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• Marseille, France | 26 November . . . Leave it to litterateur and erstwhile Argentine champion Jorge Valdano—who, incidentally, is sporting director for Real Madrid—to give Zinedine Zidane his place in the pantheon. The French midfielder returned home today in Madrid's 2-1 Champions League victory over Olympique de Marseille. As quoted in Ben Lyttleton's pre-game report in the Irish Examiner, Valdano pegs Zidane as the team's soul:

  He is one of those players that make our intelligence happy. When he touches the ball, things happen in a way that links football with common sense. He is not very quick, not very strong, not a great goal-scorer; and not much of anything really. He is different because he uses football's classical values: he knows when to stop, when to think, when to clarify a move, those things that give breathing space to today's football, a game everyday more scatter-brained.

  Zidane's iconic status is secure in the city where he was raised, a shy son of Algerian immigrants. "He'd spent his childhood playing on the concrete pitches of Marseille's impoverished La Castellane district," the Associated Press writes. "Zidane attributes his remarkable sense of balance and nimble feet to the highly competitive matches played on the concrete dust bowls—where falling down hurts a lot more than it does on grass." His face looks warmly from an Adidas poster painted on the back of a Marseille restaurant (see above). The poster's legend reads, "Made in Marseille." François Thomazeau ("Homecoming of Zidane Is the Real Deal," The Scotsman, 24 November) quotes deputy mayor Serge Botey, who links the poster's popularity to that of the city's talisman, La Bonne Mere (The Good Mother), the Roman Catholic edifice looking down from a hilltop. "The Good Mother was especially good to us when she gave us Zizou." | back to top

• Selma, North Carolina, and Denver | 26 November . . . The Christian Science Monitor writes on the proliferation of "underground" football leagues in North Carolina, Georgia and Texas. Yet Mexican Americans and others remain largely separated from Anglos, according to the Monitor's reporting, while having an uncertain impact on the game's domestic popularity. Harvey Kaye, history professor at the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay, says the difference between U.S. and Latino football is passion: It is "like the difference between American baseball, which is all about winning, and Japanese baseball, which is all about playing well and with honor." . . . "When you're back in Mexico, you open any paper and you look for the employment section and find out what's available. Here you go to the soccer field." So Ruben Hernandez-Leon of the University of California, Los Angeles, tells the Denver Post in a similar treatment of grassroots Latino football in the United States (Michael Riley, "Soccer Helps Arrivals Adjust to New Lives," 1 December). The Post's article continues:

  From Los Angeles to Atlanta, the soccer leagues are studied intently by sociologists because of the role they play in helping immigrants assimilate in the United States. Weekly meetings sorting out referee schedules and field rentals often turn into the organizational launching pad for a community that otherwise has little political voice. | back to top

• Budapest | 25 November . . . Today marks the 50th anniversary of Hungary's famous 6-3 victory over England at Wembley, England's first home defeat to a continental opponent. The Times (London) and the UEFA website provide extensive coverage, much of it focusing on the tactical innovations of Hungary coach Gusztav Sebes, who, in turn, was indebted to former Tottenham manager Arthur Rowe (Ben Lyttleton, "Hungary 1953," footballculture.net) and Aston Villa, Fulham and Celtic gaffer Jimmy Hogan (Norman Fox, "How Total Football Inventor Was Lost to Hungary," The Guardian, 22 November). The game's outcome is memorialized in the name of a Budapest bar, 6:3, but no one questions that football in Hungary has been in decline for some years. Current 6:3 tap puller Marianna Toth tells the Times's David Powell, "The reason I'm not so keen on Hungarian football is that it is of poor quality." Water polo has become more popular than football. Remembrances of the 6-3 victory appear to be sparse: The Budapest Sun reports it could find no evidence of a government-sponsored commemoration (Tamás Kiss, "6-3—Is Anniversary a Net Loss?" 20 November). A recent change in government has arrested support for Hungarian youth football; meanwhile, legendary Ferenc Puskas, who scored 240 goals in 260 appearances for Real Madrid, now lives in a hospital suite paid for by the state, the Times reports. Perhaps the Times offers the best tribute, reprinting Geoffrey Green's 1953 matchday coverage, in which he writes, almost liturgically, "Here, indeed, did we attend, all 100,000 of us, the twilight of the gods." It continues:

