signed the nation's top high school player the last twoyears. "When kids see us play, they want to be part ofthat."

The downside is that tJVA occasionally gets embar-rassed. By stressing the attack, "we take some risks," saysArena. When UVA made a last-second effort to scoreagainst Clemson last fall, it resulted in a fast break forClemson, which won 2-1. An inferior Brown teambunched everyone on defense and beat Virginia 2-0.But believe me, the Virginia brand of soccer is worththe risks. It's fun to watch. Arena gave Reyna the greenlight to be a creative playmaker and scorer, and hebecame the greatest player ever in American collegesoccer. In the NCAA regionals last November Reyna spot-ted the goalie for Loyola of Baltimore too far ii'rom thegoal. He lofted a thirty-five-foot chip shot toward thetop of the far corner of the net. The goalie scrambledback madly. No one else in college soccer would haveseen this scoring opportunity, much less been able totake advantage of it. I was sitting on the sidelines a fewfeet from Reytia when he shot. The moment the ball hitthe netand UVA won 2-1I was hooked.

In Mexico, soccer as history.

PRI.GAMEBy Enrique Krauze

I sing to the feet of those who,weary of their labors in the mountaitis,descended to the plains,there to invent football.

Antonio Deltoro, 1990

Actually, they didn't come from the mountains at all,but from England. As in Argentina and Brazil, soccer (or"football," as we call it in Spanish) arrived in the van of fmde siecle material progress. It found a home in the minesof Pachuca and in the textile factories of Orizaba, as wellas in the elegant metropolitan clubs previously given overto cricket, tennis and polo. A certain Mr. Blackmoreimported balls from England. The British ambassadorlaid down the rules, which all players, as loyal subjects ofthe crown, studiously observed. With World War I, theBritish left Mexico and ceded control of the sport to theMexicans, who took to it quickly. Did it remind them, intheir collective unconscious, of the ancient "ball game"played by the Aztecs and the Mayas, a sport that some-times cost the lives of the players? Who knows? The pointis that in the plains of Mexico City the ball began to roll,and with it commenced a minor epic that in many waysparallels the history of Mexico itself.

The growth of Mexican soccer was stunted by the

Mexican revolution (1910-1920), which postponed eco-nomic progress and cost the country 1 million lives. Nosoccer fiesta could take place in the midst of that "fiestaof bullets," as the Mexican writer Martin Luis Gttzmancalled it. (In peaceful, prosperous Argentina, by con-trast, every neighborhood of Buenos Aires had a soccerclub, and tangos were composed in honor of thegame.) When the civil strife finally settled, the stage wasopen for the Americans. From that time on, soccer wasconfined to the center of the country. In the northern.Pacific and Gulf Coast states the big sport thenasnow^was baseball, spread by the Americans through-out the Caribbean and Central America.

In cttlture and in art, the Mexican Revolution revivedan old confiict between Spaniards and AztecsDiegoRivera even painted a syphilitic Cortes into one of hismurals. In somewhat less sensational fashion, the samething happened to soccer. The sanguinary cry, "Deathto the Spaniards!"which opened the war of indepen-dencewas heard once again in the stadiums of thecapital. On the one hand, there were the teams sttp-ported by Spanish businessmen in Mexico (the Espafiaand the Asturias). On the other, there were Mexicanteams drawn from the most varied economic, social andethnic categories: the military elite (the Mars); theworkers of the electric company (the Necaxa); the teamof the well-to-do, founded by French Marist fathers (theAmerica); the shoemakers and masons (the Atlante),known as the "little darkies."

Though beloved at home, these teams were no matchfor their international neighbors: the tough Uru-guayans of Basque origin; the versatile Argentinians ofBritish, Spanish or Italian origin; the nimble Brazilians,for whom soccer and the samba were two variations onthe same carnival theme. (The musician Vinicitis deMoraes would accept only two excuses for refusing todance the samba or play footballa headache or afootache.) Mexico lacked genuine professional clubs.Instead, it fielded teams of amateurs brought togetheronly by a love for the game.

T he Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) led to a newpeninsular emigration to Mexico. This time,however, the influx consisted not of soldiers,priests or adventurers, but of republican histori-ans, poets, philosophers, musicians, businessmenandsoccer players. At one time, the entire Basque team tookrefuge in Mexico. Sadly, most of its players ended up join-ing either the Espafia or the Asturias, which served onlyto reignite the rivalry between Mexicans and Spaniards.Angered by an injury infiicted by one of the Asturias play-ers on the famous Necaxa forward, Horacio Casarin, thecrowd burned down the Asturias stadium. That was in1943. The final battle of our war of independence, onemight say, was carried out on a soccer field. Shortly there-after. Generalissimo Francisco Franco issued a decreeforbidding Spanish teams to play in Mexico.

