All in One Rhythm: Brazil Rejects the Pure Spectacle

The people taking to the streets in Brazil are demonstrating the only right and true response to the militarized boondoggle of international sports festivals like FIFA's World Cup and the Olympics. These are serial spectacles - a rotating cast and set acting out the same story over and over again - a massive fiction about fairness and a "level playing field." It is fiction in the sense of the lie, the scam. The complicity of any government with the production of these spectacles is a scandal.

from Christopher Gaffney's Geostadia

The level field of the pure spectacle is flattened by bulldozers, helicopters and police. The formal image of the World Cup: a green rectangle of the best grass for the best game - a painted-on Imperial green that registers nicely in HD and bears no resemblance whatsoever to the fields that the world's people actually play on. Our own lived experience of the game is mediated through it. The beautiful game is turned into a game of deficits - the distance between that artificial image of the perfect conditions and the actual conditions in which we live, work, play - that distance itself is captured, packaged and sold to us as a form of global longing - a shared spectator experience that we indulge every four years and from which we turn away, like uncertain addicts - disgusted with ourselves and with the things we want. (This is why I am not going to the World Cup.)

It may seem a strange moment for me to remind you of Brazil's women's team. The CBF has never done right by the women's team. They are still here nevertheless as embodiments of everything FIFA resents. The impure spectacle, the spectacle of intense skill and joy that takes us all by surprise every time we see it because we consume it through a system determined to forget every sick pass, every goal or supernatural save. A system that can't hold onto her joy - for that kid of joy is a poison to its system. So a women's club will win its national title before an all but empty stadium. A player might grow her hair long and indulge a manager's impulse to put her in a uniform so tight it doesn't allow her to move her arms. But she knows it won't work. She remains an irritant to the apparatus. A grain of sand, a splinter.

Perhaps this is why FIFA wants women to play their World Cup on plastic. Or why we forget that people have organized international tournaments for women (e.g Mexico, 1970) - at a time when supposedly nobody cared - and these games drew massive audiences (e.g. Estadio Azteca, 110,000). I can hardly get myself wound up about the "failure" of women's soccer. I like to think of the dogged failure of the women's game to attract as a sign. It is an unspectacular spectacle, an impure spectacle of the lowest order.

From a PRI story, "The Struggle for Equality in Brazil" 

Given that the men's world cup is in essence Moloch's game, I find it hard to root for "equity" for the women's. Instead, I like to remember the activist and egalitarian spirit of the women's game as a counterpoint. FIFA hates women, FIFA hates feminists - and in this simple fact we see that it actually hates the grassroots it purports to nurture - the same grassroots spirit it appropriates as a marketing strategy - the favela fantasy, the favela as the soul of the game - the "slum," the "street" rendered in one commercial after another (teeming with life and with talent) from an actual community into the commodity's patina.

Demonstrators in Brazil are telling us what we already know: we need to hate these systems back - properly, and in numbers. It is not enough to want a "better" World Cup, just as it not enough to want the state to be more efficient in the ways that it strips our educational, health care and transportation systems for parts, to build higher fences and thicker walls. 

There is a lot of good writing about what is happening in Brazil right now. I recommend Christopher Gaffney's blog Geostadia, from which I pulled the photo at the top of this post. It's a smart starting place for the English-language reader. Check out this post on Social Text too. 

The Vulnerable Spectacle: Notes on the Bombing of a Marathon

The bombing at the Boston Marathon - what is there to say about such a thing? Already, barely a day into the story the story is on repeat. Terror, heroism, terror, heroism. How many are dead? Wounds and more wounds. Women & children. Look out for a dark skinned man in a hoodie. It's an awful mix.

Violence and the sport spectacle: they are not exactly strangers to each other (Munich, Hillsborough, the parking lot of Dodgers Stadium). Nevertheless, it is hard to place this event in a sport context. The obvious point of reference is Eric Rudolph's bombing of a crowd at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta (which killed one person, and in which another died of a heart attack, and in which a great many were injured). If the media has shown any restraint in naming suspects (while giving in to its instinct to visualize that suspect for us), we can thank poor Richard Jewell, a security guard who actually saved people's lives when he spotted Rudolph's backpack. Jewell was falsely accused of the bombing and vilified by, sacrificed to the media gods. 

The reasons for Rudolph's attack are confused: it was part of a series of bombings - the others were attacks on health clinics (which provided abortions) and a gay bar. Although people assume his actions were part of some kind of homocidal anti-abortion campaign (as if that in and of itself isn't already crazy), investigators reported that people who knew him understood him to be anti-government, a racist, sexist and a homophobe - they couldn't recall that abortion was his issue. He was, more nearly, full of hate and violence. It seems likely Rudolph was drawn to the Olympics because it was a national spectacle at which large numbers of people were gathered and on which cameras were turned.

It feels weird to talk about this bombing as a sports story. This story is atypical - it isn't the spike in domestic violence associated with Superbowl Sunday, it isn't the mob taking-to-the-street after a team's loss or victory, it isn't an explicitly political attack on athletes representing the enemy, it isn't the stadium disaster brought on by indifferent capital, squeezing as many into as poor a space as possible. 

Perhaps this doesn't feel like a sports story because the marathon is a weird sport spectacle. It's an individual sport that provides the space for the articulation a specific kind of public. We don't think of the Boston marathon - or any marathon, really - as a nationalist spectacle (even one staged on Patriot's Day). Events won year after year by Ethiopian and Kenyan athletes remain popular, in every sense of the word. (An American man hasn't won the Boston marathon since 1983; an American woman hasn't finished first since 1985.)

Marathons are occasions for civic hospitality. That is the defining element of the major events staged in the US: the New York, Boston and Los Angeles marathons are city-stories. The metropolis shuts down its streets, interrupts its routines for a festival celebrating one of the simplest of things - running. Running for hours. Running on boulevards you know from your car, from buses, or from the movies.  

Spectators are right there on the street with the athletes. The spectacle unfolds lazily (for spectators) over hours. Spectators gather not just for the elite - they gather for the ordinary. And spectators are important: runners need their energy, their support and their cheer. There's something just plain generous about the marathon, as an event. It is a mass event - everyone on the sidewalk is part of the event's support team.

My yoga studio faces Sunset boulevard and has a large store-front window. The Los Angeles marathon went right past us. Our teacher turned the class so that we practiced facing the street. He led as through slightly more than 26 sun salutations so that we might celebrate and thank the runners. So that we might participate in the event with them. Outside, music blared, people cheered and handed out water. 

