Beckham Comes Stateside

How cool is this? I go through "European" football phases every couple of years. They generally coincide with my visits to England; while I'm overseas I try to catch up on the Tottenham Hotspurs, usually pick up a jersey (the only athletic gear that even remotely fits a guy of my build), and read a lot of football coverage. When I returned to London before law school, I caught the recently released Bend it Like Beckham on the flight over just after the man himself announced that he would be leaving Man U. for Real Madrid. This past summer, I visited in the wake of England's disappointing World Cup showing. Everyone - even people who claimed to not care about football - was disappointed.

I might appreciate the culture of football more than the sport itself. I like that the players represent both club and country and that teams play in different tournaments with different stakes - a top player on the Tottenham Hotspurs might face Man U. in the England's Premiere League, Hamburg's club in a European Tournament, and the German national team when England plays Germany. The cultural and historical ramifications of these matchups are great - when they're not dangerous. Which leads me to admit that I'm also entertained by the ridiculous (though sometimes extreme) fanaticism. And I have to add that somehow I appreciate that the the players are athletically talented but still look like regular human beings.

Franklin Foer, the current editor of the New Republic, makes some of these observations in How Soccer Explains the World: An (Unlikely) Theory of Globalization. It's a good read.