SPORTS: Latin America and soccer

I was surprised to receive from one WAISer sports fan an unWAIS message rebuking me for having said that the session on sports, chaired by Carlos Lopez, should present both sides of the sports issue. "Fan" is an abbreviation of "fanatic", and by definition WAISers are not fanatics. A new discipline, the sociology of sports, is developing, and we welcome it, since sports present a complex and fascinating problem.

Soccer, invented in England, has become globalized in an incredible way, having had the greatest impact in "Latin" countries, especially in South America. Does that go back to the nineteenth century, when British influence in that area was paramount? In England, cricket had class, soccer was a lower class sport. This class distinction does not exist in the world today. but soccer has a special appeal for working-class men, less for women. Chile has been shaken by soccer violence at a match in which a monstrous man stabbing another spectator with a dagger made good TV pictures.

In Colombia, TV news today was dominated by the story that the country had been chosen for the international Copa America games. Politicians were so exhilarated that they made foolish speeches saying that this would bring peace to Colombia. That illusion was shattered when a powerful car bomb exploded in Medellín, doing enormous damage. Was it just the continuation of the drug wars, or was it a deliberate attempt to wreck the Copa America games?

On the same day in Brazil, the national congress staged an extraordinary scene. In an angry session, irate congressmen demanded that a black soccer player tell them by Brazil had been defeated by France in the world championship games. The poor fellow just sat there listlessly, saying win some, lose some. Later there was another angry scene when congressmen demanded that one of them resign for his failure to prevent the violence at the Sao Caeteno-Vasco match. It was not clear why he was to blame.

South America produces such good soccer players that they have become a valuable export commodity. Since the European federation has rules about the number of non-Europeans who can play in European teams, false passports provide a solution. In France this has become a major political issue. Presumably teams which thus recruit a star player provoke other teams owners into making a political issue of this. Presumably the players with false passports will be forced to abandon the game, involving the clubs which purchased them in heavy financial losses. Soccer is politics and business by other means.

I trust the sports session of our conference will throw some light on this curiously dramatic business.

Ronald Hilton - 1/11/01