England/USA draw: a metaphor for another football game?

At work we've all participated in a sweepstake, with everybody selecting a World Cup team. There were the usual comments for some folk - for example, a colleague who chose Switzerland was told to cheer up because "they're rubbish at football - but boy can they yodel!"

As for me, a friend circulated an email asking how I, a Scot, was going to deal with having picked England. I replied that I respected the traditions and supported the national teams when I lived in Italy and France, and it was the same now (finishing with "cricket test? What cricket test?")

As it happened, we tried watching the games in the Draughty Old Fen, then put on the radio for the commentary, but had to switch over both times because of those blessed Vuvuzela horns; but I can remember my Mum making similar criticisms of Irvine Meadow fans and their rattles after matches when we lived in the Ayrshire town (behind the stadium).

With its customary patriotism, the BBC has published a report saying that England were forced to settle for a disappointing draw. What rubbish: a defeat is disappointing, a draw isn't.

The draw possibly also served as a metaphor for the political football game being played by Barack Obama and David Cameron over the BP oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana, to which the company's chief executive added insult to injury with his comment "I'd like my life back".

Obama's constant references to "British Petroleum", however, perhaps indicate a failure to grasp the interpenetration of liabilities and responsibilities, which are as mixed as USA midfielder Stuart Holden's Scottish and English parentage: a situation, like so many pertaining to Anglo-American relations, best depicted by Wes Wilson's adaptation of the Yin/Yang theme in his poster for the Beatles' concert at San Francisco's Candlestick Park.

Obama's half-hour phone-call with the Prime Minister, in which he told Cameron that his handling of the crisis had "nothing to do with national identity", may indicate that somebody's told him of the likely consequences of his demands that BP not pay dividends until the spill is cleaned up: that American investors and pension funds, which make up 40% of BP's shareholder constituency, will want him to explain to them why their returns have fallen. Unfortunately this isn't going to be over quickly - the gulf-stream is set to move contaminants to the coasts of the Carolinas, and eventually over to those of western Ireland and north-west Scotland.

Both England and the US gave a good account of themselves in this first game for either team. I wish us well against Algeria, and them good luck against Slovenia, both on Friday. I'll try to catch the games...maybe with the volume off?



Related posts:

World Cup: Top Ten songs about Football

Top Ten Songs about England

World Cup: top ten songs about football

Click here to view this post with only links to YouTube videos, for computers with 56k modems or slow broadband

I'm not a footie fan, but since you can't escape the World Cup this summer, I thought I'd theme my monthly Top Ten around football on the principle that if you can't beat 'em...So enjoy the music, and if you want to go a little deeper, click the flags to find more aboutthe national teams!

So the first song is published in solidarity with people who, like me, don't understand others' obsession with the world's most popular sport! This was originally sung by Robin Hall and Jimmy MacGregor, from Glasgow and Edinburgh respectively - home to Celtic, Rangers, Partick Thistle, Hearts and Hibernian; but Australian Anglophile Rolf Harris has updated it slightly.






The World Cup's being held in South Africa, which was teetering on race war not long ago with the murder of Eugene Terreblanche; but, as the Telegraph's Rian Malan notes, "when South Africans pull together, we can move mountains". Here, one of the country's greatest exports, vocal group Ladysmith Black Mombazo, repatriate The Lion Sleeps Tonight (sung by, among others, The Tokens, Karl Denver and Tight Fit) in the original Zulu Mbube, "Lion".





The official World Cup song, Waving Flag, is an inspiring piece about the ability of the "beautiful game" to bring peoples together. It would seem patronising were it not sung by K'Naan, a Somalian artist who has seen at first hand the violence that ensues when countries fail. This is the official video:






The phrase "beautiful game" was coined by Sir Edison Arantes do Nascimento, otherwise known as the Brazilian and international player Pelé, arguably the most famous football player ever. Brazil's the only team to have played in every world cup and, as five-time winners, has a small galaxy of stars on its strip. Unsurprisingly, they're the bookies' favourite to win this time. Look at the photo of actors and footballing deities on this video of the theme to Escape to Victory and you'll see Pelé kneeling in the front row, third from the right. He's depicted as being badly injured by a Nazi player in the film, which I wonder is a reference to his being targeted for fouling by Bulgarian players in the 1966 world cup.






