2 July 2010
Politicians ought to be wary of allowing themselves to be drawn into commenting about the World Cup. It is tempting to do so because it is an easy way for the political class to display a streak of passion that it shares with so many ordinary people. However, World Cup football is a topic in which the slightest superficiality on the part of politicians is immediately noticed.
Given the perils, it may appear strange that I am going to succumb to the temptation anyway. I have my reasons, however. It is not just my pleasant memories of a visit to South Africa a few years ago. This year’s edition of the World Cup has struck me for the kind of interventions politicians have made.
My heart goes out to Italy’s football fans, following their team’s early and humiliating exit from the tournament, but I was amused by how some Italian politicians sought to exploit the situation.
When journalists sought the opinion of national politicians on the outcome, it was striking how so many politicians saw the exit as vindicating their favoured basic policy.
Thus, the representatives of the Lega Nord, the right-wing anti-immigrant party, had already made some noise, prior to Italy’s elimination, by claiming that they would not be supporting the Azzurri in the crucial games.
Then, when the Azzurri were eliminated, Roberto Calderoli (a Lega member of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s cabinet) said that this is what one could expect when so many foreigners were allowed to play in the Serie A. I should imagine that some viewers concluded that Minister Calderoli was taking his job title – Minister for Simplification – a bit too seriously.
Another member of Italy’s parliament was interviewed. I missed her name but remember she was a member of the centre-left Democratic Party. She found a feminist moral in the sporting disaster. Perhaps, she mused, Italian men’s soccer has something to learn from the recent successes of Italian sportswomen…
I waited to hear what it was. However, she evidently thought it too obvious to bear spelling out.
Of course, neither of these arguments is outright foolish. The issue of how many foreign players to permit to play in national top-flight football is a matter that other nations are discussing, including England. And it needs to be discussed because notwithstanding their aspirations and their lucky red outfits the English team had to endure an unexpected early exit. The issue there also includes whether to follow the policy of other national football associations and oblige clubs to give a certain amount of playing experience to their youngsters (and hence ensure that generational transitions are as smooth as possible).
What is exaggerated, in my view, is to make the politics of sport a mirror for national partisan politics. The two can be quite different things. There is no reason to believe that a specialist profession and form of public entertainment will reflect wider national issues.
That is why I often find myself detached from Maltese debates concerning the enthusiasm with which many Maltese support other national teams. Should that national team be playing against Malta, then of course there is something unbecoming about supporting it. If, however, Malta is out of the competition, do we need to mention colonialism to explain why our co-nationals enthuse over another skilled team?
That, I find, is to confuse two entirely different kinds of history: sporting history and political history. Most ordinary people have no difficulty in keeping the two apart. Ironically, when commentators do not, and hint at a defective national mentality, they are the ones who are truly running the nation down.
Having said all that, this World Cup has given us an instance when it is probably useful to keep politics firmly in mind when trying to understand developments.
France, as we all know, had a difficult tournament and a humiliating exit. Its difficulties went beyond the sporting results. Its team appeared to behave in an unsporting manner off the field as well. Clearly there were problems that needed resolution.
However, I found it extraordinary that immediately upon arriving in France, the footballer Thierry Henry had a meeting with, no less, President Nicolas Sarkozy in order to discuss the problems.
It suggested that the President of the Republic was regarding the French failure as a most important national issue needing his own intervention. Perhaps it really was a case of national politicians intervening on behalf of sport. I can understand, however, the suspicion of others who thought it was more a matter of sport “intervening” on behalf of politicians. Indeed, FIFA was right to show a yellow card to the French Government over its interventions. Perhaps French football was being portrayed as a vital national issue, at a time of bad economic news and only a few days after a rival centre-right party had been set up.
Politicians are able to make a political football out of most issues, so why not football itself? Much of it remains amusing. They should be careful, however, not to stoke nationalist sentiments that get out of control.
