soccer

Soccer Short Stories

28/06/2014 By Andy Leave a Comment

This is a terrible season. This season is one disappointment after another. And yet, we keep coming back for more. We have to show our loyalty. We have to show our resilience. Yet again. Yet a-bloody-gain. The team is lost for a solution. Dimma’s demeanor has evolved from being angry at losing, to being convinced that ‘we would work our way through it’ to accepting that ‘we an average team’ to ‘doing it for the fans’. ‘No we are not even thinking about finals.’ Yes, that is true. But, over summer, the pass mark was not only to make the finals but to also win a final. I hear that line from The Castle, ‘tell im heez dreemin’.

The pleasures of literature seem considerably safer than the losses of footy, sport. The irony being, if one doesn’t emotionally invest in a football game, or doesn’t invest in a team, it’s intense vicarious pleasures are also not enjoyed. Perhaps ‘Indonesian literature’ is distant from the everyday life of the Richmond Football Club and the weekly habits of going to games or watching them with friends at pubs or at home on a quiet evening. But, during the 2010 season I set myself a task of translating at least 2-3 poems by Afrizal Malna per week before I would go to a game or watch a game. They were the minimum tasks I would complete before giving myself the fraught pleasure of watching the Tiges.

Now, I’m maintaining my reading, but doing it more so in parallel with watching footy, watching sport. The two have to become united. The sport of literature. The literature of sport. There are cross-overs and divergences. Sport is a creative act, neither beneath nor above the arts. I disagree with Coetzee and the snobs who snub sport as being beneath their consideration. Sport – in its multiplicity of forms, cultures, practices – is a universal part of human culture. And thus it is worthy of serious consideration, analysis. Below, I continue my reading of sport – this time, a brief analysis of some soccer-based short stories by Seno Gumira Ajidarma.

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Seno Gumira Ajidarma (born 1957, Boston), one of Indonesia’s most prominent authors, has contributed to the discourse on soccer in Indonesia through the means of short stories, journalism and academic writings. These writings reflect his trajectory as a writer and also the professions and jobs that he acquires. The earliest of Seno’s writings on soccer that I have found are his two short stories: “Kematian Seorang Pemain Sepakbola” (Death of a Footballer, 1988) and “Sukab Menggiring Bola” (Sukab Dribbles the Ball, 1996). The former is in the collection, Manusia Kamar (Room Person, Jakarta: Haji Masagung) and the latter is in Negeri Kabut (Fog Lands, Jakarta: Grasindo).

“Death of a Footballer” tells the story of Sobrat, the striker of a team that is on the brink of winning the Indonesian domestic league title. Sobrat has been transformed from a hopeless and untalented youth, into the team’s and competition’s leading goal scorer. His mother discouraged him from playing soccer; and his coaches ordered him to find other jobs rather than waste his time at soccer. Eventually they would give in, owing to his persistence, and let him train with the team on the condition that he would do other jobs such as the cleaning of the club rooms, as well as the massaging of the other players after training. Although supposedly Jonggring Salaka’s third-in-line goal keeper, he is finally deployed in attack after injuries to the other strikers. This turns out well, and, he seems to be fulfilling his wish of ‘glorifying the name of his country’. He is idealistic about the meaning of sport: it should not be corrupted by money. And indeed, he turns down overtures to engage in match-fixing. Sobrat meditates in the centre of the pitch at Senayan stadium and imagines the goals he scores. His 17^th goal for the season, which he scores in the last minuted of added time, seals the team’s fate as that year’s champions and his fate as the league’s top scorer. But, it is also at that moment which he dies, instantly. Spectators think he has fainted, overcome with emotion: but no he is dead and the coach is crying. No one can explain his death.

“Sukab Dribbles the Ball” takes the discourse of soccer into a more fantastic and literary realm. The character of Sukab is a recurring feature of Seno’s stories, and, in this story, once again he is a figure of whimsy, reflection and gentle resistance. Sukab embodies a desire towards artistry and play. In contrast to the aforementioned Sobrat’s goal scoring and league-title-winning feats, Sukab, on the other hand, is a soccer-player as artist. Sukab dribbles the ball throughout cities, jungles, amongst the ruins of civilisation, deserts, across seas in search of the greatest goal keeper so that he can score the greatest goal of all-time. As he dribbles from town to town, city to city, each city confronts him with their best team as a means of honouring his skills. He dribbles past them all. His dribbling-journey attracts crowds and the media; a helicopter follows him and broadcasts his adventure live. His journey comes to an end when he reaches the North Pole, and in his white uniform, becomes disguised against the backdrop of the great white-expanse. He kicks the ball into the last remaining goal: the gaping hole in the Ozone Layer.