I hope this bombing doesn't change the culture of the marathon - its openness and generosity, its civic-mindedness, its celebration of the common runner and the commons through which she runs. If this is the thing that makes it vulnerable, it is also the thing that makes it valuable.  

No Justice, No Peace in College Sports: More on Penn State

I'm jumping into the Penn State mosh pit! In this week's column (Why the NCAA Sanctions Are Just Dead Wrong), Dave Zirin takes the NCAA to task for the $60 million dollar fine and post-season ban that it leveled against Penn State. Zirin isn't arguing that the program shouldn't be punished: quite the opposite. His argument is with the role that these sanctions play in the political theater of college sports, supporting the NCAA's self-assigned role as divine authority over the kingdom of amateur athletics.

I can see the point. As a culture, we have a tendency to turn to colleges and universities as if they were Meta-Parents. We wait for the NCAA to step in and punish its children. But the assignation of that kind of authority to almost completely unsupervised structure goes hand-in-hand with the abuse of that power. (Think: FIFA)

The problem is that the NCAA is a meta-version of the Penn State program itself. That organization has had full contact with so many forms of abuse of power and authority in college football especially that its attempt to claim some kind of moral high ground here is nauseating. 

That I would feel queasy about it is something. Penn State football is the Scientology of college sports. Let'em go down. But I have a couple things to add to Zirin's critical look at the NCAA's actions. 

Zirin expresses concern for Penn State as a public institution. He writes, "The punishment levied by Emmert was nothing less than an extra-legal, extra-judicial imposition into the affairs of a publicly funded campus." At least some of Zirin's criticism is directed at this - the idea that Penn State is a public institution, and that the NCAA is here interfering with publicly governed resources. I absolutely agree - but the problem is big, deep and complicated.

Not all public universities are the same. Penn State is so beholden to the financial teats of alumni wealth and the commercial payoff of big time sports that it turned a blind eye to years of sexual abuse. And as the Freeh report makes clear, the whole of the university leadership conspired to keep the story under wraps. Worse, they actually helped Sandusky into his position at a youth outreach program whose relationship with the university would provide the architecture for his access to victims.

Worse, Penn State's cover-up of child abuse was staged while the university was also suppressing complaints about the homophobia of one of its other coaches (Rene Portland, a Paterno protégé). For about two decades athletes were kicked off the team, and staff were silenced. The administration ignored protests of faculty, staff and students. But then an exiled player filed a Title IX complaint: and the campus faced a losing fight against the feds. The settlement produced by that complaint required all supervisors, coaches, staff, administrators to attend educational meetings about reporting harassment and abuse. The university was getting a big lesson in compliance - which it ignored. I heard from very good sources that Paterno attended at least one of these policy sessions, arriving late and plainly showing his irritation.

But back to the defense of Penn State as a public university. Public education is not what it used to be. In 2012, about 14% of Penn State's budget was supported by public funding - this is a reflection of decreased public support for all of the Commonwealth Campuses (Penn State is the flagship campus of a network that stretches from Erie to Scranton). 

That figure goes hand in hand with increases in tuition. Penn State's State College campus has the highest in-state tuition of any public university in the United States ($15,250/year in 2011) and it has held that distinction for quite a few years. (See, for example: "Should Public Universities Behave Like Private Colleges," in Business Week Nov 14 2004 and Penn State's 2011/2012 "budget breakdown.") The fact that Penn State is a public university doesn't mean that it serves the mission we associate with that term "public education."

The NCAA is concerned about the value of the brand and the stability of the organization's power. Penn State officials are worried about the same - they are not thinking about Penn State as a part of the public system. And the state's elected officials aren't thinking about Penn State as a public resource either: they've been working for years to privatize the whole system. 

It has been a long time since the leaders of public universities acted like stewards of the state commons. Just look at what happens when one does: UVA President Teresa Sullivan was ousted by a Board of Trustees for doing just that.

Anyway: I keep returning in my own mind to the public outrage regarding Sandusky. That outrage appears in exact proportion to the fervor of the public's investment in college sports as some sort of Oz where the playing field is leveled by scholarships, where gender inequity was banished by a single legislative act, and where things like rape are aberrations and not in fact part of the same culture that fetishizes paternalistic, macho authority. "Jo-Pa couldn't possibly have known!" becomes "We can't talk about this!" becomes "Nobody needs to know!" We turn to "JoPa," then to the paternalistic structures of the university, then the NCAA - each an exponential replication of the same institutional psychosis in which people imagine that these people actually care about us. 

I take Zirin's anger to be about that - that an independent report and an NCAA sanction might be mistaken by the public as justice, or as change. It is, in fact, neither. Rage on, sister.

Silent Majority: On UC Davis and the War on Students

Depressingly, few of us who work at the University of California were surprised by the fact that demonstrating students would be treated with such violence. A squad of colleagues affirmed that it was business as usual when they stood passive while Officer Pike calmly went about his task. UC Davis's Chancellor and its Police Chief both reacted as if this were an unpleasant routine, until it became a news item.

The University of California's leaders have been a waging war on students for years. This scene is repeated with increasing force directed at protesters who have sought ever more dramatic ways of demonstrating their "non-violence." Shouting? Too violent. Standing? Violent. Sitting down and chanting? Still violent. Finally, our students are on the floor with their mouths shut.

We have also witnessed Orwellian twists in the system's efforts to quash dissent. When demonstrating students aren't bludgeoned and sprayed, they are marked with antiquated labels like "disrespectful," "intolerant" and "uncivil" in a prelude to "discipline" and disenfranchisement. In a February 2010 memo ominously titled "Intolerance on Campus," UC President Mark G. Yudof lumped organized student activists together with racists when he compared the Irvine 11 to the students who thought hanging a noose in the UC San Diego library was funny. Both, he wrote, showed a lack of "tolerance."

The comparison (which Yudof has made more than once) is chilling. It draws a line of equivalence
between a loud but non-violent protest against violence, and an action that is itself shorthand for a quite specific history of terrifying violence. Students protesting systemic, state-sanctioned violence were equated with students casually citing lynching. The political and historical acrobatics required to draw that equation are dizzying.

For crying out during a presentation by Israel's ambassador to the United States, the Irvine 11 wound up in the middle of a criminal prosecution. The Muslim Student Union was banned from Irvine's campus for six months - an extraordinary disciplinary measure I haven't seen duplicated except in cases of violence at frat parties. In fact, I've seen the latter treated more generously.

