Why football’s obsession with nationality is pointless
Columnist By Mike Tuckerman, 8 Apr 2010 Mike Tuckerman is a Roar Expert
- Tagged:
- Alex Ferguson, Champions League, football, man u, Manchester United, typical Germans, UEFA Champions League
Manchester United's Anderson, left, gestures as teammate Carlos Tevez looks on, during a training session ahead of Wednesday's Champions League final match between Manchester United and Barcelona, at the Rome Olympic stadium, Tuesday, May 26, 2009. AP Photo/Jon Super
Basil Fawlty was nowhere in sight, but Sir Alex Ferguson only just stopped short of mentioning the war: “The young boy showed a bit of inexperience, but they got him sent off, everyone sprinted towards the referee – typical Germans.”
After witnessing his Manchester United side exit the UEFA Champions League on the away goals rule, a seething Ferguson took aim at Bayern Munich in a fiery post-match interview (see the video below).
Having seen young Brazilian defender Rafael sent off for a second bookable offence shortly after half-time, Ferguson blamed the dismissal on Bayern players surrounding Italian referee Nicola Rizzoli.
Never mind that the players in question come from France, the Netherlands and Croatia, Ferguson was evidently in an anti-German frame of mind as he deflected attention away from Rafael’s rash challenge.
United have prior form when it comes to surrounding referees – they were involved in one of the worst incidents ever seen in the Premier League when Andy D’Urso awarded Middlesbrough a penalty at Old Trafford in 2000.
But it didn’t stop Ferguson from ungraciously suggesting that Rafael’s dismissal was the turning point of the tie, with the United manager insisting that his side would have gone on to win had 11 players stayed on the pitch in the second leg.
The bizarre “typical Germans” line is just one of several talking points from an absorbing encounter, but it got me thinking about why national stereotypes are still so prevalent within the game.
After all, we live in a multicultural world where ties like the United – Bayern classic are beamed across the globe and a multitude of nationalities represent their club sides on the pitch.
United had nine different nationalities in their starting eleven, Bayern had six – so why did Ferguson feel it necessary to pick on the Germans?
Perhaps it’s because international football remains, without doubt, the most popular sporting spectacle in the world.
Jingoistic nationalism is never far off when the World Cup finals are just around the corner, even if Ferguson’s Scotland will be watching it on their TV sets back home.
Or maybe it’s because we associate certain styles of football with particular nationalities, which is no doubt why the Dutch school of thought is the prevailing ideology in Australian football right now.
But maybe, to put it bluntly, it’s because we’re all just a little bit thoughtless.
In a piece for The World Game late last year, I highlighted the fact that clichés about Germany’s supposed “Teutonic supremacy” are pointless since coach Joachim Löw will field one of the most cosmopolitan squads going around in South Africa.
Many of the respondents completely missed the point – choosing to blast me for “disrespecting” the Germans and suggesting that I had underestimated Germany’s impressive World Cup record.
No matter how many incisive passes Mark Bresciano has made or mazy runs Harry Kewell has embarked upon, the world media will still focus on Australia’s “physical style” when the Socceroos run out for their first match in Durban.
And don’t get me started on Asian players, what with their over-reliance on technical skills and complete inability to finish – which hardly explains the presence of Japan’s menacing defender Yuji Nakazawa or rampaging Chollima striker Chong Tese.
No, when it comes to thinking about football, sometimes it’s just easier to reach for some hackneyed clichés and lazy national stereotypes.
Which is a shame, because I think Sir Alex Ferguson’s line about “typical Germans” – made in the heat of the moment under the glare of the world media – is one he will live to regret.
Even so, he’s unlikely to admit it and even if he did, it won’t change the way many coaches, fans and media think about players from certain countries.
It may be called “the world game,” but when it comes to analysing it, football’s pointless obsession with nationality looks set to rumble on unabated.
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April 8th 2010 @ 5:09pm
Dogz R Barkn said | April 8th 2010 @ 5:09pm | Report comment
The Germans have a proud WC history, intermingled with bouts of being dirty dobbers – very much along the lines of Cornflakes.
Who can ever forget the playacting of Klinsman in the 1990 WC where he dived over the extended leg of the Argentine, literally somersaulted, then rolled over at least five times before clutching his leg in complete agony (Red card to the Argentine).
Not too long after (or it might have been before, can’t remember), Voeller does the almost identical dive in the penalty box which ultimately delivered West Germany its 3rd WC.
