Kissinger's Guide to Watching the World Cup

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Couch-Potato Diplomacy: Kissinger's Guide to Watching the World Cup

By FREDERICK KEMPE
June 17, 2006; Page P3

For sports fans frustrated with the World Cup's excruciatingly low scores, the world's most famous diplomat has some advice: The game's appeal isn't about the goals.

Henry Kissinger, former secretary of state, Nobel Prize-winner and lifelong soccer connoisseur, compares the game to warfare or theater. With many American sports, he says, "you can segment them into individual moves," which translate into lots of statistics that fans track avidly -- like batting averages for baseball and completion percentages for football. By contrast, "soccer is more of an unrelenting drama," with no timeouts, commercials or water breaks, and limited opportunity for substitutions.

With the TV at his Park Avenue office in New York tuned to the Switzerland-France match, Dr. Kissinger offers a tutorial on the fine points of soccer, a game Americans are notorious for failing to grasp. Atop his dated Sony Trinitron television set rest icons from baseball, his other favorite sport: autographed photographs of New York Yankees manager Joe Torre and shortstop Derek Jeter. "The rest are just world leaders," he says with a wink, sweeping his arm along two long windows lined with dozens of other signed pictures.

While Dr. Kissinger is no less a Yankees fan than a soccer aficionado, he watches the two sports differently. With baseball, he is more laid-back. He cheers for his favorite team, and revels in "the game's great periods of latitude," with its moments of relaxation between points of high drama. He munches on hot dogs and chats with Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, who frequently invites Dr. Kissinger to his box.

He is less partisan when it comes to soccer, savoring its ebbs and flows of frustration, elation and ultimately exhaustion. "Soccer gets me at a relatively high pitch of attention," he says. He plans later this month to attend a World Cup semifinal match and also the finals, regardless of who is playing. He's fascinated with how national characteristics translate into playing styles: Brazil's unbridled joy, England's noble purpose, Germany's grim determination.

Dr. Kissinger keeps an eye on the TV and the Swiss team's surprisingly strong first-half showing against a French team that on paper is far superior. "I don't want to say anything anti-Swiss, but this is against expectations," he announces. As the match continues, Dr. Kissinger offers up some up other tips for appreciating this year's Cup:

Take your eye off the ball. "Soccer is a game that hides great complexity in an appearance of simplicity," he says. "It looks like 10 people chasing a ball. But they have to be coached scientifically so that they know where to move when the ball is in play."

Dr. Kissinger studies the patterns that teams try to create with their movements, whether they are predominantly attacking teams (which he prefers) or defending teams (which has become more the norm, to his chagrin).

"Oh, my God," Dr. Kissinger says, interrupting himself, as a French player fails to kick the ball into the net when he receives a perfect pass in front of the goal. "A deadly striker would have scored there."

Note the three primary playing styles -- but also the way globalization is homogenizing them. Dr. Kissinger separates the approaches to the game into three broad types: English, European continental and Latin. The traditional English style focuses on winning through athleticism -- kicking the ball deep and long and then outrunning the opponent, with defenders and attackers well-defined. With the European style, six players typically move forward and pass skillfully and four players remain back. That said, they often shift positions so that defenders can become attackers.

His favorite is the Latin approach, which is about style as much as substance. "When a Brazilian team is in good form, it looks like a ballet coming down the field. There are two troubles with the Brazilians: One is they get so infatuated with their dancing and acrobatics that they sometimes forget to shoot goals. The other is they often don't have a good goalkeeper. My explanation is that he doesn't like staying back and not joining the fun."

Dr. Kissinger worries that globalization is "brutalizing" the Brazilians, who have lost some of their Latin panache. All but three of their 11 players have had their styles dulled by playing in the highest-paying but more-conformist European leagues, he says. The English have also shifted to a more European style. Meanwhile, Dr. Kissinger says Germany is playing a more spontaneous and cheerful attacking style this year, which contrasts with the country's history-laden pessimism.

He has high praise for the Argentinians. "They have many of the skills of the Brazilians, but are ruthlessly oriented toward scoring goals and doing whatever is necessary to win," he says.

Don't underestimate the element of exhaustion in close games. Mr. Kissinger notes that goals are often scored late in the match when players are most fatigued.

It's near the end of the French-Swiss game, and though the French have improved in the second half, there still is no score. Dr. Kissinger delivers his verdict: "The French, while still elegant, have become stodgy," he says. "The French don't have the killer instinct or the killer capability."

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What I really think about soccer By Jack Kemp

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The Trials of the U.S. Soccer Fan

By JON WEINBACH
June 9, 2006; Page W5

Adam Chilenski has endured the put-downs for more than a decade. The 26-year-old health-care attendant in Columbus, Ohio, says friends still chide him about his favorite pastime. His dad thinks it's "a little peculiar." This week, Mr. Chilenski even made up a fake doctor's appointment so he could leave work early and join others who share his passion. "I told my boss I had to get my foot checked for an ingrown toenail," he says.

Mr. Chilenski is not a Trekkie, or a comic-book geek. He's an American soccer fan.

