Beyond Football

The slogan of world cup 2010 “more than just a game” isn’t dull at all. If you think about it, football can not simply be associated to well-thought strategies, artful performance, mind-blogging amounts of money allocated to players, high degrees of adrenaline especially from the side of fans, and a powerful industry where human beings are priced as any other asset. It goes beyond these elements to mirror the culture of a whole country.

Culture, this fascinating set of unspoken rules that direct people’s behaviours can easily be reflected through football particularly in a large scale competition like the World cup. Have you ever tried to answer questions such as : why would some teams create a surprise by qualifying to the next round  beating teams that were supposed to be unbeatable candidates? Why would some players display some  weird  behaviours when faced to a given situation?

I am no good at recalling details relating to football as I have a rather selective memory I am afraid. However, there are some which were quite significant in the way that they enabled my reflection about the relationship between football and culture to go forward. These ones were saved by my  memory quite naturally.

Perhaps you recall how Nigeria lost against Greece. The former literally dominated the game and scored first before one of its players displayed a totally idiotic act and attacked a Greek player in an obviously trivial situatio.He was reprimanded with a red car was thus responsible for the new twist of the match . At that moment , their Swedish coach put a really  angry face.  And you should have some understanding  why he challenged  the rules of his culture  dictating to him  to keep cool no matter how conflicting a situation gets. Indeed, his player had just demonstrated that some people coming from some spots of this world can get very emotional for the most common-place reasons.

Let’s move to Asia now. It’s probably funny to observe how Asian values such as respect for seniority and face saving are reflected through football. Did you notice that Japanese players don’t  hug or give a pat on the back to their coach but shake hands while bowing slightly before the coach? Also you might have noticed that Asian referee who  punishes players with penalty cards, and gives them a big smile at the same time. His smile is obviously not a genuin one but rather a means to save face or if you want to push things further, it is likely to hide an understatement such as: “ I’ll make you pay for it , you moron”

Our final destination is Europe and here I hesitate whether to talk about the French masquerade taking roots in the famous “exception Française” or the German achievement and its potential drivers. You know what ? I’ll go for Germany , it’s probably the team that picked up most of my interest for this World cup. So is the star- players- lacking- German team  representative of German culture? Yes very, otherwise it couldn’t have  possibly  achieved such outcomes. Discipline, focus, precision and a tendency to be very competitive are all key elements in German culture and were surely key success factors for the football team. If you question my finding, watch any match on any German channel like “ZDF” and count the number of times you hear words  such as “ Disziplin” , “Präzision”,”Genauigkeit”, respectively meaning, “ discipline”, “precision” and again “precision”!

To wrap it up, I’m just telling the Spanish team today : Watch out !these guys are programmed to score 4 goals and they are talented when it comes to  not deviating too much from their culture .At any rate, I look forward to watching parts of the match as It would highlight cultural differences in a the most beautiful way.