Watching the FIFA World Cup this year I’ve sometimes been struck with a bit of a nagging feeling. A feeling that something isn’t quite right. I’ve felt it watching a team like North Korea or the Ivory Coast or Nigeria. The feeling that the presence of these countries, these teams, on the world’s stage isn’t entirely a presence that ought to be celebrated. It was a feeling that I’d been wondering about, and I think I can finally put my finger on it more precisely.

According to the guidelines of FIFA, the governing body of international soccer, political interference in a nation’s soccer team is grounds for being kicked out of the league. That is, the government has no business involving itself with its soccer team. It seems a bit counter-intuitive at first but if you give it some hard thought, it makes sense. Of course, governments fund these teams, they sponsor them and pay player salaries, they construct facilities for them, pay for them to fly around the world and play but the teams aren’t intended, according to FIFA, to represent their respective governments—they represent countries. And the distinction is very important to make.

The intention of this rule, I think, is to serve a couple of purposes. First, it prevents a soccer team from being used as a government prop. A ruling party can’t fund the heck out of its nation’s soccer club only to hold it over the heads of its opposition party. It can’t use its nation’s team’s successes as political leverage within the country or outside of its borders. Soccer should be bigger than even the biggest of intranational and international politics or policies. A government can’t play the soccer card.

The second purpose that I think this rule serves is to prevent governments from punishing its team’s failures.

I said earlier that I finally figured out precisely what was bothering me about watching certain teams play soccer at the World Cup. I put my finger on it after reading a couple of articles about the Nigerian soccer team, the Super Eagles. Following their pretty poor showing at the World Cup—despite initially high hopes—the President of that country has declared that he’s suspending Nigerian football for at least two years. It’s a blatant punishment for poor playing. At the same time, rumours have been circulating surrounding the fate of North Korea’s soccer team. According to some, as punishment for their own poor showing in South Africa, national team members have been sent to do hard labour in North Korea’s coal mines. It sounds like something out of a bad novel, but it could very well be true.

It’s these kinds of interferences that make the FIFA guideline all the more practical and defendable but can you really have soccer without the state?

Can I feel decent about myself—can I cheer on a team like North Korea—when I know full well all of the human rights abuses taking place in that country? When I’m aware, in part, of the plight of the poor and destitute that live there? Can we really separate ourselves from that and say it’s just a game, that sport can and/or should stand outside of politics? That said, can we blame the North Korean players themselves for the state of their country? Should we boo them because of their poor policies?

Not just soccer, these kinds of questions apply to international sport in general. At what point is a team just a team? At what point does a team represent the idea of a nation instead of the nation itself, with all its shortcomings and problems.

I do have a problem watching a soccer team play when I know that they’ll be punished if they lose so I appreciate FIFA’s attempt to prevent that kind of thing, to separate soccer and the state, but does it go far enough? Is it ever really possible to do? The other solution is to just say that teams from countries that have known human rights abuses simply can’t take part, but then FIFA has to become judge and jury. Would Canada be allowed to play? The United States?

I don’t have answers, clearly, but as the tournament kicks into high gear for the final matches it’s certainly a question I’m still asking myself.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 1st, 2010 at 9:18 am and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.