Truths and falsehoods about November 4, 2008 or "soccer seemingly trumps politics"

Facts:

• I got my absentee ballot in the mail fourteen hours before it was due.
• It would have cost me $239 to get it back to Hawaii on time.
• Now I can assign a dollar figure to how much my vote actually means to me
• That figure is $52.42.
• Not $239.
  
• So I didn't vote.
• Nevertheless, I was pretty relieved that Barack Obama was elected.

Falsehoods:

• Barack Obama will solve all or at least more than two of the nation's fundamental problems: poster child complex, national debt, negative interventionist tendencies, the imminent failure of the Social Security system, environmental negligence, corporate power, technocratic identity, the popularity of The Eagles.
• This call at the end of a game between two teams I don't even like was excellent and not so terrible that it ruined an otherwise excellent day.
  

Arda Turan--it WAS a great goal.

Today, the Guardian newspaper ran an article asking why there haven't been any great goals at this year's European Championships yet. To that I would respond thus:



That's Arda Turan's matchwinner against Swtizerland. At first it seems like a speculative shot that took a lucky deflection, not a memorable goal at all, but closer inspection reveals just how great it is. Here are ten reasons why:

1. It didn't take a deflection. Deflections lead to goals. The keeper thinks a shot is easy meat and then a clumsy teammate's shin strikes the minutest of glancing blows to send it past him in the opposite direction, or his center half dives in to stop it and only succeeds in turning a benign daisy-cutter into an unstoppable pearler.

But this wasn't one of those goals. It looks like it was, but it wasn't. Not at all. Look at the replay again, find more to look at if you're still not convinced. It didn't touch any Swiss player. But it looked like it did. How does that happen?

2. He hit it across his body while moving away from the goal. You're just not supposed to do that. When they teach you how to shoot, they tell you to put your head over the ball and lean into it. They also tell you you can get a much better strike off if you move into your shot, and not away from it. Arda thumbed his nose at that advice with this goal and put himself at a considerable disadvantage--his feet had to compensate for so much more because of it. From his perspective, he was shooting more behind himself than in front.

3. There were at least two Swiss defenders, plus the goalkeeper in front of him.
To aim it past those obstacles amidst all of the other calculations he also had to make required a speed of thought mere mortals just don't posess.

4. This is the big one: the shot itself. How did he do that? If there were cannons capable of doing what Arda's shot did, then war would be an even more dangerous affair than it is. Let me explain:

5. Its power. From that angle, going in that direction, with that shot, he hit it so hard that the Swiss goalkeeper, Diego Benaglio, didn't even have time to see it, let alone react.

6. The dip it took. Any professional player can hit it that hard, but I haven't seen one do that with what looked like a lob. It was like an eagle taking off, spotting a rat inside the goal net, and then diving sharply to capture it. The ball was alive once Arda's foot hit it. I wouldn't have even known it was possible to strike a shot like that, let alone been able to execute it.

7. It dipped just as it got over Benaglio's head. This is more of an artistic point. Goals just need to end up in the net. Anything else is, as they say, gravy. And the scorer is by no means obligated to add an aesthetic touch--or even capable of doing so. But they are all the more pleasing when they have that extra bonus which this one happened to. It was almost surrealistic.

8. He ran half the field to shoot. All of that and it came at the end of a fifty-yard sprint, followed by a ten-yard cutback. I would have been too exhausted to swing my foot, let alone in such an insouciant fashion.

9. It was set against a truly farcical game. The rain that day in Basel fell in sheets and added an extra element of unpredictability to the game. Every pass along the ground was suddenly a massive risk because there were huge puddles to trap the ball and trip up players. Jerseys were soaked, muddy and torn. The Swiss took the lead in the first place because they were the first to realize they simply had to keep the ball airborne, and even then they were helped by a puddle that captured the ball just in front of the goal for Hakan Yakin to tap in. I could have scored it. Hog-tied and paraplegic.

There was no room for sublime technique. Arda had no right to be trying something that crafty and tricky. He was defying not only the Swiss team and the Swiss crowd, but nature itself.

10. Timing. It was a winning goal in the last minute. If the Turks hadn't scored it, they would have been almost out of the tournament, but Arda stepped up to try something audacious in the last minute. So add to technical ability massive, massive courage.

Soccer--it's a sport, goddammit!

Major soccer tournaments, they say, are a majestic glue that binds, if only for a month, the palms of bitter enemies as they watch a grand and edifying dissertation in the one true universal language. This European Championships, they say, will be no different.

