Lessons in pride from World Cup

June 22, 2002
By Bukka Rennie

How could we not recognise the chant of the supporters of the Korean national football team ­ "O Korea" ­ as indeed authentic calypso, the native beat and pulse of our own nation of Trinidad and Tobago? Something has to be viciously wrong with a nation that proves unable to recognise any manifestation of it's own manufacture!

Where is T&T's sense of self? Quite over on the other side of the day/night, we are told by commentators people everywhere, in the streets, in the marketplace and in the subways, are singing this melodic line, "O Korea, Korea" to build their patriotic frenzy and fire the zeal of their national team.

But it's a melodic line from somewhere out of our own extensive national songbook, and we fail to recognise it, far more to lay claim to the power of it.

So what's new with us and all our own cultural creations? And this is the time of the World Cup games when nationalism via sport is given pride of place before all else.

We have said many times before "when the nations of the world are arrayed against each other in the Cup finals, the intensity of the passion shown seems to suggest the games are almost a substitute for war."

It is when the colours and flags of nations come to the fore and every single jot, every iota, of psychological advantage is deemed spinally crucial and brought to bear on proceedings.

Such trooping of colours demands fierce loyalty, and millions of people gird and steel themselves for the pain and joy produced by the beautiful game of inner rhythm and poetry, which is the harmony between player and player, and patriot and ball, in attack and defence. It is about blood and sand! Catpiss and pepper!

It is the game given to the world by the British working-class; a game in which each player, each patriot, stands stripped of all social baggage, devoid of all irrelevancies, with only those which count, namely, innate skill, gait and poise, special talent, discipline and confidence in craft, power of concentration and will to win.

"Ball, boy!" the crowd shouts in salutations.

"It is not a team that goes to the World Cup finals," the European coach advised T&T's technical officials in '89. "It is a country that goes." It is not only the team, but the entire country that has to be ready.

How can you reach anywhere if you do not recognise your innate power and the power of your self-manifestations?

A World Cup teaches many things. But have we really been listening to and observing the goings-on at this World Cup? Have we seen what has happened to the national teams that were packed with the aged and the weary?

"Give me young gladiators!" one coach demanded openly.

Have we learnt anything from the fact that had the English team been driven by a "local" coach, the team would probably be still "lily white", not reflective of what the English nation has become, and would be spearheaded by the aged striker Alan Shearer and would probably not have made the final 32?

It took a foreign coach to unleash the real power from within the gut of England by summoning the courage to select about seven young, black, gifted patriots.

That's why England made the finals. We hope the racist controllers of the past have learnt something.

But there is another element that has to be dealt with severely: The club chauvinists.

FIFA has always been adamant the interests of nations must supersede that of the professional clubs. All the rules and regulations laid down by FIFA over the years have stipulated in minute details that professional players and clubs must at all times be guided by the paramountcy of nations.

FIFA has always suggested wherever conflict of interest over fixtures and the like may arise, there must be room left for negotiated compromise towards mutual agreement. But given the money-power of the clubs in recent times and the awesome salaries they pay to professional players, conflict with national agendas have begun to become overtly hostile.

Clubs are demanding their pound of flesh and, bit by bit, are seeking to subvert the supremacy of nationalist interests. FIFA may need to review regulations quickly in light of recent events with the view to satisfy the clubs without relinquishing the principle of supremacy of the interests of nations.

A particular case with which FIFA can launch the review process involves Luciano Gaucci, the chairman of the Italian club Perugia, and the star Korean national player, Ahn Jung-hwan, who plays professionally for Perugia and who scored the golden goal to send Italy home.

Gaucci is now claiming Ahn Jung-hwan was an "underachiever" at Perugia and announced he was dismissing the contracted Korean player immediately. Listen to how Gaucci turns around the FIFA principle of "nation first" to justify his vicious, selfish, racist, petty club chauvinism:

"He (Ahn Jung-hwan) was a phenomenon only when he played against Italy. I am a nationalist and I regard such behaviour not only as an affront to Italian pride, but also an offence to a country that two years ago opened its doors to him."

The idea a professional footballer can be punished for scoring a goal for his national team against the country in which he plies his trade is a most dastardly act. It could only happen to a non-white Third World professional.

FIFA must act in Ahn's defence, otherwise the whole idea of a World Cup of this beautiful game would be ruined and would be meaningless in the future. No club CEO should be able to get away with such vicious exploitation of professional players.

Already, national coaches are complaining that when these big clubs are finished exacting their pound of flesh from professional players, the players return to their national teams, particularly in a World Cup year, drained, weary, injured, almost creatively sterile due to listlessness. That has been quite evident in the 2002 World Cup.

The great Pele has even called on the clubs and their leagues in England, Italy, Spain, etc to curtail a bit of their schedule in a World Cup year to allow the players to maintain some freshness for the biggest sporting spectacle the world will ever know and probably the only instrument that could probably pull this entire planet, Earth, into a oneness.

It is too big an issue to ignore.