Digressions&Impressions

"You'll Never Walk Alone"

 

Liverpool's You'll Never Walk Alone has everything a great football song needs: it expresses camaraderie, perseverance ("Walk on through the rain/Though your dreams be tossed and blown"), hope, and a reasonably catchy, even melodramatic tune that is, in fact, not at all easy to sing.*  It is the song of the underdog. But it requires a great stadium. And when song by the Kop at Anfield Road, after a miraculous comeback against a very fine side with the greatest living player (Messi), it is near perfection. 

Unlike many other stadium hymns, which can be downright menacing or seem like a call to war, Liverpool's You'll Never Walk Alone has a melancholic flavor, which also recalls tragedy (Heizel, 1985; and Hillsborough 1989, which was made worse by police treachery). Man United's Glory Glory -- a song I like much less -- redeems itself by recalling obliquely tragedy (busby babes in days gone by).+ 

As an aside, you may think my claim here is far-fetched. But it helps explain why Queen's We Will Rock You, despite its popularity among marketing types surrounding American sporting events, and We are the Champions, which are both operatic, dramatic, and easy to sing in a stadium are not iconic club songs.

As is well known, Liverpool's song dates from the Bill Shankly era; it was adopted from a 1963 single by Gerry and the Pacemakers, a local, Merseyside band (see the clip here). I am not alone in thinking it makes for a great fan song because it was, famously, picked up by Celtic (soon after) and by Borussia Dortmund. When Liverpool and Dortmund play part of the fun is hearing the fans join in. 

When I was a kid, an Ajax fan, I was always a bit envious. We had Ajax wint de wereldcup, by The Specials (a largely forgotten band) dating from its first golden age.  It was written for the team during its legendary run toward (yes) the club world cup. But unlike the great hymns, the song is anticipatory and festive. Of course, the song was notably better when sung by its fans because it evoked what seemed like forever bygone days. Interestingly it has not stuck; these days (since 2008) the fans sing Three Little Birds (yes Bob Marley).

You may think that 1963 is pretty recent for what seems like a well-worn tradition. While the history of club football has roots in the development of leisure for the urban proletariat of the nineteenth century, it is easily forgotten, however, that international club football (or Soccer for my American readers) as a mass phenomenon is, in fact, relatively recent (post-world war II). Reliable air travel and TV conspired to produce it. Real Madrid won their first (of 13) European Cup (the predecessor to the Champion's League) in 1955--there are people alive who came of age with Di Stefano (and Benfica's Eusébio). 

Neil Levy quite rightly suggested that the single greatest football song moment occurred with Hibernian Fans singing The Proclaimers' anthem Sunshine on Leith after beating Rangers in dramatic fashion at (a half empty) Hampden Park in the Scottish Cup final in 2016 (see below, including the honor guard of horses on the field).++  In fact, the example proves the rule: Hibs were the ultimate underdog; the song was written by a local band as a fan hymn, and it is especially difficult to sing. (See here for an interesting essay on the back-story.)+++

I thought I would end it here. But It turns out that You''ll Never Walk Alone originates in the 1949 Rodgers & Hammerstein musical, "Carousel." (I did not know that!) Here it is sung in the film adaptation by Claramae Turner (herself a fine contraalto), who presents it as the operatic hommage that it is:

It is one of the stranger facts about our culture that a Broadway tearjerker ended up  being a fan song for the ages. But it is no stranger than Barcelona's Champion's League collapse, a second year in a row. 

On Changing experiences

My son (now eight and a half) has become an avid reader, so I have grown cautious in sharing impressions about him. Not unlike other kids his age, he adores Christian Ronaldo (CR7); consequently I have increased my admiration for Messi. It's not a question of identification: my boy is rather tall and his natural talent is at goalie (or basketball) [and I at bench-warming]. For him, the world cup so far has been a celebration of Ronaldo's skills [and Modric's], although Messi's heroics last night have redressed the balance a bit.

But I also have noticed that he finds the world cup games a bit boring--this despite the fact that there have almost been no scoreless and dull draws (France-Denmark excepted [this reminded me a bit of that shameful Germany/Austria match of you my youth]--but he missed that), many spectacular goals, and thrilling finishes. That he finds the games boring does not surprise me not just because ninety minutes of attention is a long time for a boy his age (or anybody), but also because even when he is playing his own matches I can see his mind wonder off at times. 

It's not that he is bored with football as such. He is constantly quizzing my knowledge of the game, can rattle off any statistic about players, is completely up to date on the transfer-market, and is regularly caught practicing his skill-moves when he is supposed to brush his teeth (undoubtedly to the chagrin of the people living below us).