An essential part of football is the terrace chant, the simplest being just rhyming phrases, eg "ooh-ah, CantonAAAAH!" More complex ones are taken from songs, for example the first line of Guantanamera, in the form of, eg, "one David Beckham, there's only one David Beckham..." It works with Becks' name and ones like Graham Souness, but it just doesn't work with names like Marc-Antoine Fortuné. Anyway, here's the original from Los Paraguayos:






But this is all very male-orientated. What about the women? Lots of women do, of course, watch football - and there's an ongoing debate as to whether men and women should play football together - but it remains a male-dominated sport. So I hope you ladies out there suffering from footie-fatigue HAVE SOME FUN!






Despite rumours of countries being prepared to bribe referees, one hopes that the Olympian ideal of sport still pertains in football. Whitney Houston sang about that ideal perfectly in the Albert Hammond/John Bettis composition One Moment in Time, and it's covered here by Charice Pempengco, the Filipina singer who shot to fame through YouTube. Watch that space.






Tracks by footballers and other team members are traditionally associated with players gargling with gravel before attempting to deliver an approximation of music, so it was a revelation when England's erstwhile Swedish manager, Sven-Göran Eriksson, compiled a collection of classical pieces. This is Malcom Arnold's English Dances Set 2, performed by the Texas Honors Wind Ensemble.






Do England have a chance of winning a second World Cup? Just as any boxer in a ring has a "fighter's chance" of winning, I'd say that England has a chance of winning merely by its presence in the World Cup. It's a pity that injury has ruled David Beckham out of playing, but Fabio Capello's still an inspirational manager and has a great team behind him. As the advert says, "maybe, just maybe..."




If you liked this, click here to go to more top ten songs about...

top ten songs about football for 56k modems

Click here to access this post with embedded YouTube videos for broadband

I'm not a footie fan, but since you can't escape the World Cup this summer, I thought I'd theme my monthly Top Ten around football on the principle that if you can't beat 'em...So enjoy the music, and if you want to go a little deeper, click the flags to find more aboutthe national teams!

So the first song is published in solidarity with people who, like me, don't understand others' obsession with the world's most popular sport! This was originally sung by Robin Hall and Jimmy MacGregor, from Glasgow and Edinburgh respectively - home to Celtic, Rangers, Partick Thistle, Hearts and Hibernian; but Australian Anglophile Rolf Harris has updated it slightly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GO6Ab8iXFtM&feature=related

The World Cup's being held in South Africa, which was teetering on race war not long ago with the murder of Eugene Terreblanche; but, as the Telegraph's Rian Malan notes, "when South Africans pull together, we can move mountains". Here, one of the country's greatest exports, vocal group Ladysmith Black Mombazo, repatriate The Lion Sleeps Tonight (sung by, among others, The Tokens, Karl Denver and Tight Fit) in the original Zulu Mbube, "Lion".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJF87m4_k88

The official World Cup song, Waving Flag, is an inspiring piece about the ability of the "beautiful game" to bring peoples together. It would seem patronising were it not sung by K'Naan, a Somalian artist who has seen at first hand the violence that ensues when countries fail. This is the official video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDDpW-wuR2I&feature=fvst

The phrase "beautiful game" was coined by Sir Edison Arantes do Nascimento, otherwise known as the Brazilian and international player Pelé, arguably the most famous football player ever. Brazil's the only team to have played in every world cup and, as five-time winners, has a small galaxy of stars on its strip. Unsurprisingly, they're the bookies' favourite to win this time. Look at the photo of actors and footballing deities on this video of the theme to Escape to Victory and you'll see Pelé kneeling in the front row, third from the right. He's depicted as being badly injured by a Nazi player in the film, which I wonder is a reference to his being targeted for fouling by Bulgarian players in the 1966 world cup.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvE_ri7Pyu0&feature=related

An essential part of football is the terrace chant, the simplest being just rhyming phrases, eg "ooh-ah, CantonAAAAH!" More complex ones are taken from songs, for example the first line of Guantanamera, in the form of, eg, "one David Beckham, there's only one David Beckham..." It works with Becks' name and ones like Graham Souness, but it just doesn't work with names like Marc-Antoine Fortuné. Anyway, here's the original from Los Paraguayos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rl9mrsyz2PA

But this is all very male-orientated. What about the women? Lots of women do, of course, watch football - and there's an ongoing debate as to whether men and women should play football together - but it remains a male-dominated sport. So I hope you ladies out there suffering from footie-fatigue HAVE SOME FUN!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rl9mrsyz2PA

