A handful of words

[lemongrasstea]

Hey, all. Because someone is dragging her feet, this community kicks off with a post that's all srs biznes rather than a write-up of a transfer saga. :D Or a link to that article about footballers and their hobbies

Comments

[colourreporter]

I hope you don't mind me showing up like this *looks shy* but I just wanted to hold up a big banner that says "yes YES" and then run away.

Also that article about Abbass Swan breaks my heart a thousand times over. Such a graceful dignified man in the centre of such utter terrible madness.

[lemongrasstea]

No, come back! We want you here. XD

When I was writing up this post I felt I should apologise for including so many articles published in The Guardian, but. I can't not include that interview and the two-part article on the match-fixing scandal in Italy, y'know?

[colourreporter]

But the writing in the Guardian is so often better than that found elsewhere. And they actually do seem to be genuinely interested in the relationship between footbball and the real world which so many people conveniently ignore . . .

Although their biases are pretty entrenched ;-).

I live in Scotland, where football/politics/religion are kinda inseparably meshed into a long protracted struggle. It can be quite refreshing to imagine that that's not the case elsewhere ;-).

[lemongrasstea]

I'm beginning to wonder if there are any places out there where football and politics aren't irrevocably linked. ;)

I come from a country in Asia where ethnicity/religion-based policies and uneven development among its states have had a huge impact on football. At one point, my home state's football team was its pride -- we were poor and cut off culturally (for ethic and religious reasons) and politically from the centre of power, but we beat the crap out of their football teams. I remember watching, as a teenager, a league cup final where my home team lost by a penalty shoot-out. First time I've ever seen grown men cry. Even worse was to come later when they became embroiled in a match-fixing scandal, which tore the heart out of the team. Things have never been the same.

Hope you don't mind the tl;dr!

[louis_quatorze]

Oooo, fantastic. I love articles like this. I'm forever fascinated by the international nuances of the game...

[thepianopoet]

Hee. I always like this article on Trinidad and Tobago qualifying for WC2006. The underdogs in football always capture my heart.

[koba_sama]

"But... wait... he wouldn't say that, he's from Country X where people think that Country Y's football is shit!

I know, I know. Argies aren't excessively slashed, but sometimes they are, and then they might be slashed with a Brazillian and in the fic there appears to be absolutely no problems whatsoever with what should be a situation fraught with 'I hate your country so much and joga bonito my ass'.

The article on the French players is something that gets brought up often, not just in that context, but the context of players really reaching back in their heritage, sometimes grasping at straws, to play for another country and whether that's permissible. Some kid who just joined Arsenal this year was looking for English citizenship, I think, because he wanted to play for a national team and it didn't look like the Spanish side was biting.

[lemongrasstea]

And then there's the other side of the coin: I remember the fuss over Owen Hargreaves, how he could've played for England, Canada, Germany or (I think) Wales. There was another player whose name escapes me, who has dual citizenship. He'd wanted to play for the country of his birth, but a change in the rules meant that he couldn't because he'd already played for the national youth team of his second country.

Would you happen to remember the name of the Arsenal player? I vaguely recall a non-English player saying last year that he only needed to wait another five years before applying for citizenship and thus having the choice to play for England, but I don't think he's very young.

'I hate your country so much and joga bonito my ass'

*dies* There should be more of this in fic, I think -- but not as swipes against a player the writer dislikes!

[koba_sama]

Manuel Alumnia.

"I am not as Spanish as many people, or very English - I do not care. I just want to play football at the top level.

"If I cannot play for Spain, I can find the way to play for any other country."

That bothers me, I'm not going to lie. While I understand on one hand, the desire to play at the national level, if it's not for your country, a place you've developed a deep affection for, a place that you're going to fight and die for - what's the point? Old fashioned POV, but yeah. Though if there are times where it's a valid point of contention like with Hargreaves or someone who was born in one country but raised all of his life in another.

[thepianopoet]

Hey ho, I hope you don't mind me joining the thread ^^

There are people like Chris Birchall who in all likelihood, will never have represented his home country. Playing for another country (no matter how remote the connection) presents them with their only chance for international football.

Having said that, I'm not condoning Almunia's POV - far from it, because he sounds downright mercenary and something there rankles deep within me. I know that what he is saying must not, cannot ever be considered right. It is an honour to represent your country and your loyalty shouldn't be sold so cheaply for personal gain.

[applegnat]

Possibly we can't demand it from fandom, but we can always play favourites with the ones that provide us the meat and potatoes. Hi, and thank you for doing this! Also, I love your icon. I'm amazed at the lack of Barca-love in those parts of the fandom where I have lingered until now. And as far as politics are concerned it almost doesn't get better, does it?

Special thanks for the interview with Abbass Swan. Reading it was - hard.

[lemongrasstea]

No worries, just happy that people are liking the articles. :D And ha, the politics certainly doesn't get better than Barca.

Incidentally -- and I apologise if this sounds stalkery -- I remember a mention of Carolina Morace when I was looking over your LJ before approving membership. I didn't think anyone else knew about her around these parts, and I certainly don't know much either. ^^ Might I interest you in doing up a post (this comm is by no means restricted to men's football)? Or about something else, because I recall liking your football worldview in your fics.

[applegnat]

Thank you! I Sadly there's little available about Carolina in any language I can understand (and Italian is not one of them), but I'll try my hardest to put something together. I'm interested in women relating to football, either as players, or fans, or officials, or, in their most public roles, as wives and girlfriends, and while part of it just seems like a natural base desire to insert self into fic, it's also perfectly reasonable to me to want to misidentify and shift football's pretty much exclusively male-centric view.