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Luis Suárez and the British moral approach to football
History repeats itself. A South American has once again
been declared a savage. Luis Suárez’s punishment has been so
out of proportion, and its excess so globally notorious,
that the restraints imposed by civilization are beginning to
give way. Out of the World Cup and four months in “solitary
confinment” because of a little bite? OK. Let’s talk, then,
about the underpinnings of the rancid politics of football.
We all know that savages do not respect the codes of
civilizatory hypocrisy. And if the enforcers of these codes
catch up with the savage in an attempt to discipline him, he
eats them up.
Let’s
start at the beginning: The English did not invent football.
Football was more likely invented by the Italians. But if
England did not invent football, they did create its rules.
Indeed, the English seem to be better at inventing the rules
of games than at playing under them—you only have to check
the Premier League to verify this; almost all of those
playing with some degree of artfulness in England are
foreigners. The English seem to be better at erecting
written codes than at allowing life to expand freely. And I
suspect this has something to do with the fact that, being a
relatively young culture at the time of their imperialist
heyday, the British connected their newly established
football rules, which were enshrined by the mid 19th
century, to their self-assigned role as the civilizers of
others. And by then, they lacked the wisdom that would have
prevented them from taking it all in a mortally serious
fashion. From the outset, for the British, football was a
tool for the moralization and education of the bon
sauvage—and as far as I can tell, they continue to
understand it in such a way. They keep trying to use it in
order to send moral and civilizatory messages to the savage.
But the savage runs free past their British defence and
scores. And they can’t stand it. One need only glance at the
British tabloid headlines to realize that this is the case.
We
have to admit the British did not do anything to anybody
that they had not first done to themselves. Great Britain
used football first to discipline its upper classes and to
forge character on the playing fields of Eton and Oxford.
There they developed that complex form of civilizatory
hypocrisy known as sportmanship. Fair play today is the
grandchild of this petty set of island morals, except that
now it is soaked in Coca Cola and global marketing. And,
especially, it is promoted and enforced on very different
human beings and with a wildly different background than
those young Englishmen. It’s interesting to remember that
the discussion at the time of the creation of the current
rules of football included a chapter on whether kicking the
opponent below the knee should be considered a legitimate
part of the game. In the end the idea was defeated, but it
somehow sneaked into the ethics of the game as the British
understand it. As we have learned from this last episode,
for them to kick (or to hit or punch the rival, as a general
concept) is permitted. Even, sometimes, admirable. But they
would not accept any cheating. They want to play
football without anyone being cheated. This is how the
English understand the game (I sometimes feel that instead
of playing it, they understand it).
The
Italians never bought into what the British were selling.
Italians were playing calcio long before the British
began practicing modern football, and they had little to
learn from England, having invented most of it already—big
metropoli, irony, calcio, and imperialism, among
other things—and done a better job of it. So they simply
decided to accept the British rules without ever respecting
them too much, and being accused of playing in an “ugly”
fashion and being ultradefensive has always been all but
irrelevant for them. Playing approximately under English
rules, they have four legitimate World Cups under their
belt.
Those
of us from the River Plate, have always been, and continue
to be, mostly Italian—especially the poor immigrants of the
late 19th century, who created tango and
fútbol. Logically, we have been, along with the first
hand Italians from the peninsula, the first irreducible
savages football wise. A simple explanation of why Argentine
and Uruguayan football have been so good for so long can be
summarized in one word: Italy. Football came of age in the
River Plate basin, along with the political reforms that
transformed Uruguay at the beginning of 20th
century and were carried out in great measure by the sons of
Italian immigrant workers. It came of age at the same time,
and from the same at once scrappy and fraternal ethics; it
came of age in the same barrios full of tenements packed
with immigrants, out of the same violent and creative
happiness, and from the same excellence in art and precision
in craft that have always been the best products of any
Italian culture. The people of the River Plate,
ultraitalians freed from the last bonds of formality that
only remained among the educated classes in Italy, became
interested in that curious way of playing 11 on each side,
and we accepted the rules that came ready made without
thinking much about them, merely as a structure that allowed
us to play. But while the English believed when they handed
their rules down to us that we would abide by and play
according to them, the rioplatenses took a completely
different approach. The first thing we achieved was the
ability to control the ball and not allow anyone to take it
away from us. We called that in Spanish “comernos la pelota”
(eating up the ball). Pun intended. This is how the
gambeta (Italian gambetta: little leg)
rioplatense was created.
And,
of course, it was not only gambetas and ball control:
it was all the package that comes with a street-wise
approach to the game. As Uruguayan former defender Paolo
Montero, who played for Juventus for 10 years told The
Obsertver: 'When I get on a football pitch my only
desire is to win. I'm not thinking about being a role model
for my sons or for the fans watching me. I don't think it is
true to say that you are disloyal to football if you feign
an injury, or tug a shirt or do something else to win the
game as winning games is the purpose of football.' 'Cheating
the referee is not a sin if it helps your team winning,' he
explains. 'I don't criticise those who tend to dive, because
football is for smart people. And I am a defender, who comes
up against cheating strikers every week.'