One administrative response to "the Irvine 11" has gone completely unnoticed in commentary about the case, perhaps because it is so utterly banal. The Office of Student Conduct forced the three UC Riverside students who participated in that protest to write essays about the First Amendment.

Let me repeat that: UC Riverside's Office of Student Conduct forced three students to write about freedom of expression, as a form of punishment. (In his memo on "campus intolerance" Mark Yudof identifies himself as "a scholar of the First Amendment.")

No UCR faculty member was involved in creating, reading or evaluating that assignment. What self-respecting scholar could bear such a thing? I can think of no surer way of alienating a student from his or her authorial voice that to tell them what to say, and then force them to say it. (Incredibly, these punitive essays are routinely assigned across the UC system.)

There is violence embedded in that kind of "discipline." It is not the kind that goes viral. It is the kind of thing that feeds on a system like a slow-growing cancer - empowering police officers to wield their weapons as educational tools.

In setting up camps, by so visibly occupying their schools, students acknowledge that they are at risk of being disposed of their education if they don't insist on the campus's responsibility to their presence. That University of California leadership has produced a situation in which the most effective protest has been silence should give us all pause.  Students should not have to sit down and shut up in order not to be read as a threat.

That is one reason why the UC Davis action was so shaming - such a demand is grotesquely odds with our mission, but it is exactly what the system has been asking students to do for years. In literalizing that demand, however, UC Davis's students also powerfully asserted their connection with and allegiance to the ever increasing numbers of people whose mere existence poses a problem to those who have taken so much from them.

[Obviously, it's hard for me to care much about the Galaxy winning the MLS Cup with this stuff going on.]

Foucault Explodes in His Grave (On Weiner's Resignation)

The French philosopher argued that as our public discourse tightens its grip on sex, mining it for more and more information about the body, the mind and the soul, it turns “sex” turns into a rhetorical black hole – a vortex sucking energy in, radiating pure affect. Making less and less sense.

Journalists (?) heckling Anthony Weiner – launching barbs about the size of his dick as they might shout “fag” at a baseball game – prove Foucault’s point: the more discourse we produce about sexual health, sexual behavior, sexual being and sexual practice – the more discourse on sex becomes a powerful mechanism of policing and control; a shit-storm of rhetorical violence.

Nevermind that, these days, it is less “forward” of a guy to put a picture of his dick in an e-mail (or a Craigslist ad), than it is to buy a stranger a drink in a bar. The circulation of sexy pics of our body parts is a banal fact of our fully mediated, broadcasted life. The banality of this practice doesn’t make it less erotic, or feel less personal. It’s a form of exhibitionist correspondence organic to what Lauren Berlant described as an “intimate public.” It is not in the least bit surprising that a public figure might have an erotic relationship to publicity.

Even knowing this, men and women unite behind “Bye Bye PERVERT!” They lean back, content in their own morality - as if they have never looked at a nude picture of a dick, or tits, or whatever. As if they haven’t combed the web looking for Weiner’s body and chuckling over the embarrassing fact that he has one, that he has an erotic relationship to it, and an erotic relationship to our broadcast culture. Shame on him??

Maybe in a few years, this sort of thing will be no big deal. Not because we think that what’s in those briefs is meaningful, but because maybe by then, we’ll have seen so much political crotch that these images will come to nothing.

(All puns intended.)

The Hangover: Soccer in the City of Angels, an Introduction

On Saturday, we indulge in the pleasures of the beautiful game. On Sunday, we wake up with a global headache.

A collective romance with fair play grounds the entertainment value of sporting events. We love the idea of a level playing field, stories in which the best competitor wins, or in which the well-played match is its own reward. We love our team even when they don't bring home a trophy. But, oh, when they do! Messi is a gift from the heavens. His team is a family. Més que un club. Ferguson says "No one has given United a hiding like Barcelona did." Guardiola declares "This is the way we want to play." The world wraps itself in a cozy blanket, the story of the perfect game.

But even casual participation in sports forces a break with this illusion - racism, sexism and homophobia; economic manipulation of a team's "brand" and "value" at the expense of the team and its fans; the hyper-leveraging of club assets; doping, mismanagement, cronyism and bribery. What name is now on Barcelona's shirt?

What sport is "clean," really? Being a sports fan is a lesson in bi-polarity. Manic highs, paranoid frenzy, and then you throw out your television and hide from the game ruining your life.

Over the next couple weeks, I'll publish a series of articles describing my involvement with a local league here in Los Angeles. These articles are inspired by FIFA's shocking (and yet not surprising) decision to proceed with its election of a single candidate whom everyone knows is a corrupt, sexist and homophobic bastard. (At the moment, he is accused of condoning heavy bribery in the bidding process for future World Cups.) At today's press conference FIFA's Secretary General and Official Cynic (Jerome Valcke) said that this decision was made in the interest of the organization's stability. Of course it is.

We are all wondering how long this can go on - how long the international stewardship of the game will rest in the hands of liars and thieves.

FIFA's corruption unfolds alongside complaint and ethics charges. Our collective relationship to it looks a lot like what Slavoj Žižek calls "interpassivity," in which "we are active all the time in order to make sure nothing will happen, that nothing will really change." ("A Plea for Aggressive Passivity") We tweet, update our statuses, we sign petitions and complain - but we turn on the TV, we buy our tickets, we go to sports bars and cheer.

How long can FIFA sell itself to the world using a language of social good, of unity and community? When will the world wake up to the fact that it's been playing a shell game? Maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe the shell game is what we want, after all.

As we ask for the king's head on a stick, we must also look closer to home and consider the game we say want, versus the game we actually play - the game we buy into, and sell out. That's the charge I've issued to myself....

Next: Usage Agreement

A little information about Ultras fan clubs in Egypt

Egypt's football fan clubs are figuring prominently in stories about the current uprising. For readers wanting to learn more about the Ultras in Egypt and their role in the uprising, here are a few links:

James M. Dorsey, "Soccer Fans Play Key Role in Egyptian Protests" (readers of this blog will not be surprised, as this is a fairly consistent topic in writing about the sport and politics).

The Football Scholars Forum posted a link to that story and to this BBC interview with David Goldblatt (of The Ball is Round): The Secret Policeman's Football.

In 2007, Tom Dunmore posted a series of articles on Pitch Invasion about "Ultras" - a genre of football fan club, characterized by intense organization, often somewhat militaristic structures and overtly political ideologies. The series includes this photo essay from one of the founders of Egypt's first Ultras group - Ultras Ahlawy. 

