print window | close window [x]
« previous entry | next entry »

Left Wing | 11 January 2006

Amsterdam | Playing with the historical and footballing animosity between Holland and World Cup hosts Germany, a Dutch company has launched a line of $6 faux-Nazi plastic helmets bearing innocuous slogans. Designed so supporters can tweak Germans with memories of the World War II occupation of the Netherlands, Dutch officials are not amused. "We reject every link between soccer and the war," said Frank Huizinga, spokesman for the Dutch football association (KNVB). "There are so many ways you can make a joke, but this is to obvious to be funny, it shows no creativity at all."

Buenos Aires | Marcela Mora y Araujo's Sunday profile of Diego Maradona introduces the reader to several key concepts in Argentine football culture. The first is picardia criolla, a "Creole cheekiness" with which Argentines spiced the game following its introduction by English sailors and railway workers. "The game is particularly suited to the poor," she writes, no doubt intending Maradona as exemplar. "Children whose parents who cannot afford toys can be easily entertained with a single ball, which need not be an actual ball at all: scrunched-up rags will do. The main objective for each child is to gain possession and then play. This is the moment of individual expression par excellence, the child at play." The second principle is gambeta, the melding of technical ability with deception. And Maradona possesses a third desirable quality, arenga, the ability to encourage others. With these culturally lauded traits, no wonder that Maradona is described as the nation's addiction. "He is our drug," says a sports psychologist. "It is not him who is ill, it is us."

Matthews, North Carolina | Thistle & Shamrock host Fiona Ritchie paid tribute to the late Kirsty MacColl as well as football-themed lyrics by airing the late singer-songwriter's "England 2 Colombia 0" in show no. 1180 this past weekend. The tune from the one-time punk rocker, who died in a diving accident in Cozumel in 2000, describes an ill-destined love affair against the backdrop of an England international: "You lied about your status / You lied about your life / You never mentioned your three children / And the fact you have a wife / Now it's England 2 Colombia 0 / And I know just how those Colombians feel." The song appears on MacColl's Tropical Brainstorm album (Instinct [U.S.], 2001).

Page last updated on Thursday, January 19, 2006 22:39 -0500 GMT.