WASHINGTON — Money is the root of evil in French eyes. This is Asia’s century. England reinvents itself every few decades to bound back to a dominant world position. Brazil is history, and future, and always will be.
These are among the allegorical messages being tapped out by the toes of the world’s best soccer players in the game of nations: the World Cup 2002. Even the supposedly unilateralist United States of George W. Bush is finding larger meanings in its sudden success in this supremely multilateral competition of nation-states.
A television audience of 41 million global sports fans has joined spectators in Japan and South Korea this month to watch 32 teams battle toward the June 30 championship match, an ultimate moment of national destiny and glory for the teams that make it through.
Sports and politics do not mix, says conventional wisdom. Men fasten on sports as the safer subject on which to expend conversational testosterone. Sporting contests serve as outlet and as substitute for the open and frequently destructive power struggles of politics.
But conventional wisdom gets it partly wrong again. Pride in victory, like shared grief in defeat, can build and reinforce national character and identity as thoroughly as a call to arms once did in Europe’s crowded landscape. Sport is politics by other means, as Karl von Clausewitz should have said.
The fleet and focused professional athletes who play for their flag — they represent their countries of citizenship rather than of their employment or residence — every four years make the point that nations still count in an era of globalization. Make soccer, not war.
Easy symbolism runs amok in this year’s grand tournament. Quickness, mobility and patience are essential to survival there, as they have been essential in world affairs since Sept. 11. An exceptional crop of goalies makes this year’s play an extended campaign of defensive skills (see U.S. 2, Mexico 0). Homeland security around the net is likely to determine this year’s victor.
Asia rising is another discernible theme. France hosted the glorious 1998 World Cup, won it with Gallic panache and then was unexpectedly eliminated in this year’s first round of play. Co-hosts Japan and South Korea battled through to the second round of play on the strength of their fabled commitments to the work ethic, not on flashiness. Japan was eliminated by Turkey on Tuesday. But the change of locale at least hints at a changing world order.
Here is an Asian conundrum: China, an economic giant with political feet of clay, went home goalless after losing to Costa Rica and Turkey. This undoubtedly had more to say about the 20th century than the 21st. But this could be an interesting omen for a surging but unsteady nation that will host its first Olympics in 2008.
The world turned upside down is another theme that peeks out from the play thus far. In a prophetic 1939 essay about the end of colonialism, George Orwell looked at marching lines of Senegalese troops trained by France to fight the Nazis and asked: "How much longer can we go on kidding these people? How long before they turn their guns in the other direction?"
This year, Senegal turned soccer balls against its former colonial rulers and beat the overconfident French. National gloom deeper than anything the denizens of Mudville ever felt over Casey’s failure at the bat enveloped Paris: The mighty Bleus had stunk the joint up. Victory and the fabulous endorsement contracts it brought the players (many of them from France’s former colonies, too) had gone to their heads, their waistlines and aging legs since 1998, French commentators proclaimed. "Passion for this team made us blind," editorialized Le Monde in deep, moralistic chagrin. France discovered it "is not Brazil, Italy or England," three traditional soccer powerhouses.
A surprisingly uneven Brazilian team made the quarterfinals on the strength of tradition and experience as much as talent. After three decades of underachievement, England moved into the final eight with a strong team displaying speed, flair and an intense hunger for new glory. A glimmer of that same hunger could also be seen in the other Anglo-Saxon contender in the quarterfinals — the United States.
Sports teams at their finest reflect the vitality of their nations’ cultures, languages and ways of life. They not only represent the positive face of nationalism but also help mold it. Increasingly tempted politically to play only in a league of its own, the United States has much to gain from and give to sport’s ultimate game of nations.
Jim Hoagland can be reached at The Washington Post Writers Group, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, DC 20071-9200 or hoaglandj@washpost.com.
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