An interesting 2009 Al Jazeera article about football and nationalism, The Politics of Sporting Rivalry, written by the author of The Angry Arab News Service.

I will post more articles when I find them.

There are lots of videos of the Ultras Ahlawy on youtube, highlighting their actions at matches. I've included a few turned up by a simple search.

The USSF announced its cancellation of the men's friendly match in Egypt (scheduled for Feb 9) in a very neutral press release. 

Political Play: Day Laborers Stage Tournament at the Rose Bowl

by Fernando Romero, Guest Writer

Fútbol has long been used as a key organizing tool for day laborers and immigrant communities in Southern California. One perfect expression of this fact: The National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON) was born out of a pickup game between two teams made up of jornaleros (day laborers). 

The game that birthed the organization has grown into an annual tournament, played this past Sunday at the Rose Bowl. Jornaleros from all over the Los Angeles region competed in the 10th Annual Day Laborer Soccer Cup, on teams representing labor centers or street corners from Los Angeles, Orange County and Inland Empire. Jornaleros, community leaders, students, activists, futbol fans (and yours truly) found themselves on the fields adjacent to the Rose Bowl on one of the mistiest days in recent memory. I was privileged enough to play with the team from Riverside.

This year’s tournament was played in the midst of one the ugliest moments in recent history for immigrants, documented or undocumented. The political climate in California and throughout the country has taken a range of horrifying shape, from the overt racism of Tea Party candidates (and the communities they purport to represent) to Arizona’s SB 1070, undocumented workers and immigrants are increasingly under attack from demagogue politicians and legal policies aimed to scapegoat and oppress. (Click here or here for information about immigration reform.)

The day’s events began with a press conference and an opening ceremony that included an introductory procession of each team. Each team held a banner with a theme relating to a current immigration issue such as the DREAM Act, Section 287 (g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, E-verify, the Safe Communities Initiative, and, of course, SB 1070. Members of each team gave a brief description of their theme and the immigration policy or issue it represented. NLDON organizer Eddie Gonzalez explained, “the banners were meant to communicate a message between local governments and media that this is what the workers are asking for.”

West Los Angeles took the championship, Laguna Beach came in second, Pasadena third and Rancho Cucamonga fourth. The true purpose of the tournament was not the distribution of trophies, but to a plant a seed of political/social consciousness for the day laborers, a demographic that for their struggles as part of the working class and their invisibility in society, seem to carry the burden of the immigration issue on their backs. 

Gonzalez said the tournament has been used as an organizing tool, but also to give the jornaleros a day to come together as a community. He said the event also allows for the jornaleros to come together and work for a common goal.  “The hardest part (of the tournament) was getting the players there. Along with the jornaleros, we organized car washes in order to fundraise for transportation and other things needed for the tournament.”

Gonzalez explained that the anti-immigrant climate is felt by the entire community. Scare tactics used by anti-immigrant groups in the Inland Empire kept regular players from participating in the tournament and some of their members had recently been deported in raids. Most notably, last Fall, a Neo-Nazi group had fixated on a day laborer site at a Home Depot in Riverside near the 91 freeway, and gathered there to stage a series of racist protests, shouting “American jobs for American people” and “white power”. 

The atmosphere of the tournament itself was removed from the everyday struggles of the workers, who must navigate such extremism just to make a living. Instead, the mood was upbeat and relaxed - like that of any other Sunday in Latin America, where the day revolves around family and fútbol, whether one be in Los Angeles or Lima.

“You can see it their excitement to play and take part in the event, “ Gonzalez observed. "For a lot of them this day is the only time when they can forget about being a day laborer. When they can wake up and not have to worry about standing in a corner and wait for a job to come around. The one day you’re able to take away from being in the shadow.”

It’s been said that in places where people are poor, and mad for soccer, a revolution could be based on the sport’s intrinsic ties to the working class. That because of soccer’s appeal to the working class along with its mass following, it could serve as the spark for social change. I’ve been present at immigration rallies here in California that have implemented chants born out of soccer stadiums in Latin America. And every time, it’s a vivid reminder of the power of soccer to bring about social and political change.

People living in exile tend to be in contact with other people also in exile and share similar experiences. The purpose of the tourney is to bring together the day laborer community, a community so invisible, and distant from each other that no other activity or past time seemed apt to motivate them enough to give up a precious Sunday and drive to Pasadena.

Most of the players would not identify themselves as “political”, but it does not matter: the tournament aims to bring a sense community to a demographic so disenfranchised and invisible that it seems that only through soccer could that sense of community ever be accessed. The revolution may not be televised, but it might just start on a soccer field. 

Thank you Fernando for sharing this story with From a Left Wing! I'm finishing a book project, and have not been able to post regularly. Fernando worked with me and Alan Minsky on The People's Game and also worked on Gustavo Arellano's much loved program "Ask a Mexican" - both on KPFK, 90.7 Los Angeles.

The World Throws Up: On how not to read soccer as symptom

Chéri Samba, Le Monde Vomissant (The World Throws Up), 2004

 
If recent writing on the 2010 World Cup and (the idea of) Africa is leaving you feel bloated, you must read Supriya Nair's marvelous blog, Treason Stratagems & Spoils.  In her July 3rd post, she calls out western media pundits for their tendency to see in each African soccer team (and, indeed, in each African or non-European or non-white player) a tidy study in "the African problem," the "problem of history", and the "problem of nationalism".

I cite one part of her blog below because I've been looking for someone to properly check the liberal impulse to read in Mesut Özil a redemption of Germany's policies on immigration and citizenship.  Nair's eloquent rant was triggered by Roger Cohen's op-ed piece for The New York Times, which centered on Özil's symbolic meaning ("Özil the German"). Before discussing the Turkish German player, Cohen gives an overview of, basically, Africa's "problems" - in history, politics, and soccer. It's all about the "Big Man," he argues, and national soccer teams do well to avoid them. Nair takes him to school for that, and moves on in her critique. To Cohen's assertion "But the Germany of Özil and Aogo is such a victory over the Big Man who destroyed Europe." Nair replies:

Which is to say, thank you Turkey and Nigeria for bearing the brunt of the history of European imperialism in your own distinct ways. Directly or indirectly, we dismantled your countries in our world wars, plundered your resources, broke up your nations, sold off the pieces, put your worst enemies in power over you, treated your people like shit when they came to Europe looking for work, and continue to do so. But our football teams are now full of brown kids and black kids. So Hitler lost and you lost, but we all won. So we're cool, right? We're cool.

I encourage readers to go to her site and read the whole thing ; "When I Get Older," Treason Stratagems & Spoils.

