While a good majority of the negative attention surrounding relocation of football clubs is aimed at McDons (Milton Keynes Dons, the franchise that replaced Wimbledon F.C.), and with good reason, many tend to forget that they were not the first in Britain.  In Scotland, what is now Livingston FC did the same thing in 1995 when they, then known as Meadowbank Thistle, abandoned  Edinburgh in favor of a new stadium in the new town of Livingston, West Lothian.

Originally a works team called Ferranti Thistle founded in 1943, the club adopted the Meadowbank moniker in 1974 when they were accepted into the league as the SFL had regulations against the corporate naming of clubs. Meadowbank were Edinburgh’s third league club after the famous Heart of Midlothian and Hibernian and never achieved anywhere near the success or popularity of their city rivals, though they did have passionate supporters. Meadowbank played their home matches across the street from Hibernian’s Easter Road at the soulless and cold but aptly named Meadowbank Stadium, the main venue for the 1970 Commonwealth Games.

Meadowbank’s luck was hardly the best: they were once denied promotion to the Premier Division after the league decided to realign and reduce the number of top flight clubs and later would suffer an even more cruel fate as they finished mid-table and got relegated as the league again decided to realign and reduce the number of clubs in every division. Club management, lead by Bill Hunter, claimed that this, combined with a second successful relegation the following season, ruined Meadowbank financially and the club was on the verge of being closed. However, many Meadowbank supporters rebuke this claim, and despite their impassioned protest the club was moved to the Almondvale Stadium in West Lothian and renamed Livingston Football Club.

Unlike McDons, which was forced by the Football Supporters’ Federation to transfer all of Wimbledon FC’s history to the London Borough of Merton — the spiritual home of the Wombles — Livingston FC still claims all of Meadowbank’s history which includes a Scottish Qualifying Cup in 1974 and a Scottish Second Division title in 1985/1986. While the history may not be illustrious, it belongs in Edinburgh, not Livingston.

Life as Livingston has been eventful to say the least. The club has been in the UEFA Cup following a third place finish in the SPL, has won a Scottish League Cup, has been relegated and has been in administration during a period in which they were hilariously sponsored by a company called “Intelligent Finance”.

In its 14 years since the move to West Lothian the club has employed no less than fifteen managers, including two spells by Dunfermline legend Jim Leishman. Yes, Livingston’s mad boardroom, which changes as often as the managers, seems to think they are Real Madrid Scotland. The current chairman is Italian Angelo Massone who recently refused to pay the light bill at the Almondvale Stadium to show fans who had been critical of him what happens when he doesn’t put his own money into the club. The problem is, nobody seemed to care. It wasn’t really their club to begin with. To many in Livingston, it was fun while it lasted, but Manchester United are on television every weekend.

On June 30th, 2009 the West Lothian Council, who ironically helped bait the team to Livingston, announced they would sue the club for rent arrears: LFC owes the council £300,000 or nearly $500,000. This could see the club enter administration once again, and more than likely see its doors closed for the final time. The council seem willing to make a deal with Massone, who has stated he is making arrangements to pay a higher monthly fee, but if he couldn’t pay the original fee, how will he pay the new one? Not to mention the fact that the club may owe six figures in unpaid taxes.

There is a saying, “what comes around, goes around”, and it really does seem to be coming back around for Livingston. Bill Hunter may no longer be at the helm, but the spector of that day still looms large over the empty yellow seats in West Lothian. Fittingly, if Livingston go bust, one of the candidates to replace them may well be Edinburgh City, who call Meadowbank home.

Related posts:

1. The Ghost Stadium
2. Argentinian Football: A Primer

There is no story quite so dull, however, as that of the totally confident person. Fowler and his writer plainly struggled to find those rare moments in his life when he’s been unsure of himself. That uncertainty is confined to anxiety in those months he waited to be called up from Liverpool reserves. Even then, the worry stemmed not from doubt about his ability or concern about if he’d make it. It was more impatience as to when.

Amazingly, when things go “tits up” for him at Liverpool, and as he rides the bench for much of his later career, his confidence in his own ability never seems to waver.  He never questions himself, and has no room for regret. The book (a favorite for Liverpool fans) is more interesting for the inside peek into club politics than it is for Fowler himself. A lack of uncertainly is a part of Fowler’s identity and was a big part of his effectiveness as a player. But in a narrator this quality leaves me cold.

As a genre, player biography is hard. The story of most professional footballers is hampered by the fact that they’ve done nothing else but play the game, and have little to talk about besides either their achievements on the field – with which we are already familiar – or how they blew their fortune, or dealt with addiction, scandal, etc. It’s the rare professional player who actually has a story. Or has the writerly flair it takes to make poetry from the day-to-day life of a footballer as did Eamon Dunphy in his memoir Only A Game?

His book tracks a disastrous year playing for Millwall – he drifts downward from a member of the squad to the reserves, and battles with resentment.  He describes the ordinary pleasures of training, of partnerships with players, and the challenge of professional football in which the joy one takes from playing is always checked by anxiety about not playing – in reading this book, one realizes that this experience is far more characteristic of professional life than the glory of scoring a goal at Wembley. Dunphy was a great writer then, and went on of course to enjoy a career as a journalist.

A few players have stories that diverge from the script to tell us something important. Paul Canoville’s Black and Blue was named “Best Autobiography” at the British Sports Books Awards in the spring. Canoville was Chelsea’s first black player — and this is no story about triumph over adversity. He recounts the story of the racist abuse he took from fans, and, more compellingly, he describes the team’s inability to respond to it or to know how to support him. The story of his development as a player and his amazing social life (his relationships, his many children, his love for the London music scene) is woven into a nuanced exploration of what it was like to find yourself a living lightening rod. The book also confronts his battle with addiction and then cancer without turning those stories into cliché.  It is a compelling read that speaks to anyone who has been subjected to discrimination — and it’s a sobering lesson about the passivity of those who bear witness to it and do nothing. It is also a straightforward account of a difficult life — one marked as much by uncertainty as by determination. It offers no real happy ending, no closure, just the rough contours of an actual life.

This brings me to Ken Loach’s much anticipated Looking for Eric – because in many ways, this film is about what we look for, as fans, from the players we adore.  Looking for Eric opens with a crash. The hero of the film is a depressed postman, Eric Bishop, living a very depressing life in depressing Manchester. Eric takes his car the wrong way around a roundabout. He does this just after seeing his ex-wife across the street (he’s too shy and hurt to cross over and talk to her, too wracked by guilt and anxiety, and so even though she’s waiting for him, he skulks away). Lilly is the love of his life, and he walked out on her without explanation years ago. He is still haunted, however, by his love for her and by hers for him and he stunted by this fact. His friends are worried about him — the crash makes an urgent crisis out of his slow descent, and draws them together around the project of helping him.

One of these stand-up guys is a fan of pop psychology, and initiates a series of gentle interventions. He asks the group of friends to indulge him in an exercise — to first imagine looking at yourself through the eyes of someone who loves you unconditionally, and then imagine looking out at the world through the eyes of someone you admire.  Eric Bishop chooses, as his fantasy point-of-view, Eric Cantona.

Turns out, the last time Eric remembers being happy was years earlier at a match with his friends watching Cantona play. Fandom and football play an important part in this film as the one place where the men are given permission to be themselves, to shout, scream, to “sing together” and laugh. It seems to be the one place where Eric gave himself permission to feel anything, in fact.  (And on this topic, the film is brilliant.)

