Soccer Men (14 page)

It’s known that the Dutch midfielder Willem van Hanegem as a baby had lost his father, ten-year-old brother, and six other Van Hanegems during a British bombing of the family’s home village of Breskens. Less well known is that the father of Ruud Krol, Holland’s left-back in 1974, was one of the few Dutchmen who actually joined the Resistance during the war, as opposed to just talking about it afterward.

In 1999 I visited Kuki Krol in his little house in Amsterdam. He was a tiny man whose right foot was shrouded in an enormous boot. Only his big nose evoked his handsome son. From his settee, Krol Sr. sent me to inspect a buffet table on the other side of his living room. On the table stood a photograph of a dead young man. He had combed-back, Brillantined hair in the fashion of the early 1940s. In those days the dead man had worked in Krol Sr.’s shop.

Krol Sr. told me: “Some were lucky, but he wasn’t. One day the German security police raided my shop. They came for me, but they found him. He was in the communist Resistance. They put him up against the wall, with his hands by his side—that was a technique of the time—and his bad luck was that that day he had three identity cards on him. He never came back. But they had come for me.” At one point during the war Krol Sr. was hiding thirteen Jews in his corner apartment in Amsterdam.

Our conversation was awkward. Krol Sr. was an angry man. He had been good in the war but had been haunted by it forever afterward, and had never been rewarded for his goodness.

A couple of days after we met, he phoned me. He didn’t want me to write about our conversation. He knew that he’d never managed to let go of the war, that he could only talk about it emotionally. He knew that sometimes that wasn’t such a good idea.

He died in 2003, and now I’m publishing this fragment of our conversation. Kuki Krol was good in the war and spent the rest of his life paying for it.

The point is that his son Ruud (born in 1949) probably had more feelings about the war and the Germans than Rep did. But in 1974, Dutch people—players and civilians—rarely mentioned the war. It was still too early. Only in the 1980s and early 1990s did vocal anti-German feeling break out in the
Netherlands. In part, people were expressing a fear of the mighty new Germany of their own day, in soccer and outside.

From the mid-1990s, the anti-German feeling faded again. By the time of our evening in the Goethe-Institut, in 2004, hardly anyone in Holland is still afraid of the second-rate neighboring power with its stagnant economy. By now, the stereotypical German in the Dutch mind is no longer the fat Bavarian in the newest-model BMW but the unemployed skinhead on an East German streetcar.

After the debate, over beers at the Goethe-Institut, a German diplomat confirms that the Dutch have stopped hating Germans because they have stopped fearing them. There’s certainly no hatred on display tonight. Trauma? It’s great fun. A lot of Dutch people come up to Hölzenbein for a quick chat, though it’s noticeable that most of them speak English to him, because few Dutch people speak German anymore.

Just before closing time we grab a table at a grand café: the Hölzenbeins, Rep, a Dutch friend of mine from childhood named Rutger, and me. It’s Monday evening, and we’re the only people in the café. (Rotterdam was bombed to pieces by the Germans on May 10, 1940, and afterward rebuilt with skyscrapers, so that nowadays there is often more space than people.) The bar staff, not knowing that two of us are demigods, agree to serve us only after lengthy entreaties. We order as many beers as possible. Rep and Hölzenbein chat about soccer in basic English and German, and only now do I see how differently players do it from normal people. It’s a terrible realization: All those things you dream about (World Cup finals and so forth) aren’t the things that actual players think about.

Rep says he doesn’t have a single souvenir left from the World Cup of 1974. “I don’t think so. Oh, yes, an Argentine shirt. I’ve got nothing from the World Cup ’78. We didn’t even swap—just went inside quick as a spear.”

The players’ syndrome explains why Hölzenbein was more interested in the World Cup of ’54 than ’74: In 1954 he was still a fan.

Give players the chance to chat without an interviewer, and they talk about the strangest things: Did you ever play with that guy? Strange bloke, wasn’t he? Didn’t I once play against you at a summer tournament in Abidjan?

Rep reminisces about a striker he played with at Valencia who was known as
El Lobo
(The Wolf), because he was also dangerous at night.

Hölzenbein asks if we know the former Dutch player John Pot.

“Cor Pot!” we correct him in chorus, referring to a journeyman defender turned journeyman coach.

