Toward the end of the Iran / Mexico match in the 2006 World Cup, the announcer mentioned the fact that the Iran Goalkeeper had presented Oswaldo Sanchez, the Mexican keeper, with a bouquet of flowers in a tribute to Sanchez’s recently deceased father. I haven’t followed the Mexico national side recently and have not kept up with the players, but the broadcast staff made a point of talking about the fact that Sanchez’s father had just died on Wedneday, 7 June, a couple of days earlier.

He’d been flown back to Mexico for the funeral and right back to Germany for their first match in the World Cup and he’d literally been back in the country for about 30 hours. I also heard how his father had been an ardent supporter of the Mexico side and traveled with the team regularly and had planned to be there in Germany to see his son and team play in the World Cup.

There is not a whole lot of nobility and grace in sports today. I’ve seen athletes in various sports suffer a close personal loss on the eve of a big event and have seen them stoically return to their team, do what they have to in the face of the tragedy and sometimes have a divinely inspired game. It was like that this time – Sanchez had a great game, made some incredible saves and when they ultimately beat Iran 3 – 1, all of the players on the Mexico team ran over to Sanchez and embraced him. It was then that the announcers mentioned that the Iranian Goalkeeper, Ebrahim Mirzapour, had presented Sanchez with a bouquet of flowers to honour his loss, on behalf of the whole Iran team. A small thing, maybe, but the nobility and grace about it was moving.

Currently, in the Middle East, things have never been worse – dug in with Iraq and now, the tension building with Iran. Then there is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the controversial president of Iran, who’s made some rather provocative political remarks calling for the State of Israel to be wiped out and that the Holocaust was a myth, for starters. There is also global nervousness about exactly where Iran intends to take their nuclear program. Ahmadinejad had announced that he planned to come to the World Cup to see his national side play, which was met with some resistance on the part of other European politicos who were angered by his remarks. According to ESPN:

“There were calls for the Iranian team to be excluded from the World Cup because of the current crisis over Iran’s nuclear program and the president’s hardline statements.”

Apparently cooler heads prevailed because Iran was allowed to participate:

“[But] Fifa has rejected such calls, saying critics should not mix sports and politics.”

I was glad for this and compelled to agree. Even though it was not the U.S. playing Iran in this first round of World Cup matches, Mexico, technically is not so far removed from the strife. Not only a geographical neighbour and trade partner of the U.S., it is also a very strong part of the U.S. culture, society and economy. On the flip side, Mexico has had its share of troubles at the hands of the U.S. for the last couple hundred years.

It gets complicated though, Mexico has huge working communities in most of the major cities in the U.S. and whatever America gets up to with Iran, impacts Mexico directly, so this game could technically have been a hot political situation, as if it wasn’t already.

Which brings us back to a stadium in Nuremburg where athletic representatives of global powers compete, not to take over the other’s land or country but rather for bragging rights in that most popular of world sports. From when the game kicks off, the viewer can, hopefully forget about political ills and just watch honest sport. The fact that the game was being played in Nuremburg was not lost on anyone either. The announcer said that this stadium is a short distance from where Hitler held political rallies a mere 60 years earlier. A lot changes over the years as this showed so well and I just watched the Iran players battle it out on the playing field with Mexico, and for 90 minutes, I was able to get a glimpse of something better and that the World Cup actually meant something.

Update: 27 June

Some days after writing this, I happen to be watching the intro to a later match between Brazil and Ghana, Ghana the surprise dark horse story of the ’06 World Cup, having made it farther along than expected and being a scrappy side to boot. Right before the game kicks off, the camera goes to some prior footage from an earlier Ghana match, shot in Ghana, showing a group of about 30 to 40 people, seated outside around a small black and white tv, powered by a car battery. Says it all, really.

Marc Goldin currently lives in Chicago, with three cats, each one more long-haired than the last. Interests have ranged from medieval monasticism to discontinued stations on the London Underground – literary likes too diverse (some would say schizo) to list here although the last several years have been witness to an intimacy with Scottish and Irish literature. American Southern and Beat era lit also account for some of the ‘missing years’. Music tastes run the gamut from Cuban Danzon to Ska (all three waves but having a specific attachment to the second, two-tone period) to the Tuvan throat singers. Has written book reviews for a now defunct Irish literature site and has several short stories in various stages of development. Mad for black and white photography and aspires to someday have a complete collection of photos documenting every close in the Grassmarket area of Edinburgh. Works in the IT dept. of a French company in the current political climate. In football, supports Chelsea, Hibs, and for the sake of employment security, Marseille. For more articles and reviews by Marc on The New Review, click here or to read Marc's story, 'Plastic Paddy' on the Showcase, click here