  [H]ere, on Wembley's velvet turf, [England] found themselves strangers in a strange world, a world of flitting red spirits, for such did the Hungarians seem as they moved at devastating pace with superb skill and powerful finish in their cherry bright shirts. | back to top

• London | 25 November . . . Five judges, led by current poet laureate Andrew Motion, seek a national "chants laureate" to, according to the job description from Premier League sponsor Barclaycard, "demonstrate their ability to create witty, insightful, rousing, and original chants that reflect the pride and passion of the game" (John Ezard, "Only Sing When You're Rhyming as Football Seeks Chants Laureate," The Guardian). Problem: no obscenities will be allowed. Thus, one could be left with bland tunes like the following from Southampton (culled from the "Soccer Songs & Chants" website):

  Brazil, it's just like watching Brazil
  It's just like watching Brazil
  It's just like watching Brazil, Brazil . . .
  Oh when the Saints
  Go marching in.

  For £10,000 per year, the new laureate's proposed wage, one hopes for better. | back to top

• St. Sampsons, Guernsey | 17 November . . . News must travel slowly along the English Channel, as it has taken this long for the Times (London) to report football results from the 2003 Island Games (Russell Kempson, "Island Dream Sunk by Tidal Wave of Goals"). Although the Games concluded on 4 July, it is nevertheless interesting to read of the travails of island side Sark (pop. 550), whose rangy backup goalkeeper, Leon Burletson, is a full-time gardener. "I'd love to lead that sort of life all the time," says Burletson, despite letting in 36 goals in two fixtures against Isle of Wight and Greenland. Sark lost two other matches in the tournament, 19-0 to Gibraltar and 15-0 to Froya. (Sark did not field a team in the women's tournament.) The Island Games reconvene in 2005 on Shetland. | back to top
• Lugano, Switzerland | 16 November . . . A surreal air surrounds Simon Kuper's meeting with Albert Sing, the lone survivor among international footballers who once played for Nazi Germany ("War Games," The Observer [U.K.]). Sing speaks of his hardships as a soldier and the propaganda surrounding Germany matches of the period— "What really offended me is that before the match, when the anthems were played, we had to give the [Nazi] salute until our arms were practically falling off!" Sing says. Yet Kuper is aware of all that is not being said. "We were sitting happily around [Sing's] living-room table, quaffing coffee and listening to the birds sing in the garden, and were getting on well, but a tension was emerging in our conversation." Kuper continues:

  In six hours of conversation . . . , Sing never once mentioned Germany's victims. He never denied that Germans had done terrible things, and he never offered a defence of Nazism ("It's nonsense, just as Communism is nonsense," he said), but the main victims of Hitler he was aware of were the German soldiers. | back to top

• Rancho Palos Verdes, California | 13 November . . . The current New Yorker reports from the set of Soccer Dog: European Cup to discover that the canine stars are well-treated and that not much football is being played (Susan Orlean, "Animal Action," 17 November 2003, 92–98; article available in print only). Orlean visits on the fourth day of the shoot as part of a larger treatment of the American Humane Association's Film and Television Unit. (The AHA review of the original Soccer Dog gave the film a "believed acceptable" rating.) Chip, a green-eyed mixed breed and the star of the sequel, works on a scene in which he opens a Port-a-Potty door and steps inside. This being a Hollywood film, Rancho Palos Verdes, outside Los Angeles, stands in for a Scottish village. And, this being Hollywood, Chip and his side are competing for the long-defunct European Cup rather than in the Champions League. Will Chip be trying to break down the Real Madrid back four in the final? Since he mastered the Port-a-Potty scene on the third take, anything is possible. | back to top
• New York | 12 November . . . A New York Times takeout on the pressures of youth team sports focuses in part on the conflicts between soccer and baseball (Bill Pennington, "As Team Sports Conflict, Some Parents Rebel," p. A1). Soccer competes with baseball, the so-called American game, for time and the attention of youth, to the extent that a baseball club in New Jersey has started sponsoring its own soccer team so kids can play both sports in season. "The baseball people will never accept that soccer is a year-round sport, but it is, whether they like it or not," Ashley Hammond, president of Soccer Domain in Montclair, N.J., tells the Times. Elsewhere in the article, Hammond says the trend toward competition at younger ages will be hard to stop:

  It is too embedded in what is a highly competitive culture. The baby boomer parents generally have been very motivated, and they transfer all that to their kids. People talk about youth sports and say, "This is only for fun." If you talk to the parents, they might say that, but they don't mean it. They want their kids to get ahead. . . . It's the way Americans are and you're not going to stop it.