These two short stories are typical of Seno’s style: they are elaborations of everyday life in Indonesia. The two characters – Sobrat and Sukab (perhaps they are interchangeable) – are whimsical losers who perform something great, spectacular and admirable and are lauded by those around them. Yet, they have no interest in their glory and the adulation they receive. Both stories offer little in the way of conflict and provide only indeterminate conclusions. Through these two brief stories, Seno asserts the importance of the play, aesthetics and critical possibilities of soccer.

Soccer pitch, Yogyakarta, photo by Onyenho

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Methinks that perhaps it would be comforting to watch a Tigers game and only treat it as an aesthetic event. Perhaps: watch the first quarter and leave or turn off the television. Perhaps only listen, watch or attend the last quarter. Here is the irony: the people that do watch the game irrespective of the scoreboard, are those for whom the scoreboard matters the most: the coaching staff, the players. Dimma et al always find something to appreciate or critique regardless of what happens – win (occasionally), lose (frequently) or draw (sometimes). It is us fans who are so fixated on winning and losing. We’re addicted, perhaps to the Tiges losing. Perhaps the players know this and thus they returned us to our natural habitat of turning up and watching them lose. I’m imagining Sukab playing for the Tiges. I imagine him in the shape and form of Dustin Martin. Sukab as Dustin Martin endlessly fends off defenders, takes his bold strides and endlessly looks for that goal off in the distance – some 60meters away so that he can kick it through post-high. His chest swells, he looks up, he gives the don’t argue over and over again. Win good Tiges. Or, lose brilliantly, aesthetically, playfully.

Zlatanism

17/06/2014 By Andy Leave a Comment

Zlatan Ibrahimovic and David Lagercrantz, I am Zlatan Ibrahimovic, trans.Ruth Urbom, London: Penguin, 2011.

I am reading Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s autobiography yes I am. In the late 1990s, Malmo Football Club (Malmo Fotbollforening, MFF) was relegated to the second division. The documentary Bladarar shows some of their fans in tears as the final whistle of the year blows, sealing their fate. The stands are almost empty and the fans appearances’ indicate their lost sense of hope; their slow coming to terms with the inevitable demotion. The scenes of anguish are a universal of mass sporting occasions: angry tough men expressing their frustration with macho aggressiveness or resigned passivity. The documentary quickly merges into the next season, after only a comments from the managerial staff about the club’s failure in the 1999 season. Now in the Swedish second division, the stadiums are a sparser and less grand. The number of supporters have diminished but the hard core remain. They continue to express their frustration: shouting advice, condemnation and insults from somewhat closer to the pitch. Perhaps, indeed, getting in the ears of players. Zlatan Ibrahimovic, a young player of Bosnian and Croatian background from the district of Rosengard, emerges in this context. The man is brash and he puts noses out of joint as a matter of style. By the end of the documentary, MFF are back in the top division and Malmo has been sold to Ajax of Amsterdam. Mr.Ibrahimovic continues to wind people up, but, he’s made it further than most of them; he’s been sold for a record amount for a Swedish player.

Housing solutions in Rosengard

This is an autobiography which not only tells the rise of a footballer, but, also the life of immigrants in Sweden as well as the social and cultural conditions of Rosengard – an infamous neighborhood of Malmo. Zlatan is proud of his origins from Rosengard, but at times he struggles against his tendencies to behave in a manner normal to Rosengard, but that are elsewhere considered to be rough, aggressive and arrogant. In the face of authority and a perception of him being arrogant and a renegade, Zlatan most often, chooses to outdo their preconceptions and act more aggressively, more arrogantly. But the man has a winning smile and charm. He can turn it on when he needs to. Moreover, at least in this memoir, he does have the ability to be relatively self-aware, critical and highly calculating in his negotiations of the broader football world. Unfortunately, his ‘self-awareness’ often manifests itself in statements such as, ‘I needed to be left alone so that I could damage some stuff’.