This lays the foundation for the film’s turn — at a particularly low moment, Eric hallucinates Cantona in his living room, and the imaginary Cantona (played of course by le vrai) proceeds to keep company with our melancholy postman and, in essence, coach him back to life. This coaching centers almost exclusively on getting himself back in communication with Lilly, his ex-wife. (”I like this woman,” Cantona says, “she’s got balls.”)

Though organized around the reparation of his relationship with his wife, this film is about really about men. Eric’s problem, Loach seems to suggest, is as much with the men in his life as it is with women. The film offers a flashback to explain: At a family gathering celebrating the christening of Lily & Eric’s baby, his father gets unnerved watching Lilly blow kisses to his son. “That won’t last long,” he says, as he launches into a nasty tirade about the dead-end trap of marriage and family. In this bullying (expressed as a deep hostility towards women) we get a glimpse of the hard-edged working class masculinity that is closer to Loach’s topic. Even as Eric is repulsed by this, and even as it’s clear this isn’t the kind of man he wants to be, the whole scenario pushes him away. His answer is to run away from it all and not talk about it. (At the film’s start, he can’t even say Lilly’s name.)

Thus the friendship with Cantona — Eric needs a father/brother/friend to lead him out of the woods. And so Cantona encourages Eric turn to his friends to help him through a crisis involving one of his step sons. Talking about his life, his feelings, and his problems has been, up to this point, unimaginable for him. Cantona helps Eric to realize his potential by teaching him to “believe in your teammates, because without that we are lost.” The film is packed with Cantona’s gnomic wisdom, “good lessons” like this and has a wildly optimistic ending. It’s a feel-good bromance with great footage highlighting Cantona’s career. (The French magazine So Foot quite rightly complained, though, that some of this footage feels like it’s there for those audience members who don’t know who Cantona is, or are not aware of the special fondness that Man U fans feel for him.)

I wanted to love it, but this “feel good” ending left me feeling let down. The film ultimately offers a romantic and facile solution to a very difficult situation. Eric conjures Cantona because he needs some of Cantona’s confidence. You can see that confidence in Canonta’s posture -– he strides through the film with chest thrust out like the French rooster. Eric, on the other hand, is skinny, pale, sits with his chest curled around itself, is rumpled and withdrawn. As an audience member I felt I was supposed to root for Eric to “sort himself out” but the fact of the matter is, as a person, I didn’t buy it.  That’s the point at which the film got boring.  I don’t buy that life is like football, and if you can just be “confident” the answers to big questions –- about what one wants, how to repair what’s broken in your life, etc. –- will magically appear. Considering these three texts together, Fowler’s and Cantonville’s autobiographies, and Loach’s “Looking for Eric,” I find myself thinking that sometimes “confidence” is just the uncomplicated psychology of someone who has never really kept company with failure.

Related posts:

1. Five Stories You Don’t Have to Care About in 2008
2. The Occluded History of Black Footballers in Britain
3. Millwall Fans and Slavery - Follow-up

1930 World Cup poster

The U.S.’s surprising run in the Confederations Cup is hardly the first time they have surpassed all expectations on the world stage. Their 1950 victory over England is the best-known; but in many ways, their surprising run to third place at the 1930 World Cup in Uruguay remains the most impressive achievement in the team’s history, and the biggest lost opportunity to grow the game domestically.

Ironically, the mere existence of the World Cup was in part down to America’s relative lack of interest in soccer — Fifa, aware that the Los Angeles Olympics of 1932 would not feature Association Football and in dispute with the IOC over the status of amateur players in the tournament decided to organise their own world championship for the first time in 1930. All members of Fifa, including the United States, were invited to take part without qualification for the tournament to be held in Uruguay. The distant travel was too much for some European nations, but 13 countries did participate in the inaugural World Cup.

It has become part of world football folklore that the U.S.’s team was one stocked with ex-pat professionals from Britain, but this was not so. Though many were of Anglo-origin — as would be expected in a nation with a huge Anglo-immigrant population playing a British sport — only one of the U.S. players, George Moorhouse, had played professionally in Britain. Moorhouse made two appearances for Third Division Tranmere in the early 1920s, but most of his experience had come in the American Soccer League, and it was that league that provided the bedrock for America’s strong team.

The U.S.’s performance in 1930 surprised the world in part because of their disastrous showing at the 1928 Olympic Games, which until the advent of the World Cup two years later was the world’s premier soccer tournament. The United States had been humiliated 11-2 by Argentina in the first round, though the truth was the American selection policy had adhered far more rigidly to the IOC’s strict rules on amateur participation than most other nations, leaving them considerably handicapped.

In contrast, the 1930 American team was strong and athletic, drawn from the ranks of the American Soccer League’s high-quality teams, which had begun attracting professionals from abroad with its relatively high wages and standard of play. The U.S. were drawn in group four for the World Cup with Paraguay and Belgium.

Their opening match was against Belgium, and the U.S. brushed aside the Europeans 3-0, with two goals from left-winger Bart McGhee, including the first in U.S. World Cup history. Though born in Scotland, McGhee had moved to the U.S. at the age of thirteen to join his father in Philadelphia, a Scottish international forward for Hibernian and Celtic (indeed, the McGhees remain the only father and son combination to play for different international teams). Fellow forward Bert Patenaude, at 20 a surprising inclusion in the squad, scored the other American goal. According to David Wangerin, “the Belgians were unable to cope with America’s secure defence and incisive passes out to the flanks”, with the U.S. easing up and “wisely saving themselves”, their coach later said.

Patenaude would score three more in the U.S.’s second match against Paraguay, the first hat-trick in the history of the World Cup in another surprisingly comfortable 3-0 U.S. victory (Patenaude’s second goal in the fifteenth minute has been the subject of a long historical debate, as it has been variously also credited as an own goal and to teammate Tom Florie, but in 2006 Fifa ruled the credit went to Patenaude). This victory was all the more impressive as Paraguay had considerable pedigree, runners-up in the previous year’s Copa America and recent victors over Uruguay (who would go on to win the World Cup).

The U.S., then, had taken the opening round by storm, with six goals for and none against. They headed to the semi-finals to take on the Argentinians, who had humiliated them two years earlier at the Olympics. The U.S. coach, Wilfrid R. Cummings, was full of bravado: “We are only interested in the final,” he said. The U.S. arrived at the Centenario Stadium under a military escort, in front of a passionate 71,000-strong crowd.

The first half was tightly-fought, the score 1-0 to Argentina at the break, thanks to a goal from legendary playmaker Luis Monti. The U.S., though, eventually succumbed on a pitch far larger than they were used to (eight yards over regulation length) and with a referee unable to control the game, with centre-half Raphael Tracey lost to injury and (most harmfully) goalkeeper Jimmy Douglas hobbled by an ankle injury.

Argentina's Guillermo Stabile slots the ball past American goalkeeper Jim Douglas

In the second half the U.S. lost their head and their nerve, allowing the referee to infuriate them, as this story that Brian Glanville recounts in his history of the event illustrates:

John Langenus was the referee; he never tired of relating the bizarre story of the American trainer. During the second half, he blew his whistle for a foul against America. At this, the team’s medical attendant, who was also an official, rushed onto the field, case of medicaments in hand, to make violent remonstrance. In the course of it, he threw his case to the ground and it burst open, spilling out its contents, among them a bottle of chloroform, which promptly broke. The rising fumes engulfed and tranquilized him; he was assisted, peacefully, from the field.

