From the Netherlands World Cup quarter-final versus Brazil, 2 July 2010. But fitting to publish today.

Photo credit: Crystian Cruz on Flickr, via the Pitch Invasion Photo Pool.

These images of certain teams tend to persist far beyond any relation to reality.  ESPN can still keep trying to sell Brazil as samba soccer, but perhaps after this World Cup people will stop buying it, unless it’s all laid at Dunga’s door (Maradona to coach Brazil in Brazil at the 2014 World Cup, anyone?!).

Or the Germans still managing to shock the English in 2010 when they produce a player or two who doesn’t fit into the robotic stereotype, as Gabrielle Marcotti pointed out last week:

It’s not as if, before the wave of recent immigrants were integrated in the team, Germany were a bunch of giant, muscle-bound Robocops (or Stefan Effenbergs, if you prefer). This is the side that produced Pierre Littbarski in the 1980s and Tomas Haessler and Andy Moller in the 1990s. Players who were uber-German and uber-talented, blessed with flair and creativity, as well as sterling technique. Come to think of it, so is Thomas Mueller and he’s as Teutonic as they come.

The fact of the matter is that German football has a long history of producing flair players: it’s just that we tend not to see them as such for the mere fact that they’re… well… German.

Another good example of this was superbly discussed by Raphael Honigstein yesterday, addressing the flood of commentary surrounding the apparently suddenly dull Dutch team, as if total football had been flooding through their veins until this World Cup kicked off. That is, of course, nonsense:

This sense of realism should not be confused with a radical departure or even a betrayal of the grand Dutch tradition. It’s always been there, to greater or lesser extent, over the course of the last 30 years. Mourning the demise of “Total Voetbal” these days makes as much sense as lamenting the switch from black and white to color television or the disappearance of horse carriages from city centers. The Dutch moved on decades ago. Most casual observers have simply been too lazy to notice it.

Honigstein points out that even the Netherlands’ sole major championship winning team at Euro ’88, for all the magnificent skill of van Basten and Gullit, was backed in brutal style by Ronald Koeman, while Jan Wouters in the 90s precursed Mark van Bommel as villainous midfielder pretty nicely.

At the excellent blog Minus the Shooting, the question of “relevant and irrelevant histories” is brought up as we consider narratives about national teams slightly more broadly. Writing ahead of today’s first semi-final, the question of how to fit the prospect of Uruguayan victory into a neat historical context is raised:

Spain finally lifting the trophy is a narrative that already carries a sense of inevitability – it’s a triumph that has already been written, and held back from general release for two years. Now that Brazil have no longer already won the tournament, there’s a case for saying that Spain have already won it. The same narrative can be quickly adapted and refitted for the Dutch – ‘the long wait is finally over’. There is no comparably comfortable frame in which to fit a Uruguayan victory.

So, by the fact we don’t have a neat storyline to fit Uruguay into, they confuse us. As for style: how does Suarez’s handball fit with Forlan’s flair into a soundbite?

Uruguay, indeed, present quite a conundrum from both a common perspective on their style of play and their place in the sport’s pantheon: they have two World Cup victories, but none since 1950. They were once famed for their magnificent teams of the 1920s and 1930s, but who remembers the wizardry of José Leandro Andrade today?

Uruguay have instead in recent decades, especially in the British media, been associated with negative defensive play ever since the 1966 World Cup. Their glorious past did not happen in the television era, so it may as well have never happened at all, as Minus the Shooting continues:

Granted, Uruguay’s glories were a long time ago. But when has that ever been relevant to the expectations placed on football teams? Brazilian players are still being feted for what their team did forty years ago; England are judged (and judge themselves) every four years by the standards of 1966; African teams are still labelled as naive and impetuous based on the performance of Zaire in 1970. German teams and Spanish teams are just about still viewed in the context of their past representatives as villainous mecha-men and talented bottlers respectively, although these two seem to be finally losing their grip this summer. In the group stages, the BBC wheeled out an excruciating montage showing clips of past German triumphs interspersed with footage of pistons and machinery – but even they have since realised that this German team represents something different. These three-time World Cup winners would be fresher faces on the podium than the Spanish or Dutch.