Writing like Nair's is, at the moment, only found on blogs like the one you are reading right now. Newspapers, stuck a fantasy moment of the 1970s, turn over and over again to people disconnected from the game, people all too happy to project political fantasy onto whatever - people who do not have the knowledge or skills or interest level that would allow them to see the politics in the form of the game - Nair moves swiftly from analysis of tactical errors to political critique, but does not make the mistake of treating tactical errors made on the field as historico-political symptom. 

Whatever: A French Perspective on French National Team's Implosion

I've translated an article by Simone Capelli-Welter, a regular contributor to So Foot. It's a fantastic piece, and in it you can hear an all too familiar frustration with the drama, the hysteria, and the contradictory flows of media discourse on such implosions.  This an unauthorized translation - but I am so sick of ESPN/CNN's stupid reporting on this story that I couldn't help myself:

With the events that have rocked the world of its football team, and with the event that soon will not occur, France can return to its favorite activity: saying everything and its opposite, and, above all, anything whatsoever.

Above all else, France will heap the sum of its bitterness on its football players.  Guilty, guilty of course. Of earning too much money to live and think like pigs, of being arrogant, evil, of being rebellious, and perhaps for being blacks, Muslims, and for coming from the projects. The whole country is doing poorly, and we have someone to blame. Our football players.

Sociologists, politicians, population experts, anachronistic panels, Chantal and Monique, all will be asked for their opinions, their expert words, they will be persuaded to derive from the tale of a football team the whys and wherefores of a country which obviously is looking for answers. A clash of civilizations, a spoiled generation, a team of thugs, and so forth and so on. We have Finkielkraut, one example among many who talk of playing like gentlemen...And good football players? France has emptied his bag, and seems ready for whatever. [See this Europe 1 interview with the conservative and controversial Finkielkraut, in which he speaks of Anelka as thug, and the team as the "spoiled generation". Finkielkraut is infamous for his anti-immigrant statements - among his inflammatory remarks, he called the French national team, "black, black, black" - a reference to the "black, blanc, beur" anthem for the postcolonial make-up of '98 side, which itself reappropriated the nationalist "blue, blanc, rouge" of the French flag.]

And we have the opposite, the contrarian brains who must swim against the current to register themselves as pro-Anelka, pro-Domenech, pro-propaganda. Don't jump on the bandwagon, sure, but then to take the defense of a weak, incompetent or...screw it. Today, with the World Cup in full swing, France will say anything. It is reduced to declaring that the dramas of its football team are much more entertaining than the coolest TV series. We console ourselves as we can. However, this posture, adopted by many supporters of L'Equipe de France in order to avoid losing face, puts its finger on something essential. At the moment, the France football team is actually performing. As the parody of itself, finally, that it should be. The team is making its own fireworks.

By dint of playing a poor game and refusing to explain it, the players and their coach  gave instead a letter to the people, who leaped at the chance to talk about this something else, since it must to continue to talk about its football team no matter what. The ethics of its organization, its money matters, its social side – with so little to offer on the pitch, the team is scrutinized from all angles, every angle, in all its forms. Inevitably, this little game can’t be out-grown. Ours is like any football team in the world that has endured this treatment. Players will return today to face the press. Maybe, but everything works against them if they should turn back and focus on what they are supposed to do, which is no more and no less than to defend France on the football field.

There is still a game in this World Cup, but that fact is now incidental. Players of the French team are too busy looking for their traitor; the people of the federation are too busy looking for their parachute; the football world is too busy looking for its scapegoat, and the country, its sin. Reactions will not stop coming. Some will be violent, most will be stupid, and all will be out of proportion. As happens when France loses (Euro 2002, Henry's hand, etc..). As happens when France wins (1998, France black, blanc, buer etc.). France loses her head. France cannot lose, France cannot win, France does not understand football. Fortunately, though, the game goes on. - Simone Capelli-Welter, "La France du Foot" from So Foot.

And that is as good a lesson in the very French art of ambivalence as you'll find anywhere. On the other end of the affective spectrum, Ribery's rather moving appearance on Téléfoot - "People will say anything." "We been terrible, we haven't sweat in our shirts like one should." "I am speaking from my heart, and we are hurting."

In the shadow of the World Cup: ESPN covers the rape of South African soccer players

ESPN has done a story on the frequency with which South African women soccer players are raped, targeted as lesbians. (Female athletes often targets for rape) It is a good thing that a media outlet with ESPN's resources decided to cover this story.  But there are a couple of dots ESPN avoided connecting.

This comes two years after the murder of former national team player, Eudy Simelane. (See On the murder of Eudy Simelane and Girlie "S'Gelane" Nkosi, Eudy Simelane's teammate and lesbian activist, murdered). The timing of this story implicitly links to the opening of the World Cup next month.

I wish, I really wish they'd asked the question of what FIFA has done around this - as I've written in this blog before, were a male national team player murdered in a hate crime in a country hosting the World Cup, you can be sure FIFA would do something to address it - they would at least acknowledge it.  As far as I can tell, there has been absolutely no attempt to enlist the most famous men in the world - gathering in South Africa - in any sort of campaign condemning these violent attacks.

And - to make another point again - the situation in South Africa is extreme, but rape within a homophobic attack is not unique to South Africa. In the U.S., the most famous case of this might be Brandon Teena, a trans teen who was raped and murdered in 1993. His story is the subject of the film Boys Don't Cry.

I wish ESPN had made the FIFA link, and touched base with someone who could raise their awareness about homophobic violence. It would be altogether too much for them to also acknowledge the international importance of this story, as female soccer are marked for harassment and worse for playing "a man's game" in many more places that South Africa. This situation may be extreme, but it rests at the far end of a continuum of experiences of sexism and homophobia all too familiar to altogether too many people.

[Thanks to the reader who gave me the heads up on the ESPN story!]

Q & A regarding Hertha provokes random thoughts on Berlin (and German) soccer

Q from Gustavo Arellano: And now for something different: a great story on the last sad days of a soccer club before it gets kicked out of germany’s top division. Jennifer Doyle: where do these fans rank on the political scale of things? Are they progressives like Barça, or fascists like Lazio? (German Capital Bids Auf Wiedesehen to Top-Flight Football)

A, of sorts: Thanks Gustavo! Read on only if prepared for the distortions of my extremely uneven knowledge regarding German soccer. Hertha has had a spectacularly bad season - they nearly qualified for the Champion's League last year, and now they've been relegated. I will leave The Guardian's Raphael Honigstein to diagnose Hertha's demotion:

In fact it's nigh on impossible to look at the terrible fate that has befallen Hertha Berlin as anything else but divine retribution for sins committed in a former life. Or last season, to be more accurate.

