Team Spirit; Reviewed by Jay R. Mandle
Franklin Foer, armed with a terrific idea, took six months off from his job as a staff writer at the New Republic to tour the soccer capitals of the world. He set out to observe soccer as a way to understand the consequences of globalization -- the increasing interdependence of the world's nations -- by studying a sport in which "national borders and national identities had been swept into the dustbin of soccer history." The result is a travelogue full of important insights into both cultural change and persistence.</br></br>Foer returned from this global tour convinced that globalization has not and will not soon wipe away local institutions and cultures. On the contrary, he suspects that the opposite has happened: In response to the threat of global integration, local entities have launched counterattacks that are successful but "not always in such a good way." Local blood feuds and corruption have proved to be remarkably persistent. So persistent, in fact, that Foer believes that globalization is not likely to deliver on the promise of a more humane world order that some of its proponents anticipate. That would require a liberal nationalism, a development necessary "to blunt the return of tribalism." Soccer, at its best, shows how this might work. For Foer, the sport demonstrates that "you could love your country -- even consider it a superior group -- without desiring to dominate other groups or closing yourself off to foreign impulses."</br></br>Regarding the "not so good ways" that locals respond to globalism, Foer found much to worry about. The world of soccer can be quite ugly. In Serbia, fans of Red Star Belgrade became, as he puts it, "Milosevic's shock troops, the most active agents of ethnic cleansing, highly efficient practitioners of genocide." The "unfinished fight over the Protestant Reformation" is kept alive in the stands in Glasgow. And, at least as he reports it, Margaret Thatcher was not far off the mark when she said that the hooliganism that emerged in soccer during the 1980s was "a disgrace to civilized society."</br></br>Foer argues that the gruesome antisocial fan behavior that occurs when soccer is at its worst is counterbalanced in other places where the sport plays a role in creating a more humane order. The most interesting and unlikely of these is Iran. During the Islamic Revolution of 1979, women were prohibited from attending soccer games at Tehran's 120,000-seat stadium. But, as Foer tells it, this banning never fully took effect, with some women sneaking into the facility dressed in men's clothes. Pressed by female soccer fans, the ruling Iranian clergy issued a new fatwa in 1987 that allowed women to watch games on television, though the ban on attendance remained in place.</br></br>This compromise could not survive the jubilation that followed the Iranian national team's successful capture of a World Cup berth in 1997. The team itself was at least to some extent a participant in the liberal global order: Its coach was a Brazilian who wore a necktie, an accessory that the ruling clergy considered a European imposition. But the victory celebration and its aftermath were even more important. Foer reports that many of the younger celebrants were women, some of whom danced with uncovered heads. Further, at the official celebration at the stadium, when women were denied entrance they mounted a demonstration. They shouted, "Aren't we part of this nation? We want to celebrate too. We aren't ants." Ultimately they broke through the police barriers and joined the mass victory party. Foer compares this "football revolution" to the Boston Tea Party. He notes that the event will "go down as the moment when the people first realized that they could challenge their tyrannical rulers." As the United States looks for ways to encourage liberalism within Islam, an event such as this deserves attention. Its impact suggests that Paul Wolfowitz, if no one else, should read this account.