Putting aside the two unfolding exceptions above – and progress on these fronts will be immediately undone if either team reverts back to historical type for even one game – these images seem impervious to the passage of time, and are held to remain true no matter how much contradictory evidence amasses. The fact that Uruguay have underachieved since 1950 doesn’t explain the strange discrepancy about them; they are the only World Cup winners whose achievements have been definitively consigned to the history books, and deemed not relevant to modern analysis. You can never write off the Germans because of their past wins – but I don’t believe I’ve ever heard a pundit say ‘Well, I’ll tell you what… I think Uruguay might be dark horses to win back their title this year. End the sixty years of hurt.’

The obviously ill-fitting narratives surrounding all four countries in the semi-finals perhaps suggests that we ought to work a little harder to dispel them before judging teams: Spain are no longer bottlers (2008 and all that), Germany are no longer teutonic automatons, the Dutch are no longer Brilliant Orange, the Uruguayans are neither their glorious ancient history nor their negative 1960s. But maybe all of them never even were those things, except briefly, in the first place; Spain, after all, first won the European Championship in 1964.

El Pais, published in Montevideo, Uruguay

AD, published in Rotterdam, Netherlands

Courtesy of newseum.org

AD, published in Rotterdam, Netherlands. 2 July, 2010.

Courtesy of newseum.org.

Eindhoven, the Netherlands, 14 June 2010

Photo credit: Kees Verwer on Flickr, via the Pitch Invasion Photo Pool.

This is the fifth in series of brief and miscellaneous perspectives on the World Cup groups and nations (here’s

Maybe it’s because the Dutch are often described as having a ‘philosophical’ approach to their football.  Or maybe it’s because the old Monty Python skit on soccer philosophers (where Nietzsche was “booked for arguing with the referee; he accused Confucius of having no free will”) has been popping up lately.  Or maybe it’s just me.  But when contemplating Group E (Holland, Denmark, Japan, and Cameroon) I couldn’t stop thinking about philosophy.

I’ve never been very good with philosophy, mind you, but that may just be appropriate to the vain pursuit of trying to make sports seem profound.  In other words, I know just enough philosophy to cobble together quotes from a big thinker native to each of the countries in Group E and then take those quotes totally out of context: as they might translate to the World Cup.

With Holland, for example, my occasional academic interest in sports and play has led me at various points to the well-known 1938 book Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture by Dutch cultural historian Johan Huizinga.  It’s the type of book that I know is supposed to be really good and profound—but I’ve never quite gotten it.  Kind of like Dutch football.  If they can’t win anything, and if they somewhat regularly fail to qualify for the World Cup (as in 1982, 1986, and 2002) then I find it hard to appreciate their genius—no matter how many Dutchmen tell me I’m supposed to.

But maybe the answer is in Huizinga?  In Homo Ludens he takes a world historical perspective on play, explaining it as a lost art:

“As a civilization becomes more complex, more variegated, and more over laden, and as the technology of goods production and social life itself become more finely organized, the old cultural soil is gradually smothered under a rank layer of ideas, systems of thought and knowledge, doctrines, rules and regulations, moralities and conventions which have all lost touch with play. Civilization, we then say has grown more serious; it assigns only a secondary place to playing. The heroic period is over, and the agonistic phase, too, seems a thing of the past.”

Perhaps, then, the Dutch national team’s reputation for style over results is a symbolic move towards recovering the lost art of play?  Damn civilization and its “rank layer” of “doctrines, rules and regulations, moralities and conventions.”  Damn scoring goals when it matters.  To play, to really play, is the thing.  And to exit the World Cup somewhere around the middle of the knock-out stages.

