Yahoo Finance William Watson: A World Cup team to be proud of, if we did pride here
I’m not much of a soccer fan. There’s the proof, in fact: I called it soccer, not football. Every four years, though, like those insects, birds and fish that are on multi-year migratory schedules, I’m drawn to the TV screen, taken in by: the athleticism; the leaping headers; the world-class sprinters deftly controlling the ball with one foot then the other as they hurtle down the field; the quadrennial anguish of a missed English penalty; even, for comic relief, the B-acting, as the super-slow-motion close-ups show the supposedly grievously wounded kick victim peeking up during his writhing to see if the referee is watching. I’m not sure how beautiful a game it is. It’s certainly an enthralling one.
I love the ads, too, this year, in particular, CIBC’s “Our ambition only rises,” a dramatically edited homage to the ambitions of our men’s and women’s national teams, the women in scarlet, the men in the black that in hockey as well has become one of our national colours, different players belting the ball about the emerald pitch and then a beautifully photo-shopped final shot where both teams seem to be lined up in the snow in Edmonton after the men had beaten Mexico to qualify for the World Cup, a cup in which their ambition was thwarted (for now) by the second-ranked team in the world (Belgium) and two others that went on to the semi-finals (Croatia and Morocco).
I love the voice-over for that commercial, too. “Here you’re not an outsider for being proud of your heritage.” It’s a message of multicultural welcome. The role of players who have crossed borders to play in this current World Cup has been widely noted. More than half of the Moroccan team was born outside Morocco, including their remarkable goalie, Yassine Bounou, who spent his first three years in Montreal. Fully 59 players in the tournament were born in France, though only 37 per cent of them play for France. Of 22 players on the Canadian team, seven were born outside Canada (three in the U.K. and one each in the U.S., Ghana, Ivory Coast and what used to be Yugoslavia). Not to forget the coach, John Herdman, born in County Durham, England, whose every spoken word reminds you of that.
There’s lots of talk about de-globalization these days, as countries turn inward. My guess is soccer won’t soon be de-globalized. If you want to win, you want the best players, and you don’t really care where they come from. Yes, if there’s a great Russian player currently serving on the front lines in Ukraine, you may not make him the lynchpin of your franchise, not for a while at least. But you’ll tolerate almost any failings short of that to acquire talent. If your ambition really only rises, if you want to be the best, you have to succeed in the global market, which the soccer labour market clearly is — and the soccer capital market, too, with teams being bought and sold all the time by non-nationals.
Not really being the best until you’re the best in the world is true of all other markets and endeavours, too. Borders may close. Foreign competition may be hobbled. But the fact will remain: “Best” means global best. If you don’t compete in the world market, you can be best-in-Canada but never simply best.
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Of course, another thing that strikes you about that CIBC commercial’s line that “Here you’re not an outsider for being proud of your heritage” is that after your second or third generation here that’s no longer true. Pride in Canada’s heritage is, as they say, problematic.
I’ve always had my doubts about national pride. Should we really be proud of what others have accomplished for us? For that matter, should we really be proud of our own accomplishments? Pride is one of the seven deadly sins, after all (assuming conventional morality isn’t completely archaic). We’re still pretty much down on greed, wrath and gluttony. Lust, sloth and envy are also still on the don’t-do list, even if they drive most of reality TV. As for pride, it goeth before a fall, remember; sometimes even after a fall.
But whether pride itself is good or bad, for one group in Canada, those who aren’t either newcomers or First Nations, pride in your heritage isn’t really allowed any more. Even on the country’s 150th birthday, remembrance was more an occasion for shame than pride. Suddenly the original sin of Europeans coming to occupy land that was not theirs officially overshadowed any good things that may have been done here since.
New and new-ish Canadians generally don’t get that. As a rule, they’re proud both of their own heritage and of the new country they’ve come to, whose heritage they will now help build. It will be interesting to see, as the decades pass, whether their ambition for it still only rises.
