14 January 2007: is my memory playing tricks with me?

I seem to remember that at Christmas 1994, following that year's World Cup, then US  defender and occasional grunge guitarist Alexei Lalas was quoted (in that year's Socialist Worker Xmas quiz no less), describing himself as a Marxist in the tradition of Lenin, Luxemburg and Trotsky. Does anyone else remember the quote? Was all it just a rumour, sparked perhaps by Lalas' red beard? In view of Lalas' new role, as the manager to LA Galaxy, and therefore to brand Beckham - I would love to know if it was true.  

18 June 2006: Foreigners cheat

One theme of Calcio, John Foot's superb new history of football in Italy is the universal scorn which all Italian fans have for referees. Fans do not just anger in response to one decision, they believe rather that every referee is bent. Not just one official in one game but every ref in every match. The Italian defeat at the last world cup was explained not at all by the team's complacency on the pitch but rather in terms of Italy's failure to wield more influence in Fifa, to have more power in the game. 

The players too are raised in this culture: if rules are already malleable, then there is no harm in bending them further. A player is congratulated when they dive , praised to bring down an attacker, even at the expense of conceding a yellow card. At least a goal was saved. The Italian language even has terms for the virtuous foul, the necessary booking.

In the interviews he's done since, Foot has described the way in which by immersing himself in this culture, he actually came to despise it. Its completely shamelessness was alien to him. Watching Italy's last game: the petulance, the repeated diving, and above all Daniele de Rossi's assault on Brian McBride, it would be easy to feel the same.

But who are we to scorn?

There's a different double standard at work in Britain. We don't just deride Italian players as cheats, instead we hold that all foreigners dive: whether in Spain or France, America or South Korea, where very different cultures hold: different from the Italian and different from our own. 

My grandmother used to claim that she spoke 'foreign': through her lifetime she'd packed up a smattering of words in French, Italian and so on.  My grandmother was then puzzled to discover that while all foreigners spoke foreign, some had mastered different dialects of it. Foreigners were in fact incomprehensible. As she was to them. At that point, sensibly, she gave up - and turned back to English. Very slowly and loudly.

Enough commentators hold to Ron Atkinson's version of this rule. 

We still hold to the vestiges of the idea that British people should and therefore do always obey the rules. If there's more spitting in the premiership, then the greater presence of 'foreigners' must be to blame.

CLR James' Beyond the Boundary describes what it was like to be brought up in Trinidad but in the British tradition in the early years of the last century: he learned through cricket a culture of always obeying the umpire, of duty and order, which reflected (as he was taught) the virtues of British society and of British colonial rule.

Cricket always embodied this idea to a greater extent than football - British cricket was the product, James argued in his memoir, of the middle years of the nineteenth century, of the public school system, of Matthew Arnold and W. G. Grace. Football derives its modern origins from a similar moment: it spread from England. The rules were recorded in the 1880s. The first successful teams were old boys' clubs from the public schools. 

The difference is that the audience for football was working class from the start, and the players too (in much greater numbers than cricket). Football had by 1890 been largely captured by the working class: first in Britain and then when it spread internationally. This meant that British football was always more 'Italian' than British cricket: less moralistic, less hypocritical. 

The workers had no civilising mission to spread.

But different sports are never the product of just one class culture: so the moral ban on 'cheating' continued to have some influence on the public values of the British game, even as the habit was condoned in practice.

For de Rossi's elbow read Michael Owen's ability to fall in the box as if shot. Foreigners cheat, we just bend the rules.

16 June 2006: T and T 

Commiserations to Trinidad and Tobago, who could easily have led and succumbed with just ten minutes to go. 

I've written before about what the World Cup presents at its best: a chance for teams from the peripheral societies of world capitalism to place themselves level with the societies of the centre, to look at their representatives and to judge them their equals. 

A nice, apposite story from CLR James' Beyond the Boundary describes this same process taking place in the different context of cricket in the 1920s:  

'I was holding forth about some example of low West Indian cricket morals', James writes, ' when [Learie] Constantine grew grave with an almost aggressive expression in his face. "You have it all wrong, you know", he said coldly. "What did I have all wrong?" "You have it all wrong. You believe all that you read in those books. They are no better than we." I floundered around. I hadn't intended to say that they were better than we. Yet a great deal of what I had been saying was just that.' 

They are no better than we; James was right, and we are no better than they.

