World Cup: Litany of the losers' suffering

By Gwynne Dyer

LONDON (JP): There are some places where the most important thing happening this weekend is not the World Cup soccer final: Mars, the bottom of the Marianas Trench, the United States of America... But with those few exceptions (so we are told), nothing unites the world like the four-yearly ritual of pain and repentance that reaches its conclusion in Paris this Sunday.

'Unites the world'? That's a bit strong. Let's just say: gets the world's undivided attention, especially in the early stages when gallant outsiders like the Nigerians or the Croatians seem to have a chance. But it's an essentially tribal thing, and interest tends to drop off sharply once your own tribe has lost.

"We thought about running guides to all the teams," said Stephen Mooney of the British marketing firm KPL, which last year won the massive Coca-Cola account in Brazil and thus has the job of sponsoring the national team. "But research told us that the only team (Brazilians) care about is theirs. In fact, as soon as Brazil is out, they will lose all interest in the competition."

This goes some way towards explaining why the world's three largest countries, China, India and the United States, are relatively immune to World Cup fever. They don't qualify for the World Cup at all, or, like the U.S., they get knocked out (by Iran) in the first round.

The Brazilians, of course, have not lost interest. They are the natural aristocracy of world football, and with serene inevitability they have won through to defend their 1994 title in Sunday's final against host nation France. Much Coca-Cola (and other beverages) will be consumed as a result, but what is the point of all this to somebody who --like me -- couldn't care less if playing football incurred the death penalty?

None, maybe, but the name William James drifts up unbidden from the recesses of memory. He was a rather pop American philosopher who, eighty-five years ago, in an essay called The Moral Equivalent to War, wrote: "So long as antimilitarists propose no substitute for war..., no moral equivalent to war...they fail to realize the true inwardness of the situation."

Like his novelist brother Henry James (whom William Faulkner described as "the nicest old lady I ever met"), William James is a bit precious for the modern taste. But could this be what the World Cup is really for? After all, drink-sodden football hooligans from England and well-drilled neo-Nazi hooligans from Germany lend a certain plausibility to the idea that football is a much needed release from the constraints of civilized life.

Indeed, Peruvian writer (and failed presidential candidate) Mario Vargas Llosa wrote of the English hooligans this time: "Privileged citizens of a society which through a thousand years of history has been steadily reducing the precariousness, despotism, helplessness, poverty, ignorance and rule of brute force in human relations that are the invariable norm in primitive societies, they now find themselves bored..."

"So from time to time...thanks to the golden beer and the anonymity offered by dissolution in a collective entity, the mass of fans, they revert to tribalism, trotting out the muzzled savage that has never ceased to dwell within them, and for a while allow him to wreak all the havoc he dreamed of, as if in amends for the monotony of their jobs, professions, and family routines."

Vargas Llosa might also have mentioned that a 1970 World Cup qualifying match between Honduras and El Salvador touched off a small war. It's the same message that William James was peddling: civilized behavior is unnatural; we do not understand the power of the beast within; we need (relatively) safe outlets for mass aggression. And with due respect to both these deep thinkers, I think it is a load of writerly crap.

International football at this level is much more about the pain of losing than the alleged ecstasy of winning: dozens of national teams fail to qualify at all, and thirty-one of the thirty-two qualifiers go home defeated. And in that shared experience of hope, disappointment, and loss, there is a flash of recognition and a moment of equality between the tribes.

Why are some very large countries left out of this global psychodrama? In China's case, it is simply the absence, until very recently, of any kind of professional sports leagues. In India, Pakistan, and some other Commonwealth countries, cricket still overshadows football (though it has long ceased to do so in Britain itself). And then there is the curious case of the United States.

What is most striking about the team sports played professionally in the U.S. (and Canada) is that they are all high- point-scoring games offering instant and constant gratification.

Whereas a typical score in the World Cup is 1-1 or 2-1 (and the average number of goals scored in the whole tournament has actually dropped by half in the past forty years).

Let us not dwell on what this may say about American national character, and note instead that the United States actually did qualify for the World Cup this time, albeit in last place. Fifteen million kids are playing soccer in the United States, while support for 'American football' -- the highly regimented game played in armor -- is collapsing in the schools. Maybe Americans are about to join the rest of the world, and be taught humility by Brazil.

If that's what it's really about -- a world event where the usual underdogs can win, and the mighty can learn to lose --then I have to accept that it is a good thing. But my enduring image of this World Cup is still the middle-aged man whose body was discovered last month in front of a TV set in the German city of Brandenburg. Checking his electricity bills, they figured out that he died four years ago, watching the last World Cup. Probably of boredom.