if you speak spanish, you like your parks for playing soccer & drinking champagne

I'd noticed the bilingual no soccer signs in Silverlake's Bellevue Park before. They are placed on the fences around the 2 almost-never-in-use baseball diamonds. These baseball fields are part of the effort to redesign Bellevue and kill off the pick-up soccer scene (e.g. large boulders and picnic tables strategically placed to break up open patches of grass).

Today I was struck by the fact that only a few of the signs in the park are bilingual. Most, in fact, are only in English. Apparently, if you are Anglo, you throw your trash around, prefer go carts, will play golf just about anywhere, and need to be reminded to pick up after your dog.











But the following instructions are given in Spanish: NO soccer se permite aquí & No Bebidas Alcoholicas.

The former directive is illustrated by a stick figure kicking a soccer ball, the latter (incredibly) is illustrated by a champagne glass - there are even bubbles spilling over its left lip. I like to think someone has chalked in a balón at the base of the glass on the left, but I think it's just the remnants of a sticker.

Apparently, si hablas español, you have the uncontrollable impulse to combine cocktail & ball.

Some Reflections on LA Sol, Marketing, and the FC Gold Pride match (Amway? Really?)

Before heading into the stadium I checked out the shop - no skort, or wrap, or whatever it is. The guys working there laughed when I asked if they carried it. Looking at the pile of Marta shirts, I found myself contemplating not the name on the back, but the name on the front. Amway? I decided I'd rather wear a Brazil shirt.

[Note to the Galaxy/SOL marketing folks: Why don't you sell national jerseys for all your international players - that'd be half the SOL squad. How great would that be to see national kits on display (and for sale) for Duan, Miyama, Frisk, Abily, Marta, Wagner, etc.?! China, Japan, Sweden, France, Brazil, and the US?! Seems like a no-brainer to me. I'd have picked up a bunch of those for my nieces.]

Amway is a SOL sponsor - and, well, just look at their wikipedia entry, which has a whole section on the "controversy" pertaining to their not-illegal pyramid scheme, and the cult-like culture of the organization which lures people in to work as distributors for their products with promises of the money they will make as they lure more people in to work as distributors for their product. Sound familiar? It should: Herbalife works the same way, and that name is plastered on the front of the Galaxy shirts. From the Guardian's obit for that company's founder (Mark Hughes: Purveyor of Californian Health Cures to the Credulous/June 19, 2000):

During the next few years the firm [Herbalife] was formally criticised at least three times by the United States Food and Drugs Administration, and subject to a CNN television exposé, a senate investigative committee inquiry, denunciations from a medical watchdog organisation and an $850,000 penalty payment imposed by the California attorney general for making false medical claims and marketing an illegal pyramid sales scheme. This recruited 750,000 "distributors" in what Hughes claimed were 48 countries, including Britain.

I've always been puzzled by the Herbalife thing. It seems really backwards to have a weight loss/vitamin supplements company sponsoring a soccer team. Think in terms of fitness, for example - wouldn't the Galaxy want its message to be something like - get out there and play? Not: "take these magic pills and it will be as if you have played"? And then think in terms of marketing: do you really want to associate your team's identity with a company that's been stained with accusations of not only making false promises to its consumers about the health benefits of their product, but also of falsely representing how much money their distributors will make by signing on?

[Laurie at The Offside commented about the creepy marriage of Herbalife, The Galaxy, and AYSO last year - Welcome to Herbalife World. You Will be Assimilated. For the similarities between Herbalife & Amway see Pyramid Scheme Alert: Herbalife Class Action Settlement. And on Amway & the Sol see this March post on Bigsoccer.com.]

Add onto this the cozy relationship between Amway, the Christian Right, and the Republican party (see, for example, Rolling Stone's 2005 article The Crusaders and this more recent article from Religion Dispatches, Worse than Madoff). You have to wonder why these teams are running around with different words for shady on their chests. Then remember that AEG is headed up by Philip Anschultz - who supports bigotry campaigns against gays and lesbians (read through "the movie, the media, and the conservative politics of Philip Anschultz" on mediatransparency.org). It's all just super creepy.

The more I learn about the corporate architecture behind the Galaxy and now the SOL, the more depressed I become.

