I’ve played in pickup games in New York, London, Paris, New Delhi and Katmandu. There’s a soccer game in most every town, if you know where to look. You don’t have to speak the local language. You don’t have to share the same religion. You simply have to run, pass, dribble and shoot. It’s a fast way into a foreign culture and an entree into being a world citizen, in the best sense of the term.
Over the centuries, there have been many utopian schemes for world peace, now mostly consigned to the ash heap of history, but soccer offers a vision of how such a world order might actually work. There are none of the vague platitudes you hear at UNESCO conferences; the sport allows for plenty of competition; it’s not just about love and brotherhood, as witnessed by the recent World Cup. People push, shove and sometimes foul. They want to win. But they must subordinate even the fiercest rivalries to the game itself. If a fight breaks out, the game stops. No one wants that.
The sport’s value as a model for international affairs first struck me while attending college in Nantes, France. I massacred the French language, but I knew how to pass and shoot. Alain, a droll student with a goatee, recruited me for his team. He sought to assemble the best équipe possible, regardless of race.
He also recruited George, a tall African who butchered the language as badly as I did, but who had a devastating shot. He then tapped several wiry Algerians and Moroccans, who as former colonists had an uneasy relationship to French society, but who dribbled like magicians. Our team included so many ethnicities with so many overlapping centuries of conflict it was hard to keep track of them all. So we simply concentrated on the game.
During our matches, George and I berated each other–not about imperialism or ethnic cleansing, but strategy. I played right midfield while George played right wing. He wanted me to play back. I wanted to move up.
After several matches, we worked out a compromise. When I ran up to shoot on goal, he’d move back to cover me. When he advanced, I’d cover him. We began to mesh as a team. By the end of the season, we were hanging out in cafés, laughing, drinking, smoking and carousing–a typically French training routine.
Several years later when I went to London, I quickly found a game in Green Park. There was a different mix of nationalities–English, northern and southern Irish, Kuwaitis, Cameroonians, Iranians, Iraqis–but the same rich tapestry of cultures. Muslims stopped in the middle of the game to bow down toward Mecca. British players with shaved heads bellowed punk songs after scoring a goal. Protestants from Northern Ireland passed to Roman Catholics from the south. Without forced bonhomie, everybody got along.
This is not to say that national identity didn’t matter. The Arabs and Afri-cans favored showboat dribbling and cartwheeling bicycle kicks in front of the goal. Irish, English and Americans like me preferred a more team-oriented, ball-control style. The more repressive the political system, it seemed, the more individualistic the soccer. These styles mixed and meshed and sometimes clashed, but when a long pass arced across the mouth of the goal, no one was thinking of the ethnicity of the person who passed it, only of heading it into the back of the net.
When not traveling, I carry my cleats to Green Lake field in Seattle–Americans are catching soccer fever, too, which bodes well for international relations. There, everybody calls each other “Amigo,” whether Korean, Tongan, Argentine, Ecuadoran, Italian or Hindu. That doesn’t mean there aren’t conflicts. In fact, the only real fight I’ve seen took place here.
Raymond, a tall African player, kept disrupting the match, swinging wildly at whoever took the ball away from him, making it impossible for the game to continue. Alex, a short Mexican with quick hands, took him on.
After a few punches flew, Alex, the winner, helped Raymond up. He wasn’t interested in gloating. He put his hand on Raymond’s shoulder, making sure he was OK. Then he ran down the field after the ball. The game must go on.
