The Soccer Match

When I first started traveling to dinner, vaguely in the direction of Parc des Princes, the home field of Paris Saint-Germain, I noticed how packed the metro cars were: I was heading out to dinner and already the cars were moderately full of pimpled, scarved supporters of PSG. When I finished dinner and went towards Parc des Princes in earnest, the cars this time was full of older college-age students. The cars were clown-car level full, and it was too full to be boisterous.

But a curious thing happened when I sat down for the match. I was sitting in the most expensive publicly available seats (the luxury boxes were between levels, unlike the US, where in terms of sightlines, they are usually awful) thanks to the Bings. I was in the second row from the field halfway between the center line and the goal, which was great, but slightly better than it sounds, as the field is separated from the seats by a metal fence topped by spikes, and sections are separated from one another by a glass barrier, which interfered with the view of the field—when I tried to look right towards the goal, I had to look through the glass, which had a strange disorienting reflective aspect. Fortunately my neighbor moved and I took his seat, which had a perfect view. When I got settled though, I looked around and realized this: the stadium was practically empty.

The “Presidential” section—which was where I was sitting—was full of genteel supporters, who, as it turned out, cheered supportively but not enthusiastically but did not seem particularly engaged. One woman directly in front of me did little beyond chain-smoke cigarettes; due to the wind, the smoke curled up her hair, and while it ascended, it clung insistently as it curled, looking as if a fire burned underneath her deeply matted hair. As the Jumbotron flashed through different spectators—all of whom were boring and do not, unlike the US, quickly realize that they are on Jumbotron—I wondered: where are the hooligans?

A first candidate was in the corner of the ground level. It was a jailed section, by walls. Its supporters were chanting a full half-hour before the match and swaying in unison. They were waving flags—but some were of the three lions. So that ruled out Paris Saint-Germain and ruled in Caen, a town in Normandy, which I figure due to its English connections, has adopted the three lions as its own. So they were not the massive contingent of supporters that I was expecting.

Once the match began, the question disappeared from my mind. The match took precedence. At first, PSG looked overmatched as Caen made several forays into PSG territory, with only some fortunate defense stopping an early goal. I had settled down for the match and assumed that the vocal fanbase decided not to come out for a cold, damp night, with the home team generally mediocre, playing against the mediocre. The question where are the fanatics? faded from my mind.

In the fifteenth minute of the match, the question answered itself. They had been confined somehow. A boom sounded, as if from a cannon, and they rushed in. The first ones through ran as if liberated, waving their arms above their hands in celebration. They rest proceeded in more orderly fashion, but were nevertheless quite fast. They quickly set about to unfurling their various banners that signified the various factions amongst them: “Lutece Falco” (Lutece being an ancient name for the city of France); “Gavroche” (the street urchin who revolts in Les Misérables); “Boulogne Boys” (Boulogne being the suburb near which Parc des Princes is located; its banner had a skull with a top hat between Boulogne and Boys); “Paris Puissance”; “Supra Autres” (I think on this last one; mostly what I remember is the middle of the banner referring to the group as “ultras” which is always otherwise a synonym for crazy reactionary radicals); lastly, one with just a bulldog and “Boulogne.” Other banners were more aspirational and directed towards the players: “Bleed for us like we bleed for you; otherwise…” After they hung their banners, they began chanting and cheering in unison but little by little devolved into their own group’s cheers. Their first cheer, though, was something to see: everyone clapped with their hands above their head and they finished each measure of the chant with arms spread wide, in prayerful supplication.

The fan engagement is the chief difference between watching soccer on TV and watching soccer in person. On TV, the fans sound like white noise, a dull murmuring roar. In person, it is thunder reverberating, awesome in import. When each end of the stadium (excepting the genteel middle) did a call-and-response, the sound itself traveled and collided and almost metamorphosed into a tangible thing right there in their air.

This was in direct rebuke to the US theory of fan management, which holds that the more bells-and-whistles that are present in a stadium, the more enjoyment a fan will have. I’ll tell you this: the stadium was a concrete oval, the seats were two plastic circles, one for the ass and one for the back, without armrest or cup holder, and the food was the equivalent of a 7-11 (no one ate there; in POPB, the food was similarly bad but more people ate outside food; I’m not sure the stadium operators realize what an opportunity they’re missing out on—maybe they should take a pilgrimage to AT&T Park and realize the money they’re missing out on). And it didn’t seem to matter—those fanatics kept on chanting for ninety minutes in forty-five minute chunks.

The crowd—here’s sports commentary cliché numero uno!—energized the players and from then on (well…except…you’ll see…), PSG dominated the game. One of the unfortunate things about soccer, and one of the reasons I think Americans probably won’t embrace the game (along with the biggest reason: we not only aren’t the best, but the best don’t play in US) is that the team that dominates the flow of the game won’t necessarily win, to the point of the game ending in a tie. Now remember when baseball’s All-Star Game ended in a tie? Remember how freaked out everyone was, even though it was a meaningless exhibition game? There you have it—there must be a winner in American sports, none of this both teams played hard nonsense (actually there is a place for the noble loser, but only rarely, and even then, only temporarily).

At any rate, PSG settled into that zone, and it was no one’s fault but their own. Often in soccer, I’ve noticed, the most well set-up plays won’t produce results; the slightest thing goes wrong and—slam!—the door is shut. Junk plays, the ones that appear to have no design whatsoever, tend to be the source of many goals. PSG appeared to be trying for “well-set up play” category, but was falling for a particularly American stereotype.