By all accounts from some older English friends who can remember, great Germans like Beckenbauer weren’t much better.
And then you have even worse dirty dobbing antics from modern players like Podolski – patting the ref on the back every time he gave a yellow, followed by a round of applause from the same player.
If the dirty dobbing hat fits….
April 8th 2010 @ 5:41pm
Nam Turk said | April 8th 2010 @ 5:41pm | Report comment
What would he know. Scotland isn’t even a sovereign nation.
April 8th 2010 @ 6:26pm
agga78 said | April 8th 2010 @ 6:26pm | Report comment
^Muppet
April 9th 2010 @ 6:30am
Nam Turk said | April 9th 2010 @ 6:30am | Report comment
^Fraggle
April 8th 2010 @ 8:28pm
whiskeymac said | April 8th 2010 @ 8:28pm | Report comment
sovereign nation?!?! as much as anyone is in the EU. geopolitics aside give me a dram of whiskey over a schnapps any day.
April 9th 2010 @ 6:27am
Nam Turk said | April 9th 2010 @ 6:27am | Report comment
Sorry, I was under the impression that they’re still part of the United Kingdom and paying for goods in pounds. Please correct me if I fell asleep and missed their secession on the evening news.
April 9th 2010 @ 6:48am
Roger Rational said | April 9th 2010 @ 6:48am | Report comment
The usual PC rubbish from Tuckerman, always trying to shoehorn world football into his happy clappy little world like some credulous teenager. It’s perfectly obvious that many of the old-fashioned stereotypes still have a lot of truth to them:
- The English still play at a much quicker pace to everyone else and, consequently, sometimes struggle to keep the ball
- They also like to tackle (something seemingly illegal in Platini’s world)
- The Italians are still brilliant tactically
- The Spanish and South Americans are the best technically
- The Latins (see Messi v Arsenal) love rolling around on the turf like they’ve been shot
- The Germans, like it or not, have a long held tradition of cheating that they seem loathe to give up
- The Dutch are big headed egotists who can’t get along
It’s true that increased player mobility is changing things somewhat – e.g. English players dive nowadays much more than they did 20 years ago – but it’s absurdly facile to throw out every individual football culture as if it’s old hat.
April 9th 2010 @ 7:36am
Mike Tuckerman said | April 9th 2010 @ 7:36am | Report comment
For a bloke called ‘Roger Rational,’ you’re not making a lot of sense.
The crux of the issue is clearly that Sir Alex Ferguson called a Frenchman, a Dutchman and a Croatian “typical Germans.”
If you can see the rationale behind that, then feel free to explain it to the rest of us.
April 9th 2010 @ 7:50am
Roger Rational said | April 9th 2010 @ 7:50am | Report comment
If you read my post, you’ll note that I didn’t defend Ferguson’s comments. They were his usual sour grapes in defeat and not to be taken seriously. You, however, have taken one minor incident and used it to justify the extremely tendentious claim that there are no “stereotypes” (for which, read: traditions) in international soccer. I don’t buy it.
April 9th 2010 @ 8:03am
Mike Tuckerman said | April 9th 2010 @ 8:03am | Report comment
I didn’t claim that there were “no stereotypes.” I suggested that there are many, and most of them are lazy and ill-founded.
April 9th 2010 @ 8:15am
Roger Rational said | April 9th 2010 @ 8:15am | Report comment
You said obsessing over nationality is “pointless” when, in fact, it is self-evident that nationality counts for a great deal in football.
I might add that the fact a Croatian, Frenchman and Dutchman were involved in the incident doesn’t prove anything. It takes only the most cursory examination of the EPL to witness foreign players playing a style of game that is resoundingly “English” every weekend. Why? Because the culture of the English game encourages them to play that way. Thus, Didier Drogba has tried to cut out diving because English people abused him for it. Your culture-free analysis surely finds this inexplicable.
April 9th 2010 @ 9:32am
Ben of Phnom Penh said | April 9th 2010 @ 9:32am | Report comment
Mike’s saying that nationality does indeed count for a great deal in football, but it shouldn’t. If you follow your line of reasoning Harry Kewell and Lucas Neill are ‘typical Turks’.