  The Times article also notes that, except for high school gridiron football, youth sports in the United States are following a "Euro-Asian model," with club organizations rather than schools responsible for developing athletes. Top competitors in soccer, basketball and other sports sometimes do not play for their schools. . . . Also today, invoking local privilege, we congratulate the Clayton Eagles, an indoor wheelchair soccer team based in Pine Lake, Ga. After going undefeated this season, the side will compete in the national championships in San Diego in January. | back to top

• Wolfsburg, Germany | 11 November . . . To get those gastrointestinal juices flowing, the Wall Street Journal reports on the Volkswagen factory's unique currywurst blends—a post–World War II sausage concoction that has become a prominent side business for the German automaker (Neal E. Boudette, "VW's Mixed Grill: An Assembly Line Turns Out Sausages," p. A1; available by subscription only). Grilled VW currywursts are available for $2.88 at the year-old Volkswagen Arena, home to the Bundesliga's VfL Wolfsburg. One can also order "a plate of two wursts, smothered in spicy VW ketchup, at the restaurant at Autostadt, the plant's theme park for car enthusiasts and customers." | back to top
• Beit-She'an, Israel | 8 November . . . Nahanni Rous reports for WBUR-FM (Boston) on some of the ugliness surrounding the Israel Premier League's Beitar Jerusalem, which, unlike other league clubs, has yet to sign an Arab player ("Israeli Soccer," Only a Game; link opens Real Media player). Rous attends a 1 November fixture between Beitar and Maccabi Ahi Nazareth; both clubs are threatened with relegation at the bottom of the league table. One Beitar supporter says of Ahi Nazareth, one of the first teams from an Arab city to make the top flight:

  The place for them is not here. They should go play in Jordan, not here, if they want a country. And they should make them a league there. They're not Israelis, they're Arabs. We're Jews. It's not possible to be together.

  Yet an "undercover" observer reports on Beitar supporters' racist chants. And a nonprofit group,the New Israel Fund, monitors racist fan behavior for publication in Israeli newspapers (see Yair Ettinger, "Maybe the Revolution Will Start in the Sports Stadium," Haaretz, 5 May 2003). Rifat Turk, an Arab Israeli who played for Israel for 10 years, says the football field offers hope: "I'm a million percent sure that through sports you can make life better. Put money into sports, and sports will do the work itself." | back to top

• Bangalore, India | 6 November . . . Continuing the trend toward celebrity politicians (see also Berlusconi, Schwarzenegger), liquor magnate Vijay Mallya has entered the fray by building his own political party in the state of Karnataka (Aravind Adiga, "Life of the Party," Time Asia, 10 November 2003). Like one of his heroes, Berlusconi (see below), Mallya includes football teams as part of his portfolio. Interestingly, though, Mallya has purchased Kolkata (Calcutta) rivals Mohun Bagan FC and East Bengal, the latter topping Mohun for the Calcutta league championship in September. According to the DK World Soccer Yearbook, 2002–3, Mohun is considered the team of indigenous West Bengalis (Ghatis), with East Bengal representing immigrants from Bangladesh (Bangals). (See also Kausik Bandyopadhyay, "Race, Nation, and Sport: Footballing Nationalism in Colonial Calcutta," Soccer & Society 4, no. 1 [spring 2003]: 1–19.) Despite his riches and fuzzy grasp of the local language, Kannada, Mallya is styling himself as one of the people, as when he campaigns among the poverty- and drought-stricken in Kolar. Adiga writes:

