Senegal players celebrate their 2-1 victory over Poland at the World Cup.CHRISTIAN HARTMANN/REUTERS
I’m pretty sure I ended up covering soccer from 17 countries on four continents because in 2001, I wrote a column about watching Ireland play Iran in a World Cup qualifying game at a bar in downtown Toronto. That, some experience playing the game and a fierce interest in it.
The bar was packed with Ireland supporters and Iranians. So packed that people stood outside, peering through the windows at the game on TV. An Iranian guy near me was doing a minute-by-minute report into his cellphone for his friends outside. It was mad. I ended the column, “Sometimes watching TV is a profound polycultural experience as well as being great fun.”
Never is that more true than now. With a World Cup unfolding in Russia, we get succour and relief from the savage world we live in.
Turn on the TV news these days and it is barbarism. The heartbreaking sight of children separated from their parents on the U.S. southern border. Children crying, bewildered and scared. Then put in cages. Although, as the Border Patrol told CBS This Morning co-host Gayle King, they don’t like the use of the word “cages.”
King said on-air, “They said it’s not inaccurate, but they’re very uncomfortable with using the word ‘cages.’” The mind boggles, and the chilled heart sinks.
A migrant ship turned away from Italy and finding refuge in Spain. The fear of migrants. The unease about immigration. The ceaseless distaste for “the other” dominates everything.
And then, every time the whistle blows on some field in Russia to start a World Cup match, the “others” are playing. The conquered and colonized can beat the great powers by chasing and moving a ball with skill and intensity. Mexico defeating Germany, and the glee of the Mexican players, and the ecstatic reaction of the cheering supporters. Tiny Iceland holding the mighty Argentina to a draw. The swaggering, joyous dance moves of Senegal’s players after scoring a goal. There is hustle and heartbreak, and it’s only a game. But also more than game. As J.B. Priestly famously described attending and watching a soccer game, it is, “Another and altogether mire splendid kind of life, hurtling with conflict and yet passionate and beautiful in its art.”
One can be cynical, of course. About FIFA and the chicanery that led to Russia hosting this tournament. About Russia itself and the intolerance of LGBTQ people and the occasional outbursts of racism aimed at black players.
But those players triumph on this stage, carrying the pride of generations behind them. And the world sees it. When the World Cup unfolds the planet is truly a global village, thanks to TV. Soccer is not a cultural divide; it is a cultural unifier. Few events or emanations of contemporary culture are instantly understood and appreciated across continents and across religious and political divides. Soccer is one. Turn in the TV for the World Cup now and the world looks very different from the world that appears on the TV news. It looks like an inclusive, humane world.
Mind you, local TV coverage has been less than inclusive. TSN is sticking with the old-school rule that white men with British accents best analyze soccer. The panel of pundits is mostly Luke Wileman, Steven Caldwell and Kristian Jack, with a glaring Carl Robinson brought in occasionally. They are reasonably articulate, Kristan Jack in particular having a sense of humour about things.
Yet the white-male thing should be over by now in soccer coverage. In Britain, both the BBC and ITV have female analysts for the tournament. ITV has England women’s star Eniola Aluko and the BBC has England women’s player Alex Scott. It’s not like we are short of first-rate, knowledgeable and eloquent women’s soccer players in Canada. TSN bosses might want to note that when the games begin in Russia, the players enter the field taking a boy or girl by the hand. The gesture matters.
The results matter too, of course. Winners celebrate and losers sometimes weep. But we are all winners when the Word Cup on TV unites us, not acting as a mere distraction from the awfulness of what unfolds on the news, but offering a carnival of shared pleasure. One that transcends athletic competition and reveals “the other” is, simply, all of us.
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Airing June 19 – American Gods (Super Channel, 9 p.m.) is the Starz series, an eight-part adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s much-adored 2001 novel, and it arrives at last in Canada. Lavishly made and beggaring easy description it is about a battle for the soul of America fought between the ancient gods brought to the country by the earliest immigrants, and the gods worshipped today are also involved. Much of it is dominated by Mr. Wednesday (Ian McShane, relishing it), a one-eyed, chatty con-artist who travels around rounding up the various deities.