“John Pot,” says Hölzenbein decidedly. “Big, strong guy who used to play at the back for Fort Lauderdale.”

“A darling of a man,” adds Mrs. Hölzenbein.

“I’ve looked him up on the Internet, but found nothing,” says Hölzenbein.

Later I Google John Pot and find only one reference: When George Best scored a brilliant goal for the San Jose Earthquakes against Fort Lauderdale on July 22, 1981, he beat (according to a reconstruction by the
Oakland Tribune
) Ray Hudson, Thomas Rongen, “Steve Ralbvsky, then John Pot and finally Ken Fogarty.” Otherwise, it’s as if John Pot never existed. I consulted several experts on Dutch soccer, but none had heard of him. A mystery is born.

Anyway, this is the kind of thing old players have in their heads: Where is John Pot? The fan who runs into a former player in a bar will ask him about his
Schwalbe
, or about the “Swimming Pool Affair” (a German tabloid story headlined “Cruyff, Champagne, Naked Girls, and a Cool Bath,” which according to many Dutch fans cost Holland the World Cup final a few days later). But the typical former pro (and I’m not talking about Rep or Hölzenbein now) remembers his first goal for the first team, or the curvy housewife he met in a café on the night after the final, or the teammates who used to tease him, or the article in the local newspaper that hinted he was gay.

The history of soccer would read very differently if it were written by actual players. They would never organize a debate about a long-gone World Cup final, or if they did, it would focus on the postmatch banquet to which the wives weren’t invited, and where Rep and Germany’s Paul Breitner swapped suit jackets.

World champions or not, shortly after midnight we are kicked out of the café. On the street we say good-bye to my friend Rutger. Rep has been cadging cigarettes from him all night. Now the two grip hands like old pals, and Rutger shakes Hölzenbein’s hand and kisses Mrs. Hölzenbein. Then Rutger turns to me and half-whispers, “You know, I’m never going to forget this.”

I think Rep and Hölzenbein have had a nice time, too.

August 2005

T
he most surprising aspect of the Michael Essien saga, to his teammates, is that he has stopped smiling. A man of practically no words, the Ghanaian tends to sit beaming in a corner of a locker room when not bouncing around soccer fields so vigorously that you get tired just watching him.

Essien is upset because his club, Olympique Lyon, is blocking his transfer to Chelsea. Lyon want a fee of $54 million, which would make him the most expensive defensive midfielder in history. Chelsea, the world’s richest club, has offered $35 million. Manchester United may also be interested. Meanwhile, Essien has gone on strike at Lyon. This tug-of-war is happening because the mute monster is the model player of our time.

His story is suitably globalized. Essien grew up in the steamy Ghanaian capital of Accra with four sisters. He spent his childhood dribbling around trees and sometimes crashing into them. He first appeared on television while helping Ghana’s under-twelves thrash Benin, was later spotted by scouts at a tournament in New Zealand, and at seventeen got a trial with Manchester United. He showed up at Old Trafford with a fellow Ghanaian, whose bad behavior irritated United. The club didn’t particularly like Essien, either, but offered him a spell with its Belgian farm team, Royal Antwerp.

Essien said no. He mooched around his agent’s apartment in Monaco distraught, until the agent phoned Bastia in Corsica and persuaded them to take the boy. There Essien grew into a monster. He is less than six feet tall, but his body is nearly as broad as his smile. He says he never gets tired. Mind you, he also says his hobby is sleeping.

Bastia was delighted: Essien didn’t even speak, which is exactly how soccer clubs like players. In 2003 it sold him to Lyon for €12 million. This May a Parisian court decided that part of that sum had been funneled to a Corsican nationalist, terrorist and Bastia fan Charles Pieri, who was jailed for ten years.

At Lyon Essien kept getting bigger, as if in a horror movie. “Physically, he’s the most impressive person I’ve played with,” says his teammate Sidney
Govou. Another teammate nicknamed him the Bison. Essien himself remarks that he has yet to meet anyone who could knock him over.

An economist would note his multifactor productivity. The trend in sports is to measure more and more, and whichever variable Lyon chose, Essien was best on the team. He touched the ball more times than anyone else and had the most tackles, most completed passes, most interceptions of opponents’ passes, and sometimes the most shots on goal, but despite his penchant for sawing opponents in half, he was rarely caught fouling. You could judge him without even watching him. Reading the stats was enough. He was voted France’s best player of last season.