All this aside - not that it can really be put aside - it was an entertaining game.

It didn't start that way, though (See Nick Green's post, with great quotes from Aly Wagner about the rough start).

Yesterday it was about 94 degrees in Carson - so neither the SOL not the Gold Pride looked quite right. In the opening minutes there was a general lack of fight for the ball - especially when asked to run it down. The game definitely picked up as the players adjusted to the heat. Looking over the WPS calendar I have to ask why on earth the Sol and their opponents are playing games at 1:00pm and 3:00pm in June, July, and August? The Galaxy play mostly early evening home games, with a few exceptions.

They'll get used to the heat, I guess. But, wow. So much for the weaker sex! They'll be a lot tougher than their corporate siblings. (They are already much, much more fun to watch than the Galaxy.)

A lot of the game's energy was generated by the two Japanese stars on the field: Aya Miyawa for the Sol, and Erico Arakawa. They both worked from start to finish, and were quick, great on the ball, and just all around dynamic - superstars, really. And I absolutely loved watching Formiga and Marta go up against each other. They seemed really well matched as Formiga won the ball off of Marta a couple times - I am a huge fan of hers, and can't wait to see her play again.

The game was fun. Especially since I migrated from my $40 seats to the sparsely populated mid-field and found myself behind these gals.

Highlights from the First WPS Game

Check out the internationals - Miyama (a real star), and Abily - I saw Abily play for Montpellier and for Lyon!


Find more videos like this on Women's Professional Soccer

The Global Game publishes story about Municipal de Fútbol

The Global Game has published a nice story about Municipal de Fútbol ("Where Angelenos do not fear to tread"). There you will also find a podcast interview that I did with John Turnbull. I appreciate the extra research he put into the article - especially his inclusion of a link to this June 2008 story in the LA Times about a team of Guatemalen women playing in MacArthur Park. He points out that the spot where those women play is the location for the opening scenes of Goal. We should also remember that this is where the LAPD attacked people participating in an immigrants rights march and rally in May, 2007 (see LAPD tries to crush immigrant rights movement). (This photograph is from Michael Wells's series of portraits of Lafayette Park, Los Angeles.)

At the Start of the WPS Season, Some Thoughts on Eudy Simelane's Murder

My football brain has not been preoccupied with the start of the US women's professional league, but with the story of the rape and murder of a former South African national women's team player, Eudy Simelane.

I first learned of Simelane's death while reading a Guardian story about the wave of violent sexual assaults on black lesbians in South Africa. The particular combination of the gruesome violence of the attack on Simelane, her visibility as an international player, and her visibility as a lesbian feminist activist has drawn some attention to state and media indifference to this particular version of hate crime. That said, the media attention to her murder has been slight, compared to that which we would see were a national team player from nearly any men's team subjected to a hate crime of similar violence. (Let us remember, too - that this is in South Africa - home of the next World Cup. For some information about the case see blacklooks.net, this interesting blog article on mhabi.com about left media and reporting of this crime, and this article from Out in Africa. I would appreciate any information about Simelane that readers might be willing to share.)

Reading the Guardian's story about what has been called "corrective rape" (I can't get behind that term), I was not entirely shocked to discover that one of the women interviewed in the story was also a football player - attacked on her way home from training.

This story is a gruesome reminder of the complex place of women's football in the world, and is perhaps worth bearing in mind as the WPS season gets underway.

Women's football is hugely controversial in many - most? - parts of the world. People's reaction to the idea of women playing this sport can be surprisingly violent and hateful. Football is also, in many - most? - places, a means by which women rebel against restrictive ideas about gender. This is very serious business, and the activists who create leagues, who attempt to change the system place themselves on the front lines of a war.

Simelane's murder is heartbreaking on so many levels. Personally, knowing next to nothing about who she was and what she was like, I have found myself confronted by the wild idealism of my fantasies about butch women athletes - I tend image them as sisters who have escaped from the misery of femininity. I get positively starry-eyed when I watch tomboys play - throwing their bodies in the air with not a care about how hard the ground is. I could hardly watch the interviews in the Guardian's video. I know butch lesbians are subjected to aggressive policing of gender, and that butchness is no protector against sexism - but I guess some part of me wants to believe in the pitch as a space apart from all that.