His babysit (who has been watching a few of the world cup games with him), a senior, offered an explanation. Your son's experience of football is shaped by fifa18. In the EA Sports world, the flow of the game is different. It's not just compressed, but the very rhythm of the game is altered such that there are no dull moments--you are given the illusion of full control.

I reflected on this a bit. I had already noticed that the probability of winning any game or a series of games is much higher in the EA world (unless you played against others online) than in reality. But it's also centered on play-making (rushes with the ball, skilled moves, and shots on goal). There is enormous amount of regular feeds of modest gratification (goals, wins, skilled play, etc.) in the game world. I wouldn't be surprised if they are timed and calibrated to create some kind of dopamine/reward habits. That is to say, viewed from the point of view of the rules, the EA game is the same game as football or, at least, a good model of it. But viewed from the point of view of experience it is not: not just in virtue of a different kind of embodiment [i ignore this], but also in virtue of the different kind expectations it generates.

By contrast, a lot of the tactics and strategy of a game in real life, even at the highest levels, involve moment away from and off the ball. This movement is easily perceived as fruitless unless you understand the significance of marking (zonal or man-to-man) and the utility of shifting positions to force (marking)  decisions on defenders, etc. What makes great teams fascinating to watch is their ability to control the movement and tempo of the game against skilled opposition--Brazil and Spain (who play very differently otherwise) go through periods where they clearly slow down the game before they accelerate it again. 

My underlying point here is not to castigate AE games. But the aesthetic and attentiveness it (as well as the youtube fan channels associated with them) generates creates both great familiarity with the strengths and weaknesses of the players and tactics in the real game, and at the time a kind of alienation from the rhythm of a match in real life. 

These things are not fixed, of course. My son has been only once to a professional match. If he were to go more frequently, and see the game in its full range from the bleachers in a stadium, he would become more attuned to appreciating the aesthetic of professional tactics, which are in no small part very spatial and not fully appreciated on a TV screen unless one knows to project them onto the screen (which is what I suspect we adults do all the time). I see no reason to doubt that it's fully possible to enjoy both AE Fifa18 and the real game.

But it's also possible that a steady diet of AE Sports FIFA18 (19, etc.) early in life will shape the expectations of kids such that when they become adults -- players and consumers -- they will become a force to reckon with and nudge the rules-making bodies into changes to the rules such that the reallife game will be made to conform to the experiences of the gamer-footballgame.*

 

On Brazil, Ronaldo, and smart Coaching

The world cup will be won by the team that wins its final four matches. That is not to deny that the first round of group play isn't informative, even important, especially since Fifa moved to awarding three (rather than two) points to victory (back in 1994). But a team can still recover from a bad result in the first match, even a loss, although the latter almost certainly entails winning six matches in a row. A brilliant side, Spain, did so in 2010, after losing to a very good Swiss side. (Brazil won all its matches at the 2002 world cup.)+ 

I hadn't looked at Nate Silver's website since the Presidential election fiasco, but I just noted that before this year's tournament, Nate Silver rated Brazil the team with the best chances to win. He did so, too, four years ago, when his Bayesian predictions were still treated with too much respect, Brazil had home team advantage. After the first game (a dubious victory over Croatia), I noted that the first game "exposed the vulnerability of Brazil's defense. For whenever the Brazilian backs were challenged on the flanks, they had trouble not just containing the Croatian counter attacks on the wings (catching the Brazilians on the back-foot), they were incapable of preventing Croatian crosses into the box that exposed Brazil's lack of organization at the core of their defense." The only surprise then was that they reached the semi-final (helped by a friendly schedule and kind refereeing) where Germany took advantages of these weaknesses and won a historic victory.

Amazingly, given the pre-tournament hype, the Swiss exposed, yet again, the lack of organization in the Brazilian defense: on the goal, Zuber was left unmarked in the box (on a set-piece, no less). If you look at the film, I count seven (!) Brazilian players in the box, none of them marking anybody! This is the kind of thing that can sometimes happen to at the end of a game, when people are fatigued.* At the start of the tournament, it exposes lack of drilling in training camp. They were unlucky not to win -- in any given game they can clearly score a number of goals --, but the Swiss deserved their point.**  

When I was a kid, and not an especially gifted player, I sometimes played on teams where the only major tactic was 'give the ball to your best player and let him make plays.' It's clear that when Ronaldo plays for Portugal, he assumes this is their tactic. As tactics go, it's not silly even at world class level: every time Ronald has the ball danger can ensue. In the thrilling game against Spain, he made his Madrid team-mate, Nacho, look foolish and commit a foul after a characteristic Ronaldo run, including a scissor fake -- it's the world cup, and he executes a scissor at full speed! -- , into the penalty area. (Nacho got his revenge with a powerful goal.)  

