#102, July 4^th, 2006

New Nationalisms

Where does one begin? Well, today I emailed a German in London, for whom I have written an article, and I commented that the California spirit had done wonders for the German national team in the World Cup. I went on to quip (since the article I had written was on the topic of transnationalism) that England needed a bit of this kind of transnationalism infused into their team (emphasizing that it ought not to be the Swedish kind), and that having only one Canadian on the team had been insufficient for their needs. My foreign correspondent replied that he was hoping that the California infusion would continue to be of value as the team faced its old-arch rival, Italy. Well, we shall see.

But this is a funny thing, nationalism. There is a wonderful book that was brought out just in time for this World Cup, The Thinking Fan’s Guide to the World Cup [edited by Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey, and published by Harper], which (in spite of the oxymoronic title) provides excellent short essays on each of the countries playing in the finals. The one on Germany is especially good. Written by Alexander Osang, a former East German who now lives in New York City, it is about how the author came to terms with his anti-West German sentiments and a veritable inferiority complex and came to root for his national team. For so many years he had wanted West Germany to lose and had resented the wealth and superiority of the West Germans. Now he was beginning to come to terms with it, mainly because of the many changes occurring in Germany: the country was now governed by a new Chancellor, Angela Merkel, who came from outside the establishment; the national team has relinquished its gritty win-at-all-costs style of football promoted long ago by Fritz Walter; it is now captained by an East German, the brilliant Chelsea player (had to slip that in, even though he hasn’t arrived at Stamford Bridge yet), Michael Ballack; and it is now coached by the former West German star and now California resident, Jurgen Klinsmann, who when he played for his national team had been far less dour than his teammates. Klinsmann, an optimist to the core, lives in California and commutes back to Germany for his training sessions and to see his players perform in the Bundesliga. Who wouldn’t have a sunny disposition under the circumstances, living in the land of OC and paid a handsome sum to do what he loves most (besides playing) – coaching football? “Klinsmann of the Moment,” as the Guardian has labeled him.

Klinsmann has actually faced a lot of stick from Germans for this American arrangement, and for not initially bringing success (in contrast to Eriksson, who brought immediate success to England and then languished for years on end), but his American methods of training have been a tonic for the German players and they have raised their game so that Ballack no longer looks so exceptional on their team (getting some sons of Polish immigrants has been helpful also). There must have been many Americans who hoped that Germany would lose before the semi-finals, if only because the tournament would then have been considered a “catastrophe” for the Germans (in accordance with Klinsmann’s pronouncement), and Jurgen would have been able to transfer his allegiance more fully to the United States and could have taken up the job of coaching its national team. Now we have to hope that Germany wins, and Klinsmann decides that there must be other, greater challenges to take on, and so that he resigns – fat chance, of course!

But what of nationalism? We have seen the New German perform, and we like what we see. This is the New Europe, led by the New Germany, and it looks not bad – the fact that there are Poles and people of African descent on the team – maybe even a Turkish player or two around, is a hopeful sign. But is that Old Germany gone entirely? Well, if we look at the ruthlessness of German penalty takers, and the clinical work of Hans Lehman in goal we have to wonder. When contrasted with the English penalty takers, you really have to wonder about national character and whether or not the Old Germany is dead. At least at the level of stereotype, they performed to plan. Each German penalty taker approached the penalty area with steely resolve and banged the ball hard beyond the Argentine keeper’s grasp. Meanwhile Lehman knew exactly which way to dive and saved several of the kicks coming his way (he had a crib sheet with him). Contrast that with the English penalty takers. The Portuguese went one goal up, and up steps Frank Lampard. He looked like he would rather be in the bar at the Bridge having a pint, or at least anywhere else besides in front of 70,000 screaming fans. He had missed his previous twenty-five shots in the tournament, you knew and he knew, that he would not score – a fairly lame attempt to the goalkeeper’s left was easily saved (I will say, however, that Lampard did not have a bad World Cup; anyone who can get into the number of scoring positions he did needs to be commended – he just needed a little more support than he got from team, coach, and journalists to score a handful of goals – he needed Klinsmann!). OK, the Portuguese player then slams the ball at a hundred miles an hour against the outside of the post, with Robinson, the English keeper, diving in completely the opposite direction. Three cheers! Up steps Owen Hargreaves, who has just had the game of his life and owes nobody anything, and one is thinking, two things are working in his favor, he’s Canadian, and he’s been hanging around with Germans (old ones). He takes a pretty decent kick with German resolve, and gets the Canadian luck (are they lucky?) as Ricardo, the keeper, can’t quite save it. 1-1. Not bad, you’re thinking (if you’re English). And then when Petit scuffs his shot a little wide (with Robinson almost reaching it) you begin thinking the jinx is over – because here we have the man of steel stepping up, Mr. Gerrard. Now you know, he’s going to score because, if we have a New German in Klinsmann, Steven Gerrard (who has conquered Europe with single shots) is the New English Man (sorry Rooney). But, no, his shot repeats Lampard’s effort and it is saved, and you know it can only get worse from there. And it does. The English never really looked like scoring and they appeared, compared to the Germans, like they wanted to be in California on the beach sorting out their tan and doing a bit of surfing – with their wives. And now they can can, wherever they wish!

