How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization, Franklin Foer [reading eggs books txt] 📗

goals, however, Rangers don’t try too hard to discourage religious bigotry. They continue to hawk orange jerseys. They play songs on the Ibrox loudspeaker that they know will provoke anti-Catholic lyrics: Tina Turner’s “Simply the Best” culminates in 40,000 screams of “Fuck the pope!” The clubs stoke ethnic hatred, or make only periodic attempts to discourage it, because they know ethnic hatred makes good business sense. Even in the global market, they draw supporters who crave ethnic identification—to join an existential fight on behalf of their tribe. If they lost their extremist sloganeering, they’d lose money. In fact, from the start of their rivalry, Celtic and Rangers have been nicknamed the “Old Firm,” because they’re seen as colluding to profit from their mutual hatreds.

Of course, the modernization thesis provides plenty of explanations for illiberal hatreds—competition for scarce jobs, an inadequate welfare state—but none of those conditions exists in any great concentration in Glasgow. Discrimination has faded. Its unemployment problem is now no better or worse than the rest of Britain. The city has kept alive its soccer tribalism, despite the logic of history, because it provides the city with a kind of pornographic pleasure.

II.

The night before the Old Firm match, I have drinks at the Grapes pub, an epicenter of Rangers fandom on the south bank of the Clyde River. Picture postcards of Queen Elizabeth have been strung in a row and hang over the bar. Union Jacks cover most surfaces on the wall not occupied by framed photos of Rangers players.

The exterior has been pointedly painted a royalist blue.

Outsiders who enter the pub are looked upon as potential Celtic infiltrators. To ease my assimilation at the Grapes, I have a friend call a regular who vouches for me with the clientele. My connection doesn’t help with some of the drunks. They laugh when I introduce myself as Frank. “That’s not short for Francis?” one HOW SOCCER EXPLAINS THE PORNOGRAPHY OF SECTS

asks. “You aren’t a Tim, are ya?” And nobody especially wants to talk to a journalist, who I’m sure they suspect will lampoon them for their deeply held beliefs. After a while, I give up and sit at the bar, staring at a drunk making clumsy passes at the only two women in the room. That’s when a man called Dummy drapes his arm around me and blows his whiskey breath in my ear. “In 1979,” he says, “I spent sixteen hours getting pissed in a bar outside Bu¤alo.”

Dummy introduces himself as James, but

announces that he prefers to go by his nickname. It conveys recklessness, he says, and recklessness is a prime characteristic of movie mobsters. From the start, Dummy makes a big point of establishing his hard man bona fides. He shows me two fresh knife scars on his face from pub brawls over money owed to him—

“just from the last six months,” he claims. But those fights were atavistic. Dummy’s career as a hard man is in the past. He’s over forty now, with a wizened face, a wife, teenage children, and a legitimate business. In fact, he says that he has become rich from his firm, which deploys sca¤olding to building sites.

Dummy comes from the west coast of Scotland but lives in an English factory town, several hours from Glasgow by car. His father had moved the family south to follow the migration of industry in the 1960s. He took with him his intense Scottish pride and his love of Rangers. Although he couldn’t indoctrinate Dummy’s siblings, Dummy bit hard. Dummy dreams of retiring to Glasgow one day. “It’s not Florida, okay,” he says, pressing his belly into the bar, trying to grab the bar-tender’s attention. “This is the greatest place on the planet. The water tastes better. The people aren’t English. Top quality people, here.”

Dummy makes it his mission to convert me to the Rangers cause. “There’s no way that you, a smart man, especially a smart American, will come away from this game without loving Glasgow Rangers. Celtic are terrorists. Listen to all the songs about the IRA. After eleventh of September, how can they do that?” Because he’s bought me two glasses of cheap house scotch, his arguments make a measure of sense. But Dummy’s biggest selling point is the medium of his message, not the substance; he has a life-consuming passion for his team. He points in the direction of his Rangers boxer shorts. “I love Rangers football club. If I had to choose between my job and Rangers, I’d choose Rangers. If I had to choose between my wife and Rangers, I’d choose Rangers.” Indeed, about sixteen weekends a year, he chooses Rangers over his wife, gathering his mates, drinking two tall glasses of whiskey for the road, putting sectarian tunes into the car sound system, and making the long drive north.

Among soccer fans, there’s a continuum of hooliganism. On one extreme exist true thugs like the notorious supporters of such British clubs as Millwall and Cardi¤ City. Although they’ll profess love of club, beating the shit out of people (including fellow fans) is their telos. Those kinds of thugs, however, are few and far between, and many have been priced out of attending games in bigger cities like Glasgow, Manchester, and London. Next, quite a few steps closer to sanity, there’s a vast lumpen proletariat. Where the thugs are often organized into marauding “firms,” the lumpen proleta-HOW SOCCER EXPLAINS THE PORNOGRAPHY OF SECTS

riat belongs to benign supporters clubs, meeting for pints and traveling to games together in chartered coaches. They are not innately violent men. They hold down good jobs and have loving families. But like much of Britain, when vast quantities of lager courses through them they can become a bit brutish. On weekends, they find themselves screaming at a cab driver who supports Celtic, or getting into a scuºe outside the Celtic bar down the block. Dummy is an avatar of this vast lumpen proletariat.

There’s a tendency to caricature the feelings of soccer fans like Dummy. These men