Scopelli and Stabile struck twice in the first fifteen minutes after the break as the U.S.’s inexperience in big games finally told. From then, it was all over, and the U.S. collapsed to concede three goals in the final ten minutes, to give Argentina a win by the flattering score of 6-1, but it was not the humiliation of 1928. A tough ending to a remarkable run, the U.S. had shown that their team — all but one of whom had learned their trade entirely domestically — could live with the best in the World Cup.

Their third place finish remains unmatched, as soccer suffered a sad collapse domestically in the 1930s, the promise of the American Soccer League’s stars never matched again. The strength of the U.S. performance can be seen in the interest it raised abroad in many of the ASL stars, with several heading to Britain to play for teams including Manchester United, Aberdeen and Celtic. The world had taken notice of American soccer for the first time.

[For more on the U.S. performance in the 1930 World Cup, see Soccer by Brian Glanville and Soccer in a Football World by David Wangerin]

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2. North Korea’s fairytale in the 1966 World Cup
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Confederations Cup Trophy

As we look forward to an unexpected final between Brazil and the United States in the 2009 Fifa Confederations Cup we look at how the competition was established and developed.  Has a tournament with a troubled history finally ‘made it’?

The Artemio Franchi Trophy and the King Fahd Cup

The precursors of the Confederations Cup as intercontinental international trophies were the Artemio Franchi Trophy and the King Fahd Cup. Neither managed to establish themselves as prominent fixtures in international consciousness, but both — along with the Afro-Asian Cup — did embed the idea of regular competition between continental champions.

The first Artemio Franchi Trophy, contested by the European and South American champions, was won by France (winners of Euro ‘84), who beat Uruguay (winners of Copa America ‘83) 2-1 in 1985 at Parc des Princes, Paris. It’s fair to say the trophy was not a resounding success, with just over 20,000 showing up in Paris, and a repeat affair not taking place for another eight years. In 1993, Argentina (Copa America ‘91) beat Denmark (Euro ‘92) on a penalty shoot-out after a 1-1 tie, in front of 34,683 in Argentina.

At the same time, the Afro-Asian Cup had been developing as a contest between the Asian and African champions. It was first held in 1978 between Iran and Ghana, though never completed as political problems in the former country led to cancellation of the second leg. It wouldn’t reappear until 1985, but was then played regularly until 1997, when a dispute between the two confederations led to a decade-long hiatus.

Competitions such as these showed some demand for intercontinental contests, but it was the King Fahd Cup, inaugurated in 1991, that first showcased intercontinental competition including more than two confederations (if we exclude the “Little World Cup” of 1980, a somewhat different one-off conception deserving of its own post).

The King Fahd Cup — or “Intercontinental Championship” — was first held in 1992, featuring Argentina (Copa America ‘91), the United States (CONCACAF Gold Cup, ‘91), the Ivory Coast (African Nations Cup, ‘92) and the hosts, Saudi Arabia (Asian Cup ‘88). The local crowd flocked to see Saudia Arabia’s two games, a 3-0 win over the U.S. in the “semi-final” (also the opening round!) and a 3-1 defeat to Argentina in the final in front of 75,000.  There was less interest in the other semi-final, attended by 15,000 as Argentina crushed the Ivory Coast 4-0, or in the third place play-off, won by the U.S. in front of under 10,000 spectators.

King Fahd II Stadium, Riyadh

The tournament was a minor success and, bankrolled again by King Fahd’s kingdom, it returned in 1995. It was expanded to six teams, to accommodate the European champions Denmark as well and to allow Saudi Arabia to enter as hosts, since Japan had won the previous Asian Cup. Also participating were African champions Nigeria and Gold Cup winners Mexico. Two groups of three gave the tournament added longevity, with Denmark and Argentina advancing to the final. In a half-full King Fahd II stadium, the Laudrups of Denmark led the Europeans to a 2-0 victory.

The FIFA Confederations Cup

Fifa sniffed a commercial prospect and took over the contest from 1997 on, though for the final time, it was played in Saudi Arabia that year, with the cumbersome double title of the FIFA/Confederations Cup for the King Fahd Trophy. For the first time, every Fifa Confederation was represented, with Oceania (represented by Australia) appearing for the first time. The tournament was expanded to eight teams, with the previous World Cup winner (Brazil) also invited along with the Asian Cup runners-up UAE (presumably because Asian Cup winners Saudi Arabia already had automatic entry as hosts). Brazil crushed Australia 6-0 in the final, the latter having somehow squeaked that far despite winning only one of their five games in regulation time.

The Fifa Confederations Cup (as it would from now on simply be known as) had been established on the international stage, but it still lacked a solid purpose, and the refusal of certain continental champions to participate undermined its legitimacy over the next decade (Germany opted out in ‘97 and ‘03 and France in ‘99). The always shifting qualification procedures confused the public, such as Mexico’s entry into the ‘03 tournament based on their win in the Confederations Cup two years earlier.

That 1999 tournament saw the Cup moved away from Saudi Arabia for the first time, and the switch to Mexico proved to be a rousing success: almost one million attended the matches, at an average of 60,625, almost triple the average of two years previously. A goalfeast - 3.44 goals per game, and stellar performances by Ronaldinho, Cuauhtémoc Blanco and Saudi Marzouq Al-Otaibi with 6 goals each — certainly helped matters. Mexico’s epic 4-3 win over Brazil in the final was watched by 110,000 at the legendary Estadio Azteca.

Yet it still wasn’t entirely clear why the tournament was taking place when and where it was. Why was it held every two years, and where would it go next?  In 2001, the eventual long-term solution was found, as South Korea and Japan co-hosted the Cup as a dry run for their role as World Cup hosts the next year. Crowds were down somewhat, with a 557,191 total attendance (34,824 per match), though most matches saw stadia close to capacity - helped by Japan’s surprising run to the final, where they were defeated by France.

Perhaps as reward for winning the ‘01 tournament, France were chosen as hosts for the ‘03 event. This tournament, though, would mark the low point in the history of the event, as Cameroon’s Marc-Vivien Foé died on the pitch of heart failure during their semi-final with Colombia. His death sparked a debate about the demands the international calendar placed on top players, and the value of the Confederations Cup. Sepp Blatter hardly helped matters by immediately stating the final would go ahead three days later with many questioning whether Cameroon should play at all. Though Fifa initially promised to consider renaming the event after Foé, nothing came of that (there will be a brief ceremony before tomorrow’s final remembering the Cameroonian).

Marc-Vivien Foé

The Confederations Cup did return two years later, once again as World Cup dress rehearsal, this time in Germany. A pretty impressive turnout — 603,106 (37,694 per match) — saw a run to the semis by the hosts, who were beaten by eventual champions Brazil, who in turn defeated Argentina in the final 4-1.

For the first time, the Confederations Cup was not held two years later, and Fifa announced it had settled on a definitive formula: the Cup would be held every four years by the next World Cup hosts. All six confederation champions, the host nation and the reigning World Cup winner would be the entrants — though for the South American and European champion only, participation remains optional.