The very best players are capable of deciding the game with their brilliance -- Ronaldo's equalizing penalty late in the match was astounding mixture of skill and determination -- and simultaneously, through their passing and positioning, make the players around them play better. Ronaldo has never quite convinced on the latter (although the last few years at Madrid increasingly so). In fact, two years ago, Portugal proved it was a better team without Ronaldo than with him--winning its first major title -- and defeating a fantastic French squad after he dropped out of the game with injury. Spain (which are the best side technically and tactically and played with great heart, including a very hungy Costa) has two such players, Iniesta and Isco, and it is glorious to see them play so well together. After the game, which was one of the best games between national teams I have ever seen, the talk was rightly about Ronaldo and his astounding hat-trick. But the smartest move of the night was the decision by the new Spanish coach, Hierro, to take Iniesta off (in the 70th minute) and preserve him for the duration of the campaign. 

 

On the Paris Statement

We are not passive subjects

The true Europe is a community of nations. We have our own languages, traditions and borders. Yet we have always recognized a kinship with one another, even when we have been at odds—or at war. This unity-in-diversity seems natural to us. Yet this is remarkable and precious, for it is neither natural nor inevitable. The most common political form of unity-in-diversity is empire, which European warrior kings tried to recreate in the centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire. The allure of the imperial form endured, but the nation-state prevailed, the political form that joins peoplehood with sovereignty. The nation-state thereby became the hallmark of European civilization.

The nation-state is a hallmark of Europe

A national community takes pride in governing itself in its own way, often boasts of its great national achievements in the arts and sciences, and competes with other nations, sometimes on the battlefield. This has wounded Europe, sometimes gravely, but it has never compromised our cultural unity. In fact, the contrary has been the case. As the nation states of Europe became more established and distinct, a shared European identity became stronger. In the aftermath of the terrible bloodshed of the world wars in the first half of the twentieth century, we emerged with an even greater resolve to honor our shared heritage. This testifies to the depth and power of Europe as a civilization that is cosmopolitan in a proper sense. We do not seek the imposed, enforced unity of empire. Instead, European cosmopolitanism recognizes that patriotic love and civic loyalty open out to a wider world.

We do not back an imposed, enforced unity

The true Europe has been marked by Christianity. The universal spiritual empire of the Church brought cultural unity to Europe, but did so without political empire. This has allowed for particular civic loyalties to flourish within a shared European culture. The autonomy of what we call civil society became a characteristic feature of European life. Moreover, the Christian Gospel does not deliver a comprehensive divine law, and thus the diversity of the secular laws of the nations may be affirmed and honoured without threat to our European unity. It is no accident that the decline of Christian faith in Europe has been accompanied by renewed efforts to establish political unity—an empire of money and regulations, covered with sentiments of pseudo-religious universalism, that is being constructed by the European Union.--"The Paris statement – A Europe we can believe in The false Europe is fragile and impotent." [HT: Liam Kofi Bright]

The "Paris statement" has been signed by an eclectic variety of otherwise, fiercely independent thinkers (including Rémi Brague, Chantal Delsol, and Ruger Scruton), so at times it represents an ugly compromise text. Even so, it's general thrust is clear enough; it reflects the efforts of thinkers (with a conservative sensibility [recall this post]), who were once at home in European Christian-Democracy, to think through the parliamentary collapse* of Christian-Democracy. For me their task takes on a great urgency because (like me) they call themselves "liberal;" I share with them both a sense that "the greatest threat to the future of Europe is neither Russian adventurism nor Muslim immigration," (about which more below) as well as the concern over the increasing hollowness of European cultural and spiritual life (recall this post),* not to mention the idea that "statesmanship" is absent in Europe today.

They do not abjure Christian values; their project starts from what they call "theological self-knowledge" and appeals to the "equal dignity of every individual, regardless of sex, rank or race" arising from "Christian roots. Our gentle virtues are of an unmistakably Christian heritage: fairness, compassion, mercy, forgiveness, peace-making, charity." They marry these Christian values with bits of classical inheritance: "the grave virtues of the self-possessed Romans and the pride in civic participation and spirit of philosophical inquiry of the Greeks have never been forgotten in the real Europe."

The first thing to note is that polite talk of a Judaeo-Christian tradition is gone. Given that this group of thinkers renounces "marketing language, a language meant to obscure reality rather than illuminate," the effacement of the Jews is almost not an oversight. With their fondness for homes and homelands,+ and their insistence that "these [European] lands" belong "to us" and "are our home; we have no other," they make it clear that Jews (who, after all, have another homeland now) do not belong. When "linguistic decency," is celebrated and "mendacious language that evades responsibility" is denounced, one can guess that one is in the company of the mendacious and that humanity is lacking.