But of course it's not. The pitch sits on a field, in a neighborhood, in a town, in a county.... It is surrounded.

Lest we shrug these attacks off as an "African" problem (the Guardian story pretty much does this), let us remember that violence against gay, lesbian, and transgendered people is all too common in a wide range of settings. We need only remember Matthew Shepherd or Brandon Teena to put Eudy Simelane's death in perspective for US readers.

To bring this serious note to a close - something about this story got me thinking about the tremendous importance of play - of the places where we play, and feel safe enough to cross the borders and boundaries that have been drawn around our bodies. The singling out of a woman for "corrective rape" as she is on her way home from training - this is violence against the idea embodied by the person. I suppose that's part of what a hate crime is.

Guardian story about the rape and murder of Eudy Simelane

I am too upset to write about this right now, but want to share this story about the rape and murder of Eudy Simelane, a much admired South African National Team player and lesbian feminist activist:

Rape and Killed for being a Lesbian: South Africa Ignores 'Corrective' Attacks

She was killed last year, her murderers have just been sentenced. Note that one of the women interviewed in this story was assaulted on her way home from football practice. She speaks about her attack in the accompanying video.

Left Back Forward

My team put me forward the other week - we were up by two, and my charge was to play defense up top - to "make trouble," which, of course, I love to do.

I've never played forward at the end of a match like this. Wow. There was minimal pressure to score. Nevertheless I did manage a good shot that caught the top of the post and bounced back to a teammate who sent it wide. I ran a lot and worked hard, but I was a hundred times more relaxed than I am on the back line. No matter how far ahead we are, on the back line I never enjoy the lead. The lead is ours to blow. It is so stressful. I never knew how much I felt the full weight of that burden until it was lifted by the captain's request to put this left back forward.

The degree to which I feel that stress is the biggest obstacle to playing my best in league matches. Like many, my best game is reserved for those settings where there are no stakes - when we play for the love of it and for no other reason. For me, that's Wednesday nights in a rag-tag scrimmage that starts around 9:00pm. If I could play that game every night, I'd play until my legs fell off. (As it is, we play once a week until the lights go off.)

Ironically, the greatest professional players - the ones who play for the highest stakes - seem able to tap into the joy and a certain fearlessness whatever the setting.

And so defender Lilian Turham knocked in the only two goals of his storied career playing for France in a 1998 World Cup semifinal against Croatia, sending the first one in when France was down one-nil. This man must feel the adrenalin but not the nerves.

I Guess Puma Didn't Get the Skort Memo

WPS and PUMA Uniform Unveiling


Let me start with the bit not related to sexism: With one brand styling all of the WPS teams, we have little as fans to grab onto. We have nothing like the particularity of Newcastle or Milan's stripes. Not the bold red of Man U, or the weird electric blue-green of Barça. The uniforms are bland. They are all cut from the same cloth. The same pattern. The colors even have the same tone - as if opposing teams are supposed to match. They are totally generic and uninspired.

And why ask Christian Siriano to design these? [note: they didn't - see comments 8 & 9] Did he create a single outfit on Project Runway that made you think he'd know exactly how to design clothes for an athlete? As fierce as he is, he was uninterested and downright bitchy about being asked to think about bodies larger than size 2. I love his clothes - don't get me wrong. But these uniforms do not look like the product of a mind inspired by the challenge of designing a kit.

Maybe this is why when Marta showed up for a teeny second at the end of today's Ellen episode she wasn't wearing her kit. She was wearing a team training jacket and jeans. And she looked fierce.

If I had to pick a Project Runway alum to design my kit, it'd definitely be a woman - and one whose designs showed an interest in the non-model body. How about Kara Saun, who managed to make a postal service uniform (pictured right) look both hot and functional.

Now - on to the sexism:

What is the redhead in the boring orange cocktail dress on the left doing here? WTF.

Why does the above video open with the players getting their hair done? Again: WTF.

I cringe at the fact that Puma treated the premier of a kit like a fashion show - making the athletes parade down a turf-lined runway. (Check out Greg Lalas's eye-witness report on the event.) As I've pointed out on this blog (Back Talk: Does Sex Really Sell Women's Sports), the (homophobic) "girling" up of women's sports has been proven by marketing studies to drive fans away - people find it condescending if not plain offensive and profoundly alienating.