Despite rumours of countries being prepared to bribe referees, one hopes that the Olympian ideal of sport still pertains in football. Whitney Houston sang about that ideal perfectly in the Albert Hammond/John Bettis composition One Moment in Time, and it's covered here by Charice Pampegno, the Filipina singer who shot to fame through YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2eqLNHJgmQ

Tracks by footballers and other team members are traditionally associated with players gargling with gravel before attempting to deliver an approximation of music, so it was a revelation when England's erstwhile Swedish manager, Sven-Göran Eriksson, compiled a collection of classical pieces. This is Malcom Arnold's English Dances Set 2, performed by the Texas Honors Wind Ensemble.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbFjq-Z1OMQ

Do England have a chance of winning a second World Cup? Just as any boxer in a ring has a "fighter's chance" of winning, I'd say that England has a chance of winning merely by its presence in the World Cup. It's a pity that injury has ruled David Beckham out of playing, but Fabio Capello's still an inspirational manager and has a great team behind him. As the advert says, "maybe, just maybe..."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUKze6da7Uo

top tips for tuesday

The Burke's Corner blogger, in his theological blog More than a Via Media, gives us his reflections on Jesus' last words from the Cross.

Nick Hillman, PPC (Prospective Parliamentary Candidate) for Cambridge, writes about a night spent with Cambridge Street Pastors.

And while we read about the various pronunciations of Ceotibus in Fr Hunwicke's Liturgical Notes...

...Richard Normington, who was lucky enough to attend a comprehensive school in the days when some were allowed to speak Latin, reflects upon a phrase from Tacitus in the imminent General Election.

Two for the price of one from Fr TF's The Hermeneutic of Continuity: click here to read about Richard Dawkins' hate-material about the Pope, comparing Dawkins to another villain who wished to eradicate another religion; quite disturbing given that the Pope will soon visit as a head of state. Alternatively, click the pic to read his blog about an article by an atheist who warns his peers against "Catholic-bashing".

Former British Ambassador Charles Crawford wonders if fans really want to feel like they're entering a boardroom when they go to watch the football...

While finally, on a slightly less urban note: a proposal for a city-farm in the south of Cambridge, from the Coleridge Conservative Action Team blog.

Maasai medical mission 2010

A friend of Maxima's had a leaving do in the Draughty Old Fen yesterday, before she goes to Africa.

Hélène Evans (right), a nurse from Cambridge, is leaving next month to work with a two-week medical outreach to the Naroka district of Kenya called the Maasai Medical Mission, which has been led by GP Dr Richard Scott since 2002, (before which he'd went to Kenya with Through Faith Missions) at the invitation of Pastor David Kereto.

I have to admit, to my shame, that I was ignorant of the Maasai people of East Africa until they touched my world in 2008. Six of the tribesmen from across the border in Tanzania - wearing recycled car tyres as shoes - came to run the Flora London marathon in order to raise money through sponsorship to instal a fresh-water well in their village. (The next year, the marathon was won by Kenyan runner Sammy Wanjiru, setting a course record).

Hélène writes:

The Maasi is a true pastoralist. Farming is anathema to them. They are hospitable, generous and affectionate, love their children, unbelievably domestic and gentle, and religious. They are firm believers in the one God - Engai, but are plagued by a fear of evil spirits. Bravest of the brave, a warrior tribe living the life they have lived over hundreds of years.

They see Engai as a creator-god associated with a mountaintop who gifted all the world's cattle to them. As well as travelling around the area to provide midwifery advice, dress wounds, treat malaria and the after-effects of polio, they will be bearing witness to another Creator God who was originally associated with mountains (see the experiences of Moses, Elijah and Jesus).Again Hélène writes:

Who is my neighbour in today's global village?

99% of all maternal deaths, 98% of all child deaths and 80% of all AIDS deaths occur in the developing world, yet this is the place where resources and workers are fewest. In Sub-Saharan Africa, 3% of the world's health workforce cares for 10% of the world's population bearing 24% of the global disease burden - with less than 1% of the global health expenditure.

The Good Samaritan helped a stranger because he saw this desperate need. How can we respond to the enormous needs we see in other parts of the world? There are many ways we can get involved - going, giving, praying, partnering, teaching, training - and more. Maasai Medical Mission aims to play a part in bringing God's love and care to some of the poorest people in the world.