The second is the peculiar relationship to Europe's history. It is recognized that the desire for "greatness" led to "competition for supremacy" even on the "battlefield" which has "wounded Europe, sometimes gravely." But without mention of the history of colonial and racialized empire one learns that "we must recover an abiding respect for reality" means historical sanitation is taking place.

The only hint of the existence of the long history of colonialism and imperialism is the suggestion that "Europe’s multicultural enterprise" imposed by a technocratic elite facilitates "the very colonization of our homelands and the demise of our culture." (They treat an embrace of multiculturalism as an embrace of empire.) Here the authors leave unsaid who is colonizing, but later they forthrightly say that "immigration without assimilation is colonization" and they praise the "inconvenient truths" of politicians who speak about "Islam and immigration." These intellectuals dare not speak the cold truths to their own readers, despite claiming "rigorous discipline of intellectual honesty and objectivity;" they do not name the enduring virulence of racialized sentiments in our homelands; they lack Orwell's courage in defending cosmopolitan patriotism (recall).

It can be intellectually honest to renounce empire and decent to reject "multiculturalism." Even so they go much further: they wish to "demand or even promote the assimilation of Muslim newcomers to our manners and mores, much less to our religion." [Would that be Lutherism, Calvinism, Dutch Reformed, Catholicism, Anglicism, or Eastern Orthodox, etc.?] It is peculiar that the continuous, demographic, cultural and civilizationational Muslim presence in Europe for well over a millennium is effaced here. Even the 'newcomers' they refer to have often been in Europe for three generations. The vast majority of which are living industrious and law-abiding lives. To  enforce legally and thus violently "assimilation" from immigrants and their grandchildren without offering a path toward mutual recognition is a recipe for continuing unrest, if not mutual violence (recall).  

By "liberal" these thinkers mean a willingness to embrace "robust public debate free from all threats of violence and coercion." At one point they also embrace a "rule of law" if it, and the markets it supports, aims at "at more than mere economic efficiency." That is, they insist that markets must serve "social ends" even a "highest good." And they embrace the "prudent use of government power to sustain non-economic social goods." But the harms majorities can inflict on minorities go unmentioned. And one encounters 'marketing speak' in the claim that after 1989 "central European nations restored their civic vitality" by which the mistreatment of the Roma and linguistic minorities are airbrushed away. One need not be a Freudian (or is that degenerate?) to observe that the aging, mostly masculine mindset of these intellectuals has a paranoid fear of the "fragile and impotent." These strong-minded thinkers overlook the vulnerability of and discrimination toward their fellow citizens--a word curiously missing from self-described 'liberals.' And, in fact, their liberalism is not of the generous sort, but rather fainthearted, if not illiberal, because the "loyalty" to law and "homeland" need not "always" take "the form of representative democracy." No, it does not.

Their illiberality is most honest in their claim that "Europe needs to renew a consensus about moral culture so that the populace can be guided toward a virtuous life." Has the demand for conformity even been expressed in such elevated language?***

Let me close with two observations: first, the "Paris declaration" embraces the "nation-state," but fails to address the challenge of regional nationalism (Scotland, Catalonia, Flanders) poses to a (De Gaulle-ian) vision of the "true Europe" as a community of nations," which have their "own languages, traditions and borders. " The sanctity of borders are being challenged. And the Paris declaration offers no clue how to respond.

Second, the piece belongs to a species of philosophical prophecy because it is has been organized around a set of contrasts between the true Europe and the false Europe. The false Europe is committed to:

• "faux Christendom of universal human rights"++
• An unprecedented commitment to one-sided human liberty. "It is a liberation from all restraints: sexual freedom, freedom of self-expression, freedom to “be oneself.""
• A "market-driven homogeneity and politically enforced conformity."
• An "unprecedented commitment to equality."

They despise the "The Generation of ’68" (by now mostly sipping Rioja in retirement) and the "faceless technocrats in league with powerful interests." They are the elect few who aim to "restore" the "spiritual greatness" of the past. But they show their true colors when they wish for a "new generation of patrons." (Patrons flourish in empire over their former slaves.) It is peculiar to be against powerful interests, but in favor of patrons. The only surprise is that these false prophets forgot to mention where our new beneficent masters must send their Paypal donations.

 

 

 

On Loving for Both

Se o teu coração não quiser ceder
Não sentir paixão, não quiser sofrer
Sem fazer planos do que virá depois
O meu coração pode amar pelos dois--“Amar Pelos Dois”.

