7-11-2010 World Cup Day

--You can see it in every pass. How Spain plays is how Barcelona plays. They can hardly be beaten—Joachim Loew, German coach. NYT 7-11-2010, S6
--Johan Cruyff, the great Dutch player of the 1970s who also played for and coached Barcelona, said he is supporting Spain in Sunday’s final “Spain, a replica of Barca, is the best publicity for football,” Cruyff wrote in his Thursday column in Barcelona’s El Periodico deCatalunya. “Who am I supporting?” I am Dutch but I support the football that Spain is playing.” NYT 7-10-2010, B10
--People wearing Catalan flags are seen traveling in a subway car after a demonstration Saturday in Barcelona. More than a million people gathered Saturday in Barcelona to demand greater regional autonomy for Catalonia and protest a recent court ruling forbidding the region from calling itself a nation.—SBT, -11-2010
--When people work on social justice issues, they don’t win much and wind up dropping out. To laugh at oneself from the beginning is essential.—Father Callahan—NYT-7-11-2010
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FURTHER READING
Twain’s opposition to incipient imperialism and American military intervention in Cuba and the Philippines, for example, were well known even in his own time. But the uncensored autobiography makes it clear that those feelings ran very deep and includes remarks that, if made today in the context of Iraq or Afghanistan, would probably lead the right wing to question the patriotism of this most American of American writers.
In a passage removed by Paine, Twain excoriates “the iniquitous Cuban-Spanish War” and Gen. Leonard Wood’s “mephitic record” as governor general in Havana. In writing about an attack on a tribal group in the Philippines, Twain refers to American troops as “our uniformed assassins” and describes their killing of “six hundred helpless and weaponless savages” as “a long and happy picnic with nothing to do but sit in comfort and fire the Golden Rule into those people down there and imagine letters to write home to the admiring families, and pile glory upon glory.”
He is similarly unsparing about the plutocrats and Wall Street luminaries of his day, who he argued had destroyed the innate generosity of Americans and replaced it with greed and selfishness. “The world believes that the elder Rockefeller is worth a billion dollars,” Twain observes. “He pays taxes on two million and a half.” –NYT 7-10-2010 A3

Sense of Discontinuity for a Bosnian Immigrant
“I have always hated German teams,” said [Aleksandar] Hemon, who grew up in Sarajevo, then a part of Yugoslavia, where antipathy for all things German was practically part of the school curriculum. “The way the Germans play conformed to all the stereotypes — the occupiers, the aggressors. To hate Germany was to love art.
“But Germany has changed, Europe has changed and I have changed. This is the first German team that I don’t hate. But I still can’t support them. I am rooting for Spain.”
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When Spain took a 1-0 lead over Germany late in the second half, a slimmed-down and very athletic Mr. Hemon was on his feet, cheering, in his Andersonville apartment. Mr. Hemon’s cable package does not include ESPN, so he was watching on Univision, which broadcasts in Spanish, a language he doesn’t speak. It doesn’t matter — soccer is a language unto itself.
“In some ways, soccer is like literature,” he said. “It provides access to a country. Nobody reads books just from their own country.”
he talked about Glenn Beck, the Fox News commentator, who has suggested that a love of soccer is somehow un-American.
“It’s symptomatic the way right-wingers are so invested in the idea that soccer doesn’t matter,” Mr. Hemon said. “Their image of America is obsolete, but they cling to it anyway.”
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A Dutch Great Helped Transform Spain’s Game
By JEFFREY MARCUS
JOHANNESBURG — Catalonia did not play in the World Cup here. It has never participated in the tournament and, because it is not a recognized member of FIFA, it quite possibly never will.
But Catalonia, a province in northeast Spain, is the capital of the world’s most exciting and inventive style of soccer, one that will be on display Sunday when the Netherlands and Spain meet in the World Cup final.
Catalonia Coach Johan Cruyff’s influence can be seen in the Netherlands, the team he led to the 1974 World Cup final, and Spain, where he played and coached at F.C. Barcelona, and now lives.
“I am Dutch,” Cruyff said last week to El Periódico in Spain, where he lives. “But I will always defend the football Spain play.”
That is an easy transition for him because the soccer Spain plays is downright Dutch, and it can trace its roots to Cruyff. At the height of his playing career in 1973, Cruyff joined Barcelona and played there five years, winning the Spanish championship and the Spanish cup. He had even greater success when he coached Barcelona from 1988 to 1996, winning four league titles and the 1992 European Cup.