Zlatan on a quiet day

The secrets of success for the teams Ibrahimovic plays for are not difficult. Regarding Inter Milan’s second successive Scudetto in 2009, he writes: “Inter Milan hadn’t won it in seventeen years. They’d had a long hard spell, filled with suffering and bad lack and shit. Then I came, and now we’d brought home the league title two years in a row, and the whole place was a three-ring circus” (Ibrahimovic 2011, p.239). This isn’t the only occasion in which Ibrahimovic formulates such a simplistic analysis of success. Elsewhere, he lays the blame of his conflicts with figures such as Pepe Guardiola, Lionel Messi, Oguchi Onyewu and Rafael van der Vaart squarely at their feet. After the fallout and his drop in commercial value while at Barcelona, Zlatan (he continually refers to himself in the third person), writes, “thanks to a single person, my price tag had gone down by 50million euros” (Ibrahimovic 2011, p.300). Although he is given the silent by Guardiola throughout his time at Barcelona and under-performs because of it (according to him, of course), he thrives on the difficult-to-please attitude dished out by Jose Mourinho.

Zlatan is at his most poignant when writing of his childhood home. These the book’s brief moments of his less aggressive side – i.e. the moments when he acknowledges his arrogance and hustling of others. “Sometimes, maybe, I go too hard on people. I dunno. That’s been a thing with me from the very beginning. My dad would go off like an angry bear when he drank, and everyone in the family would be scared and get out of there. […] My entire childhood was filled with tough people who would go off on a hair-trigger […] and ever since then I’ve had it in me, that watchful side: what’s happening? Who wants a fight? My body is always ready for a battle” (Ibrahimovic 2011, p.291).

Is there room enough for both of them?

The book contains two sections of support material: ‘cast of characters’ and ‘career timeline’. He doesn’t have many friends and he ascribes the bare essentials to his characters. “Jurka: My mum. Born in Croatia. She worked as a cleaner”, as for his father: “My dad. Born in Bosnia. He has worked as a bricklayer and property caretaker”. Most only exist because they have had some sort of brief connection with Zlatan. The career timeline is filled with his successes, as one could cynically presume. He tells us his goal for the Swedish national team in 2012, was “one of the best goals of all time”. No doubt.

Conviction, for me, is one of the main ingredients for compelling writing. Zlatan, with his co-author David Lagercrantz, to put it mildly, writes with conviction. This book probably created some more enemies – not that he would care or notice. There is quite a degree of finger pointing and naming. Perhaps Mr.Lagercrantz could have been a more critical co-author in order to uncover some of the complexities of Zlatan’s teams’ successes. But, for Zlatan, there is only one way – to go harder and harder, to be brasher and brasher and to become more and more successful – whatever it takes.

“I’m about to score one of the best goals ever. Watch me.”

By the end of the book Zlatan is playing for Paris Saint Germain, owned by Qatar Investment Authority. It’s a long way from the miserable finances of MFF. Youtube is filled up with clips of his antics, goals, and quotations. His smile is infectious and it is difficult not to like him. In a recent interview, after arriving at PSG, he is asked if he would like to win the Champions League. He responds by saying of course he would and that it would be important to him, but, at the same time it wouldn’t because his career has already been fantastic. The art of being Zlatan involves this unshakeable self-belief (arrogance) coupled with his equally immovable charm and an ability to maintain a get-out-clause, should an unlikely failure happen.

Do we have songs?

16/05/2014 By Andy 9 Comments

At the Melbourne Victory – Liverpool match at the MCG in July 2013, some 90,000 sang the classic ballad, You’ll Never Walk Alone. This has become the anthem that unites Liverpool fans throughout the world. It is sung when the team enters the playing field and during games in order to heighten the intensity, the drama and to further encourage the players.

You’ll Never Walk Alone is also the song that is played in the lead up to running marathons in The Netherlands. As I waited at the start line in the Rotterdam marathon, I felt an odd sense of convergence: on that day Liverpool would play Manchester City, the winner seemingly to be in the primary position to win the League title. I was one of 10,000 or so: in my starting block there were mostly men, upwards of 30, dressed in the bare essentials of running gear. I imagined the different crowds of (mainly) men at Liverpool football matches, with fans holding aloft the red scarves: chanting the song in a stoic and reverent manner.

