David Henry Sterry with the skinny on the Opera that was World Cup 2014, the greatest World Cup we shall ever see.
Me & Alan Black on NPR with the inside skinny on World Cup 2014. Can America escape Group o Death? Hell yeah!
GROUP B: YES: Argentina & Nigeria NO: South Korea & Greece
Argentina has, pound-for-pound, the greatest player in the world, The Flea with the genius feet, Lionel Messi. Yes, he does weigh 104 lbs. soaking wet, but still, the man is a maestro, a modern artist/dancer/madman. Problem is, Argentina also has the craziest coach, not just in soccer, but in any sport (and that’s a bold statement given the well-documented craziness of coaches), scorer of probably the greatest individual goal in World Cup history, Diego Maradona. They will make it through by sheer dint of the miniscule magician. With midfield marvel John Obi Wan Kanobi Mikel waving his wand doling out punishment, they will be a scary scary foe. Even though Greece recently won the European championship, and have a most excellent team, their entire economy’s in the toilet, so naturally they’re going to tank. South Korea has the hardest working soccer player in show business, Manchester United’s Energizer Bunny, Park-Ji-Sung, but after that they are woefully thin and wickedly undermanned.
http://www.amazon.com/Glorious-World-Cup-Fanatics-Guide/dp/0451230205
Hundreds of millions of humans will soon gather in bars, barns, parks, taverns, caverns, caravans, caves and bunkers, some crossing vast deserts just to find a radio so they can listen to a sporting extravaganza that’ll be bigger than the Super Bowl, Stanley Cup, NBA Finals and will at the Ohio 200 of them “World” Series all rolled into one. It’s humanity’s biggest pilgrimage: the World Cup. The pot’s been simmering for four years, and it’s finally coming to a boil. 204 teams played 848 matches and scored 2,337 goals, battling hammer and tong, tooth and nail for the right to become one of the chosen 32 nations who gets a chance to bring home both the bacon and the gory. June 11, 2010, strap it on and strap him yourself in, as the mother of all sporting events crashlands for the first time in history on the mother of all continents. Ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together for, live from a Jo’berg, it’s, World Cup 2010 South Africaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!
The World Cup is a month long marathon disguised as a series of furious sprints. Lemme break it down fa ya. Group Stage: 8 groups of 4 teams. Everybody plays 3 games. Top 2 go teams through. Elimination Stage: win and live to fight another day; lose & it’s instant extermination.
GROUP A: YES: France & South Africa NO: Mexico & Uruguay
Call me a cockeyed optimist, but I’m picking South Africa make it through to the round of 16. Bafana Bafana, Zulu for “the Boys”, has a world-class forward in double-somersaulting Stephen Pienaar, and a hulking, humongous, yet surpisingly skillful shaved-bald defender in Matthew Booth, who looks shockingly like a huge Q-tip. Plus they will have the maniacal sound of 1 billion vuvuzelas, their ear-bleedingly loud local noisemakers, trumpeting their every triumph. Plus this is a nation that overcame hatred and pain in part through the beautiful game. Call me a bitter cynic, but I’m also picking France to advance. After the galling display of Gallic dishonor in the infamous Hand of Henry cheating scandal, they’ve come to represent the way the world is now. Turns out cheating is, after all, the best way to win. If you don’t believe me, go ask Goldman Sachs. Mexico? Having watched the fiery Mexicans go cold in the hot spotlight so many times over the decades, I believe our neighbors to the south are a taco short of a Combo Platter. Uruguay? Too much bad karma. Their legacy of World Cup brutality is well documented, most famously in the person of José Batista, ejected 53 seconds into a 1986 game for chopping a Scotsman in half.
Thanks once again to the Huffington Post for giving me some love. Nice to see World Cup fever is spreading.
I’m 10. An American boy. When I walk into my first English sweet shop in Coxlodge, the tiny ex-mining village of my ancestors, it’s like entering a strange, exotic parallel universe. There’s candy, but it’s all different: Smarties, Crunchy Bars, Gob Stoppers. There’s newspapers, but they have pictures of naked women in them. This totally blows my little 10-year-old mind. Pretty women with naked knockers right there in the newspaper! What a world! And there, on the counter, is a box full of unopened soccer cards.