He also helped establish methods used at the club’s acclaimed youth academy, La Masia, where a third of the current Spanish team learned a style of play that was neither Spanish nor Dutch, but which is internationally appealing and very effective.
“Certainly our style is very similar to Barcelona,” Spain midfielder Xavi, who plays for Barcelona, said Saturday. “The profile of the team and what we’re trying to achieve is very similar.”
In addition to Xavi, other Spain players who have come through the Barcelona system are Carles Puyol, Andrés Iniesta, Gerard Piqué, Sergio Busquets, Pedro and Víctor Valdés. Many of them have also donned the Catalonia jersey for exhibitions.
“But it is not only Barça,” Xavi said. “We want everyone in Spain to feel great about the football we’re playing.”
Indeed, in a country where regional pride has a deep-rooted and often fractious history, the team has made its Catalan style appeal to all of Spain, relying on key players from Galicia, Asturias and Castilla.
“Our style of football is inspiring people, surprising people,” said Iker Casillas, the Spanish goalkeeper and team captain.
The Spanish style is based on the Dutch system of “total football,” developed at the Amsterdam club Ajax, where Cruyff learned the game. It requires every player on the field to be a playmaker, as a dribbler or passer, depending on what the situation requires.
Open sections of the field were not gaps to be traversed with long passes or frantic runs forward; rather, they were areas to mount an organized, well-fortified attack with keen passing and combination play. That is the sort of play Spain has used here to dominate possession on its way to the final after losing to Switzerland, 1-0, in its opening match.
“I think Spain is the country playing the best football in the past few years,” Netherlands Coach Bert van Marwijk said Saturday. “I’ve been the coach of the national squad for two years now, and during that time, it has crossed my mind that I would love to play Spain, and now it is happening.”
He added: “Both teams have their own style, and they do resemble each other. Right now, Spain has executed better.”
That is a generous assessment.
The Netherlands has scored 12 goals this tournament — some from long-range shots, others off headers close in — by six different players. All but two of Spain’s seven goals have come off the feet of forward David Villa.
Cruyff is ambivalent about the final, so tied is he to the Netherlands, the country of his birth, and Spain, his adoptive home.
“It is Spain’s game to lose,” he told El Periódico. “But I will take intense joy if they win it.”
While Cruyff’s influence is evident in the way Spain plays, it motivates the Netherlands.
“Those teams of 1974 and 1978 are an inspiration to us,” van Marwijk said last week. “I was thinking about the ’74 and ’78 teams during the game against Uruguay, and at the end of the game, and have talked many times about those teams.”
In 1974, and four years later, when the Netherlands again lost in the final, to host Argentina, the Dutch played scintillating soccer. Cruyff’s dashes through the midfield were the highlight of the 1974 World Cup campaign, when the Netherlands lost in the final to host West Germany.
Cruyff’s Oranje rolled through the World Cup undefeated until the final, scoring 14 goals and conceding only one. This team, powered by the midfield dynamo Wesley Sneijder (five goals) and wing Arjen Robben (two goals), had to defeat Braziland Uruguay on the road to the final — just like the Dutch team a generation ago.
“I don’t only think about the past and the thing we did not achieve,” van Marwijk said. “No Dutch player has ever become world champion, so that’s quite special and extraordinary.”
“Of course,” he added, “you want to win the final, that’s the only thing that counts.”

July 10, 2010
For Final, South Africans Put Past Aside
By JERÉ LONGMAN
JOHANNESBURG — Given that the Dutch are former colonial masters and their descendants instigated the harsh racial policies of apartheid, one might think that many South Africans, blacks especially, would not cheer for the Netherlands against Spain on Sunday in the World Cup final.
In truth, many will not, but mostly for reasons involving the aesthetics of soccer, not a half-century of state-mandated oppression of blacks.
“Loads of us favor Spain, but it is because they have a flair, a quality,” said Lucas Radebe, a black South African who was captain of World Cup teams in 1998 and 2002. “This is all about football. History is history.”
On the other hand, many black and mixed-race South Africans are rooting for the Netherlands, along with white Afrikaners, who are of Dutch descent. Radebe said that 16 years after the fall of apartheid, this represented a sign of progress, a recognition of deep historical and cultural connections, and a confirmation of Nelson Mandela’s belief in the healing power of sports.
