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~ Posted by Tim de Lisle, December 8th 2011

British football is reeling today, and European football is smirking. A bizarre sight confronts us: the two best teams in England, the Manchester clubs, are heading for the Europa League after tumbling out of the Champions League. It’s like Meryl Streep not being nominated for an Oscar and having to make do with the Baftas instead. Patrice Evra, the Manchester United left back, calls it a “catastrophe”.

The comment is a reminder that Evra has all the diplomatic skills of a guy who, at the 2010 World Cup, was both captain of the French national team and one of the leaders of a mutiny against the management. But he is essentially right. Man United don’t need the Europa League, a tournament designed for medium-sized teams.

The Europa is played on Thursday nights, which leaves teams exhausted at the weekend, which in turn short-changes the fans. United are lagging well behind Man City in the English Premiership, the competition that counts now the Champions League has gone. United should give up their place in the Europa League to a team who will see it as an adventure, not a catastrophe. If that isn’t allowed, they should field the reserves who played in this year’s Carling Cup—essentially a bunch of teenagers, with poor old Michael Owen acting as a rather harassed PE teacher.

Why, you may be wondering, doesn’t the same apply to City, also heading for the Europa? Because they have won only one trophy in 35 years, not one a year like Alex Ferguson. Because they haven’t been in three European finals in four years—their last and only one was in 1970. Because they have deeper pockets and greater strength in depth. And because it will help to level the playing field.  read more »

“Let's go watch the Cubs lose!” said the driver last Friday, as the crowded subway car made its way to Chicago’s Wrigley Field for the first of a three-game series between the great cross-town rivals, the Cubs and the White Sox. Half the car groaned; the other half cheered.

This kind of banter is the lingua franca of Chicago summers. Like all sports rivalries, it has a civic function; it gives people something to talk about, a channel for feelings that might otherwise go unexpressed, and a sort of shorthand for where they stand. The cultural dimensions of Sox and Cubs fandom are slightly opaque and probably exaggerated, but it seems to be that the Sox, with their Yankees-esque pinstripes and 2005 World Series rings, are grittier. The Cubs have a more cuddly face and the longest losing streak in baseball, having not won the World Series for over a century. Cursed (according to lore) or simply doomed, they happen to be the most lovable losers left in baseball.

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"It looked like fun" is one of those phrases—like "It seemed like a good idea at the time"—that sets off alarm bells. It's basically an understated, unapologetic way of acknowledging that one has done something a little odd, perhaps crazy, almost certainly reckless. For the phrase to reach its apex of meaning, the storyteller should probably be missing an arm (or a couple of teeth or a bit of self-respect), having lost it in pursuit of what seemed like fun, or at least a good idea at the time.

But really, these are the quibbles of a timid person. Any red-blooded risk-taker is surely willing to spare a few teeth in exchange for something awesome. This perhaps explains the otherwise perplexing fun-chasing of surfers who descend on the island of Torö, off the coast of Sweden, where the waters are frigid, the waves are choppy and the beach is covered with sharp stones. Daniel Månsson, a photographer and surfer, has documented these Vikings in wetsuits in a photo-essay for Intelligent Life. These images manage to convey the addictive, otherworldly beauty of surfing in a remote and unforgiving place.

Perhaps because sport has somehow got so damn big, most people alive to drink coffee this morning know that Spain won the World Cup in South Africa last night. In the 116th minute of the final, against the Netherlands, Andrés Iniesta scored the winning goal. The diminutive Iniesta has since been called many things, including "the quiet prince of Spanish football", "the Barcelona wizard" and "the shy playmaker". He also has the distinction, rare among footballers, of having been picked out as one to watch in Intelligent Life magazine. Just before the Real Madrid v Barcelona match in April, our contributor Rob Smyth shellacked the reticent hero with praise, heralding him as "an attacking midfielder with forensic vision, geometric passing, devastating pace, serene certainty in possession, and the ability to get even better in big games." He showed that last night, sidestepping many murderous Dutch tackles to win the Man of the Match award as well as coolly delivering the coup de grace.  read more »

It is not enough for Paulo Coelho to offer himself to the world as a spiritual sage—the world's wise uncle, tender lover and confession-receiving priest all in one. Ask and ye shall receive, he always seems to say in his purposeful and somewhat soggy prose. Well, apparently enough of his readers have asked for him to explain not only the mysteries of life, but also the rules of football. His indulgent response is this Soccer 101 on his blog, as well as a few grand tweets of wisdom we might glean from the sport itself:

Life is like football: When the music changes, so does the dance

Life is like football: the adversary is the best teacher

Life is like football: if you resist the first blows, you will win

What about "Life is like football: it's exhausting and occasionally boring with pockets of excitement; your teammates and rivals are essential yet random; men dominate; the big money is in the hands of a few; and spectators drink and judge and are full of barely explicable feelings of love and hate."  read more »

In case you hadn't noticed, the World Cup has just begun. Diana Geddes, The Economist's correspondent in Johannesburg and the author of a recent special report on South Africa, suggests some good reading material about the tournament's host country.