My little heart soars as my pulse spikes. Some of my earliest and most exhilarating memories involve my mom rewarding me for good behavior by buying me baseball cards. They’re one of my earliest attachments to a culture that was bigger than me and my family. An identity in the world. A way of defining myself by belonging to American institutions like Whitey Ford, Mickey Mantle and the Yankees. These iconic ballplayers are the heroes of my very early Wonder Years. Larger then life figures with extraterrestrial skills and talents you can count on in your hour of most dire need. Men who, even when limping, bloodied and bowed, triumph against seemingly insurmountable odds, and bring glory to you, your team, your tribe, and your country. These cardboard images of the best of the best were talismanic objects that stood for an ideal of American Manhood.
ADVERTISEMENT
Be prepared, brave, noble, kind, help your fellow man and be good to your school, your girl and your mom. So in that little sweetie shop outside Newcastle, I’m practically trembling with excitement as I plunk down my 10p (even the money’s different! big huge gigantic pennies!) and grab a pack. A whole new set of heroes unfolds before me. Bobby Moore, Gordon Banks, Bobby Charlton. I read about their superhuman exploits. The bone-crunching tackles, the rocket laser goals, the humanly impossible feline-like saves.
That’s when I first fall in love with soccer. Later that afternoon my budding romance is consummated with a bunch of local lads playing soccer in the little hardscrabble patch of scabby grass behind a block of industrial flats. Again I’m entranced by this parallel universe I’ve fallen into. These kids are just like the kids I play with back in America, only instead of pretending to be Whitey Ford, Mickey Mantle, and Willie Mays, we pretend to be Bobby Moore, Gordon Banks, and Bobby Charlton.
Now I’m 52. An American man. When I walk into my local soccer store in New Jersey, my heart still does a little hop skip pitterpat jig of joy when I see a box full of unopened soccer cards on the counter. $2.50. That’s what they cost now. As I start to open the first pack I have a mad flashback of that Coxlodge sweet shop of my ancestors when this is all it took to make me madly in love with life. To my mom rewarding me for being a good boy by buying me packs of baseball cards. To those Men who were the Olympian Gods of my childhood. At 52 I don’t rip open the pack anymore. Now I savor it. Take my time. As I uncover the first card I’m flabbergasted and gobsmacked. It’s Landon Manchild Donovan, arguably the greatest goalscoring threat America has ever produced. He’s the very first card in the very first pack. It is clearly a sign from the soccer gods. Obviously they’re telling me that Landyman is going to have a huge World Cup. I immediately make him my pre-World Cup favorite to win the Golden Boot for most goals scored in the tournament. If I was a betting man I’d lay a wager on that right now. When I look at the next card I’m both awe and dumb struck, can hardly believe the information my eyes is feeding my brain. It is… Tim T-Ho Howard, arguably the greatest goalkeeper in the world today. Mouth agape, eyes googly I’m like: These are the first two cards of the first pack I buy of 2010 South Africa World Cup soccer cards, are you kidding me? I’ve stated publicly that I think America’s going to win this World Cup. People scoff. Mock. Ridicule. Deride. But I don’t care anymore. I’ve never been able my entire life to muster any kind of religious belief. And I have tried. God, how I’ve tried. I envy those people who can believe in a religion that gives them spiritual ease and peace. A benevolent God, a Heaven full of angels and puppies and unicorns and all the people you’ve ever loved, who come running up to you in slow motion with open arms and hearts when you die. I don’t know why, but from since I was a little kind I believed that we create our own heaven and hell right here on Earth. I’ve never seen any evidence of what an afterlife might be. I believe in science. Matter is neither created nor destroyed. So whatever I am will turn into something else. I’ve just never seen any proof of what that something else might be.
ADVERTISEMENT
But in New Jersey last week when I opened that pack and I was blown sideways by the first two cards being the two hotshot superstars of American soccer, it struck me with a transcendent ecstatic flash that this ridiculous irrational belief I have that the United States is going to win this World Cup gives me great comfort. Sweet solace. Soccer succor. On June 12, against England, our former imperialist, colonialist oppressors, USA opens their World Cup 2010 in South Africa. Join me won’t you, and dive into the peaceful waters where awaits the blissful baptism of a true Believer. I know the more mojo, hoodoo and juju we can send through the power of our collective will to Team USA in South Africa, the more likely it is for our dream to come true, to see Lando and T-Ho hoisting the World Cup over their heads and forever basking in the pantheon of soccer gods with Booby Moore, Gordon Banks and Bobby Charlton.
