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World Cup Soccer Host Germany Plans Dubious Reception -- Sports Views with Kevin J. Walker
By: Mr Kevin J Walker
Jun. 12, 2006
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The world's number one sport is soccer, which they call football overseas. This is only a couple of the ways in which America is out of synch with the rest of the planet as African teams prepare to play in the host country of Germany, home to Neo-Nazis and Skinheads who often traveled to other countries to raise a ruckus; using local soccer mania to get out of Taba Town, Egypt...
Sports View with Kevin J. Walker of The NetPaper Walkerworld On GeoCities Netitor’s Email contact: walkernet@gmail.com Go Madagascar! Africans in World Cup Soccer Matches In Host Germany Face Problems With Hooligans; Using Soccer Mania In Getting Out Of Taba, Egypt by Kevin J. Walker, Netitor
The Word NetPaper Its world Cup time for most of the planet, unless you’re in America. Magnify the frenzy around Superbowl by fifteen times or so, but stretch it over a month, and then you’ll begin to get the idea. The African nations of Togo, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Angola, and Tunisia are expected to comport themselves well in the World Cup games of soccer in Germany this month, and into July. Even for a sport whose games don’t take breaks that’s a loooonnng time for a series to be played. Even in comparison to the NBA Finals. The African Descended are making their presence felt, no more so when Ghana takes on the United States June 22, Thursday at 9 am Central Daylight Savings Time. Other teams of note include Brazil, Trinidad and Tobago, and Costa Rica. Madagascar is not in the games. These will be multi-appearance matches, in keeping with their egalitarian Parliamentary political system, which uses multi-elimination methods. Thus there is no Win Or Go Home. You win/lose, and then play somebody else; and still could make it into the finals. Brazil beat Germany and went onto the Finals in 2002, and so now the Nazis and White Aryan Supremacists have a real reason to hate those of African descent. There have been some concerns about the reception in Germany for African Descended soccer players, let alone for African teams. Monkey “oohga-oohga!” noises have been made when the athletes take to the field, with some of the soccer hooligans holding up bananas and putting their curled arms beneath their armpits like stereotypical chimpanzees. Some players have even been physically attacked by fans on the field. Angola will be playing Iran June 21, and a neo Nazi rally is being planned that same day. The leader of Iran denies the Holocaust, which is an official crime in Germany. He said he may attend the match with his country’s team, and the Nazi rally is in his honour. That should be interesting. The football maniacal crowds and the attendant nationalism have long been fertile recruiting grounds for European Skinheads and other White Aryan Racial Supremacist groups, who go by the telling acronym WAR, for what they plan for the upcoming World War III. HOCKEY CHAMPIONSHIPS – IN JUNE?! Speaking of sports finals, the Hockey championships for the Stanley Cup are also being played. I don’t know about you, but I have a real problem with a Winter sport holding their finals in months with marathon runners falling out from near 100 degree heat! In Madison, Wisconsin recently a marathon was ended with 500 runners still out on the course when several were felled by heatstroke. And here hockey players are in full gear, with the water chillers and the Wisconsin-invented Zamboni polishing machines going full blast. Soccer mania stateside isn’t as intense but there are pockets of it. Viewing is aided by the more favourable time zone distance since Germany is about nine hours ahead of Central Time. The morning matches there tend to fall into the 11 am to 2 pm period here, meaning people who are real soccer/football fanatics could get into the games during their extended lunch hours. Bars and nightspots are counting on it, and some are adopting open door policies for the early morning games. If there’s a World Cup game on, c’mon in, pull up a seat. And have a beer with your lunch with the bar peanuts on us. BREAKING OUT OF TABA TOWN My own acquaintance with soccer has been fleeting. I’m an American. Basketball, Football, Beer, Baseball and Brats and all that are my main sports of viewing interest and activity. Sometimes, aside from the Olympics, there is tennis, Greco-Roman wrestling, and distance running/marathons since these are sports I did while in school. I realized the importance of soccer and an understanding of its appeal to those overseas while Angela and I were abroad and steadily making our way southwest to Cairo, Egypt toward the end of our Month in the Mediterranean when we were in Greece, Italy; Greece again; several lovely Cycladian islands including Santorini/Thera and Rhodes; Cyprus; Israel/Palestine/Jordan and the African Hebrew Israelite community outside Dimona; and now Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. We were told by the few freelance cab drivers left that they couldn’t take us straightaway to Cairo, which was 8 hours due West, but across the forbidding Sinai Desert. For frustrating reasons I don’t really care to revisit we missed our critical bus to Cairo. For reasons known only to them you could easily only be taken south to the tourist center of the Medieval St. Catherine’s monastery near the Gulf of Oman, but not east. Not even if you offered to pay. The monastery was put there during one of the Crusades, and was believed to be one of the Old Testament Biblical places, apart from Jerusalem which is more for Christianity. We had to speak to the Big Boss Man of Taba for permission. He and his crew were in his bar watching a soccer match. After spending half a week marooned on the Greek Isle of Naxos I’d had quite enough of quaint out of-the-way Mediterranean towns, and our timeline on our discounted tickets was growing near. We had to get the blessing of the Goombah if we were to make it out of the border area and onto Cairo, and the nearby Pyramids of the Gizeh Plateau. I left Angela with our things while I went inside to parley. This was Man Stuff. One thing you find out quick when you travel is that Feminism and women’s rights is practically nonexistent in many areas of the Middle East, especially when you get outside the larger cities. Angela was not a happy person, but I was cool with the setup. NEGOTIATING WITH JABBA THE HUT The desert GoodFella who owned the only bar in town was like a Boss Hawg who had his fat fingers in everything, and people paid him homage as if he was the Godfather of his little desert fiefdom. When I was led to him