Do the World Cup Football results reflect global political realities? According to columnist Muwaffaq Mahadeen of Jordan’s Arabic-language Al-Arab Al-Yawm, football aka/soccer, which he writes dates to the Mayan civilization, was never just about sport, and the teams that succeed or fail reflect the fortunes of the nations they represent.
For Al-Arab Al-Yawm, columnist Muwaffaq Mahadeen writes in part:
Football was never merely a sport and didn’t become popular just because people liked it. Closely tied to pagan and solar rituals going back to the Mayan civilization – even before there was a “Latin America” – it was from the beginning a phenomenon of ideological and political programming. … Football helps defuse social tension on the field rather than the streets, it diverts attention from the major issues, and unites tyrants with the poor through national identities and feelings against “the other.”
The World Cup reduces the entire global political stage to falling, rising and shaken powers. … The rising powers are in South America and Asia, the falling powers are those of Old Europe as they say, and the shaken powers are the remnants of Eastern Europe, Africa and the Anglo-Saxons (the United States in particular). The indicators of this include:
1) All South American teams as well as Asian teams from Japan and South Korea have qualified for the second round.
2) Except for the Iberians (Spain and Portugal), the fall of the great European teams, such as Italy, France and Denmark – and the ouster of the USA from the second round with just one win in four matches.
3) Also note the fall of the Francaphones, the Anglo-Saxon crisis, and the rise of the Iberians, who share the culture, language and interests of South America.
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