David Henry Sterry is co-author, with Alan Black – San Francisco legend and notorious soccer lunatic – of The Glorious World Cup: A Fanatics Guide, featuring internationally renown soccer junkie Irvine Welsh, soccer crazy best-selling author Po Bronson, and the best soccer writer in the world Simon Kuper. A laugh-out-loud ride of a guide for the fanatic in all of us. https://davidhenrysterry.pairsite.com/category/books/
I love this website, and the guy who runs it is way cool, David Gutowski. i had a blast putting this 2gether.
http://www.largeheartedboy.com/blog/archive/2010/05/book_notes_davi_13.html
In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
As I grow older, my love for soccer increases every year while the appeal of other sports wanes (both as spectator and participant). The World Cup is my favorite sporting event, combining the international aspect of the Olympics with the fervent passion of soccer fans.
David Henry Sterry has co-written The Glorious World Cup: A Fanatic’s Guide, a wildly entertaining book on the event, its players, and its history. Whether describing historical rivalries, infamous events, or the great players of the game, Sterry and his co-author Alan Black deliver a thoughtful yet always entertaining commentary.
As a bonus, the guest essays (by Irvine Welsh, Po Bronson, and others) are among the best soccer writing I have read.
If, like me, you are looking forward to the World Cup, I cannot recommend this book strongly enough.
In his own words, here is David Henry Sterry’s Book Notes music playlist for his book, The Glorious World Cup: A Fanatic’s Guide:
I am genetically predisposed to kick balls with my feet and butt them with my head. My grandfather on my mother’s side was a professional soccer player in England, back when a professional soccer player had to have a day job to feed his family. At the age of 16 my father, who grew up in a tiny mining village outside Newcastle, had a choice: become an apprentice professional soccer player, or go to college. He had a coal mining dad later died a miserable death when black lung disease planted its flag into his respiratory system. So my father chose college, the first in his family to attend school past the age of 16. He immigrated to the United States just before I was born. When my parents became citizens, five years to the day after they arrived at Ellis Island, we had a huge party, sparklers twinkling atop a red white and blue sugar lard icing cake. When I was little, soccer was something played by dark swarthy men with too much body hair who spoke strange grunting languages. And it was certainly never seen on TV. But as I reached high school, the greatest players of their generation were brought to America to ply their trade as the bright light of their careers faded. Pelé, Franz Beckenbauer, Johan Cruyff. That’s when I really first fell in love with the game. I was lucky because the North American Soccer League sent there players out to coach high school kids. So I was trained by the center half of the Dallas Tornadoes, a man named John Best. He and my father taught me what it was to be a soccer player. The speed and the skill but most especially the cool under fire take no prisoners passion that characterizes the best soccer players.
After college I went and trained back in the mother country. Yes, I was taking coals to Newcastle. I played in the top amateur league in the northeast of England, and we were paid the equivalent of $50 a game, $100 bonus if you scored a goal. One of my teammates had been noticed by Newcastle United. At that point in history, being an American playing in England, I was such an anomaly that they wrote article about me in the local paper. So when my pal brought me along to the training ground of Newcastle United, one of the great teams in Europe (present circumstances notwithstanding) I was allowed to train with the under-21 squad. It’s kind of like a peasant from Outer Bumfuck Slovakia getting to practice with the New York Yankees.
There I learned the craft of being a Hardman. How to lurk in the shadows and deliver punishment without looking like you’re doing it. How to get inside the prima dona diva goalscorer’s head. To drive him crazy and take him out of his game and make him look over his shoulder every time the ball’s coming towards him, wondering if you’re going to chop the knees right out from under him, or plant the sharp bone of your elbow into his rib cage. Happy days.
It was there I also learned about the religious ecstatic tribal grandeur of soccer. It is truly a game of the people. Completely democratic, in part because you don’t have to be a genetic freak. So anyone can become great if they pay their dues to the Goddess of Soccer. And all you need to play is a ball. In fact if you don’t have a ball he can tape up a few old socks. Or, like Pelé did when he was a child, you can play with a grapefruit if you have to. I used to go to Newcastle United games and chills would electrify my spine while the roars would rattle my bones. And they’d break into these old ancient chants and songs spontaneously. No scoreboard telling a bunch of sheep when to cheer. It was organic, hewn out of the very earth from which my hearty, sentimental, sarcastic, hard yet generous working class people sprang. Anyone who ever tells you that soccer is boring has never been to a packed stadium full of Geordies in full throated roar as their beloved warriors try to bring home the glory.