In sociological terms, soccer was very far from thepopular festival it is today. Most Mexicans continued tobe addicted to sports involving bloodshed and stoicism:

16 T H E N E W REPUBLIC JULY 4,1994

bullfighting, cock-fighting, boxing. (In the 1930s therewas even a big battle between a lion and a bull; the lionwon.) The more civilized middle classes preferred soc-cer, but the sport still lacked the support of young peo-ple. Until the 1950s, the universities in Monterreyand Mexico City were given over almost exclusively toAmerican-style football. The two main institutions ofhigher learning, the University of Mexico and the Poly-technic, were still in thrall to a Mexican version of theRose Bowl: the "Classic" between the Jaguars and theWhite Donkeys.

The Second World War benefited Mexico's economy.Many light industries sprang _up to service the Americanmarket The government putin place a successful policy ofcontrolled imports and pro-tected industry, which forthree decades made possible6 percent annual growth. Insoccer, the model was similar.The sport boomed: it spreadbeyond the capital, and a pro-fessional league with a FirstDivision was born. (It, too,was protectionistevery topteam had to have sevenMexican-born players.) Thenames of the local clubsevoked the products or skillsof each region: the strawberrypickers of Iraputo, the tannersof Leon. In the state of More-los, once the stronghold ofEmiliano Zapata, the teamsand fans were as fearsome asthe old guerrilla fighters.Guadalajara distinguished it-self among provincial capitalsby having the Chivas team,whose prestige rested on itsrefusal to hire a single for-eigner. Significantly, the most-ly Indian south (Oaxaca, Chiapas) did not produce asingle club. It was and remains too poor and marginalto do so. These states aside, soccerin contrast to poli-ticswas the one thing in Mexico that united all condi-tions and classes.

Instead of going for a stroll on Sunday, families beganto go to the stadiums. Children accumulated (in theirmemories, at least) an archive of soccer trivia: dates,names, plays. Cheerful and uninhibited, the soccer ofthat era was mediocre, but made no pretense of beinganything else: it was played for a local market. And eventhis began to change. By the late 1950s Mexican involve-ment in international tournaments raised the level ofcompetition. The country went head-to-head with theworld's great teams. The press and radio practiced afree-wheeling criticism, often with considerable literarydistinction. Thanks to all these factors, Mexico proved

ILLUSTRATION BY JANE HOLLOWAY FOR THE NEW REPUBLIC

itself at the 1962 World Cup in Chile: in the initialrounds, it beat the eventual runner-up, Czechoslovakia.

During the '60s Mexico's urban areas experienced apopulation explosionmosdy centered in Mexico City.Soccer, too, went back to the cities. Tbe monumentalAztec stadium, built in 1964 (capacity: 110,000), was em-blematic of this changea ceremonial center for the ex-position of the ritual sport. All the larger cities (Guad-alajara, Monterrey and, of course, Mexico City) gotteams in the First Division. La'cking any real possibility ofcompeting, the smaller provincial teams disappeared.

The populist periods of Presidents Luis Echevarria, (1970-1976) and Jose Lopez

Portillo (1976-82) brought toMexicoand to soccer aswellmany hitherto un-known evils, including stadsm,corporativism and infiation.In a paroxysm of "progressive"enthusiasm, the Atlante teamwas expropriated by the statein the guise of the Institute ofSocial Security. As a result, itdropped to the Second Divi-sion. In a similar outburst ofsyndicalist energies, a power-ful labor leader in the oilindustry (since jailed by Presi-dent Carlos Salinas) main-tained his own personal team:the Tampico-Madero. It, too,fell to the Second Division.Television joined in the prac-tice of vice and fraud: sports-casters hyped every playeras the next Pele. They wereno better than the announc-ers of American pro wrestling.Like their counterparts inthe Institutional Revolution-ary Party (PRi), what they saiddidn't have a lot to do withreality.

Mexican soccer and the Mexican economy had muchin common: both were centralized, heavily bureaucra-tized and breath takingly inflated. Though the cheapdollars that fiowed in during the oil euphoria of themid-'70s brought some fine foreign players to Mexico,the dominant tendency was toward unproductive lux-ury imports (mostly South Americans who were beyondtheir prime). In 1982 both the economy and soccercrashed: the Mexican national team was defeated by afifth-rate team from the Antilles. Some fans^Aztechooligans, reallythen committed the almost unheard-of atrocity of burning the Mexican flag.

What was needed was a thoroughgoing economicadjustment. Only then could Mexico begin again togrow at a modest rate. Fortunately, some teams startedto follow the model of the real soccer powers: theybecame genuine sports clubs, nurturing promising play-

18 THE NEW REPUBLIC JULY4, 1994

ers from childhood. By the mid-'80s Mexico began tofield some exceptional players. The best of these, HugoSanchez, went to Spain, where he won five champi-onships with Real Madrid and was named the most valu-able player in Europe. Sanchez proved the advantagesof open markets: Mexico showed that it could exportexcellent products, whether made by hand (glass,cement, automobile parts) or by foot (goals).