In 1995, a year after being voted president, Mandela famously wore the jersey of the Springboks, the national rugby team largely supported by whites and resented by blacks, as South Africa won the world rugby championship here.
“We forgive and forget,” Radebe said. “You’ve got to live in the world and you want to do it in peace. Mandela said we had to tolerate each other. Somebody has to give in so we can make our way forward. Sport has the power to unite people and change individuals.”
As could be expected, many Afrikaners are supporting the Dutch, who are seeking their first World Cup title. Historical links between South Africa and the Netherlands extend to 1652, when the Dutch East India Company established a supply station for ships rounding the Cape of Good Hope.
“Definitely, we’re supporting the Dutch; our roots are there,” said Cherie Smith, 52, a teacher. Her daughter, Sarah Jane, a model, has painted her fingernails orange, the Dutch color, bought an orange shirt to wear and even an orange wig.
“She’s a redhead, so orange is not her color, but she really feels a connection,” Smith said.
Generally, people here do not view former colonial powers solely through the prism of the past. Many South Africans supported England, another former colonial overlord, earlier in the World Cup and are devoted television watchers of the popular English Premier League.
Many black South Africans also rooted for the Netherlands in its semifinal match against Uruguay, mostly because Uruguay had earlier defeated South Africa and ousted Ghana — the continent’s final hope in the tournament — after a controversial play in which a Uruguayan player illicitly used his hand to block a shot from going into the goal.
A soccer connection has existed between the Netherlands and South Africa for more than half a century. The first black South African soccer player to play professionally in Europe was Steve Mokone, who joined the Dutch team Heracles in the late 1950s, a decade after apartheid had been codified in 1948.
In 1999, a Cape Town team in South Africa’s Premier League took the name of Ajax and began operating in a joint venture with the renowned and powerful Amsterdam club.
An important symbolic gesture against apartheid occurred in 1987, when Ruud Gullit, the Dutch star, was named European player of the year and dedicated his award to Mandela, who was still imprisoned at the time.
Gullit met Mandela after his release, and told The Times of London in 2007 that Mandela said to him: “Ruud, I have lots of friends now. When I was on the inside, you were one of the few.”
Such a gesture by Gullit further endeared the Dutch to many black South Africans, said Radebe, the retired captain.
“Players like him made a difference for people of color, in fighting racism, in making it to the highest level of the game,” he said.
While the Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa supported apartheid, anti-apartheid activism sprang up in the Netherlands diplomatically and among nongovernmental organizations, historians said. This is precisely why he was rooting for the Netherlands on Sunday, said Themba Ngcobo, 50, a black business owner from Johannesburg.
“I will cheer the Dutch because they contributed a lot to the democratizing and developing of this country,” Ngcobo said. “We understand the past, but we look at the present.”
The Dutch influence in South Africa is particularly resonant around Cape Town. Cape Dutch architecture features rounded gables, thatched roofs and whitewashed walls. Choral singing in so-called Malay choirs features 18th- and 19th-century Dutch songs sung by mixed-race, or colored, people, many of whom are descendants of slaves brought to South Africa centuries ago by the Dutch from Indonesia, India and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka).
Afrikaans, one of 11 official languages in South Africa, is an offshoot of Dutch that is believed to have emerged in colonial times as a way for masters and slaves to communicate.
Among the 18.5 percent of white and mixed-race people, Afrikaans remains the primary language, according to Peter Alegi, an associate professor of history at Michigan State University who is a visiting Fulbright scholar at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa.
Yet Alegi added: “At school, my two daughters learn Afrikaans, but none of their schoolmates knew that it came from the old Dutch. How much awareness there is of the Dutch connection here is an open question to me.”
Another factor may blunt any enmity that black South Africans might have for the Dutch team, Alegi said.
“Many of the Dutch players are of Caribbean or African diaspora connection,” he said. “People look at the Dutch team and they seem to be diverse racially and ethnically. It might be hard to associate that with a white supremacist past.”
Sean Bvurero, 18, who is black, said he had long supported the Dutch because he liked their players, especially wing Arjen Robben. His friend Thandi Mpungose, also 18, said he was rooting for Spain, but added, “It has nothing to do with the past.”
Thilda Dikeledi, 23, a grocery clerk in the Morningside section of Johannesburg who is black, said she would support the Netherlands because the team played confidently and with passion.
“The past doesn’t mean anything,” Dikeledi said. “Football is football. In the end, this is a game.”