In Japan, where professional soccer is still young, the largest companies have set up their own teams and hired foreign stars, making the safe bet that soccer is a universal language for advertising their businesses the world over. Furukawa electric company started the club Jef United Ichihara and hired German superstar Pierre Littbarski and the Czechs František and Pavel. Toyota set up Club Grampus and signed on English striker Gary Lineker. The veteran but ever-brilliant Zico played for Kashima, which belongs to the Sumitomo industrial-financial conglomerate. Mazda, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Panasonic, and Japan Airlines also have soccer teams.
The teams may lose money, but that does not matter as long as they project a good image for their corporate proprietors. That’s why their ownership is no secret: soccer helps advertise the companies and in all the world there is no greater public relations tool. When Silvio Berlusconi bought Milan, which was in bankruptcy, he launched a new chapter in the club’s life with all the choreography of a major advertising campaign. That afternoon in 1987, Milan’s eleven players descended slowly from a helicopter hovering above the center of the field while loudspeakers blared Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries.” Bernard Tapie, another specialist in his own protagonism, liked to celebrate Olympique’s victories with huge parties glowing with fireworks and laser beams, where top rock groups performed.
Soccer, the fountain of so much passion, also generates fame and power. The teams that enjoy some autonomy, because they do not depend directly on other companies, are often run by shady businessmen or second-rate politicians who use the game as a prestigious platform to catapult themselves into the public eye. There are also rare cases where just the opposite is true: men who put their well-earned fame at the service of soccer, like the English singer Elton John, who took over Watford, the team he loved, or the movie director Francisco Lombardi, who runs Peru’s Sporting Cristal.
[As tends to happen in the cutthroat business of professional sports, a number of teams have changed hands and some of the companies have gone belly up since this book was first published in 1995. Parma, Sampdoria, Fiorentina, Paris Saint-Germain, Uerdingen, and Tottenham are all owned by different corporate behemoths. And ISL Marketing collapsed without warning in 2001, at which point the International Olympic Committee discovered it could sell TV rights very well on its own, thank you. But the essence of the story remains unchanged: few hands own the ball that captivates the world.]
Jesus
In the middle of 1969, a large hall for weddings, baptisms, and conventions opened in Spain’s Guadarrama Mountains. While the grand opening banquet was in full swing, the floor collapsed, the roof fell in, and the guests were buried in rubble. Fifty-two people died. The hall had been built with public funds, but without proper authorization, a building permit, or an architect in charge.
The owner and builder of the ephemeral edifice, Jesus Gil y Gil, went to jail. He got two years, three months, and two weeks behind bars for each death, but was eventually pardoned by Generalissimo Franco. As soon as he stepped out of prison, Jesus was back to serve the progress of the fatherland once again in the construction industry.
Some time later, this businessman became the owner of a soccer team, Atlético of Madrid. Thanks to soccer, which turned him into a popular television personality, this Jesus was able to launch a political career. In 1991 he was elected mayor of Marbella, winning more votes than anyone else in the country. During his election campaign he promised to clear pickpockets, drunks, and drug addicts off the streets of this tourist town reserved for the amusement of Arab sheiks and foreign gangsters specializing in gunrunning and drug trafficking.
Atlético of Madrid remains the foundation of his power and prestige, even though the team loses all too frequently. Managers do not last more than a few weeks. Jesus Gil y Gil seeks advice from his horse Imperioso, a snow-white and very sentimental stallion: “Imperioso, we lost.”
“I know, Gil.”
“Whose fault is it?”
“I don’t know, Gil.”
“Yes you do, Imperioso. It’s the manager’s fault.”
“So, fire him.”
The 1978 World Cup
In Germany the popular Volkswagen Beetle was dying, in England the first test tube baby was being born, in Italy abortion was being legalized. The first victims of AIDS, a disease not yet called that, were succumbing. The Red Brigades were killing Aldo Moro, and the United States was promising to give Panama back the canal it had stolen at the beginning of the century. Well-informed sources in Miami were announcing the imminent fall of Fidel Castro, it was only a matter of hours. In Nicaragua the Somoza dynasty was teetering, as was the Shah’s in Iran. The Guatemalan military was machine-gunning a crowd of peasants in the town of Panzós. Domitila Barrios and four other women from tin-mining communities were launching a hunger strike against Bolivia’s military dictatorship, and soon all Bolivia would be on a hunger strike: the dictatorship was falling. The Argentine military dictatorship, in contrast, was enjoying good health and, to prove it, was playing host to the eleventh World Cup.
Ten European countries, four from the Americas, plus Iran and Tunisia took part. The Pope sent his blessings from Rome. To the strains of a military march, General Videla pinned a medal on Havelange during the opening ceremonies in Buenos Aires’s Monumental Stadium. A few steps away, Argentina’s Auschwitz, the torture and extermination camp at the Navy School of Mechanics, was operating at full speed. A few miles beyond that, prisoners were being thrown alive from airplanes into the sea.
“At last the world can see the true face of Argentina,” crowed the president of FIFA to the TV cameras. Special guest Henry Kissinger predicted, “This country has a great future in all ways.” And the captain of the German team, Berti Vogts, who made the first kickoff, declared a few days later, “Argentina is a country where order reigns. I haven’t seen a single political prisoner.”
The home team won a few matches, but lost to Italy and drew with Brazil. To reach the final against the Netherlands, they had to drown Peru in a flood of goals. Argentina got more than they needed, but the massacre, 6–0, sowed doubt among skeptical fans and magnanimous ones alike. The Peruvians were stoned on their return to Lima.
The final between Argentina and the Netherlands was decided in extra time. The Argentines won 3–1 and in a way their victory was due to the patriotism of the post that saved the Argentine net in injury time. That post, which stopped a resounding blast by Rensenbrink, was never given military honors only because of the nature of human ingratitude. In any case, more important than the post, as it turned out, were the goals of Mario Kempes, an unbreakable bronco who liked to gallop over the grass carpeted in a snowfall of confetti, his shaggy mane flying in the wind.
When they handed out the trophies, the Dutch players refused to salute the leaders of the Argentine dictatorship. Third place went to Brazil, fourth to Italy.