Nearly every aspect of this unveiling is atrocious - right down to the press release with its "let's find as many ways that we can to remind ourselves that these are women" vocabulary - like using the word "feminine" twice in the same paragraph. (Ever seen the words "manly" or "masculine" used to promote uniforms for a men's team? Of course not.) Why not just write: "We promise: these uniforms won't make you look gay." Because that is clearly what PUMA, and the WPS means.

I can't believe I need to say this, but: I do not want to wear a Marta jersey because I think it is going to make me attractive to men. (Do guys wear Messi or Kaka on their back because they think it's going to appeal to women?) And, guess what else - I like the fact that maybe I look boyish when I'm in my gear. And I'm only interested in other people who think that's hot.

This brings us to the controversial skort, pictured right. Don't Leslie Osborne and Christina DiMartino look thrilled to be photographed in their skorts? (We've been reassured that no one will actually have to play soccer in them.) At first look, the skort (noticeably shorter than the shorts) seems to be part of Puma's attempt to girl up/straighten up the look of the WPS.

Apparently the folks behind this bit of marketing genius didn't get the following memo: Skorts are totally, hopelessly, Navradeliciously LPGAishly gay!

And Christian knows it! Siriano scores one for the team!

Sport/Therapy: Thoughts on Depression & Runner's High

Runner's high is just what the name suggests: a sense of euphoria.

I feel this on a really good day, when I run for more than an hour. Once you hit it, you feel like you can run forever. If that wind catches my sail at 60 minutes, I'll run another 40. I started logging way more miles after I first got a taste of it. Euphoria is a great motivator.

Recent medical studies have shown that the biochemistry of this state is real, and that it looks just like the euphoria of "new love" - and, interestingly, the deep pleasure of listening to music that blows your mind (see "Yes, Running Can Make You High"). I sometimes feel this intense pleasure when playing soccer - I love pick-up games that last for hours. The pacing is different, but the payoff is similar - on a good day, I feel in love with the pitch and everyone on it. (The high in soccer is distinctly social - I am sure the nature of this high is why so much soccer literature is so outrageously romantic.)

Anyway, journalism on "runner's high" suggests that running has a natural anti-depressent effect. I don't know if that's accurate - but it sure is true that "runner's high" feels good when you are feeling it, and, too, if you are in the habit of running that long and that far, you are at least able to get yourself out of bed and out of the house.

But it turns out that athletes can have their own form of athletic depression: "overtraining syndrome." According to this 2002 article in Peak Performance, it looks just like major depression - but is signaled in the athlete by "decreased physcial performance." That drop in performance compounds the difficulty of depression's symptoms (difficulty sleeping, loss of interest/motivation, weight loss/disordered eating, irritability, restlessness, etc.). [Image: Yrsa Roca Fannberg's "Falling" (2009).]

According to Laurence Armstrong and Jaci VanHeest (authors of the study on which the Peak Performance article is based), disappointing performance leads to more and harder training as the athlete tries to grapple with feelings of failure and is driven by the sense that "harder" work will somehow get them back on top. The syndrome produces a vicious cycle and can be hard to notice because athletes are so good at doing the very thing that "traditional" depressives seem to struggle with. An athlete tends, by definition, to be very active - and often lives in a world reluctant to acknowledge the reality of psychological struggle. (Laurence Armstrong and Jaci VanHeest's study can be foud in Sports Medicine, 32(3) 2002, pp 185-209.)

I have been wondering if, in all these new conversations about treating depression in athletes, people have explored the impact of antidepressants (increasingly prescribed to everyone) on "runner's high." As happy as I was when an anti-depressant relieved me of the disabling cycles of panic and anxiety which tormented me in my 20s, I was sad to find that experiences of euphoria became muted - I distinctly remember, in fact, that I couldn't "feel" music the way I used to. (I also didn't cry at the movies like I do normally. Or sink into spirals of complete despair.) I didn't run much back then. No more than 30 minutes a couple times a week. So I have no personal experience with the impact of an anti-depressant on runner's high.

