The World Cup: What happens when the crowds go home?

The World Cup is the the world's greatest sporting event.

For an entire month, people from every corner of the globe are riveted by these world class athletes and the magic they perform with their feet, their head and a ball. This is why Steve Nash of the Phoenix Suns heads to New York City every summer to play in the city's many soccer leagues and why people everywhere are cramming into bars, clubs, stadiums and pubic squares at insane hours to cheer for their national or adopted favorite team.

Goals are infrequent. They are hard earned, generally by the creative and brilliant work of many. As a result they are more valued than even the home run which has been almost commonplace through a combination of weight training and chemicals

I love the competition, the international camaraderie and the brilliance of athletes like Messi, Park Ji-Sung, Rooney and Howard. But in a country as poor and unequal as South Africa, it is hard to justify the costs of hosting the games. Once they are over and the cheering stops, South Africa will be left with enormous debts in addition to its overwhelming social and economic problems.

This is the first World Cup played on African Soil. But the claims that it is an "African" event ring hollow. In reality it is a sanitized spectacle run by and for multinational corporations and global elites.

Whether the administrators and sponsors like it or not, the games are highlighting the gulf between the haves and the have-nots.

Take, for example, Royal Bafokeng Stadium, where England and the US met on Saturday night. It cost $82 million to build, and its recently refurbished stands are hosting business executives from some of the world's biggest corporations. While they live it up at the World Cup, in the surrounding 29 villages that make up the tiny Bafokeng kingdom within South Africa, most live in abject poverty despite the region's platinum wealth.

South African sociologist Chris Bowman writes in the Harvard Business Review:

Relying on tax subsidies, the South African organizers have built five world-class stadiums, renovated two existing football stadiums and a further three rugby stadiums, and made additional significant infrastructure changes — all at a cost in excess of 30 billion South African rand, double what was predicted in 2006.

This is in a country where poverty is extreme: The Gini coefficient of income inequality, a metric on a zero-to-one scale with higher numbers representing greater disparity, has risen from 0.66 in 1993 to 0.70 in 2008 (the U.S., for comparison, is at 0.45). Racial apartheid has been replaced by class apartheid and unemployment hovers around 40%.

Scarce public resources have been diverted from much-needed public projects to a spectacle that generates significant revenue — but mainly for FIFA, football's governing body, and big corporations. In presenting FIFA with a "risk-free opportunity on African soil," to quote their bid, the South African organizers structured the tournament so as to allow FIFA to generate vast profits through marketing and broadcasting rights.

The result: The 2010 World Cup is already proving lucrative for FIFA — Jerome Valcke, the organization's secretary general, recently announced that income has increased by 50% since the last event.

But the economic benefits for South Africans will be very slim. In fact, many citizens — indeed, many Africans of all nationalities — will be excluded, due to expensive tickets and a complicated ticketing system. Though less than 10% of the South African population has internet access, tickets were initially sold online. Local traders have been barred from selling food, beverages, and soccer merchandise outside the stadiums. Local factories were not even awarded the contract to produce the official mascot, Zakumi — instead, the work went to a factory in Shanghai.

The 2010 World Cup has gotten off to splendid start with large enthusiastic crowds and stirring performances. With favorites like Brazil and the Ivory Coast yet to play and stars like Kaka and Ronaldo working their magic, these games, despite the controversy over the ball and the noise of the vuvuzelas,, are meeting the expectations of football fans everywhere.

The games have also generated enormous enthusiasm among South Africans who are justifiably proud of hosting the event on African soil for the first time. But after the games are over and the money is counted, very little will flow back to the South African communities that need it the most.

Why do Glenn Beck and the right wing hate football?

Dave Zirin writes:

Every World Cup, it arrives like clockwork. As sure as the ultimate soccer spectacle brings guaranteed adrenaline and agony to fans across the United States, it also drives the right-wing noise machine utterly insane.

“It doesn’t matter how you try to sell it to us,” yipped the Prom King of new right, Glenn Beck.

“It doesn’t matter how many celebrities you get, it doesn’t matter how many bars open early, it doesn’t matter how many beer commercials they run, we don’t want the World Cup, we don’t like the World Cup, we don’t like soccer, we want nothing to do with it.”

Beck’s wingnut godfather, G. Gordon Liddy also said on his radio program, “Whatever happened to American exceptionalism? This game … originated with the South American Indians and instead of a ball, they used to use the head, the decapitated head, of an enemy warrior.”