In short, Essien exemplified the growing physicality of most sports, from tennis to baseball. The average player now runs almost six miles a match, nearly three times more than thirty years ago. With everybody whizzing around, space shrinks. The center of midfield, where the ball is most often, has become like the line of scrimmage in American football: a “pit” where monsters like Essien roam, trampling the weedy playmakers who once ruled there.

The only playmakers still thriving in central midfield are the two-in-ones, men so physically strong that they double as monsters: Pavel Nedved, Michael Ballack, or Steven Gerrard. Weedy playmakers—Francesco Totti, Alessandro del Piero, and even Zinedine Zidane—struggle. The exemplary tale is that of Javier “the Rabbit” Saviola, Argentina’s weedy playmaker in their 3–0 thrashing of Essien’s Ghana in the World Youth Cup final of 2001. Saviola went straight to Barcelona for a salary of $4.4 million a year. Today, while everyone wants the Bison, Barcelona is quietly offloading the Rabbit onto their little neighbors Espanyol.

This autumn Essien may even help Ghana qualify for its first-ever World Cup. He needs to. Ghanaian fans often judge players by their willingness to “serve their country,” and Essien, like most expatriate players, has been found wanting. The problem isn’t that he emigrated. Ghanaians expect that. Whereas the country once exported cocoa, gold, and slaves, today it exports cocoa, gold, and workers. But fans don’t like expat players showing up for an international match “in posh-posh cars,” complaining that their plane tickets weren’t waiting for them at the airport, and then resting on the pitch. Before a crucial qualifying match in South Africa in June, Essien
had to insist, “We’re ready to die for our country.” Perhaps it was true, because Ghana won.

But he’s miserable now. Lyon is testing the theory that Chelsea—funded by Roman Abramovich’s billions—will pay any transfer fee. Chelsea is trying to prove them wrong.

In the few recorded instances of Essien speaking, he has mentioned his dream of joining Manchester United. But such sentiments seldom influence players, and today he would prefer Chelsea. Meanwhile, he wanders around shrouded in gloom and in his headphones, irritating his employer. “At that level of remuneration, a certain ethic should exist,” says Jean-Michel Aulas, Lyon’s chairman, expressing a peculiar moral philosophy.

At least the Zeitgeist is on Essien’s side. As Damon Runyon wrote, “The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that’s the way to bet,” and it’s even more true now than when Runyon wrote it.

July 2006

H
olding the World Cup aloft is the highlight of a life, but the Italian captain Fabio Cannavaro was a world champion long before Sunday. Now he simply has the medal to prove it. The cherub carved from stone should also have been named player of the tournament, because he was the image not just of Italy but of this World Cup.

From soon after birth in Naples thirty-two years ago, Cannavaro cultivated a peculiarly Italian ambition: to be a defender. The man-marker is a peculiarly Italian profession, like gondolier or fashion designer. The most enjoyable thing in soccer, says Cannavaro, is marking:
“Marcare, marcare, marcare!”
He is scornful of strikers. They can play terribly and be praised for one goal, but defenders
are hanged for one mistake. Cannavaro belongs to the Italian school that says the perfect match ends 0–0, because there were no errors.

Had he been born in Britain, he would probably never have found employment as a center-back: He is only five foot eight. To compensate, he built up his upper body and arms. A defender needs his arms, Cannavaro says, because he must constantly touch his striker, place him where he wants him to be. Cannavaro loves the details of his craft.

He understands his worth. Asked at Euro 2000 to name the best defenders there, he said, “After myself and Nesta, I think the Frenchman Thuram.” But Cannavaro’s sole mistake of that tournament allowed France’s Sylvain Wiltord to score the equalizer in the final. France won.

On Sunday there could be no repeat. Going into the final, Cannavaro’s defense had conceded once in six games, and that an unstoppable own goal. Cannavaro sets high standards for his men. When his colleague Marco Materazzi permitted a German shot in the semifinal, Cannavaro stood beneath the giant, lectured him, and then slapped him in the face. Cannavaro believes a defender does not permit shots—he throws out a limb to block them—or corners, free kicks, or even throw-ins.