13 June 2006: the World Cup, a week in

Judging by the online bookmakers Oddschecker, the odds seem to be shortening on Argentina and England, while lengthening on Germany. England have become clear second favourites behind Brazil. Neither team deserves the position. Of the teams I've seen, Argentina, the Czech Republic, Germany, Holland, Italy, the Ivory Coast and Portugal should all feel confident of playing England, were they picked together. Spain haven't played yet, but should have nothing to fear either. 

The common cliche that England have the best midfield in the competition seems to pall against reality: Joe Cole doesn't cross, Beckham remains slow, and Lampard is surely one of the most over-rated players in Europe: he doesn't run back, and Gerrard's threat is nullified to make space for him. Guillem Balague was surely more accurate when he suggested that if Eriksson had the choice, this would not be his first four. 

Brazil too are over-rated; Kaka and Ronaldinho are real stars, the rest of the team seems slow and complacent. 

Ironically, I think that England could beat Brazil, but so I think could any of the other seven teams I've mentioned above. 

Before the start of the tournament, I said that I'd be supporting Trinidad and Tobago, and I'm proud of how they've done. Fingers crossed for them to take points of England. Histomast is right to call Shaka Hislop a legend; although I personally would give Carlos Edwards even more of the plaudits.

But if I had to pick a winner I'd still go for the two teams I put money on, on the very opening day: Germany (because the hosts always have the best of the referees) and Argentina (as the team with the best squad in the tournament): I was able to pick both at 9:1. (And Spain's Fernando Torres at 33:1 for top scorer) England are 5:1 with William Hill.

25 May 2006: what's so wrong with supporting Trinidad and Tobago?

Much is being made of the news that Scottish first minister Jack McConnell won't be supporting England at this year's World Cup but is backing Trinidad instead. McConnell justified himself with the curious line that 'football is not about politics'. I doubt he convinced anyone. I remember 2002 when USA played Iran, with the latter winning 2-1, and with pro-and anti-regime Iranians facing each other in the stands. In a 90-minute game, you could see all the concentrated politics that we've had to endure since. That's the point, isn't it: a career politician announces who he'll back not losing a lifetime's instinct, but knowing rather that there are more swing (i.e. SNP) voters to be won from a moment of feigned indiscretion.

But McConnell's 'gaffe' raises a more interesting questions: what team should socialists support in two weeks time? There doesn't seem to be much point in backing Brazil, Germany, or Argentina, 3 of the 4 best-backed teams at World Cup Advice.com. They're getting support enough, and don't need mine or anyone else's emotional endorsement. Of the four best-favoured teams, the second favourite strangely is England (anyone who watched the qualifier against Northern Ireland will agree with me that they don't deserve to be seen as possible winners). Their odds with the international bookmakers are shorter than they are on the UK high street: suggesting that local patriotism isn't extending itself either.

There's an old socialist argument that the world cup marks a sort of practice for global war. To quote George Bush, you're either with us or against us. And if it wasn't for the blessed relief of Rooney's metatarsal, you'd know that the tabloids would be regaling us with more 'stories' of the character of Led-Zep tribute band The Darkness' world cup song: 'we've fought them on the beaches / now we'll play them on the field.'

English nationalism needs the World War story as its recent moment of vindication; odd then how few people seem to recall that it was a war ostensibly against fascism: not to be celebrated with the right-arm salute.

I spent much of the last World Cup hiding in South Africa, and will be there again this summer - so will escape the worst of it. But I think it would be a shame if people tried that approach collectively: by all just turning off their sets and wishing the football would go away. For buried in the worst of it are bound to be some moments worth savouring: the 11 June group match between Portugal against Angola, for example, could easily go the way of 2002 and Senegal's humiliation of France. For five centuries, Portugal were the dominant power in that country. They introduced the Angolans to starvation and slavery. Would it really be so wrong for a left-winger to take pleasure if Portugal lost? It will also be interesting to see how team USA goes down in Germany: a country which once had the last two Michael Moore books at 1, 2 and 3 in its bestseller charts (numbers 1 and 3 were the German editions, an English-language edition was at number 2).

And ignoring their odds (which are pitiful) I think a modest socialist case could indeed be made for backing Trinidad and Tobago: the team was built from nothing, and managed for most of the post-war period and until as recently as 1971 by none other than Eric James, CLR's brother.