Imagined Communities in the Global Game:
This article draws heavily on Benedict Andersons article, Imagined Communities, as a the conceptual structure for his analysis of Dutch soccer. He says that the focus of nationalism and soccer with the Dutch style of “total soccer.” He describes the coaches goals of the 2006 World Cup were to;
“Van Basten’s job was to correct the lapses the national team had suffered under a previous coach and return to playing the ‘right’ way, that is, to ‘play according to the laws of the so-called Hollandse school’ and find the players to match the style (Kok 2006: 166), to ‘combat globalization’ by making his team ‘Hollands’ again (Kuper 2006a).” (pg. 215)
Lechner criticizes this movement to tie nationalism with soccer, which is interesting to compare with my focus on Catalunya and its own use of soccer. Football became powerful as a symbol of Catalism under Franco, whose regime made any reference to Catalanism illegal, and Catalanism in the Stadium became an important release for the Catalans. This is not true in the Dutch sense and Lechner argues that they are simply fighting globalism.
Another thing is that the Netherlands have recently been a really powerful soccer team. They played fantastically during the 2010 World Cup, although they lost to the Spanish. The Spanish team was already being called a dream team and so this loss matters less for the tournament and reflects that the Netherlands have built a strong team.
Comments: I like how Lechner references Cruyff, a super-famous Dutch soccer player, that became a star of the Barcelona football squad during the 70s and helped to bolster Catalanism while Franco’s regime was ending.
Playing with Tension:
Law uses two ideas to explore the current European soccer community. He calls these ideas the “official sports ideology” and the “Hyper-Critical Theory.” (pg. 3) The official sports ideology maintains that soccer and its competitions are a place of mutual respect for competing nations, while the Hyper-Critical Theory argues that it polarizes nations and makes political tensions even worse. Put in an exaggerated way the Hyper-Critical Theory argues that soccer:
“In the exercise of disciplined obedience to rules sport infantilizes and enslaves adult males in purposeless displays of pseudo-military aggression, producing the stupefy- ing effect of what Adorno called ‘meaningless activity with a specious seriousness and significance’.” (pg. 4)
Law focuses on the mostly post-Soviet bloc for the article. Ultimately he continues his comparison of the Hyper-Critical Theory and the official sports ideology and concludes that the official sports ideology is way closer to the truth.