Bullshit, I say.

It's possible that my essential curmudgeonliness is getting the better of me. After all, I was ripped away from other enthusiasms and into the vortex of soccer by the cyclonic winds whipped up by the 2002 World Cup as a fourteen-year-old.

And I'll admit: the whole geopolitical harmony angle was what did it to me in the first place. It was all in the first result: Senegal 1, France 0. Who could help but revel in the revenge fantasies indulged by this result?

I was hooked--all the sport had to do was reel me in by proving itself watchable. And that it did not with the lyrical displays of that tournament's most accomplished teams--Brazil, Spain, Turkey--that I would later come to appreciate.

The match that opened like a gallows trapdoor the world of soccer was as far as possible from the fluency and harmony soccer tries to cultivate. It was Mexico's violent victory against Croatia in the group stage. It was hideously dramatic and, the impact of Boris Zivkovic's foot on Cuauhtemoc Blanco's testicles also broke ground on a whole new chamber in my heart.

So my love for soccer was born of the same youthful schadenfreude and bloodlust that fueled my childhood obsessions with a succession of violent cartoons, combined with my growing teenage sense that the world was a cruel and unjust place, particularly to the people of the world's Senegals.

But really, few underdogs get their day in soccer--at the World Cup, teams playing their former or current imperial overlords have won only seven games and lost 25. And the record is even less impressive when you remove from the reckoning European countries occupied during World War II and its aftermath by Germany, the Soviet Union and the United States. Then there are only three victories--Argentina over Spain in 1966 and the United States over England in 195o in addition to the Senegal result.

Instead, often, soccer inflames and re-enforces old resentments. The most extreme example is the 1969 Soccer War that broke out between El Salvador and Honduras, essentially, over the result of a World Cup qualifier between the two. But even the most recent European Championships have proven themselves not immune to violence, as the recent arrest of 157 German and Polish hooligans in Klagenfurt, Austria, proves.

And anyway, the heightened emotions associated with soccer lead to resentment. Five years ago, if you had asked an Englishman what he thought of people from Portugal, I have no idea what he would have said. But in the intervening period, Portugal have knocked England out of both the 2004 European Championships and the 2006 World Cup, both in controversial circumstances.

If you asked the same Englishman about Portugal today, he would probably spit out something bitter about playacting and cheating and question the masculinity of Portuguese players like Ronaldo Aveiro and Deco Souza.

Even the seemingly positive and uplifting in soccer often comes to ill purpose. Brazil's 1970 World Cup team is rightly considered the greatest ever to take the field. Its players' names are almost always accompanied by unavoidable saliva as they roll off any soccer fan's tongue--Pele, Rivellino, Tostao, Gerson, Jairzinho, Carlos Alberto. They were charismatic and beautiful to watch, and they played fair.

But their tremendous legacy was tragically politicized, co-opted by the brutal Medici regime in a desperate and successful bid for legitimacy.

So I don't want to hear anymore of this psuedo-profound nonsense about soccer as a unifier or some sort of mystical karmic force.

When an exuberant twinkle of Ronaldinho Moreira's toes leaves a criss-crossed opponent flattened, when a casual swing of Michael Ballack's right foot inexplicably causes the ball to materialize on the chest of a teammate seventy yards away, when a cunning yet imperceptible step to the right by Ruud van Nistelrooy somehow sets him gloriously free of a marker to flick the receive the ball businesslike and flick it into a corner of the goal, that is where you'll find the true worth of soccer.

The rest, I'm afraid, is just the bamboozling of the World Cup's advertisers.

Manchester United 1-0 Barcelona: Underrated Park covers for Ronaldo

Everyone expected it: Manchester United's startlingly effective right winger was instrumental to their defeat of Barcelona in Tuesday's European Cup game. After being criticized for is lack of end product in his initial games for the club, he has worked hard and made that a part of his game. He is an integral part of the team.

Except that the right winger everyone expected to sparkle was Cristiano Ronaldo. The one who actually did was lesser-sung South Korean Park Ji-sung.

On Park's signing from Holland's PSV Eindhoven, the move was cynically viewed by fans as an effort to sell shirts in Korea. Park's effort could not be questioned--Park has unquenchable reserves of bubbling energy--but he was, said one fan page, "Not good enough for Manchester United's side."

The fans were wrong.

On Wednesday, Park once again ran all 90 minutes. But there was also a quality about his performance and he was the only Manchester United player who produced consistent, threatening crosses, two extra-accurate efforts in particular dangerous for the home side.