It seems this formula, along with Fifa’s smart decision to package the rights to the Confederations Cup with the World Cup, has finally established the tournament as a serious proposition. The opportunity for nations to compete at the next World Cup’s venue and for the host themselves to get a meaningful warmup and operational dress rehearsal gives it practical purpose. And it’s a fine carrot for the less prestigious continental championships to offer their winners.

Perhaps most importantly, there is finally a sense that the world cares and is watching. As U.S. forward Charlie Davies posted on his Twitter account today ahead of the final,  “off too [sic] training, We gotta do it big tomorrow on ESPN!!!! Shock the world part II”.

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2. The Occluded History of Black Footballers in Britain
3. History and Hillsborough: The Cohen Controversy

I never met Steven Wells. I always figured I would some day, but that it would be totally random — I’d be in some dive bar on a road trip to Philly to see the Fire play the new team there that he, in a small way, helped make happen, the Philadelphia Union. I presumed we’d end up shooting the shit about the Sons of Ben and Section 8 and the good fight to keep American grassroots fan culture alive in the face of the McBeast. And then we’d get into an argument about the Smiths and something would get broken and shots would be downed in excess.

Sadly, Steven Wells passed away before this could happen. He died yesterday of lymphatic cancer, at just 49 years old. Wells made his name writing and supporting punk rock in Britain — from the Mekons to Black Flag — and his punk rock attitude more than spilled over into his later writing on soccer in the United States. He wrote about music fiercely until the end, illustrated well by this snippet from a recent Quietus piece:

I have argued for a long time for the state-subsidised mass-murder of all music journalists over 25-years-old. True we’d lose some cracking writers and cause a lot of human misery and suffering, but on the plus side we’d live in a universe where Q didn’t exist.

And when I say “we”, of course, I mean you. Because I’d be dead.

Frankly I think it’s the only way to shut me the fuck up. I mean who gives a fuck what I think anyway? I certainly don’t. And next year I’d be joined by Dom Passantino. Can I request now that we be buried together, intertwined like Ancient Greek warrior lovers, thus causing the alien robot squid archeologists in the year 4012 to scratch their throbbing giant computer-brain-cages with their super-advanced semi-liquid-space-metal tentacles as they wonder how these two obviously brutally murdered men - one old and the other, like, rilly rilly rilly old - were intertwined in life as they are in death?

Or even better, every year open that grave up and sling in the next generation of 25-year-old, past-their-fucking-pontificate-date music hacks so that when the Angel Gabriel blows his horn to signal the dead to rise on the day of judgment, this huge interlocked mass of creaking hack bones will rise from the grave like some enormous skeletal super zombie which will then engage is a mass fuck-in-a boney post-mortem sex and drugs and tediously over-told fucking anecdotes fucking orgy where slime encrusted femurs rasp chitinously into flyblown sockets and worm-gnawed fists are rammed repeatedly into crumbling pelvic girdles. Oh fuck me I’ve just come all over the fucking keyboard. But it was worth it.

At times, Wells’ half-crazed prose threatened to overwhelm the nuance, intelligence and truth in his arguments, but I suppose that was essential to Swells’ ethos: never compromise, never limit, always excess. What marks Wells out from other ‘angry’ writers was that his furious, energetic prose was just as often directed in support of something he loved as it was against the evils he hated. In this sense, he was far from a shock-jock, the coruscating nature of his writing employed for positive goals.

This was why when the rest of the world was fixated on Beckham’s big bucks move to the Galaxy in 2007, Wells instead introduced a British audience to grassroots American soccer fan culture, with his pieces in Four Four Two and the Guardian on Philadelphia’s Sons of Ben, a supporters group for a team that then didn’t exist.

One of the Sons of Ben founders emphasises the importance of Swells’ support:

He wrote about us in Philadelphia Weekly, FourFourTwo, and The Guardian…apart from a small little blurb in Sports Illustrated he was the source of all our solid media credits for months. He was at our first tailgate - he took the well-known picture of all of us there. He saw what we were really doing and what we were capable of doing before any of us did, I think. He gave us relevance.

Wells’ magnum opus on the SOB came last year after the announcement the city would have an MLS team in 2010, with this epic cover feature in the Philadelphia Weekly:

Meet the Zolos–the crazy fans of Philadelphia’s yet-to-be-named American soccer club. They’re better known as the Sons of Ben (SOB). They’ve got a club crest, flags, a Latin motto, a customized bass drum, six different scarf designs, thongs, mousepads, aprons and mugs. Lord knows how many songs and chants, and–at last count–2,010 members. (Hence Zolos. Get it?)

They’ve also got bitter rivalries with Major League Soccer (MLS) teams D.C. United and New York Red Bulls. And the New England Revolution hate them too. As do fans of the Portland Timbers and Toronto. Already. Despite the fact that Philly doesn’t actually have a team yet. How Philly is that?

As you’ve almost certainly heard, there’s a $115 million soccer-specific stadium and an MLS franchise coming to Philly. To nearby depressed-to-hell Chester, actually. They start play in 2010. (Zolo. Get it?) And the reason we’re getting a team?

“You can never underestimate the passion of the fans,” says Ed Rendell at a press conference in Chester. “You can’t measure it. Believe me, this group’s excitement and desire had a lot to do with why we’re here announcing this franchise.”

Big Ed goes on to compare the SOB to the Eagles’ 700 level. Which is kind of flattering to Eagles fans.

Wells’ point, which he made again and again, was that the vibrant potential of grassroots soccer culture lay in its contrast to the stilted atmosphere of professional American sports at the highest level, which sees adult fans infantalised and spoonfed seemingly anything to distract them from the game itself.

Wells understood that what happened at the bottom was just as important — perhaps even more so — as what happened at the top for the future of soccer in the U.S., as he told Richard Whittall in this excellent interview at EPL Talk:

The history of soccer is the US isn’t just the history of the professional game. There’s also the (in many respects way more interesting) history of the grassroots game. Maybe I’m being optimistic, but even if pro-soccer in the US once again shits the bed (and let’s not forget that last year saw both the collapse of NFL Europe and the AFL indoor football league) I don’t really think that would impact grassroots soccer.

Just as soccer boosters tended to massively overestimate just how much the establishment of the WUSA and the arrival of Beckham would “grow” soccer in the US, I think we also tend to worry a little too much about our failures and setbacks.

I think grassroots soccer survives and continues to flourish in the US for a whole host of reasons, but perhaps also because it fills a previously empty evolutionary niche.

In much of the rest of the world, you’ll find soccer balls in every work space (I’ve never been on a British rock band tour bus without one, for instance.) First chance you get, you set up goalposts, in the parking lot maybe, and you kick off.

The nearest US equivalent is basketball. But basketball without the hoops is futile. In soccer almost anything can be used as a goalpost, hell, you don’t even need a ball.

I see kids playing pick-up gridiron in parks and it seems to be spectacularly futile and unsatisfactory waste of time, with most of the players stood around doing nowt.

And there’s the American oddity of kickball. I passed a school playground recently and I thought: Oh my god, they’re playing soccer.

Then I thought: No they’re not, they’re playing kickball.