Hélène is asking for three things:

First, pray: for Dr Scott, Pastor David Kereto (right), Hélène, and the rest of the Maasai Medical Mission 2010 team.

Second, if you can contribute financial aid (towards eg flights/food/water/petrol/staff costs etc) or medical supplies, please contact Hélène on penhydd1740@yahoo.co.uk.

sport: is morality the enemy at the gate?

I was never a sports fan; but it's so pervasive that, even being averse to it if not phobic, I was caught up by the cloud of depression caused by Kenny Dalglish's departure to Liverpool from Celtic that hung over our school for a day. I think I went home and gazed at his picture on one of the football cards you got with bubble-gum brought from ice-cream vans and mentally asked, "how could you do it?" But I was better the next day, and was back in the school's small car-park with my Eye-spy Book of Cars.

The behaviour of sports personalities off the pitch, field or course has been high in the media spotlight recently but, in an article whose title refers to Pele's description of football as "the beautiful game", the Telegraph's Mick Brown shows us that extra-curricular activities are nothing new:

One of the more poignant football stories this week was the revelation that during the Second World War those two examplars of a finer age of Corinthian values, Stanley Matthews and Stan Mortensen, were arrested for trying to sell contraband coffee and soap while playing an international match in Belgium. Their excuse, touchingly, was that they needed the money to buy presents for their wives. The two men were given formal reprimands, and the incident buried away in Ministry of Defence documents which have been kept secret for more than 65 years.

However, stories coming out in recent years seem to be of a more serious nature than spivviness.

For example, we had the infamous "dentist's chair" incident in the 1996 European Cup, where members of the England Football Team adopted the posture of a client of said professional to have spirits poured into their mouths. The incident probably had a two-way relationship with Paul Gascoigne's increasingly problematic drinking; as the Guardian's Mark Watson wote last year, "if Gascoigne's gluttony ended up being his fatal flaw, the media were equally greedy for details of his impending downfall. The tabloids who demand 'GET HELP FOR THIS MAN' these days are, by and large, the same ones whose relentless scrutiny fuelled Gascoigne's decline."

More recently, a presumably fatigued Tiger Woods has been intimately linked with nineteen women. But compare his attendance at a clinic that treats addiction to sex while Iris Robinson, MP in the devolved Stormont Assembly in Northern Ireland, who had a fling with one man who fleeced her for £50,000, told all in a BBC documentary and is now a star on Facebook, was taken into psychiatric care when the scandal broke. I'm not trying to say that committing adultery with one person is more excusable than committing it with nineteen, merely that being diversity-ridden does not protect society from institutionalised sexism.

It's as if sports stars, whether playing or not, are in an enclave where normal morality is kept at the gates. In an essay on Moral Reasoning in the Context of Sport, David Shields and Brenda Bredemeier of the Univesity of Missouri's Center for Character and Citizenship state they found in a study of 50 college students that "the nonathletes had significantly more mature moral reasoning than did the basketball players", explaining:

we also noted that in the philosophical and social science literature on play, games, and sport it was commonplace to discuss these activities as somehow "set apart" from everyday life. The noted philosopher Huizinga, for example, described play as "a stepping out of 'real life' into a temporary sphere of activity with a disposition all of its own". Handelman, an anthropologist, wrote that entry into the play realm requires "a radical transformation in cognition and perception". Schmitz, a sociologist, similarly suggested that play transfers participants into a world with new forms of space, time, and behavior, "delivering its own values in and for itself".

Now we have the news that John Terry, captain of the England football team, had an affair with the wife of his team-mate Wayne Bridge - but there's something different here. Famously strict England manager Fabio Capello, in seeking to lance "the most pernicious boil threatening his meticulous preparations for the World Cup", indicated that he's opening the gates of the enclave when he asked Bridge if he would be prepared to play under Terry's captaincy, the result being that England is seeking a new captain.

One could argue that heaping more money and fame upon young males than they can reasonably be expected to cope with is asking for trouble. It's a compelling argument and is in many cases true, but there's more. Firstly, huge amounts of money pumped into sport by TV deals and sponsorship that distort the playing field in every sense - from which even the sedate world of cricket isn't immune; secondly, the fête-'em-and-slate-'em attitude embraced by celebrity magazines and the worse tabloids which assumes that being in the public eye is a hubristic act that must be punished by astounding violations of privacy; and thirdly, a notion on the part of the Establishment that success - that being known for being good at sport, perspicacious at business, or just being known for being known - is an end in inself and a "get out of jail free" card.

