What is football anyway?

By Marcela Mora y Araujo
July 7 /Guardian
"The World Cup has nothing to do with football," César Luis Menotti,the man who managed Argentina to its first World Cup victory in 1978, once told me. It was early 1994 and we were discussing whether the USA was an apt host nation for the forthcoming WC. After all, it's not really a footballing nation.
But what is a footballing nation? What is football anyway?
Menotti meant that the USA as host nation would not have any adverse impact on
the game since the World Cup is no more than "a big business venture orchestrated by Fifa". Hard to argue with that. The USA was as good a stage as any in that respect - some might say, better than most.
Menotti's view of football is a romantic notion of the "beautiful game", a form of artistic expression meant to delight and entertain performers and consumers. Others believe it to be a zero sum competition whose value is quantified by results - a discussion which has cropped up a lot on this blog in recent weeks.
Both views are valid. The problem with the World Cup is that it attracts a much broader audience than regular leagues.
Clearly, some long-suffering fans who have put the hours in come rain or shine, who have learnt formations and memorised scorelines, who have experienced the range of emotions dealt by the cruel hand of fate and followed the ball since time began find the notion of fairweather fans enjoying the show only once every four years somehow offensive.
The World Cup has become so successful a business venture that, in the words of Julio
Grondona, an eminent active member of Fifa for the better part of 50 years, "when it happens it focuses the attention of most people in the world to the detriment of other events".
Like most of the world I have watched the World Cup on TV, but I did go to the stadium a couple of times. Last week I went to Berlin's Olympiastadion, an eerie construction that blends modernism with history, much in the way the whole city does.
On my way to the game I saw a man with a rather cool T-shirt bearing the legend: "Der Ball ist rund" and a picture of a leather ball. Beautiful, strong leather with coarse stitching, not a sportswear brand in sight.
I recognised the phrase but wasn't sure from where. At the stadium I met a well-dressed German man with a VIP accreditation. He was furious with gate attendants who sent us off on a 10 to 15-minute walk past many other possible points of entry where we were repeatedly denied access.
We chatted, in the way fans do, and walked around a stadium surrounded by uniformed
officials, much in the way one would at any ground. During our peregrination he told me he was a film-maker. I immediately thought of German cinema, of Fitzcarraldo and Run Lola Run. Then I remembered: Der Ball ist rund.
Perhaps this is in part what Menotti feels makes the World Cup removed from football:
the tunnels up to the terraces are crammed with filmmakers and celebrities. The tickets are prohibitively expensive. There is no smell of rancid urine. The surrounding areas, instead of offering hats, flags and headbands or hotdogs and sugary coffee - or whatever stadiums round the world sell, these are just the ones I'm familiar with - are lined with white tents in which marketing companies host "hospitality events".
You've a good chance of bumping into an Argentinian rock star, Baddiel and Skinner, or a corporate lawyer. But a true fan? A regular bloke who has been there every home game since his dad took him there as an eight-year-old? Unlikely at a World Cup stadium.
Maybe controversially, I don't think this makes the World Cup less about football. For me, going to the stadium in Germany put me in touch with a slice of German footballing history and a slice of German contemporary culture - football is part of all that.
Of course it's clouded in marketing strategies and we have to perform sacrilegious actions such as the Mexican Wave, or buy a Valderrama wig (thankfully a fad that seems to be dying down). And of course those having the biggest laugh are the manufacturers of the white and black "Teamgeist" ball, who have sold close to 15 million worldwide since the tournament began, and not the quirky Philosophy Football outfit who make the T-shirt that caught my eye.
But it isn't just that.
Football in its purest form has been present throughout the tournament. Or can you really tell me that the suspense of the semi-final between Germany and Italy - that certainty shared by millions that after 118 minutes of athletic prowess we were in for penalties and then the sudden plot twist, the goal, changing everything - is not football?
Klinsmann's hurried look as Italy celebrated,thinking there are still a couple of minutes, we can turn it round again, urging his men not to give up.
Del Piero's impatient run "to make his appointment with the ball" as my Italian friend so eloquently put it - that's not football?
And Zidane's calm, cool, collected penalty in the semi-final against Portugal, determined, confident - is that not football? The debatable nature of the penalty itself, the arguably boring quality of the game, the impossible task of the referee, the reprehensible anger of Felipao - that's not football?
And it's not just the goals either: the infinite dissection of every move, every decision, every gesture (the wink, the dive, the hug, the shrug); the impossibility of any agreement over an image we have all seen repeatedly (is that a punch or a careless arm-stretch? Did he stamp on his testicles or merely take a gentle step backwards? Was there any contact before he fell?).
Even the debate about whether or not it's scoring goals that matters, that old aesthetic versus result discussion, permeates every preview and every post-match analysis.
What's more, all the traditional tribal enmities come to the surface. Hand in hand with the defence and support of our team comes derision of the other. The danger here is the team's equation with nationality. As a Boca fan, I know I can make swiping statements about River supporters which would never be taken as any more than an expression of the irrational licence that football grants us to vent negative feelings.
Somehow, when it comes to being an Argentinian making a statement about Brazilians, caution is of the upmost importance. Football nationality has nothing to do with real nationality, a leading Scottish-born sportswriter who lives in England said to me last week. Because football is not real, he added.
But some of the exchanges ignited by the event feel real. As one person commentated on an earlier blog of mine, the discord among us is worthy of an Edgar Reitz epic.
Football has everything to do with territoriality. Football is mine, we all feel; I am the one who really knows this game, I understand it in a way that 'others' don't. Football is all about "us" and "them", a battle for territory and possession, and a sense of belonging for individuals through a common objective. Football belongs to all of us, we all have an expert opinion and a personal history and a bundle of shared memories and hopes.
Football is about strategy and poetry. In the words of JB Priestley, Art and Conflict for a shilling.