  He's exchanged the heavy diamond studs for simple gold earrings and is decked out in the chaste all-white kurta and pajama of a typical Indian politician. "God has given me everything," Mallya tells the audience. "Money, big houses, fame. I want nothing more—except the chance to serve you." The crowd listens politely and begins to drift away—until the techno music starts to pound. A green laser beam projects images on a giant screen: first a map of India, then objects of desire, such as washing machines and pickup trucks. Dry-ice vapors envelop the stage. Engines rev. And a 25-car entourage whisks Mallya away, leaving behind a bewildered, speechless but thoroughly entertained crowd. | back to top

• Milan | 4 November . . . European Union commissioners are set to examine the so-called football savior law, passed to help Silvio Berlusconi's AC Milan and other Italian clubs struggling with burdensome debt. The EU could decide to veto the law, according to today's Financial Times (Fred Kapner, "Italy's 'Saviour' Laws Face Probes," p. 16). The result would be "the bankruptcy of Italian football," says Lecce president Rico Semeraro. Berlusconi, incidentally, is profiled by Jane Kramer in the current New Yorker ("All He Surveys," 10 November 2003, 95–105). . . . Speaking of the current New Yorker, memoirist Tara Bahrampour uses football to set the scene for her sketch of expatriate Iranians in Los Angeles—or, "Irangeles" ("Persia on the Pacific," 10 November 2003, 52–60). Parshaw Dorriz, now a high school senior, found himself inspired by Iran's 2-1 victory over the United States in the 1998 World Cup finals:

  It was the first time I'd seen Iranians all rooting for the same thing instead of arguing about "the Shah did this," "the mullahs did that." I saw a sense of unity, and I felt like this was something important. | back to top

• Brasília, Brazil | 3 November . . . Arms spread like a Christ figure, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva gazes intently at an airborne football as the centerpiece of Alex Bellos's New Statesman profile ("The President Wins the Midfield Battle," 32–33; link is to article text at Bellos's website, "Futebol: The Brazilian Way of Life"). Perhaps a redacted form of the paper presented at "Fútbol, Futebol, Soccer: Football in the Americas," a conference in late October, Bellos's article recaps Lula's support of SC Corinthians and the appropriateness of football reform as the target of his first legislation:

  In Brazil, football is one of the most prominent stages on which the battle to make the country a fairer place is being fought. The sport is run by a network of unaccountable, largely corrupt figures known as carolas, or "top hats," who have become obscenely wealthy while the domestic football scene is broke and demoralised. The public plundering of football is a constant and very visible reminder of the country's failings.

  In May, Lula ratified the Law of Moralisation in Sport and a "fans statute," requiring the Confederação Brasileira de Futebol (CBF) to hold a national competition in which "teams know before it begins how many games they will play and who their opponents will be." Surprisingly, Brazil has only had a national league since 1971, one year after winning its third World Cup. | back to top

• Lisbon | 3 November . . . A 65,000-seat "cathedral of football," Estádio da Luz, the home field for Benfica and the venue for the final of the 2004 European Championships, has officially opened. Given boondoggles over financing and political corruption, the Times (London) terms the stunning structure's completion a "minor miracle." Damon Lavelle, principal of stadium architects HKO Sport, recalls meeting about the stadium's final design:

  I wanted the arch on the roof to be much higher but they were worried about planes. I set up a meeting to fight my case and they came over. Unfortunately, the date was September 11, 2001.

  Now the only problem is paying for it. A £60 million debt needs to be retired, an issue for presidential elections at Benfica on 7 November. | back to top

• Adelaide, Australia | 1 November . . . Adelaide United FC is sitting mid-table in the 13-team National Soccer League after beginning its inaugural campaign with two wins and a draw. The team's mission, according to the Sydney Morning Herald, is to unite Australians and non-natives in the state of South Australia. "Our objective was pretty simple—to create a team that every South Australian could relate to," says club chairman Basil Scarsella. Adelaide's emergence comes amid a makeover for Australian football; the national association has re-formed under chairman Frank Lowy, and marketing figures now indicate that football has overtaken cricket as the nation's most widely played team sport. Of the game's new leadership, the Herald's Michael Cockerill writes: "[N]one are Anglo-Saxon and all are pro-reform. Significantly, they also see the game's multiculturalism as a strength, not a weakness." | back to top