Though the Japanese don’t have the same soccer history as the Dutch, East Asian philosophy also rings of prioritizing subjective experience—the momentary beauty of an elegant poem, the First Noble Truth of life as suffering.  When I looked up the man the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy calls “the most significant and influential Japanese philosopher of the twentieth-century,” I found a similar theme.  Though I couldn’t understand most of the importance of Nishida Kitarō, I could recognize the wisdom in the poetry he wrote to cope with the death of his first wife and four of his eight children:

The bottom of my soul has such depth;
Neither joy nor the waves of sorrow can reach it

This may just be the best the Japanese can hope for at the 2010 World Cup: to not worry about the joy or the sorrow (especially since there is likely to be more of the latter) and instead contemplate the depth of one’s soul.

Which brings me, obviously, to Søren Kierkegaard.  The Dane, famed for his existentialism and his depression, may well have been talking to the current Danish national team in one of his famous quotes:

“I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations – one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it – you will regret both.”

Translation: in South Africa the Danes will either advance from the group or they won’t.  And they will regret it.

Leaving only Cameroon, with somewhat less of a modern philosophical tradition but—make no mistake—some legitimate intellectual heft.  In fact, one of the earliest (and best) essays offering a critical local perspective on South Africa’s hosting of the 2010 World Cup is a 2006 piece by Cameroon-born, Sorbonne-educated, South Africa-based post-colonial scholar Achille Mbembe:

“Every indication is that ‘Africa, the cradle of humankind’ will be the dominant theme of the 2010 Soccer World Cup. On the world scene, such platitudes will only further relegate the continent to the realm of folklore. Not only does such a theme smack of nativism, it does not say anything meaningful about who we are, who we want to be, and what our proposition for the world is.

That Bafana Bafana (the national football team) will not win this competition is a public secret. Now, if we cannot win on the soccer field and if our victory won’t be economic and financial, then we better start thinking hard about changing the very terms of what it means to win at all.”

Translation: The trans-national Indomitable Lions of Cameroon, with players who ply their trade in 11 different countries, will be serious.

Group E: The Group of _______________

In looking at the statistics for the nations of Group E  (see below) the most striking thing is the relative wealth of Holland, Denmark, and Japan.  Having those three countries in the group, the only one in the World Cup with three nations whose GDP per capita is over $30,000 per year, makes Group E easily the wealthiest group (on average) in the tournament.  Not coincidentally, it is also the quartet with the highest average ranking on the UN ‘Human Development Index.’

Contrasting the statistics from Holland, Denmark, and Japan with those of Cameroon does, however, offer cause for some notes on global inequality.  We all know the general cliché of Europe = Rich, Africa = Poor, but seeing the numbers up against each other in a soccer tournament somehow reinforces for me the tragedy of global inequality—the Dutch are struggling through ‘the great recession’ on $40,000 per person per year, while the Cameroonians manage on $2000.  And even if we put money aside, looking at life expectancy ranges from Japan’s 82.6 years to Cameroon’s 50.4 years is simply shocking.

I did, however, find an interesting statistic in which Cameroon is equal to its European group mates: tax rates.  According to NationMaster.com, Cameroon, Denmark, and the Netherlands are 1, 2, and 3 in the world for “the highest rate shown on the schedule of tax rates applied to the taxable income of individual” (at 60%, 59%, and 52% respectively).  Japan, in relative contrast, looks like a Tea Partier’s paradise at 37^th (at 37%).  But still, combining the overall high tax rates, the somewhat fatalistic trend in each nation’s philosophical history, and the conventional soccer moniker, Group E reminds me that only two things are certain in life—and shall be ‘The Group of Death and Taxes.’

Who would advance if there were any justice in the world?