Supporters of the Spreesiders will probably violently shake their heads in disagreement at this point, but this column has still barely recovered from witnessing one or two Hertha matches in 2008-09, when they played (if that is indeed the right word) a brand of football so dull, negative and downright misanthropic that one opponent after another lost the will to live. By the end of the campaign the whole Bundesliga was ready to commit hara-kiri, just to make the pain go away. Forget Jorge Valdano's notorious quip about Rafa Benítez's less than aesthetically pleasing Reds: you couldn't see the pitch for all the excrement in the Olympic stadium.

This year, it's more or less the same. Tedious but very competent catenaccio with excellent results has turned into slightly less tedious general incompetence without results.

To address your query regarding Hertha supporters -fans rioted in March, when Hertha lost a crucial match to Nuremberg. But, honestly, I don't know if that incident squares with Hertha's reputation, or if perhaps if this is just typical football-guys gone wild. 

I am a little creeped out by the "Hertha girlfriend" subsection of the club's page for female fans. Not for fans of women's football. Hertha does have an LGBT fan club - as does Barça, Man City, and a few other clubs who reach out to gay and lesbian supporters.


This brings me to your question - who is Berlin's Barça?: No side in Berlin - or anywhere - has managed Barça's ability to "brand" its progressive reputation. And as to Berlin's Lazio - at least one Berlin-based club draws more than its share of fascist fans (Dynamo - formerly the Stasi's team).  But of course it isn't the high profile club that Lazio is and seems to have tried and failed to wiggle out of  its terrible history and dubious present (by changing its name, then changing it back).

The media tag line regarding Hertha's decline focuses on Berlin as now the only European capital not to have a team in the country's top flight division.  But Berlin's reputation as a European capital has always been that of an atypical capital - a capital of atypicality. 

The city's romance, as a tourist destination, is built on fantasies of cabaret life and spy romance. It's basically the only city in Germany many of the alternative set care to visit - and, drawn by the relatively cheap rent, lots of those folks stay.

So, Hertha's spectacularly bad season is perhaps a higher profile version of the other "beautiful losers" playing in "poor but sexy" Berlin (that designation might just be the official signal for gentrification).  But for those teams, one must look beyond the Bundesliga. (FYI - The Global Game reviews a recent film festival gathering work about East German football - it's well worth reading.)

For example - check out at Türkiyemspor Berlin, playing in the unglamorous domain of regional football for a few years now. Türkiyemspor, founded by players of Turkish immigrant background, threatened to rise to the 2nd division in 1990-1991. Their campaign was ruined by an administrative error (read the history on the club's site). In an incident recalling Germany's attitude towards the workers it recruited from Turkey in the 1960s (Come! - a generation later: Leave!), a player who'd transferred to the club was mistakenly ruled ineligible and the games in which he'd played were either forfeit or replayed.  The club just missed being promoted. The German national FA later apologized for the mistake (!). Things went downhill from there. But the club is still around, and it has a women's team (actually, I think it has three). 

When in Berlin last year, I was supposed to attend a match between Türkiyemspor and Hallescher FC - it was postponed, ostensibly due to inclement weather but probably due to fears of violence from Hallescher FC fans, notorious for their racism. 

Hallescher FC was at the center of a particularly miserable incident in 2006. Hallescher fans heaped racist abuse on a Nigerian midfielder playing for Leipzig. Fed up with the ape noises from fans, and from being spat upon, Adebowale Ogungbure threw two fingers over his upper lip - as a salute to the fascists. Ogungbure was then attacked by fans. Incredibly, he was brought up on charges (making Nazi gestures is illegal in Germany) - they were quickly dropped. From Der Spiegel:

"I was just so angry, I didn't care. I could have been killed but I had to do something," Ogungbure told SPIEGEL ONLINE last week. "I thought to myself, what can I do to get them as angry as they have made me? Then when I lifted my arm I saw the anger in their faces and I started to laugh."

"I've faced some sort of racist abuse at about half the matches I've played," he said, but the spitting was too much on March 25. "I've never seen anyone spit at a dog or a cat in Germany -- why should I be spat at?"

Anyway, Berlin has lots of clubs not playing in the Bundesliga - and some of them, like Türkyemspor do interesting political work - to find them one needs to follow the love, not the money!

A brief note on "Los Suns"

On Cinco de Mayo Phoenix wore "Los Suns" shirts to protest Arizona's Senate Bill 1070 - a jaw-dropping bit of racist, xenophobic legislation. The Suns' decision has sparked much discussion about the place of politics in sports. 

The idea that politics can be kept out of sport is giant fiction. If you are allowed to ignore the politics of your team's owners, it is only because this makes it easier for them to line their pockets.

For those wondering where the Suns got their "Los Suns" shirts, I thought I'd share the following: The "Los Suns" shirt comes out of "Noche Latina" - an annual NBA promotional gesture towards Latino fans, in which teams housed in cities with a large Latino market wear jerseys sporting their names as spoken in Spanish by fans (e.g. "El Heat", "Los Spurs" and, my favorite - though not my favorite team - "Los Lakers.")

A marketing gesture intended to acknowledge (and "monetize") Latino fans of NBA teams returns to the court as a provocative statement about what it means for NBA teams to support their fans.

If you want more on this topic, listen to this conversation between Dave Zirin and Greg Esposito. Zirin lists other instances in which sports is politicized openly - the owners of baseball's Arizona Diamondbacks have used their teams as platforms to raise money for Arizona Republicans, and to organize against abortion rights. It's a good long discussion and heats up pretty quickly. Well I guess we can be glad that soccer isn't baseball.  Except, of course, it is.

Al Jazeera Story about Iran's women's team & a follow up to last week's post

Watch this very informative story from Al Jazeera.



Reaction to last week's post about football and hijab has been caught up in the veil (represented by some commentators as the first step in a "slippery slope to fundamentalism").  Some readers seem to have lost sight of the story at hand: whether FIFA's support of the ban against headscarves specifically, and hijab more broadly, makes sense.