Some anti-depressants lift the "floor" of your lows, while also dropping the ceiling of your highs. Surely, they must have an impact on how athletes experience the pleasures (and anxieties) of their sport. And I wonder how that kind of chemical shift in feeling impacts people in competition.

Armstrong and Vaneest's study recommends that atheletes suffering from depression work closely with their therapist, coach, and (ideally) nutrionist - the only way to track the effectiveness of any treatment is to keep very close track of what one is doing, and how one is feeling. This of course means bringing the darker side of the athlete's emotional life into the open - to acknowledge experiences of depression as an aspect of the self - as one of the things that make us unique, and even uniquely driven.

Potential

By "potential", we mean something more than possibility. We mean something there - latent, just beneath the surface and waiting to be coaxed into open air.

It's what kills fans. Feeling the potential for our teams, and yet watching the reality unfold, match after match. And still believing. You feel foolish. And then you look at the people on the pitch, and on the bench - and remember: the potential. You think: Yes, they've lost or drawn or looked awful even as they've managed to wrangle a few points here and there. But the potential is real.

And, of course, it is.

It's one of the things that binds us to them - potential, and our ability to project the wildest possibilities into the future of the players on the field; our conviction that a little tinkering here and there - and that potential will be unlocked!

Look at Barça. They've just set a La Liga record for reaching 50 points mid season.

The realization of Barça's potential makes the season (as it is unfolding) extraordinarily satisfying. You don't have to be a Barça fan to know that this side has long had perhaps the greatest potential of any playing. But recent years have given much cause for suffering. That misery is not caused by the team playing badly - but by the great disparity between the team's performance and its potential. Now, the long tested faith of fans is affirmed by game after game of not just convincing victories but victories won by playing their game.

Events like this feed our need to believe that every now and again, the beautiful maybe you see just there, just out of reach, rises up and becomes real.

Marta. Again.

FIFA just announced the winner of the award for female footballer of the year: Marta. Again. Now, I am a fan. I love Marta, and am thrilled she'll be playing for the LA Sol. (I am learning to embrace the fact that the team is named after mediocre beer.)

But since 2001, this award has been given to exactly three women: Marta (three times), Birgit Prinz (three times), and Mia Hamm (twice). As deserving as these three women are - are there really no other players that the coaches and players casting their votes can think of?  

I think the lack of imagination here reflects the lack of exposure of the sport. These are basically the three players that players and coaches know best - for reasons that have far more to do with access to tournaments, to footage of the players, to, in fact, any information about women's football at the international level. These are the players that everyone is aware of.

But I think that those of us who have been watching Brazil seriously (in not just final matches, but throughout tournaments) would have nominated Cristiane. Five goals in six matches in the Olympics (for example) - and two (gorgeous) assists. She was the top scorer in the 2004 Olympics, too, by the way. Her performance in South American cup competition is also exceptional - and it looks like her presence on your roster guarantees your team silverware.

This is not to take anything away from Marta, but as a fan of international women's football,  I find the lack of imagination in the selection kindof depressing.  Not for what it says about the sport, but for what it says about awareness of the women playing it at the top level.

[Check out this great post from theglobalgame on Marta and her move to Los Angeles - this is possibly the most well-balanced and researched article on her to date in English!]

Short Shorts & a Günter Netzer Sighting

First, a bit of television history making the viral video rounds:



There is oh so much to say about this.

I will confine my comments here to observe that the gentleman in the leather jacket is Günter Netzer, an early Ferrari-driving, nightclub owning popstar-footballer. One of his most fabled moments on the pitch arrived in the final for the 1973 German Cup. After a season of public power struggles with his manager, he announced a move to Real Madrid a week before this final game against Koln. The manager had him start the match on the bench. I am not sure I understand the details, but I think the manager tried to sub him in during the first half, and Netzer refused to go on the field. And then, during the second half, he shed his jacket, and said "I will go on now" and scored the winning goal. You can see that goal here, starting at about 2 minutes.

A friend of mine told me about Netzer and this incident in August, and, amazingly, we saw Netzer at an airport in Berlin just a few days after that conversation. I thought of asking him to autograph my copy of Moby Dick (the only thing I had in my hands that someone could sign, as it happens), but I didn't have a pen, don't speak German, and got shy.

Happy Holidays!