This I found extremely odd. I’d even go as far as to say that the day that soccer really succeeds in the US isn’t when the US wins the world cup, it’s when it becomes the default sport in the nation’s playgrounds. Which—in Darwinian terms—it really should, being far better suited to that arena (and way more fun as well as being better exercise) than all the alternatives. Way to go yet though…

Cancer means that Wells will not be around to see whether this happens. His battle with the disease does leave another legacy — his brutally honest and ferocious piece on his struggle within the American healthcare system will, I hope, be read by many more.

This is the tale of a smartarse Brit getting lost in the Philadelphia health system. The highlights–edited for shock value–include cockroaches, urine-drenched bathrooms, a crazed geriatric chip-sucker, a frenzied attempt to masturbate into a specimen jar while the chap in the next bed watches Patton at a libido-shattering 128 decibels, and nurses hiding their name badges while my wife screams, “My husband’s got cancer. Get off your arse and get him his fucking painkillers now !”

The story also features Kafkaesque data chases, a scrotal sac swollen to the size of a football, glimpses of oak-paneled $300-a-night posh-patients’ rooms where protein shakes come in silver salvers, the horror of the catheter they stick down your cock (and this is legal, why?) and the nightmare foot-long scented candle of compacted fecal matter that was so hard to shift that I collapsed and had to be given oxygen the first time I tried.

Plus more love, affection and staggeringly efficient professionalism from amazing doctors and incredible nurses than you could possibly believe. And more really, really, really great free drugs than you could shake a shitty stick at.

Seriously, having experienced everything from industrial-strength stool softeners to the same anxiety and pain relief medicine they issue to medics in the Marine Corps, I have to wonder why anybody in America would ever take crappy street drugs. Join the Army and get shot. It’s got to be cheaper in the long run, and it’s totally legal.

Did I type that out loud? I’m sorry. It’s the synthetic heroin. It’s great but it does have the unfortunate side effect of turning you into an emotional Republican.

Wells’ final piece, which he filed last week, was one of his best composed rants as he approached the end. Wells’ departure to punk rock heaven leaves a big blank space we might never fill again. His last printed words:

I blame it on sunshine. I blame it on the moonlight. I blame it on the boogie.

Related posts:

1. Steven Wells, Dave Zirin and the Politics of Sportswriting
2. They Can’t All Be Steven Wells
3. Philadelphia, Soccer City

The outcasts are on the world stage again: the third Viva World Cup, for associations unaffiliated with FIFA, got underway this week. It’s being held in the northern Italian cities of Verona, Brescia and Varese.  You might remember our post on the 2008 Viva World Cup hosted by Sápmi in Gällivare, Sweden won by Padania and featuring five teams.

This was an improvement on the three who actually made it to participate in the inaugural 2006 Viva World Cup in Occitania, out of the six originally scheduled due to a conflict with the original intended host in Northern Cyprus (who eventually organised the ELF Cup to compete with the VWC).

Originally planned to be played every two years, the success of the 2008 competition in raising awareness of the wannabe nations — the main purpose of the event — has encouraged the organisers, the N.F.-Board (New Football Federations-Board) to hold it every year.

The N.F.-Board, headquartered in Liege, Belgium, currently has 18 full members, and a number of associate and provisional members, stretching from the Chechen Republic to Easter Island. The N.F.-Board states that its purpose is to be a “transitional” body for Football Associations looking to gain FIFA recognition. Its admission rules are simple: “Any Football Association which represents a People, a Nation, a Minority or an Isolated Territory population may become an Affiliated member of NFB.”

Six teams have entered the tournament this year, though one of the strongest non-FIFA teams, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, is again in dispute with the NF-Board and is sitting out for political reasons because of the participation of Iraqi Kurdistan, according to Steve Menary (author of the book Outcasts: The Lands That FIFA forgot).

This year’s entrants, a decidedly mixed bag in terms of nationhood legitimacy and footballing ability, are divided into two groups, as follows:

Group A

Padania
The hosts of the tournament, Padania is an alternative name for northern Italy and one adopted and popularised by the Lega Nord party since the 1990s as a proposed name for a breakaway northern Italian state.

Lega Nord has helped the organisation of a Padanian team since 1998.  They have been one of the more successful non-FIFA teams, winning all five of their matches in their inaugural appearance in the 2008 Viva World Cup. Two Italian Serie D players, Stefano Salandra and Giordan Ligarotti, finished as top scorers.

Padania 2-1 NK Zagabria

Iraqi Kurdistan
Iraqi Kurdistan is an autonomous federal region of Iraq, bordering Turkey, Iran and Syria.  Football in Kurdistan has progressed considerably since the end of Saddam’s regime. Some players, such as former captain Karwan Salih, have played for both the Iraqi national team and the Iraqi Kurdistan team. Kurdistan will be making their second appearance in the Viva World Cup, after failing to work out admission with the N.F.-Board to the 2006 tournament, and finishing fourth in 2008, winning only one of five games.

For the 2009 tournament, most of the players come from the Kurdistan league, which ended its first season of play last month. The league was founded this year after complaints that Kurdistan teams were treated poorly in the nationwide Iraqi league. Iraqi Kurdistan was granted full membership of the N.F.-Board in December 2008, and will host the VIVA World Cup in 2011.

Kurdistan Flag

Occitania
Occitan is a traditional language in much of the southern half of France and parts of Italy and Spain, and Occitania is the name that has been given to the cultural region. The team was established in 2004 by the Associacion Occitana de Fotbòl, founded itself over a century ago.

Occitania took third place in the first Viva World Cup in 2006. In 2008, they decided to participate in the Europeada instead of the VWC, a tournament for national minorities in Europe, where they reached the quarter-final. Their most recent game, against Monaco last November, ended in a 2-2 draw.

Linguistic map of Occitania

Group B

Sápmi
You might know Samiland better by the name Lapland, home to the indigenous Sápmi people, numbering around 60,000 up in the Arctic Circle.

Organised by the Sápmi Football Association, the Sápmi team won the 2006 Viva World Cup (scoring 42 goals in three games!), and hosted the 2008 event, where they disappointingly finished third. They joined the NF-Board in 2003.  Most Sápmi footballers play in Norway and a few in Sweden. Some well known Sápmi footballers have played for FIFA recognised Scandinavian countries, including Morten Gamst Pedersen for Norway.

Sápmi

Provence
Provence, a region in the southeast of France, are one of the most recent affiliates of the NF-Board, joining in December 2008.

They competed at the 2008 Viva World Cup, the region’s first representative games since 1921, managing to lose all  four of their  games. So far, they have just one win, beating Monaco last December 3-2, suggesting they might have turned a corner.

Provence

Gozo
Perhaps the most obscure of the entrants, Gozo — the second largest island in the Maltese archipelago, with a population of 31,000 — are making their Viva World Cup debut. Gozo has been governed by Malta throughout its history, apart from a brief period of autonomy granted by Napoleon at the end of the eighteenth century. It’s supposedly the island that Odysseus was imprisoned on for seven years as Calypso’s “prisoner of love” in Homer’s Odyssey.

The Gozo Football Association was founded in 1936, and runs a league with two divisions along with several cup competitions. The Gozo F.A.  is a provisional member of the NF-Board. A team run by the F.A., Gozo F.C., competes in the Maltese league second divison, playing at the 4,000 capacity Gozo Stadium. Most of Gozo’s players in the Viva World Cup have played for Gozo F.C.