In the week leading up to the game against Melbourne Victory, Liverpool had also been in Jakarta to play against a composite team, known as the Indonesian All Stars. That there were still two main leagues of soccer in Indonesia made it difficult to form a single national team that could best represent the best of Indonesian soccer. But, the crowd, on this day at least, was just like the Melbourne crowd: they were the to see Liverpool. And so, packed into the Gelora BungKarno stadium, some 90,000 sang You’ll Never Walk Alone with a passion and exuberance equal to that of Anfield or Melbourne. The match was as dull as it would be in Melbourne: but, all could state that they had seen the Liverpool play.

But, Liverpool’s victory against Manchester City turned out to be a false sign of the eventual winner of the EPL. A disappointing loss to Chelsea, a shocking draw with Crystal Palace and the title became City’s with ease. City won the title through being consistent and not slipping up along the way. Liverpool played the exciting football and captured a enraptured audience throughout the world. And soon after the title became City’s, subscribers of Instagram were uploading videos directly from Anfield with the hashtag #ynwa.
The 15 second clips of footage were showing the Liverpool fans defiantly singing, chanting You’ll Never Walk Alone at the game’s beginning and conclusion: as if singing along could claim the title that seemed to be within Liverpool’s grasp. Suarez, of 31 goals, left the field with his face covered beneath his shirt, guided by Kolo Toure. He wasn’t walking alone, but this was a disappointing moment. He had given so much joy, hope and pleasure to Liverpool fans throughout the season, he should have looked them in the eyes – each 44,000 of them – and thanked them for their unwavering support.

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Pasoepati, the supporter group of Persis Solo in Indonesia’s second division – the curiously named Divisi Utama (Main League) – have several main chants which they also churn out during important moments in the football game, but, also during the quiet moments of play when nothing much is happening on the field. The anthem for Persis Solo is Satu Jiwa, or, ‘One Soul’, by a group called The Working Class Symphony who play a kind of folk punk. Like You’ll Never Walk Alone, Satu Jiwa, also implores steadfastness in the face of changing and difficult circumstances: “kita tetap satu, apapun yang terjadi”, that is, “we’ll stay together, whatever happens.” Satu Jiwa greets the players as they walk onto the field, just as You’ll Never Walk Alone greets the players at Anfield. These two songs weren’t written for the clubs, but, they have been appropriated into becoming their anthems.

The Pasoepati supporter group state that their aim is to provide a vibrant and lively atmosphere throughout the full 90minutes of each match. One of the chants that is sung is “Alap-Alap Samber Nyawa”, “alap-alap” indicating a sense of threatening, “Samber Nyawa” being the name of a famous prince from Solo and thus indicating their identity. But, the chant of “alap-alap samber nyawa” wouldn’t be sung if it weren’t for its combination of vowel sounds; it almost rhymes, it’s easy to chant. The subsequent lyrics don’t make much sense, too, but no matter: “fly us into the galaxy, you will surely shake the legend, [we are] Persis Surakarto (the old name for the city of Solo)”. And in between there is a big oooooohh—–wwooohhhhh. The chant is sung to the beating of drums. One doesn’t need to be able to sing; one only needs a gut full of energy and a heart full of passion for the team.

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But a footy game is not a soccer match. Footy grounds differ from soccer stadiums. Footy crowds contrast with those of soccer. A footy game is much longer and the action is more easily dispersed across a bigger playing field. Arguably, one needs more concentration to watch a footy game than a soccer game. Or, perhaps, it is a different kind of attention that is required. Soccer crowds in England or Indonesia are overwhelmingly male, the footy crowds of Australia are much more diverse: a roughly equal number of men and women and of course many children in attendance. The unified macho chanting of You’ll Never Walk Alone, Satu Jiwa, or Alap-alap Samber Nyawa might be not so easily created at a Richmond home game. But, part of me thinks it is possible, to a degree.

Do we have songs to sing at games? Is there a pop ballad that we could appropriate as our own song? A song that we all know the lyrics to, that we can chant during a quarter to rouse our team? Can we write a 4 line chant in homage of our great coach, Tommy Hafey, in the manner that Liverpool fans have songs for their captain Steven Gerrard? Can we have another four line chant in ode to Matthew Richardson who gave us so much pleasure during the long years of hopelessness? (We don’t have success at the moment, but at least we have a degree of hope.) Me thinks we have it in us as a supporter group to come up with songs and chants which can show our passion for our team. Regardless of how our team performs off the field, us fans can devise ways of making the experience of watching the Tiges play more and more enjoyable. Players, coaches, administrators come and go. For 10, 20, 30,40, 50, 60 years – or longer – the fans stay loyal. The fans maketh the club.