Gooooooooal!

Illustration by Jillian Tamaki

The world is about to go footballistic. In some countries, there will be mass delirium, in others, much weeping and gnashing of teeth. Like the Olympics, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association World Cup (only in North America is “the beautiful game” called soccer) is staged every four years and is every bit a television spectacle. A quarter of the world’s population tuned in to the 2002 World Cup. This year’s extravaganza, which gets underway June 9 in Germany, is likely to surpass that.

Given the Jumbotron dimensions of football’s grip on the popular imagination, it’s not surprising there’s a multitude of books and films on the subject. As entertainment, though, football (like any sport) is intrinsically different. The most intense drama comes not from a carefully shaped storyline, but the players’ display of speed and skill, a form of special effects all the more thrilling because it’s a physical reality, not the product of a computer program or an author’s imagination. Arlene Croce, a former dance critic for The New Yorker, wrote that the best choreography “exerts a force that passes through the spectator’s muscle sense.” The same is true of football’s finest moments.

Moreover, the outcome of a game is unpredictable. It’s amazing how often a bad call by the referee, a lucky or unlucky bounce, decides a team’s fate. Every loyal fan knows it’s possible to go from exultation to despair in seconds. Those whom the football gods wish to destroy, they first put up by a goal.

Movies and books about football, on the other hand, are structured to provide a reliable payoff. Especially in feature films, the game is mostly a vehicle for wish fulfillment: the triumph of the underdog or the follow-your-dreams parable. Action on the field has a predictable climax: the championship game against a bitter rival, the lead flipping back and forth until, at last, with the score tied and time running out, the main character scores the winner. It’s what goes on off the field — how the characters and their situations are put into play — that determines if a story is formulaic or fresh.

Jess Bharma (Parminder Nagra) and Jules Paxton (Keira Knightley) are mad for soccer in Bend It Like Beckham. Photo Christine Parry. Courtesy 20th Century Fox.

Still, a number of recent football-centric films and books succeed on artistic terms, even if they don’t quite match the sport’s excitement. For instance, those seeking thrilling footage won’t be satisfied by Gurinder Chadha’s cheery, girl-power feature Bend It Like Beckham (2002). Neither Jess (Parminder Nagra) nor Jules (Keira Knightley) seems a credible candidate for a soccer scholarship in the U.S., and editing trickery is obvious in the climactic action sequences. But it’s a rousing example of the feel-good story: the characters are likable, the off-field complications (Jess’s parents oppose her footballing ambitions because it goes against their Sikh culture, the girls’ friendship is tested by a romantic rivalry) believable. And it’s so smartly paced and exuberant in its final scenes — which cut back and forth between a championship match and Jess’s sister’s traditional wedding celebration — that it’s an armchair version of runners’ high.

Documentaries tend to do a better job of combining a satisfying narrative arc with action, mainly because they use authentic footage. The upbeat Ginga: The Soul of Brazilian Football (which was partly funded by Nike) offers profiles of seven players, ranging from a superstar pro to a one-legged wonder who lives for neighbourhood pickup games. Fernando Meirelles and Hank Levine, who previously teamed up for the stylish City of God, capture the sport’s hustle and flow with terrific camera work. The soundtrack, which matches the players’ nifty footwork in its infectious rhythms, underscores the fact that, for Brazilians, it’s all about play.

German football, on the other hand, is known for hard work, discipline and solid technique. That’s what shows in The Champions (2003), by Christoph Hübner and Gabriele Voss. It’s the sober, meticulously observed saga of four teenage footballers of various cultural backgrounds who have been recruited for Borussia Dortmund’s junior A team and have their eyes set on making the senior team, and the pro ranks. The life of a footballer, this film suggests, is a grind: gruelling training sessions, injuries and more setbacks than breakthroughs.

Courtesy Arcade Publishing.

When play turns into work, the only real fun is in being a spectator — which may be why the best books about football (all of them non-fiction) offer a fan’s-eye view of the game. In A Season with Verona: Travels around Italy in Search of Illusion, National Character and — Goals! (2002), British-born writer Tim Parks chronicles his experience among the most fervent fans of Hellas Verona, a lowly team in Italy’s top league. With its chants, jargon, nicknames and fierce insider/outsider perspective, this hardcore contingent is a bit like a cult — and in some ways just as creepy. (The Verona supporters are known for their racist chants, which Parks struggles mightily to explain as empty — albeit objectionable — rhetoric.) Still, for Parks, it’s the game’s “sense of geometry in four dimensions, at once shape and flow, that makes football so enchanting.”

