—in many ways it is actually a place of great wealth—they are about the global problem of inequality.  The fact that hotel rooms go for $400 dollars a night in a place with an average life expectancy somewhere around 38 and an infant mortality rate of around 180 deaths per 1000 live births should be of concern to everyone (from conservatives prioritizing the value of life to liberals prioritizing the importance of equal rights).  But it requires recognizing that Angola is not rich or poor—it is both.  Likewise, South Africa’s challenges are not just about crime and dysfunction; it is a country with a vibrant media, a rich geography of diverse people and places, extraordinary intellectuals, and a crime problem deriving from a complex socio-historical nexus that I can’t pretend to understand.

Which also means that there is still much to learn.  Amidst the tragedy, triumph, and confusion of Angola 2010 the thing that has become most clear about the evolving narrative from the year of African soccer is that much has yet to be told.  I’m sure many at FIFA and with the South African organizing committee hope everything goes smoothly—that the World Cup is, how do they say, “one big party.”  But that no longer seems quite right.  I suspect there will be much partying, but there may well also be continuing problems and frustrations.  And all of that—the partying and the problems—should be part of the story of Africa through soccer.

So ultimately, it seems to me, the question is no longer whether Angola should have hosted the Cup of Nations.  They did, and it was an event with both inexcusable tragedy and impressive accomplishment (for a country emerging from 27 years of civil war).  The question is no longer whether South Africa should host the World Cup.  They will, and it will likely be an event of both frustration and joy for a country that deserves to share the global stage.

Instead, the question now is whether the stories from year of African soccer will be about success or about failure.  And I am increasingly satisfied with the answer being yes.

In the midst of several embarrassing incidents during the last decade, most notably the arrest of Cameroonian coaches (one of whom was German) during the 2002 Cup of Nations in Mali for “trying to place a magic charm on the pitch,” CAF has worked hard to “modernize” the image of African soccer.  As a CAF spokesperson noted after the Mali episode: “we are no more willing to see witch doctors on the pitch than cannibals at the concession stands.  Image is everything.”

But with my sympathies to CAF and all due respect to the marketing industry, I find it much more interesting to think of “image” as merely the most obvious thing.  Behind the image is where you find the good stuff: the ways that the local and the global get mashed up into dynamic cultures of the game.  In African soccer stories of witchcraft and black magic are simultaneously fun and controversial, illuminating and misleading.  They are also extraordinarily common.

Among my own favorites from working in Malawi many years ago was one from a school teacher friend whose team was playing a local rival.  The game was delayed by a crucial decision about the game ball: they couldn’t agree on which to use.  Each team was sure that the other had put some type of juju curse on its own ball, and neither would concede the advantage.  Eventually a Solomonesque compromise was reached—they would use one school’s ball, but the other school’s players would be allowed to urinate on that ball in order to dilute any potential curse.  I assumed the first half was mostly short passing.

I was also thoroughly intrigued—why do seemingly rational people believe seemingly irrational things?  How similar is the popularity of juju in a place such as Malawi to the popularity of sports superstitions everywhere in the world?  And now, does the seeming absence of stories about juju at the 2010 Africa Cup of Nations signify meaningful changes in the nature of the African game?

Ivory Coast, 2007. By Michael Hughes on Flickr.

Believing and Questioning

To start, it is important to note that there is no one African experience with what I’m referring to as juju—there are different names, rituals, and degrees of belief both between and within the diverse nations on the continent.  There are also important technical differences between “black magic,” “witchcraft,” “traditional medicine,” and other loosely related concepts which I’m crudely aggregating into a broad colloquial category of practices and beliefs based on supernatural powers.  But as a generalization, from my experience juju in African soccer is mostly strange only when considered from afar.

For one thing, the use of curses and forms of witchcraft is not exclusive to African soccer: it is relatively easy to find examples from other parts of the world, including rumors that in his desperation (and apparent lack of managerial skills) Diego Maradona turned to Argentina’s version of juju before playing Paraguay in their crucial World Cup qualifier.  Maradona is also one of many managers who looks to religion to buoy his team’s prospects—Giovanni Trapattoni, for example, famously brought a bottle of holy water with him to the sidelines of Italy games in the 2002 World Cup.  Such analogies do not go without notice in Africa: as a South African fan noted to the Guardian following up CAF’s response to the 2002 Cup of Nations: “Will they ban Catholic players crossing themselves?  Will they shut the chapel at Barcelona? If you believe, muti makes you stronger.”