We ask ourselves, at this juncture, whether this is such a bad thing. Is steely resolve what we want from our New English Men? The team’s wives, led by Lady Becks, won the shopping games. While I suppose it goes without saying that you want to win at the World Cup and to do so the chances are that you will need to score a penalty or two, is it not actually the case that there is something to be said for not winning? Or to put it another way, do/should the English really want to win above all else? This time it seemed that they wanted to win to quite an uncharacteristic degree. They were playing appalling soccer and still scraping by and that was deemed sufficient – Fritz Walter must have had a few English disciples. But while the Germans were enjoying themselves and playing above their talent level, the English seemed to be playing well below their own level because they looked to be in absolute pain from day one. Now Ronaldinho may have been criticized for smiling a little too much and not getting on with the business of scoring goals, but no English player smiled once throughout the tournament, and they weren’t getting on with that business either. Have fun, or just go home – or go for a vacation to California. Something, but don’t play miserable football that you’re not enjoying and the spectators aren’t either. Was there a player having fun? Yes, Hargreaves, the Canadian. He was romping around – playing – running all over the park, making his fellow midfielders look like they had something stuck somewhere impeding all movement. I digress. But the point is, I think, that the only way that that English team could have won is if it had gone to Germany with the intention of not winning, and just tried to see how far it could get for the laugh of it. I’m not saying they should have done no training; they could have dragged weights around like the Germans, but they needed to do it as though it wasn’t just a miserable job. Here, have fun on the chain gang!

But do we really want to win, as a nation – speaking here not as an American (about whom we will have to say more later). The English seem so conflicted about the issue. Here are two examples of what I mean. I remember once hearing a Middle-Eastern academic (no it was reported to me, I now recall) at Mount Holyoke College, saying that nationalism had not really been fully understood by social historians at least, because of the blasé attitude towards nationalism among the English academics who dominated the field. Now E.P. Thompson you may remember took great pride in Englishness, but it was of a particularly weird kind. The English were better because their airport was not as nice as other people’s – this was before Terminal Four and before Margaret Thatcher had her full impact. The English were great because they were rational and empirical, whereas nationalism is all about blind loyalty and sentiment. Dash it all, that’s not on. While old E.P. wanted to stay out of Europe, it was in the name of a higher internationalism of peace and reason – not fertile soil for nationalism. Of course, one could have responded with a Churchill or a Thatcher (neither of whom would qualify as social historians, of course) but they were very much last gaspers, trying to buck the trend, Canutes on the shore attempting unsuccessfully to turn back the tide. And there is something oh-so post-imperial about all this. The ethnic diversity welcomed onto the team (the empire striking back) hasn’t resulted in a raising of the level of play for the whole – the English aren’t French, and they can’t seem to imagine, in their inner core at least, that they were right all along (whatever that berk Niall Ferguson might think – he’s a Scot, and they were always more invested in the imperial project!), so they can’t see the inclusion of the Other as the successful outcome of their earlier burden. The English are embarrassed about empire, and nationalism (regardless of who is being cheered for) smacks of a return to something bad. They just haven’t quite worked out how to express nationalism in a different way.