And Mexico finally developed a soccer style of its own.Pier Paolo Pasolini, a famous theoretician of soccer(almost as big a fan as Camus and Beckett), said thatthere are two types of soccer: prose and poetry. TheEuropean teams are prosetough, premeditated, sys-tematic, collective. The Latin American countries playpoetryductile, spontaneous, individual, erotic. Mex-ico, a country with neither great soccer prose stylists norgreat soccer poets, had to develop a technique of itsown. And, with the help of Cesar Luis Mennoti, anArgentinian who coached Mexico until 1992, it did. Theteam created a game built on a quick touch, continuousmovement, individual brilliance, stoic resistance.

How will the Mexican style fare in the World Cup?Judging from the way things have been going politically(Chiapas, the assassination of Luis Donaldo Colosio, theuncertainty over the August 21 elections), probably nottoo well. What will happen if Mexico doesn't advance tothe second round? Will there be a wave of suicides, asthere was in Brazil when its team lost to Uruguay in1950? Will national fiags burn once again? Most likelythe fans will blame the defeat on media hype, the corpo-rativist and centralized control of the sport and, last butnot least, Mexico's archaic political system. In Mexico,politics is our first national sport, soccer our second. Andboth are sorely in need of the same thingdemocracy.

ENRIQUE KRAUZE is editor of Vuelta. This article wastranslated from the Spanish by Mark Falcoff.

In Germany, even soccer is serious.

VICTORYBy Friedrich Christian Delius

Once upon a time Germany was a poor country.Its people, the majority of whom perceived thecapitulation of 1945 not as liberation but asdefeat, had to find a release somewhere. Soccer,

with its breathtaking simplicity and minimal equipment,offered such a respiteat least for the men. Thebombed-out rubble of the ruined cities left plenty ofspace for games. The life-and-death battle for the Endsieg,the "final victory," was over; with a sense of relief, one

could at last shoot only goals and compete just for fun.A few of the men who played for West Germany in the

1954 World Cup had lain in trenches, and a few had beenin captivity; all had the "defeat" of 1945 in their bones.Never again would a German team be so representativeof the nation; The coachthe legendary Sepp Her-berger, who as Reichstrainer under Hitler had been aprominent fellow-travelerbecame the Konrad Ade-nauer of German football. Like the first chancellor of theFederal Republic, he used an authoritarian leadershipstyle, an insistence on loyalty to principles, and cunningand luck to reconcile the Germans to themselves andtheir achievements. "Achievements," therefore, becamean important ideological term of the postwar era.

The Germans had been banned from the 1950 WorldCup, but in 1954 they were back in. After making itthrough the qualifying gamesone of their victorieswas over the Saar, which soon after became a part of theFederal Republicthe team headed to Switzerland forthe final rounds. To be able to participate at all countedas success, as retaliation. The unfolding of the weeksthat summer exceeded all expectations. Herberger'steam entered the finals as an underdog against theformidable Hungarians.

On July 4 many West Germans sat in front of a televi-sion for the first time; people gathered in taverns beforetiny screens. Millions more heard the play-by-play on theradio. The citizens of East Germany, then called theSoviet zone, listened with open or concealed sympathyfor West Germany. The game's ninety minutes, culmi-nating with the astonishing West German victory, servedas the initiation ritual for the fiedgling Federal Republic.In the rain of Bern, in a mud fight that must havereminded all the former soldiers of the trenches, elevenmen in soiled, wet tricots fought for a happy 3-2 deci-sionand more. They transformed the West Germanself-image: the time of defeat was past; from now on vic-tory was the aim.

Even the language of the radio announcer, who sensedall these connections but did not express them aloud,was mixed with religious vocabulary. "Toni, you are afootball god!," he exclaimed after the goalkeeper, ToniTurek, made a dazzling save against the Hungarians. Thevictory was celebrated as a "wonder," a heavenly gift.("Economic wonder," the primary expression of WestGermany's fiscal recovery, sprang from the same vocabu-lary.) The very fact that a football game could be under-stood as a "wonder" demonstrates the psycho-socialneeds of the Germans just after the war. They longed forredemption and a future, for freedom from guilt and thepast. The Cup triumph, combined with the auto racingvictories of the Mercedes "Silver Arrow" that same Sun-day, allowed one to say with ever-increasing brazenness,as they did in the taverns and in the Bundestag, "Wirsindwiederwer": we are somebody again. Just about everyone,and not just the old Nazis, could exult and once againmake too much out of his or her Germanness.

So at the victory celebration in the Bern stadium, theWest German soccer fans did not sing the official hymnof the Federal Republicthe third stanza of the

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