For another thing, it is not entirely clear whether calling something juju makes it all that different from the types of superstitions that are prevalent amongst athletes everywhere in the world.  When Tottenham striker Jermaine Defoe replied to a journalist asking about a particularly short haircut by noting “I had to, I only ever seem to get injured when I have longer hair,” was his logic that different from the Rwandan player who planted a ‘magic stick’ in the goal to ward against unlucky bounces?  Or when Raymond Domenech allowed his interest in astrology to mitigate against picking Scorpios such as Robert Pires to play for France, was his decision making any more exotic than Ghanaian fans who carried a “juju pot” in hopes of bringing the Black Stars good luck?  And all this is to say nothing of Robert van Persie’s apparent belief in the powers of horse placenta to heal a bum ankle.

Being fascinated by juju and African soccer may ultimately say as much about outsider perceptions of Africa and how we ourselves define what is “rational” as it says about Africa.  But I admit that it has long provoked my curiosity—so much so that when I spent a season playing in the Malawian Super League in the 90’s, I made an active effort to learn about juju.  It just sounded exotic and fun.  But when I started asking around the reality was considerably more mundane.

Sure, people had stories about juju and football.  But they almost always told those stories with degrees of humor, skepticism, and self-awareness.  The Malawians I played with knew that juju was not science, and it wasn’t something to be taken too seriously.  But, in some situations, it couldn’t hurt to pay it at least a little respect.  As one of my teammates explained to me:

“When I was playing at school, we played up to the finals and we used juju just because everybody was using it then.  We used to go to this guy who would tell you about the game…if we were going to lose he could give us some roots from different trees and tell us what to do, or have a certain person sitting on the bench with a certain thing in the hand pointing toward the goal and squeezing hard.  I can say I no longer believe in that, but at Civo [another Super League club] they used to take water from the mortuary, put in some small roots and put it over your face.  It was so if those guys are using some type of juju where you don’t’ see things clearly, then you could see things and play a normal game…why not?”

The guys I played with were relatively well educated and as such, I was told, we tended to use juju less than other local teams.  But my teammates would point out to me opposing players with small charms around their socks, or note opponents arriving at the pitch one by one after having stopped for individual “blessings” from a “juju man” in the locker room.  And most everyone recognized that juju was only a small part of the equation: “if the players are not dedicated [to training] then the juju does not work…but if you apply juju you try as much as possible to say—if I do this the juju has helped me.”

If anything, the guys I played with took advantage of how much attention other teams paid to juju.  This advantage was facilitated by one of our club officers and part-time bus driver, a jolly fellow named Nasimba, who happened to be one of the “chief supporters” for the Malawian national team.  And who happened to have a national reputation as a juju man.  When I asked him about it he would just laugh—never quite admitting nor denying.  He certainly played the role well, dressing in flowing African gowns and maintaining a mischievous look in his eye.  He also loved to tell the story of a time he had gone to Lusaka for a Malawi v Zambia international and been forced to leave a packed Independence Stadium under guard.  The Zambian authorities had feared that he was a Malawian witchdoctor.

His reputation was also the font for a trick played by my team during one of our biggest games of the year against Bata Bullets—at the time one of the two best teams in the Super League.  Bullets was full of national team regulars, and my UFC team had little chance of matching their skill.  So some of our players organized to conspicuously bring a hand-made rag ball into the stadium for warm-up, a plastic and twine construction mostly used by kids playing on the street or in the country.  I wasn’t playing that game, and from the sideline I first assumed that my teammates were just joking around—until a curious hush came over the crowd.

The fans and the Bullets seemed to watch carefully as the UFC players brought the ball to the middle of a tight circle of bodies.  Nasimba, decked out in a dotted orange outfit of flowing fabric, casually walked from the sideline to meet the team huddle.  After a brief silence, the group parted quickly and dramatically.  A designated player grabbed the ball, sprinted towards the bench, placed it on the touch-line, and cleared the way for Nasimba’s lumbering approach.  He hovered over the ball, methodically raised his arms, lowered his head, and allowed the stadium a moment of strain trying to hear his incantation.

Then, with a quick, shrill yell, Nasimba dropped his hands and joined the rest of us on the bench.  Either a curse had been put on the game, or a lot of people believed a curse had been put on the game.  In some ways it did not matter which.  Bata Bullets still won 1-nil.

In my mind this was how things usually seemed to work: juju might play a small role in Malawian soccer (sometimes relaxing players, sometimes motivating players, and sometimes intimidating players) but ultimately what mattered was still the game on the field.  And, while Malawians gave varying degrees of credence to juju, they mostly understood that.

Ghana, 2008. By malaise creole on Flickr.

The Business of Superstition

Over time what became most interesting to me in Malawi was the realization that juju had been around a lot longer than football—how was it that football as a European import became the site for what outsiders believe to be a “traditional” African practice?  It seemed to mostly be a matter of entrepreneurship.  As one of the older team officials on my Malawian team told me: “during my time juju was not popular in football.   It was just coming….because the doctors, they put their posters up somewhere there and people started to come…it was just a business opportunity.”  In fact, others told me this was still a problem for club’s accountants: where do you record your expenses for juju?  Under medical?  It didn’t quite fit.

