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The 2010 World Cup is a great chance to learn about national cultures and how they play out in football/soccer. Because the World Cup is one event where globalization comes alive. And where cultures clash, sometimes in hilarious ways.
For a whole month, it is the place of intense international rivalries, but it is also the place where strangers hug, where Brazilians dance wildly in the streets even when they've lost (as I witnessed it at the 2006 World Cup in Berlin, after Brazil had been ousted by Italy), where every nation puts their best foot forward (pardon the pun).
Through triumph and defeat, the World Cup is a modern example of one world fused with nationalism. In ¨How Soccer Explains the World,¨ Franklin Foer wrote that national teams create a tribal sense amongst fans who show their pride with football shirts, scarves and flags. Ironically, the World Cup is also a symbol of one world.
People typically associate different skill-sets with different regions. For example, speed is typically associated with African players, ball control is seen as a South American trait, and strength is typically seen as the European way.
If you don't mind these obvious clichés, and if you would like a quick mini-workshop on Culture Clash, watch this video clip.
You could say that the culture that gets the best rap in the video are the Brazilians. They are elegant, they are playful, they simply love football, and they dance in the streets even when they lose.
One culture that gets a rather bad rap are the Swiss, who are so careful and detail-oriented that they forget about winning and end up putting the ball into their own goal. (As a Swiss-American dual citizen with Swiss loyalties, I take offense; but since we are supposed to be neutral, I'll let this one go.)
Speaking of hitting your own goal, does the name Andrés Escobar still ring a bell? He played as a defender for Colombia in the 1990 and 1994 World Cups, and was known to his fans as el caballero del football (¨the football's knight¨ or ¨football gentleman¨).
On July 2, 1994, ten days after the World Cup that year (which was won by Brazil), Escobar was shot to death by a gunman right outside the ¨El Indio¨ bar in a suburb of Medellin.
Why? Because he had put the ball in his own goal, leading Colombia to a humiliating defeat against, of all people, the United States, who are known as a greenhorn in the sport they alone, in their typical exceptionalism (the Swiss would say it's an Extrawurscht or special sausage), insist on calling ¨soccer.¨
The United States went on to win the match 2:1, and Colombia was eliminated from the World Cup in the first round and in national disgrace.
It was reported that the killer shouted "Gooooooooal!" for each of the twelve bullets he fired at Escobar, mimicking Latin American sports commentators for their calls after a goal is scored.
For an illustration of how Latin television announcers do that, see the short video below.
To be fair, the Latin Americans are not alone with their unbridled passions. You surely remember the 2006 World Cup final, when French star player Zinedine Zidane head-butted Marco Materazzi after verbal taunts and insults from the Italian.
And whenever their team has lost, disgusted Italian fans have been known to throw their television sets out the window into the streets of Rome or Rimini (I saw this when I was in Italy during the 1982 World Cup).
During this World Cup, we are bound to see not only culture clash but also a clash of the sexes. Men versus women, to be exact. See the video below.
In true Swiss neutral fashion, let me wish each and every one of you that your favorite team wins the 2010 World Cup. And if not, may you still dance in the streets. Enjoy!
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Hey Thomas - Football is called soccer in Australia too. Is that because we are too Americanized I wonder?
ReplyDeleteof course. i don't think football is called soccer in australia because of americanization. as far as i know, the term ¨soccer¨ originated in england, first appearing in the 1880s as an oxford "-er" abbreviation of the word "association.¨
ReplyDeletethe article is greta Thomas (especially the videos)it never ceases to ama=ze me how much variation there is in human beings due to culture, yet underneath we are all basically the same.
ReplyDeletethank you for your kind words. amazing indeed. as you know, decoding a target culture before you work with that culture is essential for business success. as you may recall from the ¨culture clash¨ book, cultural values (your basic lens on the world, what geert hofstede used to call ¨the software of the mind¨) is given by history, more precisely by 4 factors: the founders of the culture (e.g. in switzerland, the farmers who gathered on the ruetli in 1291, and the revolutionaries in 1848 who crafted the swiss constitution); the heroes (e.g. roger federer and his precision, hard work, diplomacy and humility), villains (e.g. anybody from abroad, but also christoph blocher), and defining moments (e.g. being overrun by the french in 1798, with a subsequent ¨gleichschaltung¨ and loss of autonomy by the cantons, until the 1815 vienna congress re-established swiss independence and made its neutrality permanent). understanding these 4 factors allow you to decode the blindspots of any culture. try it on australia. when i worked with kazakhstan's prime minister and cabinet, i decoded the culture by reading on wikipedia and wikitravel in a few hours. standing in the shoes of the kazaksh was a giant success factor on my trips there.
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