Aesthetics also plays a big part in the offbeat Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Football (2000), by the fortuitously named David Winner. The British journalist contends that the style of Dutch football — the national team is nicknamed the Clockwork Orange for its distinctive uniform and the precision of its passing — arises from cultural identity. Holland has had to make creative use of space because of its low-lying geography; ergo, Dutch players like Johan Cruyff, nicknamed “Pythagoras in boots” by one admiring commentator, have done so on the football pitch. Highly speculative but fun, especially since readers get a side dish of culture (interviews with choreographers, architects, musicians and the like) along with the usual heaping helping of team/player trivia.

Courtesy Verso.

For sheer liveliness, there’s no beating Eduardo Galeano’s Soccer in Sun and Shadow (2003), an anecdotal survey of memorable goals and colourful players, translated from Spanish by Mark Fried. Galeano, better known for his writings on socio-political issues, is sharply critical of the sport’s present commercialism and the ugly aspects of its past, as in 1938, when Italy qualified for the final of the World Cup and Mussolini sent the team a telegram that read, “Win or die.” (They won.)

But Galeano is also a consummate raconteur who takes extravagant poetic license, proving that hyperbole may be the best method for conveying the prowess of the greatest players. An Argentine striker’s shot is so powerful that he has to “take off his shoes for a group of journalists to prove no iron bars were hidden in the toes”; and a group of defenders collapses “like swatted moths” in the wake of an unstoppable opponent.

Hyperbole also animates Fever Pitch (1992), British writer Nick Hornby’s memoir of his love/hate relationship with a London team, but for comic rather than poetic effect. “I have measured out my life in Arsenal [games], and any event of any significance has a footballing shadow,” he writes. Hence, Hornby’s play-by-play of his love life, his relationship with his parents and growing up takes place against the backdrop of games won and (mostly) lost. He’s at his best laying bare the masochistic neuroticism of the loyal fan. As he puts it, “I have learned the value of investing time and emotion in things I cannot control.”

Whatever fun Hornby makes of his own obsessions, he gets serious when discussing the culture of fan violence and intimidation that often mars the sport. Nevertheless, the game itself continues to beguile him: “Real life is paler, duller, and contains less potential for unexpected delirium.”

And for millions of fellow fans worldwide, the potential for delirium is near at hand.

The 2006 World Cup runs June 9 to July 9, in Germany. A look at the history of soccer in Canada can be found here.

Barbara Carey is a Toronto poet and critic. She plays midfield for a team in a women’s recreational soccer league.

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Letters:

I really enjoyed the article about soccer movies and documentaries. However, you've failed to mention the movie "Shaolin Soccer"! I think that's one of the best soccer movies out there. A nice infusion between east and west by blending in kung-fu into soccer! Although it might be a bit goofy, and definitely unrealistic - but certainly demonstrates the growing popularity of soccer - even in countries where their real soccer team are the pits.


Jon So
Guelph, Ontario

An enjoyable article on a fabulous sport. I might make one of my own film recommendations. The documentary "The Other Final", by Johan Kramer (2003), is perhaps the most uplifting film on football I have seen. Even non-aficionados will enjoy this beautiful and light-hearted documentary on the road to a football game set to take place between the 2 lowest seeded teams in FIFA ranking: Montserrat and The Kingdom of Bhutan. Watching this movie completely renewed my faith in humanity! In a time where the mighty dollar has infiltrated every aspect of sport, it is refreshing to see two countries compete with no commercial sponsorship or advertising revenue, no multi-million dollar media rights, but simply for the love of the game.


Jonathan Swank

We liked Barbara Carey's article; we are both huge football fans (and Germany supporters) and there were some titles in her article that we didn't know, but will soon. We realize that you couldn't practically mention every film set around football, but one in particular of recent vintage that was left out is The Real Jimmy Grimble. In our opinion, this is one of the best films with a football background that has been screened. If you haven't seen it, you should. Thanks for the article.


Peter & Dianna
Calgary, Alberta

Great article on the Futbol literature, but you missed the most recent entry "How Soccer explains the world", which is a wonderful kind of extention of the "Soccer in the sun and Shadows." really is a sweet book, I highly recommend it.


David Silver
Winnipeg, Manitoba