Gozo Football Association

Update: Since I started writing this entry two days ago, several games have taken place in the tournament. On day one, Padania defeated Occitania 1-0 in Group A and Provence beat Gozo 3-1 in Group B.  On day two, Kurdistan beat Occitania 4-0 in Group A and Sápmi lost 2-1 to Provence. For all the latest results, visit the Non-Fifa Football World blog. I’ll keep this page updated as results come in, and the competitive scores so far suggest progress in the world of non-Fifa associations.

Related posts:

1. Viva World Cup Update
2. A Map of Campeonato Brasileiro 2009
3. The Trophy for the Freedom of Peoples

Green Point Stadium, Cape Town

The stadium under construction is located in Green Point, between Signal Hill and the Atlantic Ocean and close to Cape Town’s city centre. Its backdrop will be the spectacular Table Mountain. Green Point Stadium will host eight games at the 2010 World Cup, including a semi-final, and will have a capacity of 68,000 at a cost of R3 billion (approx. $400M). It is being constructed on the site of the now demolished old Green Point Stadium, an 18,000 capacity stadium home to both Santos Football Club and Ajax Cape Town.

Architectural design was led by Robert Hormes of German firm GMP Architects (the firm responsible for Berlin’s 2006 World Cup stadium), working with local architects Louis Karol and Point. Construction of the stadium began on March 26, 2007.

Architectural Impression, Green Point Stadium, Cape Town

Lead architect Robert Hormes found himself in the middle of considerable controversy over the stadium when he arrived in Cape Town, admitting to the Cape Argus in 2008 that “I had sleepless nights about whether it was the right building for the space.”

Many were concerned that the sheer size of the stadium would overwhelm the picturesque surroundings, at the waterfront and with the Table Mountain as a backdrop. Hormes’ solution was a curved design and greyish tinge with a low-hanging roof, intended to keep the building from dominating the city’s skyline. Hormes added, “We said the only straight line in Cape Town is Table Mountain so we didn’t want to create a box-shape. We needed a curve and something light to reflect the city’s attitude to life.”

Though the slow pace of early construction caused concern, progress has moved swiftly in the past year.

Herd of cranes in Cape Town; 21 were in use at one time. July 28, 2007.

Green Point stadium construction: early excavation. June 18, 2007.

Construction. May 2008.

Green Point stadium progress. February 2009.

Interior view. May 19 2009.

Stadium from above. May 2009.

Stadium at sunset. May 2009.

Panorama of Green Point Stadium. Table Mountains in background. June 2009

Green Point stadium, close to completion. June 18, 2009

According to the Cape Business News, major concrete work has now been completed at the stadium. The roof is anticipated to be finished by September, and the contractors are on schedule to complete the stadium by December. 13,000 seats in the third tier will be removed post-World Cup, leaving the stadium with 55,000 seats.

Photo credits: JackySnappy2009, craig.pitchers, cyberdees, rfataar, Frankly Richmond

Related posts:

1. Will South Africa Be Ready for World Cup 2010?
2. The Draw for the 2010 World Cup, Politically Explosive Ties
3. FIFA, Blatter, Blackmail and the 2010 World Cup Draw

The Rattle

The first popular noisemaker in football — and one that made a sound to make even a vuvuzela wince — was the wooden rattle in Britain.

Though appearing as early as 1900, the rattle became the ubiquitous din to football matches in Britain after the world war. They had been popularised during the war as a way of warning people of gas attacks: their simple noise making capacity saved many lives. Holding the handle and spinning the rattle made a loud clacking noise, and this was soon transported to the terraces.

Football rattles fell into disuse in the 1960s in English football, as the cloth cap-era of working class support began to morph into something trendier, and supporters began to create their own songs and chants that rendered the use of the rattle obsolete.

Writing in the Guardian, Simon Burnton hoped that “perhaps South Africa can learn from the loud wooden rattles that soundtracked British football in the post-war era – and fell out of favour when everyone realised just how annoying they were. I can only hope that one day soon a similar fate will befall the vuvuzelas.”

Yet it was a shift in the entire base of fan culture, rather than a simple realisation that rattles were annoying, that removed the rattle from the terraces.

The Thunderstick

The thunderstick emerged in the 1990s in Korea, and quickly spread to North America at baseball, football and political rallies. The air chambers inside the inflated plastic baton amplifies the sound of the sticks clapped together, meaning even a child can create quite a racket. The advantage of thundersticks from a commercial standpoint is that, unlike rattles, they are large enough to feature a prominent company logo and can be produced cheap enough to mass distribute for free before games.

The marketing spiel of one company selling them explains their simple use and appeal:

Sports fans around the world love these best-selling noisemakers. When inflated, fans hit them together for loud cheering fun while yielding a low cost, large marketing impression. Thunder Stick are the ideal promotional product for giveaways at basketball, hockey, soccer, football, and lacrosse games. Candidates love to use them to produce crowd energy at political rallies. Packaged in pairs for easy distribution and cleanliness, Thunder Stick are made from 100% recycled PE.

Many Major League Soccer teams embraced the thunderstick, and games were often played to the uncoordinated din of young children manufacturing a plastic roar.

Thundersticks have remained popular at Korean football and baseball games. You will remember them from the 2002 World Cup, when seemingly every Korean fan was armed with a pair of inflatable red batons: one American fan, watching from home, remembers the joy of the silencing of the sticks when the U.S. scored (”In this moment of grace, Clint Mathis stilled the red thundersticks of South Korea.”)

So cheap to produce and so useful a marketing tool, the thunderstick seems unlikely to vanish any time soon, though constant complaints have begun to limit their presence in American baseball stadiums.

The Vuvuzela

And so we come to the vuvuzela. Originally made out of tin, they were mass produced in plastic in the last decade and have reached a new fame with the worldwide debate on their use prompted by the hum at every Confederations Cup game in South Africa. Many mistake the vuvuzela for the air horns used commonly around the world, but they have a different origin and use as an instrument in South Africa.

As we know, many players, coaches and fans have complained about the noise of the vuvuzela at the Confederations Cup, with calls for their ban inundating FIFA. This prompted a defense of the vuvuzela as organic African culture from Sepp Blatter, echoed by BBC writer Farayi Mungazi:

“That is what African and South Africa football is all about - noise, excitement, dancing, shouting and enjoyment,” said the most powerful man in world football.

I could not have put it better myself. Banning the vuvuzela would take away the distinctiveness of a South African World Cup.

It is a recognised sound of football in South Africa and is absolutely essential for an authentic South African footballing experience.

After all, what would be the point of taking the World Cup to Africa, and then trying to give it a European feel?

Let us all embrace the vuvuzela and whatever else a South African World Cup throws at us.

The fact that some in Europe find it irritating is no reason to get rid of it.

Though a fairly recent instrument at South African football games, some trace the roots to African tradition. “The ancestor of the vuvuzela is said to be the kudu horn - ixilongo in isiXhosa, mhalamhala in Tshivenda - blown to summon African villagers to meetings.”

It seems to have been in 1992 that the vuvuzela was first used at South African football matches, by supporters of AmaZulu F.C.. Supporters made the horns out of discarded tin cans, and the use spread wildly, to the joy of many and the irritation of some: South African writer Jon Qwelane wrote in 2007 that “Nowadays, there is an instrument from hell, called the vuvuzela, which has largely formed my decision to abandon all live games and rather watch on TV, with the sound totally muted.”