The idea that juju in African soccer is actually an example of a modern entrepreneurial spirit rather than an African “tradition” fits with other analyses of the phenomenon.  In his interesting history of football in South Africa, for example, Peter Alegi argues that applying ritual magic to football was part of a broader “process of Africanisation.”  He notes that in South Africa “the infusion of agrarian beliefs and rituals reveals a way young African men de-colonised football through cultural practice and, in so doing, influence the institutional growth of black soccer.”

Scholars generally tend to be more sympathetic to the use of black magic in Africa than do CAF officials.  In fact, though it has nothing to do with soccer, one of the most famous works in the history of cultural anthropology is E. E. Evans-Pritchard’s classic from the 1930’s: Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande.  Though his analysis of the Azande near the upper-Nile was in many ways a product of the colonial times, it was also distinct in positing that the use of witchcraft was not so much exotic and irrational as it was human: all our definitions of “rationality” are constrained by particular cultural boundaries.  When the Azande relied on oracles to guide their decision making about who they should consider an enemy or about what medicines to take they were operating within a system of philosophical understanding that functioned in their society.

It may not be too far afield to suggest that when the US National Team employs a chiropractor or when Bundesliga teams employ homeopaths, despite questions about the “scientific” base of such practices, they are also operating within particular local ways of understanding the world that are as influenced by the entrepreneurial spirit as by pure rationality.  And I don’t mean to pick on alternative medicine; even more mainstream endeavors such as psychopharmacology depend greatly upon systems of belief—anti-depressants have generally been a boon to mental health care, but the most optimistic evidence suggests they still only significantly reduce depressive symptoms in about 60% of cases compared to reductions for about 40% of cases taking only placebos.

One thing science has learned is that placebo effects are real—in many cases thinking something will help does help.  And that process may partially explain both the persistence of juju in African soccer and superstition in all types of sports.  Just as Michael Jordan perceived a boost to his basketball luck when he wore his college shorts under his professional uniform, a Zimbabwean player explains that before games his team “put some powder in our mouths and had to spit it out as soon as we walked onto the pitch. In the game we would just fly. I will never know if these really worked but I remember some guys really got pumped up.”

Rationalizing the Irrational

Though I’m arguing that juju in African soccer may not be as exotic as it first appears, in the world of sports and superstition it does have some distinct qualities.  For one thing, in African soccer juju is often explicitly used against an opponent rather than just for one’s own benefit.  As such, it can get contentious.  In one scholarly paper arguing that understanding witchcraft in African soccer can help explain broader cultural notions of causality, for example, Wisconsin professor Michael Schatzberg describes violence provoked by manipulative threats of witchcraft in 2003 Uganda v Rwanda qualifiers.  Unlike Jermaine Defoe, whose superstition did no more harm than a bad haircut, one of the Ugandan players ended up with blood gushing from a head wound.

More tragically, a riot during a 2008 match in eastern Congo that killed 13 was reportedly provoked by accusations of witchcraft.  Of course, the real tragedy there is the lack of safety precautions that allow a sports event to become a riot, along with the fact that 13 deaths in Congo does not make much of a blip in the world news unless associated with unsubstantiated claims of the exotic.  In such cases claims of witchcraft implicitly and subtly encourage an ignorant belief that Africa is too “primitive” to take seriously.

But in my mind the best reason to take stories of juju and African soccer seriously is as an example of how all societies approach the game with rationality bounded by culture.  In the US, for example, I often think the assumption that we’ll conquer world soccer when we get a fully professionalized youth system in place is as much about our cultural reverence for “training” children for success from younger and younger ages as it is about the nature of the game.  We “believe” in professionalization.  Yet, a good argument could be made that American youths would become much better players if they just learned to enjoy the game and play for fun.  Unfortunately, such perspectives have only a marginal place in our own bounded rationality.

And if the 2010 Cup of Nations is any indicator, what counts as rational may also be changing in the world of African football.  It seems quite plausible that amidst globalization African players and teams are more likely to position themselves within a “modern” game that accepts belief systems such as those of evangelical Christianity or Islam much more readily than those of “traditional” African societies.  But despite the seeming success of CAF in eliminating stories about witchcraft and black magic, I suspect there are still players and teams at the Cup of Nations using juju more quietly.  Just as there are players and teams praying to their God for victory.  Just as there are players and teams investing in the latest sports science.  Just as there are players, teams, fans, and commentators trying to make sense of it all.

(Note: For anyone interested in other perspectives on this topic, the BBC radio show Heart and Soul recently put out an interesting program on “Faith and Football” that includes discussions of faith, religion, and juju in both British and African football; I’d also recommend the chapter in Ian Hawkey’s book ‘Feet of the Chameleon’ titled ‘Whispering at Pigeons.’)

Photo credits: michael_hughes and malaise creole on Flickr.