If your heart doesn’t wish to give in
Not to feel passion, not to suffer
Without making plans of what will come after
My heart can love for the both of us--"Love for Both of Us."

On Monday, in a moment of melancholy, I was curious to learn who had won the Eurovision song festival. I had not watched the festival in a long time. But was pleasantly surprised to learn that Salvador Sobral had won singing his sister's song. I was enchanted by the fact that an introverted, longing ballad had won. Despite listening loyally to Catarina's Brazilian Music on Fridays, and a general, excessive fondness for Brazilian coffee and football, I don't understand a word of Portuguese (except for obrigado). So I had no idea what I was listening to.

I hesitated checking the lyrics knowing that the spell would be broken: pop tunes are too often trite, cliche, and shmaltzy. I can't say I was surprised it was a melancholic love song. The way I understand the song, the vocalist has been left by his/her beloved. Rather than accepting the end of the affair, the vocalist decides not to let go and will (stubbornly) go on loving for two.

Even though the desire to treasure something of value after it has passed is noble, the protagonist is a fool, of course; and may well have some kind of clinical disorder. (I leave it to others to label it.) Experience teaches that is better to move on after one has been dumped (after a period of mourning or reflection). This is not to condemn the fool who can't be otherwise.

I was about to let go of the song when I reflected on the oddity of saying about oneself that one has a big heart, which from stoutness shades into magnanimity. (A modest person would never say s/he could love for both; but a magnanimous person...) We tend to say that philosophy just is love of wisdom. But to philosophize often means unrequited love. By this I do not just mean the elusiveness of wisdom or truth. Rather, too often, in practice, our favorite means, argument, is designed to end discussion rather than to generate shared pursuit or mutual exchange. In the hands of many argument becomes a means of silencing--a weapon in a duel of brainpower.

Here my train of thought halted... too often in a philosophical exchange we need from each other a willingness to love for both, and there are few greater, rare joys when we give it to each other.

 

Hobbes, Muhammad Ali, and Self-Determination.

When Muhammad Ali famously said, “Man, I ain’t got no quarrel with them Vietcong…they never called me nigger,” he wasn’t just refusing to serve in Vietnam. He was also challenging the ability of the state to define for its citizens whom they should fear and who were their enemies. As Ali said to a group of white college students, who had challenged his position on serving in Vietnam, “You my enemy. My enemy is the white people, not Viet Congs or Chinese or Japanese.”

From the time of Hobbes, one of the leading attributes of sovereignty has been the right of the state to define what threatens a people and how that threat will be responded to. In the state of nature, Hobbes wrote in Elements of the Law, “every man…is judge himself of the necessity of the means, and of the greatness of the danger” he faces. But once we submit to the state, we are forbidden “to be our own judges” of the threats we are facing and how to respond to them. Except in cases of immediate physical threat to ourselves, we must now accede to the sovereign’s assessment of and decision about these threats. The sovereign, as Hobbes says in Leviathan of the state’s control over matters theological, is he “to whom in all doubtfull cases, wee have submitted our private judgments.”

This is why Ali’s challenge to the Vietnam War was so formidable. He wasn’t merely claiming conscientious objector status, though he was. He wasn’t simply claiming the authority of a higher being, though he was. He was asserting the right of the citizen to be the final judge of what threatens or endangers him. In asserting that right, Ali was posing the deepest, most fundamental challenge to the power and authority of the state.

That he also claimed to be more threatened by his own fellow citizens and government than by an officially declared enemy of the state only added to the subversiveness of his challenge. Against the state’s axis of fear, which claims that one’s enemies invariably belong to another country and thus are part and parcel of the international state system, Ali sought to rotate that axis along a different dimension: away from the international state system to the domestic system of social domination and civil subjection.--Corey Robin "Muhammad Ali, Thomas Hobbes, and the Politics of Fear."