in a side room area he was sucking on the little hose for a countertop Coke syrup dispenser. Looking at the pudgy, sausage-fingered, slit-eyed desert gangsta, I had to stifle a small giggle because for an instant while he rubbed his fat tummy across a too-small T-shirt he looked like Jabba the Hut with his hookah. (I also made a mental note to not order the Coke if we indeed got trapped in this Taba town in transition). Looking for any advantage, like the beer ad that showed the two visitors scanning the bar for the local brew, I noticed for whom our perhaps patrone and his boys were cheering. It was for Madagascar, which is an island on the Indian Ocean side of the continent. They were playing Spain or somebody, and that team got no love here. We were for the Africans! Go Madagascar!! I know nothing about soccer-- excuse me, --football, except that you’re not supposed to use your hands. Unless you’re a goalie. And it is unsuitable for American TV because they play straight through, without commercials. I mean breaks. It’s also a low-scoring game, which it shares with hockey. Somebody recently suggested making a soccer goal worth seven points instead of just one, so it would seem more exciting. Therefore, a 3-2 game would then be 21-14. Perception is important. Another thing is that socc --football is big everywhere else in the world except America. This last is taken by some elitist and the Blame America First crowd as proof that there’s something wrong with the US. Of course it could just as well be taken that there’s something wrong with the rest of the world in their love of the sport, or that they need to progress to our level of consciousness, but that’s just me. Anyway, the small crowd of Sinai good ol’ boys in the dark bar near the border with Israel in the Sinai desert in Taba Town were cheering some plays and not others, so I started to catch on to the rudiments of what they choose to call football. FAKING LOVE OF SOCCER TO GET OUT OF TOWN I saw a beginning of a grimace on one of Jabba’s krewe at a referee’s call. I tossed my hands up and shook my head; frowning in a near universal display of disgust and resignation at something one of the accursed referees did, may their mothers be cursed for ever birthing them, those offspring of mangy dogs! This was an easy call. People the world over dislike refs when the home team is taking it on the chin. I shrugged my shoulders and glanced about, inviting anyone nearby to join in on the condemnation. The fellas started to think or act like they thought I was a pretty OK guy. We just might make it out of this desert hick town of Taba and to Cairo tonight after all! Now Taba, at the southern point of Israel that isn’t usually shown on the evening TV news that overly concentrates on Tel Aviv, the Gaza strip and Jerusalem, wasn’t a one-camel town. After all, as the first town on the northern Sinai border with Israel it played the role of Neutral Ground host to the Israeli-Palestinian talks with America’s Secretary of State at their fancy new hotel. We could see it gleaming off in the distance over the flat desert but had no wish to spend the night there if we could be in downtown Cairo at the once opulent hotel Carleton where we had reservations. Besides, Taba’s looked expensive, and we were running low on cash especially after early on our Mediterranean trek by making the ultimate Traveler’s No-No of doubling back after first landing in Athens, then making our way to Italy by ferry boat, and back to Athens.
Anyway, this was my first real practical experience with soccer mania outside of the US. Work is slowed, TV sets are tuned in, and the street corners afterwards are abuzz with discussion of the game action, and the bad calls by the incompetent referees, who aided in the cheating against their beloved teams. WHEN IN ROME… We eventually got out of Taba Town and into crowded, exotic and steaming Cairo that night, but not by my ploy with glad-handing and backslapping Jabba the Hut and his butte-kissing soccer-watching tavern krewe. He turned us down flat. But we were well experienced at the black market by then, as well as the old adage of “When in Rome,” or in this case Egypt, you Do As The Egyptians Do. So we cheated our way out of Taba town. Oh, grow up and get that expression off your face! This is permitted when you find you’re in a crooked game and the dice have been loaded. Suckers who then play by the rules get taken, and we weren’t naïve Americans, we’d been around plenty. “Rich Americans” as they call those of us who travel for leisure or enlightenment are always fair game; everyone from low level hotel workers to bureaucrats in suits will have their hands in your wallets and purses. Its like a sport. They must sit around afterward and swap stories about their big scores on us. We had a need in Taba, but they wouldn’t even let us pay our way out of it; we had a strict deadline, and so we made a way. Middle Easterners would understand perfectly. The full story will be told in an upcoming Adventures of the Travel Griot, with some excisions. Angela and I still must protect those who helped us. After all, kingpins, even in two camel desert backwater towns, didn’t get there by being nice guys. Besides, for all we know Jabba is right now sucking on his Coke syrup hose, surrounded by a new krewe of fawning sycophants, with his dark restaurant with Broadband Wireless Internet access, and is now a canopied Fern Bar for travelers just across the border with Israel. And they’re surfing the Web when they’re not watching the World Cup games on a flat panel, large widescreen plasma TV, or drinking a Coke, now in air conditioned comfort for those who don’t care for the big expensive hotel a couple of miles across the desert. Go Madagascar!
http://www.geocities.com/walkerworld_2000/beenthere
http:/travelgriot.tripod.com/photos
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Our Partner:Kevin Walker
Mr. Walker is a print journalist who often includes Science and Travel articles among his forays on political and societal observations. A past professor of Journalism at his Alma Mater of Marquette University, Walker has written extensively for several newspapers on urban issues, and is presently compiling his essays on the phenomenon of intractable trans-generational familial poverty into the book in progress "The Culture of Poverty," based on his observations on the effects of Welfare Reform in his hometown in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He often writes from an Undisclosed Location in the Hidden Valleys retreat inland from the Mississippi River in western Wisconsin, where he indulges in his first intellectual love, amateur Astronomy and stargazing.
Milwaukee, WI, 53202
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