The World Cup kicks off today in Germany, a monthlong global festival of futbol. In parts of Europe and South America, the games grind business to a virtual standstill. This year, the tournament has even halted a civil war: Ethnic factions in the Ivory Coast recently declared a truce to support the country's first-ever World Cup appearance.


Sam's Army drums up team spirit before the U.S. soccer team's 1-0 win against Latvia.
But in the U.S., soccer fanatics still contend with critics who say the sport is too slow, low-scoring and not "tough" enough for Americans. "After all these years, we're still competing with this idea that soccer is not a 'real' sport," says Mark Spacone, a Buffalo, N.Y., high-school history teacher who founded "Sam's Army," the official fan group for the U.S. national team, in 1995. "A lot of people still raise their eyebrows and say, 'You're crazy.' "

The indignities continue despite a U.S. national team that got to the quarterfinals of the 2002 World Cup. Some soccer supporters fear that if the U.S. team fails to get past the first round at this year's tournament, the sport's high-profile critics will pounce, rekindling memories of 1998, when the American squad lost all three of their games, finishing dead last.

The chorus of soccer haters includes journalist Frank Deford, sports-radio host Jim Rome and former vice-presidential candidate Jack Kemp, who once called soccer a "European socialist" sport. For older fans who didn't grow up playing the game, its growth "represents a direct threat to American culture and tradition," says Franklin Foer, editor of the New Republic and author of the 2004 book "How Soccer Explains the World." And the success of the women's national team and the rising pop-culture profile of "soccer moms" has just provided ammunition for critics who've long viewed the sport as "less manly," he says.

A Direct Approach

In the past, soccer die-hards tried to combat critics with arguments about the game's history and grace. Joe Gannon prefers a more direct approach. The 42-year-old from New Market, Md., grew up playing baseball, and was a rabid college-basketball fan at the University of Maryland. He got hooked on soccer after attending a U.S.-Ireland match on a rainy night in Washington, D.C. during the early '90s. "It was a blast," he says.

Mr. Gannon, who teaches 11th- and 12th-graders, gave extra credit to students who came to school early to watch Team USA's 2002 World Cup matches. After the Americans' narrow quarterfinal loss to Germany, he and his brother felt the team lacked support at the game. They pledged to travel to Germany if the U.S. got to the World Cup. They also decided to attend all pre-tournament qualifying matches -- in a converted schoolbus.

The brothers paid $3,700 for a diesel-engine bus with 150,000 miles on it, and after a six-month, $18,000 renovation, rechristened it the "World Cup Express." The bus is now painted red with white and blue trim, can sleep 10, and features four big speakers on the outside to blast music for tailgate parties. The maiden voyage was to Columbus, Ohio, for a 2004 game against Grenada, and the brothers made it to qualifiers in Boston, Washington and Hartford, Conn., as well. "We hope to be ambassadors for U.S. soccer," he says.

Though the school year isn't done, Mr. Gannon is leaving this weekend for Germany (minus the van), where he'll attend games in an Uncle Sam outfit, with his goatee dyed white. "I've got my buddies at work covering for me," he says. "They can't harrumph about soccer anymore."

The Gannon brothers won't be the only Yanks in Deutschland. The U.S. soccer federation sold out its original allotment of about 10,000 World Cup tickets in a day, and later sold 8,000 more.

Of course, soccer still has a way to go in America. Major League Soccer's financial health has improved in recent years, but it is dwarfed by the other U.S. sports leagues. Television ratings for soccer are still paltry. And for most casual fans, retired women's soccer star Mia Hamm is still a far more recognizable name than any member of the men's national team. No member of the U.S. World Cup team appears in the annual "Sports Q" report by Marketing Evaluations Inc., which surveys the name recognition and "likability" of 475 top athletes.

But the lack of mainstream attention gives American soccer underdog appeal. Growing up in Chicago during the '80s, Alex White hated soccer, often ridiculing the game and anyone who played it, including his sister. "The whole thing was very 'wussy' to me," says the 36-year-old, an executive with the American Hospital Association in Dallas. But after a trip last year to an MLS game, he was quickly converted and purchased season tickets to FC Dallas. Last month, he flew to Cleveland to watch a World Cup warm-up game with his sister. "There's something about the fact that they're not millionaires, and they seem to genuinely like the fans," says Mr. White.

Hitting the Mainstream

Mainstream media outlets are also coming around. In recent weeks, soccer features have graced the covers of magazines such as Sports Illustrated, Outside and National Geographic. Next month, Miramax will release "Once in a Lifetime," a slick documentary about the New York Cosmos, the team that raised the profile of U.S. soccer in the '70s. (Academy Award nominee Matt Dillon provides the voice-overs.)

For their part, the players appreciate the added support -- but hunger for more. Before the U.S. team's warm-up game last month in Cleveland, defender Frankie Hejduk schmoozed with fans. A part-time starter on the '98 and '02 World Cup teams, Mr. Hejduk -- whose flowing locks and surfer-dude patois have made him a crowd favorite -- was selected for this year's squad, but injured his knee a few weeks ago. Slowly but surely, he says, the atmosphere at American games is starting to resemble the spirit found at European stadiums. He just wishes ESPN would show more soccer highlights on "SportsCenter." "The whole rest of the world is on the bandwagon," he says. "Soccer can't be that bad."