Park is the opposite of Ronaldo in terms of style. The Portuguese is all flash and his end-product comes in the form of goals. Park is unglamorous and utilitarian--though he is an offensive player, he also provides the defense with the kind of herculean contribution Ronaldo doesn't bother to put in.

Park is also the best crosser his team has. And I think that's the product of his insatiable work-ethic. When Park gets the ball, he hits the byline and whips it in, with uncanny accuracy, to the head or foot of a teammate. He's singleminded, persistent. Winning teams need players like that.

And it's grossly unfair to say he was signed to shift shirts. I won't attempt to deny the possibility that his transfer increased the number of Red Devils shirts sold in Seoul.

But there's also something racist about those accusations, which are raised every time an Asian player moves to a European club. They never seem to be associated with players from outside Asia, even though I think they should be.

I would propose, for instance, that Manchester United only keep utility man John O'Shea around to maintain their following in Ireland. From what I have seen, O'Shea is by far the worst professional footballer they actually put on the field, clumsy and prone to losing his man, lacking in aggression.

But the club needs some reminder of the days when Roy Keane, the former Ireland captain, converted so many residents of the Emerald Isle to their cause.

These days, United's coach, Sir Alex Ferguson, is so loath to play O'Shea that he puts midfielders like Owen Hargreaves out of position at right-back to avoid putting the Irishman on the field. Park, by contrast, has started the two most important European games of the club's season so far, and performed well in both.

This season, Manchester United have not lost any game in which Park has played. The Korean is not spectacular, not necessarily a crowd-pleaser, but he is effective. His work-rate is inspirational to his teammates.

And in two games against Barcelona, Park has played well, while the club's more well-known, flashier players have not.

Especially Cristiano Ronaldo. It's good for his club that he has a reliable guy like Park to uphold the name of Manchester United right-wingers.

Derby 2-6 Arsenal: Earnshaw's exuberance exposes embarrassing inequality

You there was naked joy in Rob Earnshaw's face as he celebrated scoring for Derby County against Arsenal in today's English Premiership soccer match. He ran towards the crowd, front-flipping through the air before launching into a stiff-legged dance probably picked up from a Morris Day video.

His team was losing.

The eventual result was 2-6 in favor of visiting Arsenal, and it was pretty apparent which team had been at the bottom of the league table since day one and which had been in first place most of the season. And the London-based away team was even more dominant than the scoreline suggests.

The Premiership is the most lucrative, well-publicized league in the world, but it is also the most polarized. Every team is fantastically rich, but the four largest teams, of which Arsenal is one, make the rest look like serfs.

Admittedly, this year's vintage of Derby County is by far the worst team ever to play in this league. The disparity in talent between these two teams is such that Derby's ability to score even one goal, let alone two, is a shock.

Add to that the frustrating season Earnshaw has had and you can probably excuse his joy. Derby paid more to sign him than they ever have for any player and he has not justified the outlay.

The team's results have been so bad that the club learned it would be demoted to the second tier of English soccer in March, two months before the end of the season. They have only won one game this season. Their best players left for teams in the second tier midway through the season. They just aren't trying anymore.

But a league that includes a team of Arsenal's talent and one of Derby's cluelessness cannot be healthy.

The Londoners, known for playing attractive soccer, were allowed to be at their aesthetic best, despite starting with five reserve team players. They produced sweeping passing moves involving curled through balls, surging runs across half the field, deft back-heeled touches and inch-perfect thirty-yard high passes that Derby's defenders seemed disinclined to deal with.

It was a dizzying hurricane of skill that none of Derby's starting players seemed even remotely capable of withstanding, let alone reproducing. The goals included three for Togolese superstar Emmanuel Adebayor, who didn't even play in the first half, and one each for the raw teenager Theo Walcott, half-injured Robin van Persie, and Danish forward Nicklas Bendtner, who has endured a terrible season. Each was a mark of glaring shame on the home team, whose fans started leaving well before the final whistle.

It was all the more embarrassing because Arsenal's is not a great team. Derby even drew level in the first half, defender Jay McEveley pouncing on negligent Arsenal marking in the penalty area off a corner kick. But they didn't believe in themselves, just as they have not all season. They are depressingly mediocre and will not be missed--only American midfielder Benny Feilhaber, a second-half substitute, even seemed capable of passing the ball.

But the Premiership will see more teams whose players are so inadequate that they celebrate exuberantly even when they are losing. Unless something is done, but I don't know what that would be.


Earnshaw did this