ESPN's 2010 FIFA World Cup Murals by the Cape Town-based AM I Collective

In this first African World Cup, Cameroon has to be a sentimental favorite.  They are, after all, the African country who has played in the most World Cups (5), and their 1990 performances against Argentina and England are widely regarded as the point where African soccer began to be taken seriously around the world.  I remember that opening game of Italia ’90 between Cameroon and Argentina like it was yesterday—the joyful exuberance of the Indomitable Lions, the fear and confusion of the Argentineans, Roger Milla dancing with a wild grin at the corner flag.  But then I realize that memory is a funny thing, and I’ve probably been watching too many Coca-Cola commercials.  The historical record suggests that famous game was actually a relatively brutal display of cynical soccer—by the end Cameroon had two players dismissed for violent play.  Francois Omam-Biyik scored the only goal for Cameroon off a deflected cross and a goalkeeper error (Milla played briefly  in the game, but his magical scoring run only started after the first game).  Cameroon did play some nice soccer at points in the 1990 tournament, and their performance was iconic, but it wasn’t always pretty.  Using my secret formula of soccer history and global politics, however, the history is enough to justify Cameroon going through.

And speaking of having one’s perceptions distorted by marketing and clichés, I have some grudges against Dutch soccer.  First, because they get much credit for playing the ‘beautiful game’ and ‘total football,’ they seem to get a free pass for employing unrepentant leg-breakers such as Nigel De Jong.  Second, the arrogance too often associated with Dutch football is hard to stomach.  I can’t believe American viewers are going to be subjected to Ruud Gullit commentary on the World Cup after the hubris and embarrassment that was his tenure with the LA Galaxy.  Third, in my experience Dutch soccer people love to tell anyone who will listen what an accomplishment it is for them to be “so good for such a small country.”  And while they are certainly smaller than some of the other favorites, population-wise there are 10 other countries at the World Cup with fewer people than the Dutch—including group-mates Denmark who have only 5.5 million, compared to Holland’s 16.5 million, along with an equal number of European Championships and World Cups (one and zero).  Of course, the Dutch do have some brilliant players, coaches, and teams; they can be a joy to watch.  But in my mind they are out.

Finally, there is not much between Japan and Denmark for the other spot.  I’m partial to the Japanese for sending one of their former World Cup goal scorers, Takayuki Suzuki, to my local Portland Timbers.  Sure, he seems to have lost a step or five—but how many USL teams can claim players with World Cup goals?  But my scales were ultimately tipped by learning that Danish center back Daniel Agger has a bit of the old Kierkegaard attitude in him (or on him): two of his many tattoos read, in Latin, Memento mori (“Remember you will die”) and Mors certa hora incerta (“Death is certain, but the hour is uncertain”).  For quite literally embodying the ethos of this Group of Death and Taxes, Denmark is in.

Meaning that if there were any justice in the world Cameroon and Denmark would go through.  But remember the lessons of the great philosophers: there is rarely any justice in the world.

Group E – Some Stats

Whenever that Brilliant Orange bursts forth with attacking gusto, the deeds of Rinus Michels, Stefan Kovacs, and Johan Cruijff are suddenly resurrected, with the Dutch believed to have recaptured their heritage from the 1970s.

That, of course, is guff: the Dutch have played some fine, fine football at this tournament, but on a systematic and even aesthetic level, it bears little resemblance to the complex genius of Total Football (“whatever that was”, as ESPN’s Adrian Healey recently pronounced bemusedly).

Here is but the merest glimpse of what Total Football actually was for the Dutch at the 1974 World Cup. Note the overlapping runs, the intense pressure, the high line the defense held, the penetrating runs, the patience to open space, and suddenly, the viper attack.

As Jonathan Wilson presciently pointed out in the Guardian, it is not the Dutch, but rather their opponents tomorrow who most resemble a resurrection of Total Football, albeit one that has to adapt to the hyper-physical world of football today.

Russian commentators, referring back to the great ice-hockey teams of the past, spoke of “clap-clap” football, mimicking the way the puck used to click from stick to stick. Others, noting the fact that both goals were laid on by full-backs on the charge, have given Hiddink credit for reawakening a form of total football in Russia, yet that style has always been implicit in the Lobanovskyi school.