Dear Lord, where do we begin? First of all, I always find it amusing when folks like Beck say, “We don’t like soccer” when it is by far the most popular youth sport in the United States. It’s like saying, “You know what else American kids hate? Ice cream!”

Young people love soccer not because of some kind of commie-nazi plot conjured by Saul Alinsky to sap us of our precious juices, but because it’s – heaven forefend - fun.

Among adults, the sport is also growing because people from Latin America, Africa, and the West Indies have brought their love of the beautiful game to an increasingly multicultural United States. As sports journalist Simon Kuper wrote very adroitly in his book Soccer Against the Enemy, “When we say Americans don’t play soccer we are thinking of the big white people who live in the suburbs. Tens of millions of Hispanic Americans [and other nationalities] do play, and watch and read about soccer.” In other words, Beck rejects soccer because his idealized “real America” - in all its monochromatic glory – rejects it as well. To be clear, I know a lot of folks who can’t stand soccer. It’s simply a matter of taste. But for Beck it’s a lot more than, “Gee. It’s kind of boring.” Instead it’s, “Look out whitey! Felipe Melo’s gonna get your mama!”

As for Liddy, let’s be clear. There is not in fact hard anthropological evidence that early soccer games were played with a human head. Interestingly, though, there is an oft-told legend that the sport took root in England in the 8th century because the King’s army playfully kicked around the detached cranium of the conquered Prince of Denmark. Notice that this tall-tale is about Europe not “South American Indians”. I think we’re seeing a theme here.

But maybe this isn’t just sports as avatar for their racism and imperial arrogance. Maybe their hysteria lies in something far more shallow. Maybe the real reason they lose their collective minds is simply because the USA tends to get their asses handed to them each and every World Cup.

After all, as G. Gordon asked, “Whatever happened to American exceptionalism?” When it comes to the World Cup, the exceptional is found elsewhere. Could Beck, Liddy, and company just have soccer-envy? Is it possible that if the USA was favored to win the World Cup, Beck himself would be in the streets with his own solid gold vuvuzela? I feel that to ask the question is to answer it. In fact, this is as good a reason as any to hope for a mighty run by the US team. It would be high comedy to see Beck and Friends caught in a vice between their patriotic fervor and their nativist fear.

[Dave Zirin is the author of the forthcoming “Bad Sports: How Owners are Ruining the Games we Love” (Scribner) Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.]

The Fugees: soccer, hope,redemption and the immigrant experience

Two years ago, Warren St John of the New York Times, wrote an article about a soccer club composed of refugees from some of the most violent nations in the world and their volunteer coach, a young woman, Luma Mufleh.

It is an inspiring story about how Ms Mufleh, an immigrant herself, used soccer as a vehicle to help her players adapt to their new lives in the United States.

While the experiences of these athletes are unique and in many cases horrifying, generations of immigrants have built soccer clubs in the US and used them as a supportive community to understand and adapt to their new circumstances.

Long before the soccer had established a foothold in Milwaukee's suburbs, immigrants had organized ethnic clubs like Verdi, the Bavarians, the Serbs, the Croatian Eagles, and Polonia. Many of Milwaukee's soccer legends like Bob Gansler and Mario Carini played for these clubs that were firmly rooted in the city's immigrant neighborhoods. One of the largest clubs in Milwaukee today, Club Latino, continues this tradition.

St John has now written a book, "Outcasts United," about the Fugees soccer club which is shorthand for Refugees. It's a great read. To learn more about the Fugees and how soccer serves as an effective vehicle for self expression and acculturation read the book or watch attached video.

Soccer, footwork and basketball

Over the past decade there has been a big increase in the number of foreign-born players in the NBA.

The three stars on the NBA's reigning champion, the San Antonio Spurs, are Tim Duncan (Virgin Islands), Tony Parker (France) and Manu Ginóbili (Argentina). Their rivals in this years Western playoffs are the LA Lakers who have six players who were raised overseas including the NBA's MVP, Kobe Bryant.

The New York Times', Billy Witz, writes that this is no accident. All of these athletes and others like Steve Nash (Canada) and Dirk Nowitzki (Germany), are former soccer players who benefited from international football's emphasis on footwork, angles, spacing, and movement without the ball.

The article is linked here.