Page title here

The Zapatistas are no strangers to casual kickabouts in serious boots, such as this match in Mexico City. (www.jornada.unam.mx)

"Pingui," on server patrol. Marcos writes, "We are all like pingui, forcing ourselves to rise up and make our way in Mexico, in Latin America and the world."

The Zapatistas are ever conscious of public relations, demonstrated by the sophistication of their Centro de Medios Independientes and accompanying website. The site, in fact, has published the correspondence between Marcos and Moratti. In a rambling, amusing message, Marcos suggests two games—a tie—played in Italy and at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) ground in Mexico City ("Marcos: Let the Games Begin," 25 May):

I have been unanimously designated Head Coach and put in charge of Intergalactic Relations for the zapatista football team (well, in truth no one else wanted to accept the job). . . . [I]n order to differentiate ourselves from the objectification of women which is promoted at football games and in commercials, the EZLN would ask the national lesbian-gay community, especially transvestites and transsexuals, to organize themselves and to amuse the respectable with ingenious pirouettes during the games in Mexico. That way, in addition to prompting TV censorship, scandalizing the ultra-right and disconcerting the Inter ranks, they would raise the morale and spirits of our team.

Moratti, in equally eloquent fashion, ripostes:

We will play. We will play our game, and I thank you for that. It will be a great match. Perhaps in a field, like we did as children, perhaps surrounded by giant trees. Or in a stadium, in the capital or on a rectangle drawn out in chalk on the earth, with the dust rising up until it makes us cough. Exhausted, but happy.

Caught up in the fantasy, Marcos demonstrates why he has helped make the 11-year-old indigenous-rights movement a cause célèbre in Europe and the Americas. He suggests Diego Maradona as referee with former Argentine international and writer Jorge Valdano as an assistant; Uruguayan authors Eduardo Galeano and Mario Benedetti would offer commentary. Valdano, for his part, has agreed, and the star of Mexico's women's team, Maribel Domínguez, has said she would play for EZLN—presumably sans balaclava. "If there's an opportunity to be there it is a good cause," she told La Jornada, the leftist paper that backs the Zapatistas (Abril Del Rio, "Maribel Domínguez alinearía con el EZLN, 'gustosa por la paz,' " 3 June). "I think it would mean a lot toward peace in the country, and that is most important." The match idea has grown out of such noble motives and from the initial interest of Inter captain Javier Zanetti, who persuaded the club to pool changing-room fines for donations that came to €5,000. "Our team doesn't just play on PlayStations and computers," said Inter manager Bruno Bartolozzi. Like Moratti, Bartolozzi can also reach rhetorical heights: "Soccer is like the fight of resistance—full of surprises."

Turin, Italy, 13 April 2005 | The fierce devotion (campanilismo) that calcio supporters give to their home side showed in last night's Champions League derby between Internazionale and AC Milan. The match

Flares rain down at the San Siro. One struck AC Milan's Brazilian goalkeeper Dida, who had to be substituted. (ANSA)

had to be abandoned after 73 minutes when Inter-backing ultras on the San Siro's Curva Nord hurled more than 30 red flares toward the AC Milan goal box, ending what International Herald Tribune correspondent Peter Berlin called a night of "ritualized and choreographed confrontation" (" 'Ultras' Hurt Inter Milan and Tarnish a City," 14 April). The ultras' action was to protest a disallowed Inter goal and to demonstrate frustration at the nerazzurri's long-foiled trophy quest. Some 85 police were injured in the previous weekend's slate of Italian league matches, prompting one writer to notice that the only peaceful weekends in Italian football occur when a pope is mourned. (For more background on the Milan derby, see Roberto Gotta, "Divided by Loyalties," ESPNSoccernet.com, 5 April.)

Some of the worst incidents occurred at the Stadio Olimpico on Sunday in Rome.

Turin mayor Sergio Chiamparino likes the Echo. (Liverpool Echo)

Lazio hosted Livorno with both sides, again, playing out ritualized hatreds. Banners proclaimed Rome's alleged Fascist leanings. Livorno, with its ties to the Communist Party and Che Guevara, seemed to bring out the worst in their hosts (see the report by Ian Hawkey, "Political Football," The Times [U.K.], 3 April). The unruliness has accentuated anxiety before another Champions League fixture tonight, the second leg of Juventus and Liverpool in Turin (see the earlier entry on Heysel). Liverpudlians' efforts at atonement appear to have been helpful, despite the crude response from some Juve hard-liners. Nevertheless, anti-terrorist DIGOS forces will be deployed; Liverpool fans have been asked to put their shirts and songs aside for the night. Tony Barrett of the Liverpool Echo writes that Turin—where the majority supports second-division side Torino—feels its own remorse in the Heysel aftermath. Jean-Philippe Leclaire, author of Le Heysel: Une tragédie européenne, tells Barrett: "There is shame that the game actually took place while 39 fans lay dead. There is shame that Juve paraded the European Cup around the Heysel Stadium. And there is shame that when the team returned to Turin more than 10,000 people lined the streets to welcome them" ("Now Is the Time to Forgive").