I have not double-checked Hobbes's Elements of the Law, but in his beautiful essay Robin is wrong about Leviathan: when it comes to soldiering, Hobbes recognizes that we have a right to second-guess the Sovereign (recall). There is no doubt that Hobbes thinks all able-bodied have an obligation to fight in defense of the survival of the Commonwealth. Refusing to do so is a matter of injustice. But when it comes to wars of choice, however, one may well justly resist to join the armed forces, and leave the fighting to others that have voluntarily joined the armed service (for money or other reasons). He writes:

No man is bound by the words themselves, either to kill himself or any other man; and consequently, that the obligation a man may sometimes have, upon the command of the sovereign, to execute any dangerous or dishonourable office, dependeth not on the words of our submission, but on the intention; which is to be understood by the end thereof. When therefore our refusal to obey frustrates the end for which the sovereignty was ordained, then there is no liberty to refuse; otherwise, there is. Upon this ground a man that is commanded as a soldier to fight against the enemy, though his sovereign have right enough to punish his refusal with death, may nevertheless in many cases refuse, without injustice...But he that enrolleth himself a soldier, or taketh impressed money, taketh away the excuse of a timorous nature, and is obliged, not only to go to the battle, but also not to run from it without his captain's leave. And when the defence of the Commonwealth requireth at once the help of all that are able to bear arms, every one is obliged; because otherwise the institution of the Commonwealth, which they have not the purpose or courage to preserve, was in vain. Hobbes, Leviathan Ch. 21. 

Given that the sovereign is instituted in order to protect life and liberty, it would have been odd if individuals could be asked to put themselves at mortal danger for a reason that falls short of the survival of the state. Whatever the merits of the domino theory, nobody could think that survival of the Republic was at stake in Vietnam. (France -- with fewer resources and nuclear weapons -- suffered a serious defeat in Vietnam, but continued to exist.) So, from Hobbes's perspective, Muhammad Ali was entirely right in his response, that is, to face the sovereign's punishment (and not flee to Canada or fake illness), as well as stand his principled ground.

More subtly, Ali's remarks serve to point to the way to reminding us that ,from a Hobbesian perspective the history of state-sanctioned slavery, Jim Crow, legal segregation, and abuse of the rule of laws to create mass incarceration shows that the United States did not end the state of nature, but continued it by other means. In fact, Ali is right to claim (by implication) the United States represents what Hobbes would call an "imperfect" institution (recall), where civil strife is a consequence of the abuse of law by a faction (see Leviathan Chapter 29). Anticipating Spinoza and Hume, Hobbes argues that social unrest is a consequence of bad government.

I have remarked before that Hobbes's theory is pacific in intent and execution (especially compared to the mercantile and liberal imperial projects that followed during the next two centuries). This is not to deny that, first, Hobbes does not find a solution to the bellicose international arena (where the state of nature exists), and, second, that his domestic project has problematic, absolutists elements (and famously denies a right to revolt). Both failures lead to abuses. But it is wrong to attribute to Hobbes the idea that individuals should defer to the state and ought not decide their own fate when their lives are at stake. We should admire Muhammad Ali for maintaining this insight in the face of enormous intimidation and violence.

RIP: Johan Cruyff: 1947-2016

De waarheid is nooit precies zoals je denkt dat hij zou zijn. [The truth is never exactly like you think he would be.]--Johan Cruyff.

The first professional soccer (voetbal) match I ever saw in person was at old the Olympic Stadium 7 november 1978. It was a good 30 minute walk from my childhood home, and my mom's friend, Max, took me. Max was the son of a sailor; he and his dad introduced me to sambal--an Indonesian hot sauce that I continue to adore. Unfortunately, Max died rather young.

The match, an arranged exhibit, marked the first official 'retirement' of Johan Cruyff and, simultaneously, ended the first golden age of Dutch football: Ajax of Amsterdam got completely outplayed (0-8) by Beckenbauer's Bayern Munchen. I went home in tears. (I was seven years old.) These days my dad lives next to the (renovated) stadium, although it is now more modest in size and not used for football anymore.

It's hard to explain the role of Johan Cruyff during the 1970s in Amsterdam and Barcelona. One year, my own club (AFC) took all the youth teams to the movies to see a special showing of Nummer 14--a 1973 documentary about Cruyff (see here, too). The title of the film was a reference to his shirt number. It caused a major crisis among my friends: would we go in the Ajax club colors, to honor our idol, or go in (the more stylish) AFC club colors. (I believe I opted for a mixed outfit.)

The documentary is a homage to the greatest club squad ever (the 1972 Ajax team). The best scene in the film is the one in which the annoying musical sound track is halted to show how the squad of my heroes is forced to run up the 'mountain' in het Amsterdamse bos (the Amsterdam forest), which was the huge depression era, man-made forest behind my childhood home. I always think of the scene when I bike by the forest or fly over it when I land at Schiphol.

Cruyff eventually resumed his career as a player, including a successful stint at arch-enemy Feyenoord, and, eventually, a manager. In his 30s, when I saw him play regularly, he had lost speed, but he still combined a velvet touch with on-pitch insight. He could make many much fitter and faster professional players look amateurish.