The second example comes from Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch. This returns us to the book mentioned earlier, The Thinking Fan’s Guide, as Hornby has an excellent piece in it on England. Très Amusant. And it repeats something that he said in Fever Pitch that struck a chord with me, when I first read it. It was the fact that the English support their nation’s team, but really only as an addendum to their local team. Hornby’s nuts about Arsenal, and that’s nuts (just kidding), so he basically is prepared to root for Les Bleus who have Henry and Vieira (once of the Gunners). For me, this made sense as I grew up as a Chelsea supporter. England won the World Cup in 1966 before my allegiance to Chelsea had been fully cemented, but from 1967 onwards unless the England manager picked the players that I thought should be playing for England, basically Peter Osgood, then I didn’t really care what happened. I would have supported Scotland, if only they had picked Charlie Cooke more frequently. In 1970, I even managed to think that Peter Bonneti (the Chelsea galkeeper) had done well against West Germany, while all around everyone was trying to pin the blame exclusively on him (“he didn’t dive late, he never”). Perhaps this club-not-country sentiment died down in the 1980s, as some of the thugs found that they could go on the rampage in Europe (and the Malvinas) as easily for their country as for their team, but there are certainly divided loyalties. Everyone ends up questioning everyone who is picked and there is no real sense of solidarity. A Liverpool supporter probably hated Rooney, Neville, and Beckham. While a ManU supporter would have had little time for Gerrard. I must be the only person who believes that had Robbie Fowler been played more in the 2002 World Cup and been picked for this one, we would have done a whole lot better. Not the quickest player in the world anymore, but every team needs God, and I agree with the Liverpool fans that that is most clearly Mr. Fowler. Besides, he’s as rich as sin (aren’t all gods), and he could have helped pay for the England coach!

All right, nationalism, I know. So England will always have trouble getting on board for a project such as winning the World Cup. It will really only happen, I believe, if the World Cup comes to English soil again. But even then I have my doubts. The Premier division is made up of foreign players. That’s a good thing. It raises the level of everyone. But it also screws up people’s national identities. Essien, Robben, Makalele, Cech, Duffy, Drogba, to name a few are all on one team, and this results in identity soup packets that create very tasty but confusing concoctions. The English may become more European, or worldly, and the whole commercialism of the game will make the World Cup seem exciting to watch and be a part of, but not really something that someone should get too worked up over. Reading the Guardian blog for the last month has been somewhat scary – odd people accusing other people of being traitors because of what they suggested about the English team and its performance. Well, there’s always going to be a Churchill or a Thatcher out there, but the reality is that there are as many views of what should be done to save England’s soccer as there are respondents to the Guardian blog. And they all think they are right (basing their views, basically as Hornby might suggest they would, on the team they support).

And, what of the United States? For some reason, people here have gotten it into their heads that the success of American soccer is dependent on a good run for the national team in the World Cup. I am not so sure. Americans aren’t very good at these national team sports. They would rather set up a World Series to which they only invite their own players. Their football, baseball and basketball, is really meant to be for them only – with the inclusion of a few Europeans in the NBA and a Latin American contingent in the NL (a group of people who it is assumed, of course, want to be Americans). When the time comes to play sports like baseball against other countries, Americans know they have nothing to gain. They should just send out college players to take care of the business. In basketball they know that they are so superior that they can only be embarrassed at the Olympic Games if they fail to come away with gold. In Hockey, they can score an upset or two, but only as complete underdogs overachieving.

In soccer, the United States have Klinsmann, and the Germans are borrowing him. That’s real success. Americans have thousands, even millions of kids playing the game. They have money in the sport like you wouldn’t believe, and like Europeans could only dream of. Youth development in the US is so far ahead of everywhere else that all the training ideas in the future will probably come from the United States and will be picked up by others around the world. American players will undoubtedly make it big in Europe in future, but we need to remember that for American children the real money is still in basketball, baseball, and particularly American football, and the monopolies that these are (Trust me) will ensure that many of the talented players will turn to these sports. Americans have the facilities (infrastructure) in all sports, so they also have the choices.

There is also the divided loyalty question, which makes soccer a problem for American nationalism. Everyone’s an immigrant in the United States (forced or otherwise), so everyone may still root for his or her country of origin or heritage. They may also decide to go and play for that country, rather than for the United States – let’s see whether Freddy Adu decides to play for Ghana or not after this World Cup. This means that creating an national identity through football may be more difficult for the United States than for other countries, whether or not one has a Fritz Walter around willing to do the ideological heavy lifting.

And, that said, Americans should not be dumping on their team as they have done since the United States went out in the opening round. The United States had the hardest group to play in. The Czech Republic’s team was made up of some solid players. Italy, with whom the U.S. tied when down a man, have turned out to be very good, and Ghana were an excellent team also. The United States showed some tactical deficiencies at times, and some players were a little taken with their star status and hadn’t quite worked out how to deal with a loss of form (akin to Frank Lampard). But they did well overall and fought hard. Americans need to get over the idea that everything depends on their men’s team's success. It doesn’t. Far more important, and it always has been, is building and rebuilding the women’s game.

Ah, now there’s a different story about New Nationalism.