I was reading Shocking Brazil. Amazing how precient it was.
Gilberto Silva wrote the intro:
“Ask any Brazilian footballer and they will undoubtedly say that playing for our national team – the Seleção, as we call it – is the highest professional and personal honour he can aspire too. In over 15 years as a professional player, I have been blessed with the opportunity to play 93 matches for my country and represent Brazil in three World Cups. While being part of the 2002 winning side was unquestionably the pinnacle of my career, the two tournaments where we returned home early have never faded from my memory. Those were hurtful experiences, I can tell you, but they also taught me a great deal about life and the game. They showed, above all, how winning a competition like the World Cup is an outcome that relies upon so much more than simply having good players.
Brazil are the team that everybody wants to beat thanks to their outstanding record in the World Cup. But at the same time, I feel this record also poses a grave a threat to Brazilian football, for it serves as a perfect excuse for sticking to the status quo. Even when there are clear and troubling signs that the game in Brazil “Even when there are clear and troubling signs that the game in Brazil needs an overhaul, many people both abroad and at home are unaware of the serious organisational problems at the heart of Brazilian football that need to be addressed for the benefit of all stakeholders, from fans to the clubs, if we are to remain as a superpower in the world game.
In this book, Fernando Duarte is not being pessimistic when he focuses on the sad chapters in Brazilian football history. Throughout his tour of World Cup defeats he points out mistakes and lessons learned both on and off the pitch. He also addresses the need for some soul searching as the rest of the world catches up with the Seleção. Like me, Fernando has spent a great deal of his career abroad and from this perspective he has been able to observe that Brazil can sometimes be accused of hiding behind its past successes instead of looking to build upon them.
In late 2013, a group of Brazilian players returned home to help found a player movement that demanding reforms in the way the game is organised, played and run in my country. We called it FC Common Sense. More than simply hailing the good practices we had experienced abroad, we wanted to show the need for collective engagement in improving the standards of the whole football experience in Brazil. A crucial part of our agenda is to show the world that Brazilian football should not be guided by stereotypes and myths and that our problems need to be explained, analysed and understood.”
Furtho wrote: O Globo gives every Brazilian player last night a 0 score, here, describing Ramires as "irrelevante", Fred as "tragico" and Willian as "insipido".
Are you sure that those aren't the zero scores at the end there?
The Ken Early piece is very, very good, though it does flatter my prejudices: realism and planning over magical thinking. (But I'm prejudiced that way largely because I indulged in the latter over the former for too much of my life.)
Anyway, I really hope the U.S. tries to copy the German model rather than the starstruck magical thinking one.
Galway is a big market town with suburbs, and notions. It has a load of pubs that are overfilled with tourists, and cunts from Dublin. It might seem great to all you holidaying cunts, but it's not easy to live in.
Christ, Supermacs. Literally the worst meal I ever had in my life was in a Supermacs in Tullamore, about 15 years ago. The alleged chicken nuggets tasted like soaked industrial rubber.
I dimly remember Berbaslug once telling me that a fine Italian restaurant in his home town, which I had once dined at, was nowadays a branch of Supermacs.
The one in central Galway is a notorious trouble-spot at night. It's only a matter of time before someone is murdered in it, or just outside it.
Anyway, I really hope the U.S. tries to copy the German model rather than the starstruck magical thinking one.
Likewise. With the game beginning to "go mainstream" in the States I think what the American FA do next is crucial. If they approach the sport with the same dedication and attention to detail that they do in athletics and national sports they should be fine. If they adopt the British/Irish model on the other hand...
I could see it going either way, though thankfully the German way is more likely as long is Klinsmann is technical director. But many of the teams in our more popular sports go the super-hero route, with varying degrees of success.
Not to get too grand, but I feel like there's a battle between a German-style rational planning, inclusive model and a "Brazilian"-style exploitative, hero-worshiping, magical thinking model in all sorts of areas of American life and in all sorts of American institutions, and that unfortunately the latter is winning in most of them.
One of the many pleasures for me of supporting the U.S. soccer team is that because we've never really had the star-power to be a team of galacticos, they've had to find strength by playing together well as a team. I hope they don't lose that when/if we manage to develop a bunch of truly world-class players. (Look at the U.S. men's basketball team's performance in the 2004 Olympics for the depressing alternative.)
It's funny you mention that, I was actually thinking about the 2004 USA Men's basketball team as a comparison to what happened to Brazil. Also, the 2003/04 Lakers. They're the team I compared Brazil's 2006 World Cup team to--the emphasis on stars everywhere echoed with the 2006 team's hype with Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Adriano, and Kaka all up front.
Yeah, but because of that disaster, USA basketball turned it around and Coach K managed to build a winning team rather than just a bunch of assholes. USA hockey has also made tremendous progress both in helping to develop great players and in putting together successful teams, especially at the junior level. (The Olympics is kind of a crapshoot).
One of the advantages of our school and college-based sports system is that it is good at creating team spirit and cohesion. When you're playing with kids you've known forever for the honor of your town against those fuckers from the next town over, you're more likely to do whatever it takes for the team than if you're just playing for some club all-star team with kids you only see at practice just because your dad says it will help *your* chances at a scholarship.
The student paper here did an interview about the World Cup with Penn State's soccer coach Bob Warming (slow news time on campus) and he pointed out an important conundrum in youth development. On the one hand, kids are constantly told from age 5 onward to pass the ball, because otherwise it's just mob ball and obviously passing is a key skill, but kids also need to learn how to play with the ball and hold possession, and that means allowing them to make mistakes. Warming says the US' strength is it's commitment and spirit and the weakness is technical skill. Sounds about right.
I would hope most people would agree with that, though Wynalda and Donovan and a bunch of online ninnies complaining about Klinsmann's "defensive tactics" suggest it might not be as obvious as I thought. (Faulting Klinsmann for his player selection is another matter, of course. But the idea that it's an easy thing to decide to just use attacking tactics with players at our technical level against the likes of Germany is, in my opinion, a bit silly.)
Anyway, don't want to turn this into a thread about the U.S., but I couldn't help thinking about it. I really think the German model as described in Early's article is the one all the football associations should try to follow if they possibly can, although obviously it's much harder in some countries than in others. Germany's able to do it because they have a broadly prosperous country with ample resources to make sure all kids interested in football can receive quality coaching from the beginning to as far as they can or want to advance, and the model is supported by the DFB and the Bundesligas on down. (And the clubs are majority fan-owned, which gives the average punter a reason for buy-in to the model, too. And of course I also see all of this as a good reason for people in all countries to push for more social-democratic institutions and economies. Your lives will be better, and your football will be better, too!)
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