Journalists pepper him with questions at the postmatch press conference, but he never reveals the secrets of his victories, although he formulates admirable explanations of his defeats. “The instructions were clear, but they didn’t listen,” he says when the team suffers a big loss to a crummy rival. Or he dispels any doubts by talking about himself in the third person, more or less like this: “The reverses the team suffered today will never mar the achievement of a conceptual clarity that this manager once described as a synthesis of the many sacrifices required to become truly effective.”
The machinery of spectacle grinds up everything in its path, nothing lasts very long, and the manager is as disposable as any other product of consumer society. Today the crowd screams, “Never die!” and next Sunday they invite him to kill himself.
The manager believes soccer is a science and the field a laboratory, but the genius of Einstein and the subtlety of Freud is not enough for the owners and the fans. They want a miracle worker like Our Lady of Lourdes, with the stamina of Gandhi.
The Theater
The players in this show act with their legs for an audience of thousands or millions who watch from the stands or their living rooms with their souls on edge. Who writes the play — the manager? This play mocks its author, unfolding as it pleases and according to the actors’ abilities. It definitely depends on fate, which like the wind blows every which way. That’s why the outcome is always a surprise to spectators and protagonists alike, except in cases of bribery or other inescapable tricks of destiny.
How many small theaters inhabit the great theater of soccer? How many stages fit inside that rectangle of green grass? Not all players perform with their legs alone. Some are masters in the art of tormenting their fellows. Wearing the mask of a saint incapable of harming a fly, such a player will spit at his opponent, insult him, push him, throw dirt in his eyes, give him a well-placed elbow to the chin, dig another into his ribs, pull his hair or his shirt, step on his foot when he stops or his hand when he’s down — and all behind the referee’s back and while the linesmen contemplate the passing clouds.
Some are wizards in the art of gaining advantage. Wearing the mask of a poor sad sack who looks like an imbecile but is really an idiot, such a player will take a penalty, a free kick, or a throw-in several leagues beyond the point indicated by the referee. And when he has to form a wall, he glides over to the spot very slowly, without lifting his feet, until the magic carpet deposits him right on top of the player about to kick the ball.
There are actors unsurpassed in the art of wasting time. Wearing the mask of a recently crucified martyr, such a player rolls in agony, clutching his knee or his head, and then lies prone on the grass. Minutes pass. At a snail’s pace out comes the fat masseur, the holy hand, running with sweat, smelling of liniment, wearing a towel around his neck, and carrying a canteen in one hand and some infallible potion in the other. Hours go by, years go by, until the referee orders them to take that corpse off the field. And suddenly, whoosh, up jumps the player and the miracle of the resurrection occurs.
The Specialists
Before the match, the columnists formulate their disconcerting question: “Are you prepared to win?”
And they obtain an astonishing answer: “We will do everything possible to obtain victory.”
Later on, the broadcasters take the floor. TV anchors know they can’t compete with the images, so they just keep them company. Radio commentators, on the other hand, are a less fainthearted breed. These masters of suspense do more running than the players and more skidding than the ball. With dizzying speed they describe a game that bears little resemblance to the one you are watching. In that waterfall of words the shot you see scraping the sky is grazing the crossbar, and the net where a spider placidly spins her web from post to post while the goalkeeper yawns faces an imminent goal.
When the vibrant day in the concrete colossus ends, the critics have their turn. Already they have interrupted the broadcast several times to tell the players what to do, but the players did not listen because they were too busy making mistakes. These ideologues of the WM formation against the MW, which is the same thing but backward, speak a language where scientific erudition alternates with war propaganda and lyrical ecstasy. And they always speak in the plural, because they are many.
The Language of Soccer Doctors
Let’s sum up our point of view, formulating a first approximation of the tactical, technical, and physical problems of the contest waged this afternoon on the field of the Unidos Venceremos Soccer Club without turning to simplifications incompatible with this topic, which undoubtedly demands a more profound and detailed analysis, and without resorting to ambiguities which have been, are, and always will be alien to our lifelong dedication to serving the sporting public.
It would be easy for us to evade our responsibility and attribute the home team’s setback to the restrained performance of its players, but the excessive sluggishness they undeniably demonstrated in today’s match each time they received the ball in no way justifies, understand me well ladies and gentlemen, in no way justifies such a generalized and therefore unfair critique. No, no, and no. Conformity is not our style, as those of you who have followed us during the long years of our career well know, not only in our beloved country but also on the stage of international and even worldwide sport, wherever we have been called upon to fulfill our humble duty. So, as is our habit, we are going to pronounce all the syllables of every word: the organic potential of the game plan pursued by this struggling team has not been crowned with success simply and plainly because the team continues to be incapable of adequately channeling its expectations for greater offensive projection in the direction of the enemy goal. We said as much only this past Sunday and we affirm it today, with our head held high and without any hairs on our tongue, because we have always called a spade a spade and we will continue speaking the truth, though it hurts, fall who may, and no matter the cost.
Choreographed War
In soccer, ritual sublimation of war, eleven men in shorts are the sword of the neighborhood, the city, or the nation. These warriors without weapons or armor exorcise the demons of the crowd and reaffirm its faith: in each confrontation between two sides, old hatreds and old loves passed from father to son enter into combat.
The stadium has towers and banners like a castle, as well as a deep and wide moat around the field. In the middle, a white line separates the territories in dispute. At each end stand the goals to be bombed with flying balls. The area directly in front of the goals is called the “danger zone.”
In the center circle, the captains exchange pennants and shake hands as the ritual demands. The referee blows his whistle and the ball, another whistling wind, is set in motion. The ball travels back and forth, a player traps her and takes her for a ride until he gets pummeled in a tackle and falls spread-eagled. The victim does not rise. In the immensity of the green expanse, the player lies prostrate. From the immensity of the stands, voices thunder. The enemy crowd emits a friendly roar: