The Soccer Wars

No sport should arouse the passion that national-side soccer football does, in competitions like the Euro and the World Cup. The red-mist fervor blinds you to the sport itself; the pleasures you derive from watching it become less proper to a sport than to a bloody spectacle, to the wars that such competitions in effect stand for and perhaps have helped to avoid: terror, panic, orgiastic euphoria, bloodthirstiness, suicidal despondence. Watching a game in which much is at stake for my nation is more ordeal than fun, I have found: though normally an admirer of the embellishment, the display of flair, and clean play, I suddenly become a Germanic ogre of anxious pragmatism, intolerant of anything that is not directly aimed at triumphing and willing to condone the dirtiest tactics if they will ensure victory. So I am with with those English sports journalists who, like Simon Hattenstone in the Manchester Guardian today, have written about how much England’s no-show has enabled them to enjoy Euro 2008. Us soccer fans could learn from the fans of American sports, who allow a dash of irony to keep them well this side of hysteria and so do not let a defeat of their team ruin their lives too much.