Can Football Survive the Future?

Visitors to Ibrox Park, home of Glasgow Rangers, might have been more than a little stunned last year to see the home fans flying the Israeli flag to cheer on their side. The Star of David is certainly an unlikely symbol for the fans of one of Scotland's largest soccer teams, whose often ferociously sectarian Protestantism is legendary — for decades, the club would not sign Catholic players no matter how extensive their talents. But to understand why the Rangers faithful were flying the Israeli flag, one only had to look across the field to where the fans of the visiting team, Glasgow Celtic — the pride of Scotland's Catholics and the Irish Catholic Diaspora — were flying the Palestinian flag. That must be counted almost as an instance of wry Glaswegian humor in the decades-old binary sectarianism that binds the soccer terraces of Glasgow to the bloody streets of Northern Ireland.

Soccer has, as long as anyone can remember, always served as a form of ritual combat onto which neighborhoods, tribes and even nations could project their most passionate enmities. When Real Sociedad, the pride of the Basque country, comes up against Real Madrid, the soccer symbol of the Spanish crown, it's more than simply an athletic spectacle involving 22 men and a ball. And when a Republic of Ireland striker puts one past the England goalkeeper in an international fixture, the roar heard across the Irish Diaspora expresses a passion that long predates the game of soccer itself. But just as the forces of globalization are challenging long-established notions of identity by eroding traditional boundaries of nation and tribe, so is the globalization of professional soccer challenging some of the traditional bases of identification with the game.

While the fans of Rangers and Celtic may continue, for the foreseeable future, to see in the Glasgow derby match an echo of sectarian clashes from the Battle of the Boyne to Belfast's Falls Road, those meanings are increasingly remote for the men donning the blue shirts of Rangers and Celtic's green-and-white hoops. What could it possibly mean to Rangers' Georgian striker Shota Arveladze when those cheering his team on against Celtic are singing “We're up to our knees in Fenian blood!” ? And what passions does an IRA anthem stir in the heart of Celtic's star forward, the Senegalese striker Henri Camara? Once, Rangers only signed Protestant players; today, like Celtic, they've followed the trend of shopping in soccer's global labor market in order to make themselves competitive in the pan-European leagues that are the most lucrative for the continent's clubs. So, while the fans treat the game as a tableux enactment of ancient tribal battles, those acting it out are Dutchmen, Georgians, Danes, Brazilians, Portuguese, Swedes, Frenchmen, Senegalese, Guineans, Ivorians, Bulgarians and others who are simply professionals marketing their skills to the highest bidder in the increasingly globalized world of international soccer.

How Soccer Explains the World
It is into this complex, often darkly funny nexus of soccer's traditional role as metaphor for national and ethnic warfare and the forces of globalization that are changing the face of the game that New Republic writer Franklin Foer steps in his new book, "How Soccer Explains the World". It's a compelling and ambitious project that seeks to chart the impact of the crashing waves of globalization on the traditional tribal barriers that have long defined the culture of soccer.

As an American, Foer must be commended for venturing onto terrain inherently foreign to his home readership. In the U.S. soccer is mostly a middle class suburban game played by boys and girls, and the idea that loyalty to a team can be an expression of identity so profound that it's worth fighting — even sometimes killing — for would seem utterly preposterous on the grassy fields of suburban Long Island where Foer first played the game as a child. America's professional soccer clubs — or "franchises," as they're uniquely known in the U.S. — were created from scratch in the 1990s, and carry none of the encoded history of their European and Latin Americans counterparts. And support for the U.S. national soccer team is hardly an outlet for jingoistic nationalism. In my own experience, American audiences are more often than not oblivious to the meanings being attached to the game by fans of the opposition when Team USA has played Iran, Serbia or Mexico in recent internationals. Foer falls down when it comes to finding any greater meaning and offers a weak analysis of the impact of globalization on the game and its fans.

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