Like many kids of my generation, I was born 'too late.' We mostly missed out on the 60s and 70s in which Amsterdam was the center of the world (or so we were told); and we certainly missed the golden age of Ajax in the late 60s and early 70s; we spent most of our childhood hearing about the great club and national squads from older friends and relatives. This changed when Cruyff returned to Ajax to coach in the mid 1980s. He inherited a very talented, youthful team including a whole new generation of fantastic players (e.g., Menzo, Rijkaard and Van Basten), but he manifestly improved them, and I loved watching them develop in person. The team was uneven, but on its best days it could dazzle (including a memorable goal by Van Basten). Cruyff took them back to the near-elite of European footbal (including the cup winners cup). Even so, his greatest European managing triumph took place in Barcelona when he managed them to their first European Championship (in 1992).

As the years went by Cruyff became known for his oracular aphorisms uttered during TV interviews or commentary. Cruyff, who spoke in a distinctive Amsterdam working class accent that has now largely disappeared from Amsterdam, could compete with any Ancient sage with his philosophical nuggets. My favorite one has always been, Als ik zou willen dat je het begreep, had ik het wel beter uitgelegd, that is, "If I had wanted you to understand it, I would have explained it better." (Another gem is Vaak moet er iets gebeuren voordat er iets gebeurt, "Often something has to happen before something happens.") In Holland, Elk nadeel heb z'n voordeel ("every disadvantage has its advantage") has entered the popular lexicon.

One final thought on the 1974 world cup final (recall also this post). During the last forty years, the Netherlands has fielded astoundingly talented national squads, including four others that had a legitimate shot at winning it all (and here I am leaving aside the most talented one that I saw self-destruct at San Siro in Milan in 1990). Cruyff has loomed so large in the national football imagination, that there has always been an underlying sense that, if Cruyff couldn't do it, it couldn't be done, until, of course, it will be done.  

 

Against Merit (I think)

[Perhaps today's post is the product of my belief that given my skill-set, I have manged to over-achieve in my professional career.--ES]

I used to embrace an article of faith that all hiring and appointments should be based on defeasible and broadly construed meritocratic principles that may be bent for some other important principles (overcoming past discrimination, ensuring diversity for various reasons, etc.) I still think this would improve the actual societies we live in. But recently I have come to wonder if an ideal society that is fully meritocratic (a so-called meritocracy) would be worth having.

Before I get to my concern let me offer four, important qualifications: first, a meritocracy is compatible with some (even considerable) chance if, for example, it is also a market based society. (As even Hayek and Frank Knight taught, market outcomes always involve some chance.) Second, by raising concerns about merit, I do not mean to advocate for nepotism or for willful incompetence in the actual world. I am here exploring a feature of far-off, counter-factual ideal theory. While I am unfamiliar with a political theory that is fully grounded in embrace of merit, lots of theories appeal to meritocratic principles along the way (see Rawls here).* Third, here I am ignoring the debates over the many flawed proxies for merit (IQ, race, religion, gender, etc.) that rightly cause concern among many people of good will over the very idea of objective merit. (I am stipulating for the sake of argument that merit can be established and that the criteria/proxies are multi-dimensional, context sensitive, and sensible, etc.) Fourth, meritocratic decision procedures or rules that settle athletic or sports competitions are fine.** So, I do not object to a boxing referee saying 'may the best man win' (unless, perhaps, we should urge the referee to use 'person' instead of 'man').

But while fair play and our sense of fairness are important commitments in support of justice, we should not confuse the way we envision an ideal society with the norms that regulate a boxing match. I think the analogy between a boxing match and a meritocracy is not accidental. We care about meritocratic principles in zero-sum contexts: that is, in circumstances where there are winners and losers. Obviously, we do not always describe patterns of merited outcome in terms of wins/losses (or rankings), but it is a fairly common temptation to do so.

In a meritocratic situation, other people's advancement would be entirely fair and one's (relative or absolute) disadvantage fair, too. But would an entire meritocratic society be worth having, that is, flourishing, happy, content, inspiring, and politically stable? I have started to question this. While undoubtedly there are more psychologically galling things in life -- Nietzsche famously called attention to being the object of pity --, it is surely very annoying to be told that one deserved to lose. It is worse, I think, if one is told repeatedly and frequently by a whole society's morality and shared commitments (I hesitate to call it 'ideology') that the systematic pattern of outcomes in which one always end up on the losing side is morally just and due to your cognitive, physical, psychological, aesthetic (etc.) flaws, especially, perhaps, if it all seems true.

Thus, I worry that a meritocracy does not generate widespread contentment, but rather widespread frustration and anger (if not self-loathing). If that's right (big if--it turns on one's moral and empirical psychology), then a meritocracy, even if fair, would not be worth having as such. Maybe the bad-making features of meritocracy can be contained or eliminated, but perhaps we should be cautious when we rely on appeals to merit when we are thinking of structures of ideal society or ideal principles to live by. 