However, Capello's reaction to his former captain's phiandering - making Terry the first England player demoted for non-football-related matters - wasn't the only surprising thing about the affair; the "other woman" has announced that she won't be selling her story. If things keep going on like this, I might just look out my old football cards.

the real predator hides behind the Tiger

Tiger Woods doesn't have his troubles to seek: the man who has everything lacks a shed in which to escape the celebrity goldfish-bowl that is constructed around anybody good enough at whatever it is they do (and lucky enough) to make a lot of money, usually for the purpose of pulling them apart when cracks creep up the façade.

There has also been a degree of compassion: for example, David Skelton at Platform 10 reminds us that "every Bobby Charlton there was a George Best, for every Michael Vaughan there was a hard drinking genius like Iain Botham"; and Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, author of Kosher Sex took a more analytic view of why men cheat in the Jerusalem Post, opining that somebody who has become as successful as Woods through their innate competitiveness is living with the toxic anxiety that "they are only special to the extent that they keep on winning". (Although he does then pose the million-pound question: "Many have said that husbands like Tiger Woods are sex addicts. But then why aren't they addicted to sex with their wives?")

Another, equally explosive, controversy linked with Tiger Woods emanates not from him but from one of his associates but has been eclipsed by the lurid chain of revelations about Woods' sex life - and perhaps that's the point.

The Telegraph's Tom Leonard revealed this week that Woods' doctor, Anthony Galea, has been under investigation by the FBI and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police for allegedly supplying performance-enhancing drugs to sportspeople, after his assistant was arrested crossing the US/Canada border with a laptop containing his patients' treatment and four substances, including human growth hormone (HGH). This is often used to look and possibly feel a bit better, and has been referred to as "the fountain of youth".

This is worrying. I'm sure what was in Galea's assistant's car was actually recombinant growth hormone, which is made in a laboratory either totally synthetically or with the aid of genetically-modified bacteria.

Human growth hormone is what it says on the tin. It's been harvested from the brains of cadavers since 1958, when Dr Maurice Raben of the Tufts University School of medicine first treated a 17-year-old boy who had dwarfism (which can result from a lack of human growth hormone from one's own pituitary gland) by injecting him with HGH he had harvested from an autopsied corpse.

From 1958 until the practice was banned with the advent of the recombinant hormone in 1985, a minority of HGH recipients were dogged with the symptoms of Creuzfeld-Jacob disease (CJD), a degenerative neurological disorder manifested by dementia and movement disorders, which had first been identified in the 1920s in the Fore people of New Guinea, who practiced rituals involving cannibalism. (CJD would later become famous as "mad cow disease" - bovine spongiform encepalopathy or BSE - and would be traced to bovine brain material being present in cow-feed.) The US National Endocrine and Metabolic Diseases Service reports that 28 out of 7,700 recipients of HGH in the US were identified as having developed the symptoms of CJD, 109 out of 1,700 in France, 56 out of 1,848 in England - and in 2002, a Dutch man developed symptoms 38 years after the treatment, the longest recorded gap.

Although no longer acceptable as a medical treatment, the price of recombinant HGH creates a market for the original stuff in communities of people engaged in the worship of Narcissus who haven't yet realised that to put a few years onto your lifespan and look like a Greek god doesn't bring you a whit more happy. Intelligence suggests that HGH is being harvested from corpses in the Baltic region, Eastern Europe and - of course - China, where possessing organs or bodily fluids that somebody richer than you wants can be a capital crime. Others may be paying over the odds for consignments of HGH that are packaged like medicine and have the right labels and warnings, but since it's produced illicitly there's no way to tell, and no comeback when your memory starts to go.

In sports there's a huge market for performance-enhancing substances like steroids, erythropoietin, HGH and of course painkillers so that one can ignore the warnings screaming "stop". So perhaps this is why the media are on a continuous drip of revelations about enough mistresses, porn-stars and the rest to people a netball league, and why it's not going to stop anytime soon. So, whether or not Woods has taken performance-enhancing drugs (not all of which are illegal), perhaps it's time for him to hire other folks' muscles to create a space where he can sit down and figure out how not to let things spiral out of control again. Who knows, his silence might even prompt Anthony Galea to find his voice.

Related post - Victor Conte and Dwain Chambers' secrets