Henry Flores ● The World Cup ● Our Voices/Nuestras Voces

The World Cup

Henry Flores, PhD

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At dinner the other night with some friends, not Latinos just plain ordinary folks, one of them said that he did not get the game at all. He said, all he saw were these guys running around for an hour and a half, kicking the ball and nothing ever happened. Except that when a goal is scored, there not many, everyone goes wild. Then the other men at the table, the women had more interesting things to discuss, all made similar comments until one of them asked what I thought. Their comments mirrors those of the average American who is used to the physicality and brutality of American football and the stop and go of basketball. Since most of these folks are conservative, I go to dinner with them once a week and see them on Sundays at church, I thought before I responded how I would address this issue.

Let’s consider that the World Cup, the mundiál as it is known in Spanish Speaking countries, is just that, it is the only legitimate World Championship watched by approximately 6 billion people globally. About 180 countries begin the qualification rounds two years before the final rounds with 48 arriving in the host nation for a month long series of games resulting in a final winner. In those countries that win the championship, the teams become forever heroes, they are worshipped and spoken of for generations, they become the pride of the nation and never forgotten. The stars are memorialized in portraits, posters, statues and on the lips of people throughout their lifetime and beyond. The World Cup, in short, is a very big deal, globally!

Part of the status of fútbol globally is that it is the national sport in those countries. Everyone plays soccer from when they begin to walk through as long as they can. I’ve seen matches of very small children and those of senior citizens and all ages in between when I visit my second home in Argentina. In the USA, Soccer is just one of many sports enjoyed by a small segment of the population. Many are children or grandchildren of immigrants from soccer playing nations others have learned the game from inferior quality coaches in various types of leagues over differing levels of sophistication. Coaching in the USA is spotty at best, although

there are a few good American coaches none come close to the quality of the professional coaches that populate the big soccer playing world.

For the uninitiates, there is strategy to the game that is quite sophisticated. So, I’ll give one or two examples because there are too many for this space to address. Various teams play styles born in their countries or through the professional systems within which they play. For instance, “Total Football” was a unique system that came out of Holland and memorialized by the famous Dutch teams of the 1970s starring the cigarette smoking Johan Cruyff. When he became coach of Barcelona, he took that system that was made famous and led to that club being one of the foremost teams of the 1990s and early 20th Centuries. The system was taught in the Barcelona academy where a child by the name of Leonel Messi was learning the game, and he took it to the Argentine national team. Since then, the “Total Football” system has seen modifications made by different coaches and has led to innovations of such tactics as the “False 9.” This latter system was brought to the USA Team by the current Argentine coach, and you can see it on display in this year’s World Cup.

The original “Total Football” system was designed so each field player can play any position on the field as the play evolves. The players mix up their positions to confuse the opposition and cause the other team to make positional mistakes in the defense that can be exploited. It allows a team more flexibility in the attack and you will find midfielders playing defense and offense, defenders playing midfield or scoring and the number nine (striker) setting himself up wherever he feels he can attack from, left, right, top or deep. Of course, implementing these types of sophisticated systems requires a great deal of skill and practice and

To those who are just now becoming engaged with the global sport of fútbol, you must understand that it is not the most broadly viewed game in the world. On my basic cable set up I get games from England, France, Spain, Italy, Mexico, Argentina and USA both men’s and women’s every week. That is a heck of a lot more offerings than American football.