In the 2000s, with South Africa’s World Cup bid on the horizon, the vuvuzela became a mass produced commercialised phenomenon as the result of a grant given by SAB Miller (the giant South African brewer) to Neil van Schalkwyk’s company Masincedane Sport in 2001, who began to mass produce a cheap plastic version.

By 2005, the commercial potential of the horn was clear. Van Schalkwyk told the South African press that “It is our dream that the ‘Vuvuzela’ become the icon of the Soccer World Cup 2010 and that each supporter is given one of our horns. When England played South Africa in May 2003, some international supporters were buying over five horns each.”

South African vuvuzela enthusiast Mzion Mofokeng explains the significance of the instrument. “When we started the vuvuzela, there was so much sadness in our country in those years and it brought so much joy. All of a sudden people would go to the stadiums because of this instrument that was able to get fans on their feet and start cheering. For a few hours, they would forget about the reality in our society and enjoy the sound.

In 2008, FIFA ruled that vuvuzela’s would be allowed in stadiums for the 2010 World Cup. The debate before the ruling focused not on concerns about the noise, but FIFA’s concern that the vuvuzela’s would be used by companies to have an advertising presence at the game or as a weapon.

The argument for banning the vuvuzela is obvious to anyone who has watched a Confederations Cup game: it certainly produces quite a racket, one that appears to be an uncoordinated din of a million bees, following in the footsteps of the rattle and the thunderstick and the regular air horn.

Yet unlike the thunderstick or the rattle, the vuvuzela is an instrument that when co-ordinated, actually has a purpose in leading sections of the stadium in sound and song which has not come across on television. Jay Hipps at Center Line Soccer explains:

We’ve all heard plastic horns in stadiums in the U.S. and Mexico, but there’s a lot more creativity involved in South Africa. Specifically,  the horns are played in a call-and-response pattern that involves a leader who plays a complex rhythm and a group of players who punctuate that pattern on a specific beat. [..]

The most active supporters choreograph their movements. The side men lower their horns while the leader plays and suddenly point them skyward as they hit their note. It’s reminiscent of something jazz or even marching band horn sections have done for decades.

Unfortunately, the broadcasters have set up their stadium microphones the same way they would anywhere else in the world, so the result is a constant hum where the charm of the vuvuzela is lost to the TV audience.  The first thing on their to do lists should be re-working the microphone layout so they can capture an individual group of supporters in all its glory, rather than the simultaneous mish-mash of everyone playing at once that they currently offer. Even suggesting a ban before that is attempted is a radical over-reaction.

The best illustration of what Hipps means is the vuvuzela orchestra. As their website explains:

The Vuvuzela Orchestra and the traditional South African ensembles (Dinaka, Tshikona) that inspired its creation are musical representations of the “Ubuntu” principles.

The Nguni proverb “Ubuntu Ngumuntu Ngabantu” means that a person becomes human with the help of other humans. An individual can only survive through cooperation with other humans.

What better expression of that principle can there be than a musical ensemble where each player only has one note to play ? This is an absolutely exhilarating experience which was created by human societies many thousands of years ago at the very beginning of humanity to make their communities stronger.

This video of the orchestra’s practise and then performance at a football match illustrates Hipps’ point that the vuvuzela is an instrument with a purpose, not a simple noisemaker (be sure to watch to the end to see how the single note can be used effectively):

Vuvuzela Orchestra @ Mandela Challenge 2007 from Pedro Espi-Sanchis on Vimeo.

To be sure, not all who use the vuvuzela do so with the right art and coordination.  But the failure of television to convey the vuvuzela’s differentiation as a noisemaker from the likes of the rattle and the thunderstick and the calls to ban it have struck a nerve in South Africans, who interpret it as an attack on a part of their culture. FIFA allowed the thunderstick — an entirely indefensible noisemaker — to litter the 2002 World Cup. Why instead ban a noisemaker that has been proven to have an instrumental purpose and meaning to South Africans?

Do we really want FIFA to further sanitise and regulate fan culture at the World Cup by banning the vuvuzela, just so we’re all comfortable in our armchairs with surround sound on?

Related posts:

1. Will South Africa Be Ready for World Cup 2010?
2. Photo Daily | January 16 | Jumbo Jet Passes over African Nations’ Cup Opener, 1996
3. All Played Out? England Fans Welcome Around the World

North Korean goalkeeper Li Chang Myung and defender Shin Yunk Kyoo block Eusebio. Credit: FIFA.com

Heading into the 1966 finals as Asia’s sole representative just over a decade after a war that had devastated and divided their country, North Korea were 1000-1 outsiders to win the World Cup, despite the proud boast of their specially composed World Cup anthem that proclaimed “We can beat everyone, even the strongest team”. North Korea had qualified by beating Australia in a playoff, after many other Asian and African countries had withdrawn in protest that only one team from the two continents would be granted a place in the finals.

Getting entry into the United Kingdom proved to be a considerable challenge in itself for the North Koreans. Lacking diplomatic relations with Great Britain since the Korean War, the British Foreign Office took their time granting the Koreans entry clearance, and only relented when it was agreed their national anthem would not be played before games. The British Post Office even had to redesign a planned commemorative stamp and remove the North Korean flag after the Foreign Office objected to the design.

The North Koreans entered the tournament an enigma to the British press. The Times‘ 1966 World Cup finals preview said that “the North Koreans, offering a string of names that have the sound of waterfalls, remain for the moment a mysterious, unknown quantity.”  The Times‘ correspondent expected Italy and Russia to waltz through the group that also included the North Koreans and Chile, as the Italians have “the cut and look of finalists”. And despite the preview already admitting the North Koreans were an unknown quantity, the Times’ correspondent was dismissive of their chances:

Unless the Koreans turn out to be jugglers, with some unexpected ploy like running with the ball cushioned in the crook of their necks, it looks as though Italy and Russia should have the run of the place.

The shroud of mystery was lifted from the North Koreans in their first match, a 3-0 loss to Russia that earned them plaudits as plucky underdogs (or the “little Orientals”, as The Times called them), who won the support of the Middlesborough crowd.

Pre-game handshake, Portugal vs. North Korea. Credit: FIFA.com

At Ayresome Park again for the second match, North Korea earned a draw with Chile, with The Times waxing that “rarely have supporters taken a team to their hearts as the football followers of Middlesborough have taken these whimsical orientals.” Their teamplay and effort was praised to the hilt, but quite why the people of Middlesborough embraced the Koreans so strongly was a mystery to the players themselves.

“It still remains a riddle to me,” North Korea’s Ring Jung-sun told the BBC in 2002. “The people of Middlesborough supported us all the way through. I still don’t know the reason why.”

But it was against Italy, who needed a point themselves to qualify for the knockout stage, that North Korea staged one of the greatest upsets in the history of the sport in front of 19,000 awed and partisan fans at Ayresome Park. A goal by Pak Doo Ik, struck sweetly into the bottom-right corner of the net in the 42nd minute, was roared in by the crowd. Perhaps more importantly, just minutes earlier the Italian captain, Giacomo Bulgarelli, was stretchered off and did not return. The Italians could not break down the Koreans in the second half, with the press praising Pak Seung Zin and Ha Jung Won’s monumental workrates.

