FOOTBALL AGAINST THE ENEMY / SIMON KUPER

Simon Kuper (1969- ) is a Uganda born British, naturalized French author and journalist. He studied history and German at the Oxford University, and studied at the Harvard University as a Kennedy Scholar. He was born to South African parents, spent most of his early life living and traveling all over the world, and now lives in France with author/journalist wife and three children. He wrote for the Financial Times most of his life, starting in 1994, covering a variety of topics, and is notably known for his sportswriting, both as a journalist and an author. A libra. 

This book was originally published in 1994. Kuper traveled to 22 countries in 9 months, interviewing football managers, politicians, ‘mafiosi’, journalists, fans and others. His frequent interviews in the book also with anthropologists makes more sense after learning that his father and aunt were anthropologists. 

For this book, he states that he was in search of finding about how football affects the life of a country, and how the life of a country affects its football. And how football is not simply football, and how it is intricately bound with politics and culture. 

In the chapter on Russian football, an anthropologist Shinkaryov explains to him that Dynamo was the club of the KGB, CSKA was of the army, Torpedo was of the Zil plant, Lokomotive was of the railways, but Spartak alone was independent, and supporting it was ‘a small way of saying ‘No’. And ‘[at] the height of Stalin’s purges, the only place where a gathering could express its hatred was in the anonymity of a football stadium’. Kuper cites people openly admitting to bribery, cheating and connections to the mafia in the football industry- as an example, Koloskov, the President of the Russian Football Federation who had ample power within FIFA and UEFA, quotes to him an old Russian saying ‘He who is not caught is not a thief’. 

A Russian journalist, V. Kukushkin tells Kuper that ‘many referees accept bribes from both sides and they judge the match honestly. Teams pay up simply to get fair treatment.’ He also tells him that an old journalist told him, ‘Bad referees give penalty kicks or offsides, but good referees know how to stop an attack while it is still in midfield.’ Kuper talks about how Russian spectators were laughing at football players’ blunders during a game, and they explain to him that it’s the Russian way- they like to laugh and watch football as theater, and the players are also laughing at the spectators because they are rich, and the spectators aren’t so.

On Gascoigne ‘Gazza’ in Britain, Kuper says he was the symbol Britain needed then: He played European, but remained unmistakably English. He likens John Major to Gazza, and says people stopped believing Thatcher’s claims of British superiority, and preferred a figure like Major or Gazza. 

Kuper summarizes the four main approaches in the football of the time: Britain’s long-ball game, total football spread by the Dutch, ‘piano and shoeshine’ football of Brazil and South Africa, and the catenaccio, the defensive system of the Italians. Most teams borrow from all the styles, but teams have a general tendency towards one of these systems. 

In talking with Helenio Herrera, who refined and spread the catenaccio, Kuper reports Herrera agrees different countries create different charactered players, yet by mixing them, making them friends with each other and with training camps, he is able to homogenize them enough to be able to play the system he wants them to play.  

On Barça, Kuper says that the Catalans really do not want a state of their own, but they want recognition, a symbol to prove that they are a separate people, and that is a main contributing factor in why Barça has become the biggest club in the world. The immigrants also support Barça if they want to belong in Catalania, and have something to talk about, he says. And one Catalan tells Kuper, ‘some people watch Barça because they like football.’

On football in Africa, a Cameroon anthropologist tells Kuper players who did best in Europe were mostly from Anglophone nations of Africa. British colonization was openly racist, he says, so players from those colonies were better able to deal with it. Kuper also thinks there is no special talent or ‘suppleness’ in African players, but the fact that football is played a lot there everywhere on the streets has produced good players. A TV presenter Ignatius Fon Echekiye tells Kuper: ‘In Europe, players learn to minimize energy expenditure. So players who come back from Europe no longer have the same kind of endurance, and though their raw talent is shaped, we feel they come back worse.’

On football in America, Kuper theorizes that immigrants took up baseball when they arrived, not risking ridicule for playing a funny European game on the streets. Hispanic Americans and mostly richer Americans do watch and play football, but American fans are generally not fanatics. And ‘ghetto kids take the view that soccer is for softies.’ Kuper says American women never felt as outsiders to the game, and many play football because ‘Americans never found out that soccer is a man’s game.’

On the organization of the 1978 World Cup by Argentina, Kuper describes how the generals that came to power after a coup, wanted to impress the world and also their citizens by putting on a show. For that they destroyed the slums, even attempted to erect a wall to hide them. Many prisoners and other ‘politically incorrect’ people were killed so the journalists could not find them. Not enough visitors came, and the World Cup ended up actually educating the world to what was really going on in Argentina. Five years later the junta gave way to a civilian government. Kuper writes, the fascist generals were naive in their thinking because they were not used to playing the politics game, and instead of the boring achievements of providing work, housing and a stable currency, they thought loud triumphs would better bring people together. And the unitedness it brought to its citizens are described like this by an Argentinian: ‘[but] the joy is not joy. It is a kind of explosion of a society which has been obliged to keep silent’. 

On Brazilian football, Kuper describes their folklore figure, the Malandro. The Malandro’s ancestors were slaves, and he resolved to be completely free. He is a con-man, a trickster who works alone and obeys no rules. Though poor, he dresses well, eats in the best places, and is with beautiful women. Brazilians identify with this figure, and ‘There is a deep connection between tricking defenders on the football field and being a smart boy in real life. This boy is a Malandro’. Brazilian football is also influenced by the capoeira of their culture, and ‘even if the players are not capoeristas, they come from a culture that admires grace and trickery’.  But now few Malandros are left in Brazil Kuper says, and they are all politicians. 

For the old rivalry between Celtic and Rangers, 

he says it is no longer a matter of Catholics versus Protestants, but rather a matter of genuine enjoyment of the rivalry: ‘They are not about to give up their ancient traditions just because they no longer believe in God’. 

This book is not a cohesive work in search of specific answers, but rather the travel journal of a young football enthusiast who is happy to travel, meet some significant figures from the football world, collect any and all anectodes he can get through the people he meets. It is certainly outdated, yet many of the concepts are still relevant in the current football world as far as I can tell. There really are no surprises, big revelations in the book, if you know a little about football, yet it is a pleasant read because of Kuper’s enthusiasm and his anthropological angle supported with anectodes from a variety of people.

‘He was amazed, [Nikolai Starostin] writes, that these ‘camp bosses, arbiters of the life and death of thousands upon thousands of human beings… were so benevolent to anything concerning soccer. Their unbridled power over human lives was nothing compared to the power of soccer over them.’ ‘Enough has been written about football hooligans. Other fans are much more dangerous.’

‘In Europe, players learn to minimize energy expenditure. So players who come back [to Africa] from Europe no longer have the same kind of endurance, and though their raw talent is shaped, we feel they come back worse.’

‘Americans never found out that soccer is a man’s game.’

Author: Simon Kuper
Title: Football Against the Enemy
Published: 1996, by Orion
First published: 1994
Pages: 239