Vatican City, 2 April 2005 | Karol Wojtyla, nicknamed "Lolek," had a checkered background as goalkeeper for a synagogue team in his

Real Madrid visits the pontiff in summer 2002. "Surmounting differences of cultures and ideologies, sports offers an ideal occasion for . . . building the desired civilization of love," said John Paul. (Zenit.org)

hometown Wadowice, Poland. "From age zero, we used to play together—marbles and soccer," neighbor and friend Yosef Bienenstock, a Jew, said of the boy who would be pope (Deborah Sontag, "Boyhood Pals in Poland, Ready for the Reunion," New York Times, 22 March 2000), "but the soccer ball was made of rags. In soccer, his ability wasn't the greatest." Yet he has been called "the most athletic pontiff in history," a committed swimmer, skier, hiker. Many have commented on the tremendous work rate demonstrated during his travels. He remained a football fan, scheduling his installation Mass in 1978 around Serie A matches. He received all referees prior to the 1990 World Cup finals in Italy and, in January of this year, granted an audience to KS Cracovia of Krakow in the team's 100th-anniversary year. John Paul's interest in football even inspired satire from The Commentary Box in the U.K. ("Papal World Cup Bid Expected," 13 November 2000): "Poland's failure to win the World Cup in '74 sent John Paul into a period of soul-searching. Eventually he was to cast off his tracksuit and don the robes of the highest office of the Papal state, but his love of the beautiful game has never waned."

Remembering John Paul at the Cracovia stadium. (www.cracovia.pl)

Update: With John Paul's funeral on 8 April, more remembrances have surfaced. UEFA.com recalls the pontiff's lifelong support of MKS Cracovia SSA and reports how Krakow's three teams—Cracovia, Wisla Kraków and KS Hutnik Kraków—joined at a Mass at the Cracovia stadium (Maciej Iwanski, " 'Reconciliation for the Pope' "). Supporters have also cleaned walls of graffiti slurring rival clubs. In his "Keeper's Blog," Peter Chapman of the Financial Times calls John Paul the "Cracow Cat." He sees in the pontiff a goalkeeper's persona, demonstrated even in boyhood: "[H]e volunteered to play in goal, a position shunned by those who seek membership of that larger, safe and largely anonymous community out on the field."

Turin, Italy, 10 February 2005 | One year to the start of the 2006 Winter Olympics, memories linger of what remains a defining moment in Turin sport history. That is the 4 May 1949

Banner headlines in La Stampa convey the tragic news.

crash of a Fiat G-212 airplane into the Superga hill near a 300-year-old basilica. On board were 18 players for "Il Grande Torino," Italian champions in 1943, '46, '47 and '48. "We lost an expression of our excellence," says former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, as Alan Abrahamson of the Los Angeles Times delves into the lingering pathos ("Redefining Moment"). Turin, now in the upper echelon of Italy's Serie B, historically has represented the local working class versus a nationwide base of support for Juventus, the bianconeri. In the aftermath of the tragedy, writes Paul Dietschy ("The Superga Disaster and the Death of the 'Great Torino,' " Soccer & Society 5 [summer 2004]), the club developed a new breed of tifo (fan), more activist and involved in perpetuating the memory of the great Turin side lost in the disaster.

Update: "We're hoping for an Olympics that doesn't fear soccer," says Giancarlo Padovan of the Turin daily Tuttosport (Andrew Dampf, "Turin 2006: Overall Readiness Receives High Marks but Smaller Problems Remain," Associated Press, 15 September 2005). Serie A matches will continue during the Games from 10–26 February, prompting concern that Italians will be distracted. A ceremony to mark passing of the 150-day threshold before the Games was delayed in deference to UEFA's Champions League schedule. "Italy is a very particular, vertical country," says Padovan. "Three-quarters of Italy doesn't know what snow is."