Forget the stuffy museums. Or the useless Lonely Planet guidebooks.
If you really want to understand a country and its culture leave your valuables at home and join the fellow hooligan masses at a professional soccer match.
Disclaimer. During the trip, I’ve seen countless games on televisions in packed bars and live among the crazies. Yet despite the dozens of loyalists who’ve explained the subtleties and fueled the fervor, I still don’t love the game.
Sure, I enjoyed watching the U.S. women win their World Cup (or maybe it was just Brandi Chastain removing her shirt). And I remain hopeful that with millions of soccer midgets occupying every inch of grass in our country that someday we’ll be able to reach soccer’s elite status.
But, c’mon. Admit it. The game’s dull. There’s less scoring at a soccer match than at a Saudi Arabian Junior High School. And the only drama occurs after a foul, when a simple tripping turns into a Merchant and Ivory production.
So forget the game and watch the real excitement – the fans.
Soccer in Brazil is like forro, a rhythmic, colorful, fast-paced, cross-cultural and at times erotic form of dance and music. Brazil’s zydeco. The name derives from picnics thrown by Ford Motor Company plants in Brazil “for all.” It’s also a good way to describe matches in Rio’s Maracanã stadium, the world’s largest. Ice cream vendors and truck drivers, lawyers and land barons, students, vagabonds and work shirkers cram, wiggle, shout, moan, sway and pray for victory. They dance and sing like the culmination of Carnival.
Crumbling economy? Who cares. Disappearing rain forest? Don’t have the time to worry about that. Not when Brazil is playing. And heaven forbid a loss.
I had a Brazilian friend in college who locked himself in his room after a World Cup defeat. “Give me a couple days alone,” he said as I tried to coax him out for a school party. “This one is going to take a while to stomach.”
Italians are passionate about their soccer as well. It’s just a more fashionable passion. Men blend team color scarves with Armani jackets and Versace sweaters. Even the red glare road flares and fire bombs thrown on the field match the banners and flags overhead.
Kurt and I earned numerous stares at an AC Milan match. It wasn’t because we were obvious soccer novices (calling it soccer instead of football alone qualifies one) or out-of-place Americans. It was our blue jeans and gray sweatshirts. They didn’t quite fit the style palate.
Italians sang boisterously to encourage their team and waved their arms after each penalty whistle. 75,000 divas in an Italian opera.
During halftime at a match between Milan and Leeds, a young Italian enthusiast berated his English counterpart a deck below with an emotional diatribe accentuated with Momma Mia wrist waves, fingers bunched together. The Brit took a more direct approach, acting out a pulsating hip thrust that looked like a prison love scene with the Italian as his imaginary cellmate.
Verdi vs. Sid Vicious.
I think there were thousands of cheering fans at the Spartek Moscow game. I just had a hard time seeing them through the tens of thousands of police and military personnel who ringed the field, lined the aisles and formed a mile-long human tunnel from the stadium to the metro.
In Russian soccer and society, the authorities love to exert control. So we ended up spending almost as much time waiting to be excused to leave as we did watching the orderly, ordinary match. Dance of the Russian soldiers.
Also like the country, the stadiums are massive, poorly constructed and cold; the food bland though improving; and the people surprisingly warm and friendly.
Intricate, precise, old-fashioned yet enjoying a renaissance -- soccer and Tango in Argentina share much in common. Both cling to past glories. Both worship their icons, Carlos Gardel and Diego Maradona, respectively. Both view themselves as being more European influenced than the rest of the continent.
Kurt and I have a British friend living in Buenos Aires. She’s dating a local. One night over wine, we tweaked him about siding with the enemy.
“They can have the Falklands,” he said. “We have the World Cup,” a championship Argentina grabbed after defeating England with a controversial goal that deflected off Maradona’s hand.
Argentina residents call it “Mano de Dios” or the hand of God. I don’t need a Gallup poll to know that most Argentines would choose cups over rocks without hesitation. And, based on the soccer fanaticism we’ve seen around the globe, the rest of the world would probably follow suit.
