How Soccer Explains the World

As great as the Iranian commitment to Islam is the Iranian commitment to Iran—the two haven’t always been one and the same.

That’s because they don’t hate an opposing group of people; they feel rage toward an idea, the idea of Castilian centralism. And you can’t beat up an idea.

They argue that the Catalans like to cry over their “victimization” so that they can bully the central government—and the Spanish soccer federation—into giving them undeserved favors. How else can Catalonia get so much more money from the central government than any other Spanish region?

The foreigners can become Catalan, because the ideology of Catalanism holds that citizenship is acquired, not inherited. To become Catalan, one must simply learn the Catalan language, disparage Castilian Spain, and love Barca. Catalan nationalism is not a racial doctrine or theocratic one, but a thoroughly civic religion. Catalan nationalism is so blind that it will accept you even if you have an impossible personality.

If Barca let Catalonia blow off steam, it turned out to be a tidy arrangement for all involved. Franco never faced any serious opposition from the Catalans. Unlike the Basques, the other linguistic minority suffering under Franco, the Catalans never joined liberation fronts or kidnapped Madrid bank presidents or exploded bombs at bus stations. And Barca supporters, for all their noise in the Camp Nou, never seriously objected to the Franco apologists who ruled the club’s boardroom. While Catalonia kept its head down, it got on with business. Franco’s nationalist economics, which included subsidies and tariffs, abetted a massive industrial boom in metropolitan Barcelona. Immigrants from the south of Spain, many thousands in the fifties and sixties, came to work the region’s factories. The new industrial strength and concomitant wealth helped take the mind off oppression and memories of slaughter.

This tradition understands that humans crave identifying with a group. It is an unavoidable, immemorial, hardwired instinct. Since modern life has knocked the family and tribe from their central positions, the nation has become the only viable vessel for this impulse. To deny this craving is to deny human nature and human dignity.

Manuel Vazquez Montalban, one of Spain’s great contemporary writers, published a novel about Barca called Offside. He described the club as “the epic weapon of a country without a state…. El Barca’s victories were like those of Athens over Sparta.”

In contrast to the ethic of American capitalism, Inter fans know that there are “things more important in life than winning.”

As everyone knows, Italian men are the most foppish representatives of their sex on the planet. T

They smear on substantial quantities of hair care products and expend considerable mental energies color-coordinating socks with belts. Because of their dandyism, the world has Vespa, Prada, and Renzo Piano.