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| Lucifer38 |
on Wed 25 Feb 09, 12:14 AM to Lucifer38's blog.
In Football 
IF you dont like it dont read it and if you dont want to be offended by it, dont read it....I shall begin, lets start with the music shall we?
Samba and Tango, before a pedant comes in and says that Tango is an African word by descent, yes well done it is. In their early days samba and tango were for the lower class society. Football, on the other hand, was introduced by the British, who had huge trading interests in the region. You cant go to a ground in Brazil, Argentina or Uruguay without hearing a beat.
In Brazil samba and football help define the national identity. In Argentina and Uruguay it is tango. In all three countries the two elements took opposite routes into the national soul.In the Late 19th century and early 20th the music came from the bottom and worked its way up. Football, believe it or not began with the elites and made its way down the classes.
Theres how your music can integrate a class barrier.
Everyone associates Brazil with stylish and successful football. There was a time when Uruguay brought a similar reaction. Between 1916 and 1926 Uruguay won six of the first 10 Copa Americas. They astonished Europe by slaughtering all comers on the way to winning gold at the Paris Olympics in 1924. Four years later they repeated this in Amsterdam, then won the first World Cup in 1930, won the next they entered 20 years later and lost their first World Cup match in 1954, a semi final against the great Hungarians that went to extra- time.Earlier in the tournament beating England 4-2 and Scotland 7-1.
The reputation for violence came later, when the rest of the world had caught up and they could no longer win, but national pride demanded that they went down fighting. For decades, though, their name attracted no negative headlines.
In the early years of the last century Uruguay brought in the world's first welfare state, sorry labour people, it wasnt you...... and invested in education. This made it much easier for football to move from the upper classes to the immigrants pouring in from Italy and Spain and to the descendants of Africans, whose ancestors had been shipped across the Atlantic as slaves. This is the system that nurtured some of the early superstars of the game such as Gradin,Delgado and Andrade.
Brazil only abolished slavery in 1888, and some would argue that its legacy remains strong. Not until the 1930s were black Brazilian footballers properly established, and the country's football continued to have a racial hang up until the 1958 World Cup, and longer in the case of goalkeepers. Why goalkeepers? Well, in 1950 when Uruaguay beat Brazil in Rio de janeiro 2-1 Barbosa, he of african descent was blamed for their defeat. It was'nt until 1994 that they used another black goalkeeper, Dida. Will that do you for Race?
Ok ill move on now to Religion and politics.
Countries that have experienced regular political issues and dictatorship often take their club allegiance much more seriously than other nations because their regional identity inside a country is so crucial to them. However no matter which country or region you talk about there seems the same story within that regional, national culture and its link to football, namely how football/life used to be compared to how football/society is now.
Ill bring up now Barcelona, seen as the flag bearers of the Catalans in trying to gain independence. Same for Athletic Bilbao in the Basque region. Dinamo Kiev in the Ukraine were seen as the resistance against Nazi Germany and Vfl Bochum, currently a Bundesliga club were formed in 1938 from the amalgamation of two teams, under orders from the Nazi regime. Not only clubs, but even individual players are standard bearers for a regions politics, eg Di Stefano for Real Madrid, Ladislao Kubala for Barcelona, i wont go on but you follow me.
I guess i want to finish on something fairly prudent i think. Ive been told on more than one occasion by the elderly that if you truly want to understand World War 2, then you have to have lived through it, the same i think can be said for the above topics.
You cant have a view on how good a team or player was or compare them unless you saw them. Most of us can only listen.
| 25 Feb 09, 7:43 AM gentleman_spanker UK(SL), 4 yrs |
I enjoyed your article very much, thanks.
Does living through a period increase your understanding of it though? big Jim was no one's fool, he owned the town's only diamond mine |
| 25 Feb 09, 6:08 PM beatabeatrix UK(CV), 5 yrs |
I'm glad you weren't my Sociology lecturer! No actually that would have been rather nice come to think of it.....mmmmmm. Amoris vulnus idem sanat, qui facit. |