April 9th 2010 @ 8:27am
Stormin Red said | April 9th 2010 @ 8:27am | Report comment
This is simply just another play from SAF’s Book of Deflection. Man U lost on the weekend and it was the ref’s fault, not his tactics or team selection. They go down to Bayern and he pulls the same play from his book. This time though he knows that he is out of Europe and may have lost the league (only time will tell) so he resorts to borderline racism to make sure we are all focussed on what he said, not what he is doing.
April 9th 2010 @ 9:31am
Mike Tuckerman said | April 9th 2010 @ 9:31am | Report comment
If “nationality counts for a great deal in football” as our friend Roger Rational argues, what will Sydney FC do if they sign Robbie Fowler from North Queensland Fury?
Will they need to pump long balls into him from the back as he’s English, or keep it Czech-style on the carpet?
April 9th 2010 @ 9:41am
Dogz R Barkn said | April 9th 2010 @ 9:41am | Report comment
Neither.
All they need do is what they always do, keep it tight, and wait for the inevitable defensive error (as commonly happens at A-League standard), upon which Fowler will feast with another shot in the top corner.
Butcher in season 2 would have been just as effective.
April 9th 2010 @ 11:22am
David V. said | April 9th 2010 @ 11:22am | Report comment
Stereotypes have little substance to them. Production of technically gifted footballers is not limited to a few countries despite what propaganda has fed people, that Australian fans have swallowed more easily than the rest of the world. Never mind that virtually every country playing football has in fact produced technically gifted players for generations, even though the talent pool in some countries has dried up. e.g. we even have people arguing we should focus on Asian players because of technical skills, even though other countries have these things too. This debate does no good to Australia, because it reinforces the notion of ignorance on part of many Australian fans.
April 9th 2010 @ 11:55am
Ben of Phnom Penh said | April 9th 2010 @ 11:55am | Report comment
true, David, though I disagree with your take on why the focus is on Asian players, because it isn’t. There is talk about Asian players simply because there are vast regions of the continent where football is played but are largely overlooked by scouts. Throw in the 3+1 rule and you have an argument for clubs investing more time checking out the region.
Every club with ACL aspirations would do well to have a talented AFC member national on the books.
April 9th 2010 @ 12:17pm
David V. said | April 9th 2010 @ 12:17pm | Report comment
Maybe because they have been shown to be not all that good? The concentration of talent in a few regions of Asia is self-evident compared to the spreading out of talent and competitiveness in all other regions.
April 9th 2010 @ 2:51pm
Tom said | April 9th 2010 @ 2:51pm | Report comment
Just read this article.
What an excellent piece by Mike.
One of the best illustrations of this in an Australian context was Fred, who was often viewed as an attacking, creative player.
In fact his strengths were his athleticism and his intelligent precise passing. He also made a great many tackles working back to help the defenders. I feel that if he’d had a passport from Eastern Europe he’d have been perceived very differently. Might well have been played in a more defensive position.
I’m convinced that when Marcus Merk reffed the Australia-Brazil game in Germany his perception of Australia as a physical team influenced many of the calls he made. In Group D in South Africa we won’t have any kind of physical advantage over our opponents so we’d better hope that perception isn’t too engrained.
On the World Cup, I’d be interested in hearing Mike’s opinions on the recent friendly between Serbian league players and J-league players in Osaka recently. It was a sobering result for the AFC in general, I would say.
April 9th 2010 @ 4:14pm
Mike Tuckerman said | April 9th 2010 @ 4:14pm | Report comment
Tom – I don’t think I’ve been so frustrated inside a football stadium as the day Markus Merk refereed Australia’s clash with Brazil in Munich.
As for the result in Osaka, it was very much what one should expect from Okada’s Japan.
Players picked despite being excruciatingly out of their depth (Tokunaga, Kurihara), players being forced to play despite being injured (Nakamura) or fatigued (Endo), ridiculous substitutions (Tamada, Yano) and some of most obvious talent in the J. League completely overlooked (Iwamasa, Ogasawara).
Japan were as abysmal as Serbia’s third-string were impressive, and all that is left is the complete and utter humiliation that will befall the hapless Okada in South Africa.
April 9th 2010 @ 6:05pm
David V. said | April 9th 2010 @ 6:05pm | Report comment
How many of the Serbian home-based squad will make it to South Africa? As opposed to the majority of Japan’s squad being drawn from the J-League. Japan has everything but success on the world stage- strongest league in Asia, one of the best national teams in Asia, but when it comes to the World Cup they can’t step up yet.