 

 

On Dick Nanninga (1949 – 2015)

The 1978 World Cup involve my earliest televised football memories. (I was seven years old.) My favorite player in the tournament was Daniel Passarella (because of his exotic name). The Dutch side was not expected to do well because its best player, Johan Cruyff, withdrew from the squad. (I had long thought he had boycotted the tournament to protest the military dictatorship, but a few years ago he revealed the real story; I now wonder if I have also been wrong all along about Paul Breitner's absence--Breitner is one  of the classiest German players ever.)

The Dutch had one of the most underrated coaches of all time (Ernst Happel) and he took a scrappy team to Argentina. There they played badly, at first, but they grew in the tournament, and reached the final with convincing games against Austria, Germany, and Italy. Meanwhile, on the other side of the draw, Argentina won a suspicious game (6-0) against Peru to keep Brazil out of the finals.

Now, many melancholic types come to believe they were born too late. And as boy from Amsterdam I was encouraged to believe I was born too late, because I would spend most of my teenage years hearing the same old stories about Amsterdam in the 1960s and 70s, flower power, Provos, pre-Aids sex, and, of course, tales of one of the greatest club-sides (Ajax 1971-3), ever.* Eventually all these stories got overshadowed by 1974; the year of the lost final. But as a seven year old I knew nothing of national traumas or lost finals; I lived from day to day.

Looking back at that 1978 world cup, I wouldn't be surprised if was a time of escapism for me. My parents were separated or separating (perhaps already divorced--I don't recall the exact chronology), and I don't think I was an especially happy child. I was an avid collector of Panini stickers (with the players of all the teams) trading them with my friends at school. (I was reminded of this just recently because my son has been trading animal stickers that were part of a supermarket promotion.)

The 1978 final became associated with a single moment in the dying seconds of regular time with the score tied at 1-1; Rensenbrink hit the post. If you look at the replay, it's not an easy shot. But Rensenbrink was a supremely gifted player, and on most days it would have gone in.

 

But that Holland was in a position to win the world cup was due to a fantastic header by Dick Nanninga a few minutes before. If you look at the clip, you'll notice at once that goal has all the hall-marks of Dutch football at its best: a quick transition, a precise, long diagonal pass to the speeding wing (cf. years later: De Boer-Bergkamp against another Argentina squad) sailing over the opposing defenders, an instant, one-touch cross by René van de Kerkhof, and Nanninga (a late substitute) does the rest.

 

Now unlike all the other players associated with that 1978 Dutch squad, Nanninga was not a star and never became one, despite averaging a goal every second game in the Dutch highest league (when it was still world class). In fact, in looking at Dutch wikipedia, I learned today that his transfer to Ajax fell through because he owned a flower shop in Kerkrade (then a Dutch mining town in Limburg).

Holland has fielded far more gifted squads than that 1978 one with far more gifted players than Nanninga. (I have seen several of them up close.) But Nanninga's header is the finest moment in all of Holland's great world cup campaigns -- yes, greater than the first ninety seconds of the 1974 final -- because he stepped up when his team needed him and put the cup within achingly close reach.

 

 

Predicting World Cup Results

Sunday’s matches weren’t supposed to happen. None of the four teams playing was given even a 50 percent chance of reaching the knockout stage by ESPN’s Soccer Power Index-backed model at the start of the tournament. Now two will reach the quarterfinal and one will play a semifinal. --Fivethirtyeight.com.

It's not difficult to explain why Nate Silver's World Cup forecasts are far less impressive than his election forecasts. As Silver notes before the competition got under way, the World Cup is a data poor environment: the world's top national football sides play each other extremely rarely when the outcome really matters. In such environments forecasting requires really good background-theory, which is lacking. Moreover, Silver's player-centred algorithm misses two key factors this year: quality of coaching and fitness, which have been decisive in the blistering tropical heat. Let's take for example, the Netherlands Vs Mexico.

During their debacle at Euro 2012, where the Dutch (still reigning vice-champions of  the World) got outplayed in three group games, it was evident that the Dutch team was out of shape. This is not the case this year: in all four games (against Spain, Australia, Chile, and Mexico) the Dutch were the fitter side. In each game, they dominated the last thirty minutes of the game. They also tend to dominate the last few minutes of the first half, where they have had a lot of scoring opportunities.* Similar fitness-differentials were apparent in the hard-fought round of sicteen defeats of Nigeria by France and the loss of Algeria to Germany.