In looking for models for more productive discussion of the question of headscarves and football, I've been reading over some academic work on the veil debate, and find myself compelled by discussions about the local complexities of hijab. In last week's comments section I pointed to a June conference in Canada - I'm inspired by the abstracts for papers to be presented at that conference, some of which center on practical questions like Heather Marie Akou's query, "to what degree does this [athletic hijab] create new stereotypes concerning what the 'proper' Muslim female athlete should look like?" ("Islamic Swimsuits" Filling a Need or Creating a New One?"), and by Rikke Andreassen's suggestion that we ask "in which specific moments and spaces are veils destabilizing [or not]?"("Destabilizing Effects of the Veil(s) - Examples from Contemporary Europe", and then there is Ipek A. Celik's interrogation of the association of the veil with "passive victimhood" and a "failure to integrate" in a paper that explores how the liberal marketplace produces this narrative for popular consumption ("Veiled Women's Narratives as Marketable Commodities").

Clearly, hijab has a destabilizing effect in relation to FIFA's regulating presence in international women's soccer. FIFA makes football a global game by making it look the same - by imposing a conformity on the game in order to allow each nation's football culture appear to be interchangeable with every other nation's football culture - perhaps should I say market, here, instead of culture?

Why do women provoke so much trouble in regulating the game, in making the game "uniform"? Why does the female athlete provoke such a challenge that for decades women were prohibited from playing it at all in countries like England, Germany and Brazil? What exactly is so dangerous about a headscarf-wearing soccer player?

Perhaps one of the reasons why some people can't stand the idea of women playing in headscarves is that images of Muslim women playing this physically demanding sport in hijab challenges a world-view that needs to see the Muslim woman only in terms of radical victimization, and as a completely powerless and passive body.

Surely there must be room here for a non-hysterical conversation about more complex processes - for a discussion, for example, of the impact of the normalization of hijab in sports on Muslim women athletes more broadly, or, alternatively, of the ways that some uses of hijab in sport may disrupt discourse on hijab (and gender) in significant and unanticipated ways.

FIFA Makes Its Islamophobia Official & Bans Iranian Women for Donning the Hijab

 

Iran's National Women's Football Team, 2007

FIFA has declared that Iran can't enter its women's team into this August's Youth Olympic Games if its athletes play in headscarves.  Iran's football association is calling for international protest - quite rightly.

This decision comes from the International Football Association Board, which is made up of representatives of the four UK Football Associations (England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales) and FIFA, which itself has four votes in these decisions. One can imagine what that boardroom looks like - Sith Lords of Soccer, Imperial Experts in Sexism and Islamophobia.

In making this ruling, the IFAB is hiding behind Rule 4, regarding player equipment. This is an arbitrary interpretation and application of FIFA's rules against wearing uniforms with personal political or religious statements ("compulsory equipment must not have any political, religious or personal statements").  Obviously, national uniforms frequently carry both political and religious meaning (Israel, anyone?). We often watch players cross themselves furiously before taking penalties - why not ban that gesture from the pitch? The demand that these women either remove their headscarves or withdraw from the competition is itself a strong statement about religion and politics.

Women athletes have worn the hijab in Olympic events at least since 2004 when Bahrain's Ruqaya Al Ghasara took the track - in 2008, she made headlines wearing a "hijood," a breathable form-fitting hood designed specifically for athletes.

Soccer players have been allowed to compete in international tournaments recognized by FIFA while wearing a variety of uniforms that meet their needs. Below is a photograph from January's South Asia Games - here the Indian national team competes against a Pakistani team outfitted in stylish green uniforms and headscarves.

CNN published a story about November's historic match between Palestine and Jordan. This match was celebrated as a step forward for women's football in the region and featured a few players wearing long pants and sleeves, headscarves or fitted caps. Muslim women athletes across the world adjust their gear to fit their needs, compete in international tournaments, and this should be encouraged. (See the blog Muslim Women in Sports.)

This ruling is yet another instance of imperialist and patriarchal meddling and it betrays the shallowness of FIFA's investment in developing the international women's game, as well as the profound hypocrisy of FIFA's pretence to being "above" politics.  At least now they've made their Islamophobia official.

This seems like a fine moment to recall Sepp Blatter's most famous statement about the women's game:

"Let the women play in more feminine clothes like they do in volleyball. They could, for example, have tighter shorts."

Fuck that. I'll take headscarves and lime green tracksuits over that bullshit anyday.

[April 4: Follow up - Some articles on this topic point to a 2007 IFAB/FIFA ruling supporting a Canadian referee's ejection of 11-year old Asmahan Mansour from a match for wearing a hijab. The referee claimed it was a "safety" issue (on the grounds that she might be strangled!). Quebec's Soccer Association does ban the hijab as part of a broad ban against "the Islamic veil or any other religious item." Which is I guess a safety issue in a world that imagines a terrorist under every turban, and behind every veil. Her team and four others withdrew from the tournament in support ("Hijab debate gets political in Canada").

That same 2007 IFAB decision left room for football associations to make their own decisions about the hijab - apparently only as long as those FAs cooperate with FIFA's worldview. For more - see "Hijab Ban Belongs in the Sin Bin" from the excellent Muslim Women in Sports.]

Let's ask the FA to come out of the closet (about its own homophobia)

The FA announced recently that it was delaying the official debut of its attempt at an anti-homophobia campaign.  That project was to have been inaugurated with a viral video about fan behavior.

The video shows a "typical" English fan - white, male, presumed straight. He appears to be going to work, but as he does so, he heaps homophobic insults on everyone around him - the objects of his bile and the witnesses to the abuse all recoil in disgust. As the narrative transitions from our hero's ordinary work-life like to the stadium, we see him direct his homophobic insults to the field "You queer! Hope you die of AIDS! You scum, you poof!" As the video moves from work to the stands we are given the following message: "This behavior is unacceptable here (at work), so why should it be acceptable here (in the stands)."



Gay rights activist Peter Tatchell has been involved with the FA's recent efforts to raise awareness about homophobia within football culture, and comments on the state of affairs at the FA in a recent article for The Guardian ("Football homophobia stays in play"). Tatchell had proposed an "MTV-style" ad, featuring celebrity players and an attention-grabbing soundtrack but had been outvoted by those who wanted a more aggressive narrative featuring abusive behavior and a negative message. When confronted with the video that the FA itself had commissioned, designed around the message that it had requested, they felt the need to go back to the drawing board.

Tatchell writes that the FA is totally unprepared to support this ad. It would be a hard message to deliver even from within a well-articulated gay rights campaign.  The organization is hardly a bastion of progressive thinking and behavior when it comes to gender and sexuality.  Tatchell reports that the FA made no serious effort to educate the leading public figures in English football to support this project. Nor did they make a serious request to those people who might have lent their faces to a campaign, or prepare those likely to be asked to speak publicly in support of the FA's efforts.