When I got back to the good ol’ US of A, I was shocked to see fields of blonde haired blue-eyed children playing soccer. There was even a new idiomatic phrase that had slipped into the vernacular of America: Soccer Mom. I was offered a professional contract by the Vancouver Whitecaps, whose general manager was none other than John Best, the man who trained me so well. The day after I got the letter inviting me to Vancouver, I tore my left knee to shreds training. Shattered kneecap. Shattered dreams. I was in a cast for six months. In truth, I’ve never really recovered fully, physically, spiritually or emotionally.
Some Americans still don’t understand that the World Cup is like the Super Bowl, the World Series, the NCAA basketball championship, the NBA finals and Stanley Cup all rolled into one. If every nation in the world were invited to play. It is a pilgrimage, an odyssey, a journey to the center of what makes it a joy to be alive.
And this year, the mother of all sporting events will be landing for the first time on the mother of all contents: Africa. Yes, I love watching the greatest players in the world beating each other to a bloody pulp for a month. Yes, I believe in my heart that this is the year the United States could actually make it to the final (remember, they should’ve beaten Brazil in the finals of the Confederations Cup in South Africa last summer). But I think what I enjoy most about the World Cup is that it brings together and makes the strangest bedfellows out of humans from literally every corner of this great and crazy planet. I love that.
When Bay Area legend Alan Black, the transplanted Scotsman who made the Edinburgh Castle an epicenter of literary excellence in San Francisco, asked if I wanted to put together a guide for the upcoming World Cup, without even thinking I said yes. We really wanted to capture the grandeur, passion, madness, ecstasy, agony, misery and glory that is the World Cup.
Music has always been a big part of soccer. One of the pleasures of this brave new world in is it there are approximately 800 squazillion soccer videos floating around the World Wide Web, where people take music and put it over soccer greatest-hits highlights. So here’s some of the stuff I was listening to, and watching, as we put together this guide to World Cup South Africa 2010.
“Ole Ole Ole”
The classic crowd chant. There are so many different versions of this song it kind of boggles the mind. But unless you’ve ever been in a stadium with 100,000 people chanting it while blowing whistles and beating drums, and as will be the case in South Africa, playing the vuvuzela, the local insane fan trumpet, you have not truly lived.
“We Are the Champions”
God bless Freddy Mercury. The world was truly a sadder, less exciting, more fucked up place when he left us. There’s something about his over-the-top yet totally sincere bravado to that matches the Olympian scale of the World Cup, when literally the whole planet sits on the edge of its seat holding its breath to see what happens next. And this song, of course, has been sung all over the world by rabid fanatics celebrating their team’s triumph.
Another video
“Lust for Life”
Nothing quite says lust for life like the World Cup. And I just love those drums and that yowling howling Iggy Pop. Here’s a very cool video with that song in it and how it figured in the movie Trainspotting, which was written by Irvine Welsh, who just happens to be a contributor to our book. It’s the story of the most famous goal in the history of Scotland and how it relates to pornography and tartan folklore. By the way, the goal that Scotsman Archie Gemmill scores became the basis for a modern dance piece.
“Pata Pata”
By the terribly missed Miriam Makeba. So sad she’s not gonna be able to sing for the globe when it comes calling for the World Cup. A beautiful artist who really captures the rhythms and the spirit of Africa.
“The Lion Sleeps Tonight”
I know it’s the most overplayed song in the world, but I still love it and I wanted to put some images of Africa in here.
When I was performing at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, I was on a radio show with an American comedian named Greg Proops. He’s a very funny fellow. I knew him from my stand in San Francisco in the 80s. The musical guest that day was the Soweto Gospel choir and they completely tore for the roof off the joint. Just blew the whole place up. I make a point of trying to see them whenever I possibly can.
And here, the best England World Cup song ever.
I don’t necessarily like the music in the links below, but the soccer action is amazing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbQVdLRqJ1w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SveYH_Dxudc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p21ZC9pBZDs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9L9rj4swhs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBHICeJ1ZmY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3ys_2UUEpk
Thanks again, Largehearted Boy, and enjoy the Greatest Show on Earth, as the Glorious World Cup crash lands in South Africa this summer.
David Henry Sterry and The Glorious World Cup: A Fanatic’s Guide links:
the author’s website
the book’s website
Facebook page for the book
Bollocks review
Soccer Insider review
Largehearted Boy Book Notes music playlist by the author for Hos, Hookers, Call Girls & Rent Boys
Sports Cackle Pop interview with the author
Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén