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

The restart of the season in early March, however, hardly coincides with the spring thaw. Last year, Karpaty played a game with the thermometer stuck at minus 30 degrees centigrade, and even this reading doesn’t actually represent a significant deviation from the norm.

In Edward’s photos, the club trains on a snow-

covered surface. Sand demarcates the sidelines. Even HOW SOCCER EXPLAINS THE BLACK CARPATHIANS

the ruddy Ukrainians line up in wool hats, long pants, and heavy parkas. Many Nigerians playing in the Ukraine complain bitterly about their inability to maneuver in these temperatures. They say that their frozen feet feel like sledgehammers, while their style of play demands a chisel’s delicacy. Ukrainian sportswriters have pointed out that the Nigerians tend to score all their goals in the early autumn and late spring. Looking at Edward in the photo, with his arms pulled close to his trunk, it becomes perfectly evident that the Ukrainian winter is very much a problem for him, too.

Weather may be the biggest shock for Nigerians.

But it isn’t the only one. Ukrainian soccer culture clashes violently with the style of play to which Nigerians are accustomed. More than almost any other country in the world, the Ukrainians have an idiosyncratic approach to the game. The man behind the approach was a coach, trained as a plumber, called Valeri Lobanovsky. Applying the logic of scientific Marxism to the game, he believed that soccer could be mastered by uncovering the game’s mathematical underpinnings.

He created a system of numerical values to signify every “action” in a game. As he envisioned it, a group of “scientists” would tally passes, tackles, and shots.

These scientists would note “successful actions” and

“unsuccessful actions.” Their data would be run through a computer, which would spit back an evalua-tion of the player’s “intensitivity,” “activity,” “error rate,”

and “e¤ectivity.”

Lobanovsky intermittenly coached the club Dynamo Kiev for decades and later headed the Ukrainian national team. His system became gospel, internalized by generations of coaches and players. Even after his death in 2002, the national federation continues to send scientists to every single Ukrainian professional game. His system rewards a very specific style of play: physical and frenetic. Players work tirelessly to compile points. They play defense more aggressively than o¤ense, because that’s where points can be racked up.

In a way, Lobanovsky’s system mimicked the Soviet regime under which it was conceived. Like the Soviets, it stifles individual initiative. Nothing in Lobanovsky’s point valuation measures creativity or daring. A vertical pass receives the same grade as a horizontal pass; a spectacular fake means nothing.

Compounding the stultifying e¤ect of Lobanovsky, Ukrainians have made a fetish of coaching. Managers play a role akin to the Communist Party, imposing rigid strategic formations and an authoritarian culture.

Ukrainian players commonly glance at their coach, trying to glean whether they have won his approval.

Human agency has no place in this world.

The Ukrainian game couldn’t be more di¤erent

from the Nigerian one. The paradigm ruling Nigerian soccer treats the game less as science than art. Nigeria is the Brazil of Africa—clever, undisciplined, and stylish. Ukrainians maniacally fling themselves at the ball, no matter its location on the field; Nigerians are trained to conserve energy and chase the ball more selectively.

In addition, they attack di¤erently. Ukrainians like to score goals by quickly exploiting lapses in the defense, moving the ball across the field with long passes. They often execute predetermined plays, with players moving in predetermined patterns, plays as intricate as any con-HOW SOCCER EXPLAINS THE BLACK CARPATHIANS

ceived by Vince Lombardi. Nigerians, on the other hand, are used to a more deliberate pace of o¤ense, where skills and short passes create opportunities.

All this is a way of excusing Edward’s sub par performance for Karpaty—and the failure of the other Africans in the Ukraine to achieve their potential. In two years, Edward has barely scored. Despite his abun-dance of natural gifts, Edward never looks natural on the Ukrainian field. Players bang into him as he shoots, something he’d never experienced before. Coaches and teammates demand that he play defense. Because he never learned the art of tackling, he’s always mistiming his slides and accumulating ridiculous fouls.

When I attended a Karpaty game, the club desperately needed to win. The season would only stretch for two more months, and only a narrow sliver bu¤ered them from the relegation zone. At this defining juncture, the coach pulled Edward from the starting lineup for the first time in his stay with Karpaty. The coach played him less than five minutes as a substitute in the game’s finale. Edward ran hard up and down the right wing.

But only once in this spell did the ball touch his foot.

After the game, we met outside the locker room.

Every other player seemed elated—or at least relieved—

by the outcome of the game, a one-nothing win.

“Congratulations,” I told Edward.

“Why congratulate me? I played five minutes. I did nothing.”

This dismissive tone and naked insecurity seemed totally out of character. Even if Edward’s mannerisms and tone of voice often betrayed nerves, his words always conveyed complete confidence. After his contract expired, he said he would move to a league in Western Europe. “Spain is a place I’d like to go next.” But outside the locker room, he faced the frightening fact that his career in the Ukraine might not last much longer.

Edward’s teammates had already changed out of

their uniforms and boarded the team bus that would drop them in downtown Lviv. A throng of jubilant Karpaty fans had sent them o¤. Edward didn’t join his comrades. An oªcial from the Ukrainian federation had picked Edward for a random drug test, and the coaching sta¤ wanted to put Edward on the scale. They were concerned that excess pounds had slowed him down. Edward walked around the Karpaty facility in bare feet, still wearing his kit.

“I don’t understand why the coach and the general director want to weigh me. They don’t weigh anyone else. No other players. They say I’m too heavy. But I was 77 kilos when I came here.” He