In fact, Tatchell tells us that the FA disbanded its existing anti-homophobia working group, which was responsible for effecting some meaningful policy changes (eg rules encouraging clubs to ban fans for homophobic behavior), and replaced it

with a hand-picked, much smaller and less representative number of members. It no longer includes all interested stakeholders. Many relevant lesbian and gay groups are not included. This does not inspire confidence. Even now, the FA will not explain why the old group was disbanded, nor has it made public who is on the new working group.

I don't think it's cynical of me to suggest that homophobic FA administrators might have had a hard time working with the gay and lesbian activists who were part of the original working group.

John Amaechi, a former NBA player and the only English athlete in the NBA's hall of fame, has been speaking out about this video and the fiasco of the FA's efforts (check out his terrific new blog, Dear John).  He points out in an editoral for The Times that some seem stuck on the notion that only gay athletes can be the face of such a campaign - the leaders in the sport seem to be waiting for a player to come out of the closet and show everyone else the way.  Amaechi well knows this sort of pressure, having come out of the closet only after his retirement from professional basketball. (See The Telegraph's profile.)

Of course it would be great if Cristiano Ronaldo, John Terry, and, let's say, Fernando Torres started to wave rainbow flags and speak about the terrible pressures of staying in the closet while leading very public lives. It would be awesome if they could, say, quote Oscar Wilde as they spoke in eloquent but accessible language about the terrible impact that homophobia has had on their development as men and as athletes. Should we all sit on our hands and wait for that day?  Of course not. To ask athletes to come out and fix everything for the footballing community is ludicrous and unfair, especially if the leaders of that community do nothing (and worse) to make such a coming out possible.

If no EPL player has come out in recent years, it has much more to do with clubs, and with the integral place of homophobia in sports culture than with the behavior of the worst fans. Think about it: If a club were really behind the issue, it could certainly make homophobia unwelcome.  It might make players who have been taunted feel supported. It could embrace gay and lesbian members of its administrative staff, stop homophobia where it starts - in its youth academies, for example. Clubs might proactively, publicly embrace their gay and lesbian supporters. They might lend support to LGBT organizations in their neighborhoods, get involved with queer youth programs.

The problem with homophobia in football culture can't and shouldn't be reduced to the most obvious, bigoted behavior of a few people in the stands.  That is what this guy represents - not the behavior of FA administrators, managers, agents, players, team staff, and the media who recoil in horror at the idea of being accountable to gay men, lesbians, and transgendered people who are members of the footballing community. That guy doesn't represent the institution that tolerates women's football as long as no one mentions the L word (homophobia was absolutely one of the engines behind the FA's 50 year ban of the women's game, and continues to impact attitudes about the women's game). It doesn't address the vigorous reproduction of a sexist and phobic environment within the workplaces, within spaces of play, and certainly in the global media phenomenon built around the EPL.

The ad's biggest weakness, in other words, is that it isn't actually addressed to the mainstream. As a story, it doesn't address either the passive tolerance of homophobia, or the anti-gay attitudes that don't make people recoil in horror - that are accepted as "boys will be boys" behavior, or as support of just what's "natural." It also doesn't show a single person standing up to the homophobic asshole.

Imagine rewriting that ad so that instead of showing people recoiling in horror, but doing nothing we see his abuse stopped, we see people stand up against his behavior - on the tube, at work, and in the stands? What if we see him shamed? Why not say to the video's audience: You should not tolerate homophobia anywhere, from anyone. Period. 

Amaechi points out that the ad is too limited in its scope - homophobia isn't bad because it's bad for gay people.  It's toxicity impacts everyone. He writes,

In school, for a boy, being clever and interested in academia is gay, being kind and thoughtful is gay, being respectful to a parent, authority figure or woman is gay.

For a man, being sexually considerate - that is, not sleeping with everything female that moves - is gay.  Having non-sexual friendships with women is gay.  Being nurturing and considerate is gay.  Having a friend who is gay, is gay.  Choosing not to drink until you puke is gay.  In football, even reading the guardian or using words with more than three syllables is gay.

We still socially reinforce industrial revolution-style gender identity on our boys and men so that to be a "real man" you must be the opposite of anything even remotely considered feminine.

We wonder why violence against women is rising?  Why our boys run away from academic pursuits in school?  Why they rebel against authority and steel themselves from the true expression of emotion despite the consequences? (John Ameichi, The Truth: homophobia hurts straight people too.)

It's a terrific point. And a consciousness-raising campaign that aimed to make those connections, and which left an audience with a shared sense of responsibility towards changing things might actually have an impact.

I leave you with an example of fierce visual art/activism which does just this - from Gran Fury's anti-homophobic campaign "Kissing Doesn't Kill."  FA officials need to look to the inspired work of queer/LGBIT activist organizations - this one dates back to the AIDS crisis in the 1980s and 1990s, and is not only pointed but sexy. It can be done.

"It's disgusting to take bullets for a football match": Togo attacked on its way to Africa Cup of Nations

That's Richmond Forson, midfielder for Togo's national team, commenting on being attacked on the way to the Africa Cup of Nations tournament in Angola.   Here's the story from Sky Sports, Dossevi reveals Togo horror, and from Al Jazeera, Togo footballers attacked in Anglola.  The Guardian story is here. Reuters reports that the team bus driver (an Angolan) was killed. CNN story here.

Kodjovi Obilale and Serge Akakpo are reported seriously wounded. Adebayor was on the team bus, and is apparently unharmed. People from a range of quarters are crying that the African Nations tournament should be moved or abandoned. Goal.com offers this background story on the incident - this is particularly alarming, for it suggests the tournament was held in spite of warnings about political instability and violence in the region. Needless to say, players for Togo's national team are desperately worried about their injured teammates and some want to pull out of the tournament. This Independent article on the hopes pinned to this tournament is worth a read.

As the Al Jazeera story points out, this frightening incident recalls the awful attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore last year and is bound to cause much worry about the upcoming World Cup. [1/9: For a critical perspective on this, see Pitch Invasion's World Reaction to Togo Tragedy.]

[1/9: Three people are reported killed in the attack, including assistant coach Abalo Ametele, press officer Stan Ocloo, and one of the bus drivers. There have been rumors that Obilale died, but reports on this are contradictory. Togo has withdrawn from the tournament, and other teams such as the Ivory Coast have expressed support, though I haven't seen confirmation of other withdrawals. See the Guardian's update here.]