3,000 fans from Middlesborough followed North Korea across the country to Everton’s ground Goodison Park  for their quarter-final match-up against the legendary Portugese.  The Koreans raced out to a remarkable 3-0 lead after thirty minutes, only to be pegged back by Eusebio’s genius, the Portuguese coming back to win 5-3.

What happened to the North Korean team once they returned home was for decades as shrouded in mystery as the team had been on their arrival in England. The 2002 BBC documentary, The Game of Their Lives, attempted to answer this question, with rumours swirling for decades that the team had been sent to labour camps for allegedly womanising in Middlesborough.

It was clear that their time in England, and the connection the North Koreans had made, had left a lasting impression on the players, as the filmmakers Dan Gordon and Nick Bonner recount in this interview:

If you interviewed football players of today, you would get the usual “Yeah, it was a good game of two halves” response. But what we got from our interviews was wonderful. Rim Jung Son and his quote: “We saw lightness out of the darkness.” Pak Do Ik and his quote: “I learned that football is not only about the winning. Wherever we go . . . playing football can improve diplomatic relations and promote peace.”

The filmmakers found no evidence that the players had been mistreated in their return to North Korea, and Dan Gordon concluded that “I know for certain that they were heroes on their return and are heroes now.”  Seven members of the team returned to England with the filmmakers, where they received standing ovations at Middlesborough and Everton matches.

North Korea’s appearance in the 2010 World Cup is unlikely to repeat such a fairytale, but it’s a history worth remembering for perhaps the greatest underdog story ever in the World Cup finals.

Related posts:

1. Photo Daily - August 18 - Mr. Korea
2. The Draw for the 2010 World Cup, Politically Explosive Ties
3. Photo Occasional | April 8 | Korean Protest

Markranstädt is located a few miles from Leipzig, the largest city in the Saxony state in eastern Germany, and home to a World Cup venue (Central Stadium)  in need of a top tier tenant — though Leipzig is a region rich in football history, it has no team above the fourth tier of the German league. Red Bull’s aim is to become the dominant power in east German football through RB Leipzig, and build the club into a Bundesliga force playing at Central Stadium.

Red Bull branding kit

The takeover of Markranstädt will mark Red Bull’s fourth investment in and rebranding of a football club worldwide. Their investments so far have produced mixed results on and off the field. Their first takeover — and erasure of a club’s existing history — came in Austria near the company’s headquarters in Fuschl, where  SV Austria Salzburg were rebranded as FC Red Bull Salzburg in 2005 . The takeover and rebranding was the subject of a strong fan protest by the Violet-Whites supporters, who founded a new club, SV Austria Salzburg. Red Bull Salzburg have been successful on the field, last month clinching their second Austrian championship since the takeover.

In 2006, Red Bull took over and rebranded the New York MetroStars as Red Bull New York. Since then, the team have continued their historic mediocrity on the field, having failed to win any silverware. Poor results this season will be of concern to Red Bull ownership ahead of the team’s much delayed move to Red Bull Arena next year. The new stadium looks impressive, a doppelganger of the stadium Red Bull Salzburg recently moved in to.  So far, Red Bull New York have failed to win a strong fanbase in America’s largest market, and it’s open to question if the new stadium will prove to be the magic elixir or not.

Red Bull Arena

A lesser known third Red Bull franchise is also located on a third continent: Red Bull Brasil were founded in Sao Paulo in 2007, and have since struggled to advance from the Segunda Divisão Paulista. Red Bull seem to be following in the footsetps of that last move with the takeover of Markranstädt, who have a much lower profile than the two clubs taken over in Salzburg and New York respectively, whilst also allowing them to establish the club under Red Bull auspices outside of the Bundesliga’s tight licensing and regulation procedures.

An attraction of starting smaller is that the relatively weak Markranstädt’s fanbase will find it hard to resist Red Bull, (though some minor graffiti protest has already appeared at the club’s stadium) whose “masterplan” includes pumping in $100M over the next ten years into the club and an aim to reach the Bundesliga within eight years.

In a break from the previous Red Bull franchises, in order to meet future Bundesliga rules on membership ownership (of at least 51% of the club) and on sponsor naming, Red Bull will not own the whole club or name it as Red Bull Markranstädt. Instead, it has been renamed oh-so-subtly as RB Leipzig and the current “members” of the club are reported to all be affiliated to Red Bull. The North German Football Association (NOFV) recently approved the changes.  It’s likely that such a blatant skirting of the rules would not have washed had Red Bull taken over a well-known Bundesliga team in the same manner.

The undoubted appeal of Markranstädt to Red Bull is their location and the troubled recent history of football clubs in Saxony that leaves an opening for an ambitious franchise to fill. No club in the region is currently above the fourth tier in the German system, despite the popularity of the sport in a city with a population over 500,000 and the historic links to the game locally. As well as hosting the 2006 World Cup draw and several WC2006 games at Central Stadium (Zentralstadion), Leipzig was the birthplace of the German Football Association (DFB)  in 1900.

According to reports in Germany, Red Bull plan to move the club from their current home, the 5,500 capacity Stadion am Bad, to Central Stadium a few miles away from the 2010-11 season on.  Central Stadium is an impressive venue built for the 2006 World Cup with a capacity of 45,000 but without a club that can currently come anywhere near to filling the stadium.

Zentralstadion

Red Bull has reserved naming rights for Central Stadium from 2010 on, when the team has (they hope) won promotion to the Regionalliga, the fourth tier in German football. The stadium operating group, led by Michael Kölmel, initiated talks with Red Bull earlier this year, and SSV Markranstädt was determined to be the best choice to take over tenancy of the stadium with Red Bull’s backing.

Central Stadium most recently played host to the now insolvent FC Sachsen Leipzig, a club who only averaged a crowd of around 5,000 in the huge stadium.  It is notable that Red Bull considered investment in Sachsen themselves a couple of years ago, but due to early and active resistance from supporters of the existing club, they quickly looked elsewhere (it was the same story with Saxony Fortuna Dusseldorf, another prospective Red Bull target). To avoid large-scale fan resistance, Red Bull and Kölmel settled on smaller but promising prey in nearby Markranstädt.

The only other significant team locally is Lokomotive Leipzig, formerly VFB Leipzig, a team with a proud history but considerable present troubles.  VFB won the first national championship in 1903, and under their new name Lokomotive Leipzig, did well in the postwar years with support from the East German regime, managing some notable runs in European competition, including reaching the final of the European Cup Winners Cup in 1987.  But the fall of communism brought hard times on Lokomotive (who reverted to their original name, VfB Leipzig) and the club went bankrupt in 2004. Shortly after, the club was refounded by fans as 1. FC Lokomotive Leipzig and is now slowly working its way up from the lower reaches of the German pyramid.

The goal, therefore, is wide open for Red Bull in Leipzig to build a powerhouse in Saxony, with a ready-made world class Red Bull-branded stadium available for use and a huge potential fanbase for a top tier team. However, whether football supporters in Germany will buy into the rebranded team in any meaningful manner remains to be seen.

Photo credit: Floelz Photography on Flickr.

Related posts:

1. Red Bull: Fizzing Out in New York and Austria
2. Seattle MLS: A Local Club or a Global Brand?
3. The German Model