Wilson is referring to Valeri Lobanovskyi, coach of Dynamo Kiev in the 1970s, the first to win a major European club title with a Soviet team, noted for his scientific methods of management. Yet Wilson believes that the Russian team is as much following on Lobanovskyi’s footsteps as in that of Ajax’s, that the Russians have their own history of Total Football to draw on.

One of the great fallacies of football history is the notion that the Ajax and Holland of the early Seventies was all about self-expression, while Lobanovskyi’s Dynamo Kyiv was some kind of mechanistic monster. Yes, Lobanovskyi imposed his style of play upon his squad, while Rinus Michels watched his grow up almost organically among an extraordinary group of talented players who had played together for so long that they came to have an almost preternatural understanding of one another’s games, but the central tenets of both were the same. Dynamo and Ajax both played a high offside line, both pressed the opposition in possession, both thrived on rapid passing and the interchange of positions. Most fundamentally, both were about the performance of the individual within the system.

This leads us to the tantalising and fascinating possibility that Russian football today has somehow merged the brilliance of both the Dutch and Soviet variants of Total Football, though of course, the modern game’s compressed nature hardly allows for the kind of self-expression available for a Cruyff (which makes the Russians one-touch brilliance the other night even more admirable, in fact). Those who played close attention to Zenit St. Petersburg’s rapier counter-attacking — under, of course, the Dutchman Dick Advocaat — in their glorious UEFA Cup title run will have seen a presage of Russia’s performance in Euro 2008 the other night, with Arshavin pulling the strings.

Perhaps, by the team you read this, Russia vs. Netherlands will have petered out into a bore draw, stage fright getting the best of the contenders for the Total Football crown, and making such terminology seem laughable. But it is certainly worth remembering, when we hear that phrase bandied around liberally, what Total Football actually was, and its existence outside the confines of the Oranje.

A large number of Swiss fans in Bern – dismayed by their countries exit from the tournament – were easily won over by the orange contingent that infected their city. Perhaps this came from being reluctant to support neighboring France or Italy as their adopted team in the Group of Death. Or it could have been how the Dutch side plays with an all around attacking style that easily seduces the neutral observer; either way, Bern was overwhelmingly Oranje for the day.

The city center was packed with the pro-Dutch crowd between the viewing parties at Bundeplatz and Waisenhausplatz and every street adjacent preparing for the pre-game march to the Stade de Suisse Wankdorf Bern. Around 5:00 the majority of the Dutch supporters marched 2.5 km to the stadium, regardless of whether they had tickets or not. And if they were looking for tickets, they weren’t going to come cheaply: they were being sold for as much as 1400 Euros with the price dropping to 800 Euros within an hour of kick-off.

Numerous brass bands gathered in an animated fashion around the many fountains in the prelude to the match belting out traditional Dutch tunes and entertaining supporters and on-lookers alike. Many of the paraders returned to the raucous atmosphere of the watch parties, crammed next to thousands of other fans. Others opted for a more subdued but nonetheless exciting impromptu viewing parties set up on sidewalks outside a bar or cafe.

Regardless of where fans watched the match, the Dutch did not disappoint. Picking up where they left off of their dismantling of World Cup holders Italy, the Netherlands showed once again why they must now be considered the tournament favorite. Wesly Sneijder’s brilliant stoppage time goal set the stage for the party to follow.

The viewing parties gave way to DJs on stage spinning dance music, and the rest of Bern followed suit in what transformed into a jubilant celebration for all those wearing orange. The party never seemed to end, with the beer flowing and the brass bands playing in to the early hours of the morning.

The official Euro 2008 fan guide boasts that Bern is home to over 100 fountains, 11 of which are still in their original condition. The condition of those fountains was at least temporarily altered for this night, but there was not much in Bern that could escape the Oranje tide which overtook everything in its path.

Photo credits: Antoon’s Foobar, kaspar.loosli, blogarjoni, epl talk on Flickr