As the World Cup looms, even those of us who don’t know a handball from a penalty kick can agree: sport is huge. But how did it get this way, and why? Tim de Lisle, editor of Intelligent Life, tackles this subject head-on in his feature “How Did Sport Get so Big?” He explores a list of suspects ranging from imperialism, to big business to advertising. One of the most interesting arguments he makes is that film and music, by failing to provide a relatable stream of “man-sized heroes” in recent years, has paved the way for athletes to take centre stage. He writes: 

In the 1960s and 1970s, the cinema kept up a steady supply of man-sized heroes: Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Steve McQueen, Sean Connery, Clint Eastwood, Jack Nicholson. In the 1980s, it provided human cartoons like Stallone and Schwarzenegger, and likeable everymen like Harrison Ford and Bruce Willis. Since the 1990s, it has favoured pretty boys (Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp, Leonardo DiCaprio), smiling scientologists (Tom Cruise) and more everymen (Tom Hanks, Denzel Washington). With the odd exception like George Clooney, the leading men are not pitched at grown-ups...  read more »

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• SPORT

It’s difficult following your football team from abroad. In America you have two options: spend a small fortune on a satellite sport subscription or find a bar that shows "international sport", packed with Americans, draped in internet-ordered Chelsea and Manchester United scarves.

I recently visited Lucky Bar, Washington’s infamous (if a bit dingy) football emporium, just a few streets from the White House. It’s run by an affable Welshman who serves a proper British fry-up breakfast from 8am on weekends. I arrived for an afternoon weekday match (evening in England) to see a smattering of supporters covered in Liverpool Football Club paraphernalia, confident of victory. But I was there in support of the opposing side, West Ham United, a storied but angst-ridden East London club accustomed to losing its star players to richer clubs. More recently it has become known for crippling financial troubles owing to its previous Icelandic owners, casualties of the banking crisis.  read more »

Real Madrid v Barcelona, El Clásico, is widely recognised as the biggest club football match of all. Their next meeting is even bigger than usual. It’s not just that they dominate La Liga. Never have two clubs from the same country had such a grip on the world’s best players – six of the top seven in last year’s Ballon d’Or. And Madrid need to atone for their humiliation on a barmy evening last May, when Barcelona won 6-2 at the Bernabéu, as if toying with a mouse.

That night Andrés Iniesta flirted with perfection. Iniesta is an attacking midfielder with forensic vision, geometric passing, devastating pace, serene certainty in possession, and the ability to get even better in big games. After he coolly dismantled Manchester United in last year’s Champions League final, Wayne Rooney called him the best player in the world. Iniesta, only 25, is a footballer-artist, whereas Real’s Cristiano Ronaldo, also 25, is a footballer-athlete. Each symbolises his club: Iniesta humble and homegrown, Ronaldo expensive and narcissistic. And ahead lies the World Cup, in which Ronaldo will be playing for a team of relative outsiders, Portugal, while Iniesta takes his place for Spain, the favourites.

Real Madrid v Barcelona  Bernabéu Stadium, Madrid, April 10th

~ ROB SMYTH
 

Picture Credit: Gerard Reyes (via Flickr)

Does size matter? For Shaquille O’Neal his very existence offers a larger-than-life answer to that question. Standing at 7’1”, weighing 320 pounds and strutting about in size 22 shoes, Shaq casts a long shadow. His appetites and ambitions are similarly colossal: a professional basketball star, he has also worked as an actor, rapper, memoirist and reserve police officer, and is now working on a PhD in organisational behaviour. Now, thanks to the FLAG Art Foundation in New York, Shaq can cross another item off his to-do list: curate an art show. “Size DOES Matter” features 66 works chosen by the man himself, and a catalogue with an essay by James Frey (yes, that James Frey).

An outsized gimmick? Perhaps. The line to attend the show's opening on February 19th snaked outside for nearly a block. And Shaq's selections, which feature a range of contemporary works of varying, eye-teasing sizes, were plucked from more than 200 images supplied by FLAG's founder, Glenn Fuhrman, and director, Stephanie Roach, over dinner after a game. Still, this playful show holds up as a satisfying examination of size and scale in art.

The works are by 43 artists, including Elizabeth Peyton, Cindy Sherman, Ron Mueck and Richard Phillips. Quite a few of them send viewers through the looking glass and down the rabbit hole. Robert Therrien’s "No Title (Table and Six Chairs)" from 2003 achieves this most dramatically. The installation is so big that visitors are granted the perspective of children, peering up at the seats with curiosity about the grown-up world “up there”.  read more »