As a
Uruguayan and having seen a lot of football for decades, I
know Montero’s views are only part of the more variegated
approach Uruguay has had to football along history. In my
opinion, Montero acted in the pitch as a sheer thug most of
the time—pretty much like Giorgio Chiellini does now, and in
the same team and position. But the latest 15 years of
Uruguay teams have seen a clear change in terms of fair
play—with several fair play trophys awarded to Uruguay
teams. Stylewise, he does not resume Uruguay historical
approach to the game either. For one, the Uruguayans winning
the Olympics of 1924 and 1928, and the first World Cup of
1930 were seen by independent European journalists more like
“artists” who at the same time developed a “scientific”
game. And the violence was by then used against them, as a
historically famous game against Germany in the 1928
Olympics seem to prove. Montero came along much later and
expresses a cynical view that comes from his particular time
and situation during the dark (for Uruguayan football)
nineties. But it is key to hear what he has to say regarding
football players not being role models, because that
is really the River Plate approach to it. Football is a game
and, as such, it shouldn’t be understood as a didactic tool.
***
The
current attempt to discipline Luis Suárez, a British attempt
played out on a global stage, is fascinating because it
summarizes the history of modern football in just one man.
Providentially a man and a pretext at the same time, Suárez
is fated to bring the British and the Uruguayans face to
face with what both of them have done to humanity, while
contributing as “enemies” to the development of global
football. Like twins who cannot stand one another because
they are exactly the same, only opposite, English and
Uruguayan have been and continue to be each other’s
nemesis. Suárez, the best known Uruguayan of all times, is
playing an unforeseen role: he is helping both the British
and the Uruguayans to remember what on earth they might have
in common. That Suárez is playing in England is destiny in
action.
To
make a long story short, Luis Suárez made it to South Africa
in 2010, and he became a decisive player because of his
goals, but he achieved fame for something else. And it is
England that is the key factor in him becoming world famous.
Indeed, Luis Suárez was pinpointed and attacked with
ferocity by England (who, apparently, had nothing to do with
it) after he used his hands to stop an African goal in the
infamous game against Ghana. The tabloids sank their teeth
into Suárez: “Cheat!”; “Sneak!”. They were expressing, once
again, the peculiar British angle on sports: a rule has
suffered, so the culprit becomes a despicable human being…
They read it to the hilt—and that was only the beginning of
it... A derisory transgression of an arbitrary rule is made,
by them, into a proof of human flaws in the life
outside of the game. This is exactly the point where English
and South Americans, sadly, don’t understand each other.
For
the British, football seems, at times, to be not so much the
joy of the game as it is the severity of a didactic pursuit.
Suárez gets entangled in a field exchange with Evra:
“Racist!”; Suárez bites Ivanovic: “Cannibal!”; Suárez hits
with his fangs, or bites Chiellini a little bit: “Chew,
Dirty Rat!”. Really? Seriously? Does England really
want to keep practicing moral enforcement, playing its
out-of-control metonymy connecting what belongs inside of
the game to what belongs in real life outside of it?
At
this point, it’s all too sad. As soon as Suárez appeared to
be biting Chiellini, the tabloids were already full steam in
their daily effort of bringing the worst out in people.
Active players, fellow professionals of Luis Suárez,
appeared on the spot asking for harsh punishment. And
England made it again. England won, and Suárez, the “dirty
rat” of The Sun’s June 25th article—has
been given a completely out of proportion ban. He has been
severed from his profession, removed from stadiums and
clubs, like a Hindi pariah. Suárez has been made a member of
the lowest caste, an untouchable. But it looks like, this
time, this has gone too far. The world is starting to
notice. Something does not square up anymore. Suárez, has
become the catalytic agent of a deep-seated human
discomfort. Already on June 26th practically all
big media in Latin America—and everywhere outside the
“central countries”, I believe—was exclaiming that Suárez’s
punishment was out of proportion. Even Giorgio Chiellini,
who had been depicted by some English media as the horrified
“victim” of a terrible and traumatic aggression, said he was
in disagreement with the sanction, and said explicitly that
it was “excessive”. People are noticing: you cannot drag
someone’s dignity through the mud just because he violated
an irrelevant rule of a game.
Luis
Suárez is not a racist; Luis Suárez is not a cannibal; and
Luis Suárez is neither violent, nor a sneaky or cheating
human being. His friends, his life, and his family,
provide abundant testimony of this fact. He is quite the
opposite. He “cheats” whenever he feels like it, or whenever
he cannot control it, but always within a game. And
the game is also cheating and winning, it is joy and
sadness, and above all, it doesn’t matter that much. It has
no such simplistic or direct relationship with the rest of
life outside of the game. Not understanding this may be the
English mistake, the English horror par excellence.
Playing is first. Rules, second. I have no doubt that
England may have a lot to teach Uruguay and the world when
it comes to playing according to the rules. But their
expensive didactic effort is tarnished by the sheer
brutality and excess with which they pretend to impose this
particular approach, that has historical roots more than an
undisputable logic behind it.
A
different connection is required between whole human
experience and the convention of rules, one that ignores the
idea that the way you understand a game tells anything about
your morals. Maybe the British need to be eaten so they can
be assimilated by a truly playful—and maybe wilder—kind of
civilization, which exists far away from any calculated,
rule-oriented moral delirium. But Suárez refuses to eat the
British. So far he has tasted a Turk, a Bulgarian, and an
Italian. All of them more palatable people. The British
must keep working at it before they can be invited to the
table. But there’s still hope for them. As the wise
avant-garde poet Oswald de Andrade wrote in his Cannibal
Manifesto of 1928, capturing it all, and from the same
Brazil of June 26th outrage: “Only cannibalism
unites us. Socially. Economically. Philosophically”. We must
keep repeating this text to the British until they can
finally be invited to the feast.
(Spanish
version)
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