I would argue in every American school—the best example is from high school, but I know this type in college—there is a genre of person whom I call “Guy Who Knows Soccer.” Now, Guy Who Knows Soccer is painfully aware that soccer is a second-tier sport (if that) in the US, and so he must justify it by showing off all the really cool things from soccer: bicycle kicks, juggling, that move where, instead of dribbling, your legs kind of circle around the ball like electrons around a nucleus (and here I’m painfully aware that I’m displaying my ignorance here), you know, those things that look pretty cool to the uninformed yokels. The thing is, many of these moves—not all—are mostly useless in a game (actually juggling and that ball-orbiting move I’ve seen often), and if done too much, they get the ball stolen, just like And 1 moves can’t be played in an actual game of basketball.

That’s basically what happened to Paris Saint-Germain: they would gain possession of the ball, advance it when unopposed, but once opposed, attempt to fancifully dazzle their way out, with only occasional success. And the thing about soccer is, you have to have a series of successful confrontations (or luck) to score, meaning that the dazzling was a temporary palliative. Oh, they came close: there was the ball played behind the streaking striker; there was the offsides that wasn’t (this provoked high-pitched whistling, the signal of derision). But no goal, because of the nature of the game in general and their game specifically.

I just summarized about three-quarters of the game right there in those two paragraphs, which says a lot about soccer (similar to baseball; then again I actually enjoy both sports). It was enjoyable, though, watching from so close a view, because the God’s eye view of television, while it allows you to appreciate the maneuvering of the pieces like a general at war, doesn’t allow you to appreciate the visceral timing of the game. If a pass is but a millisecond off, it is picked off. And free balls provoke much more violence than you’d assume—jostling with elbows and shoulders is normal, as is running people over; it’s also normal to see guys just writhing on the field as the game flows on around them; the most extreme behavior was a blatant shove before the ball descended. With so much physical activity comes many opportunities for fouls, which is probably why there are so many whining appeals to the ref: because the ref has the discretion to let them play on, the whine is the source of appeal. But for all this, the game was a stalemate.

The stalemate ended with the rain. It fell in long pointillist streaks. The players, however, seemed relatively unaffected. Until the Paris Saint-Germain goalie kicked off for a goalie kick towards one of his players. The player received the kick, took a step, slipped and fell, like in cartoons with a banana peel. He was unable to get up as a Caen player streaked forward took the ball and ran towards the goal with two steps on the straining Paris Saint-Germain players who followed. Effectively it was a one-on-one situation with the goalie, therefore, which generally doesn’t end well for the goalie; this trend was confirmed as the Caen player scored. Junk plays, like I said.

The whistles returned, and everyone joined in. It sounded like wind whipping through trees on a winter day. It was an eerie sort of derision. It continued for three straight minutes, then abated with a PSG corner kick—there was a brief possibility for atonement—then resumed for another couple of minutes when that was botched.

The PSG players acquired a desperate edge where before they had been show-offy. A few confrontations developed, with one shaved-head player of Caen serving as a particular target as he, the Caen player, tumbled and was sent tumbling throughout the final fifteen of the match. While on offense, the Paris Saint-Germain tried desperate long-bombs without hope of connecting. It was quite incompetent. The derision continued, with whistles becoming mixed with boos. One African player was addressed as a “maghrébin” (a North African) and told to “hurry up”. It was quite nasty. Finally the game ended, after the official end, shaved-head got in another stand-off.

As I walked out of the stadium, painfully aware of my soaked socks, I looked up to see a line of riot police choking off the road and forcing the pedestrians into two narrow channels on the sidewalks. The police were armed with shields, nightsticks (and one had something that looked like a Nerf toy, but I wasn’t about to find out what it shot) and were dressed in helmets, most with covers down but a few with covers up. They stood in a phalanx formation. Their final accessory was their expression, with the sort of baleful intimidation that you can’t teach. There were perhaps fifty of them on the street.

A huge crowd was leaving the stadium, and an unknown signal, a current, passed through the crowd and twenty or so of the fanatics charged in the direction of the police (although perhaps not at the police; I’m not sure) as almost everyone else turned around to watch, a few scrambling up onto concrete steps to get a better few. I was one of the few not to turn around; I kept my head down and got to the side of the crowd.

The metro was full of RATP police, with similarly intimidating expressions, which ordinarily would have been intimidating, but seeing as I had just seen a riot squad straight out of a history textbook of the ‘60s, wasn’t. I mean, how am I supposed to take unarmed guys in neon vests seriously? Or, for that matter, RATP security who are dressed in a jumpsuit? Riddle me that. Well, someone thought the same as me: I saw some kid in a Yankees cap, with the traditional African red, green, yellow, black, arrested to the side.

Then I went home, and here I am.

*****

Before I finish up this, I’d like to single out the Jumbotron/PA operator for further comic abuse. First of all, besides his emphasis on boring people, he was unable to find: a) cute children (one of whom right in front of me was practically begging for it: on a disco song, he was alternating between a John Travolta imitation and general hyperactive jumping hand-waving) or b) hot women. I mean, that’s your bread-and-butter right there if you’re a Jumbotron operator.

His music choices were similarly awful. All I know was a Village People song other than “YMCA” was played, as was “Born in the USA,” which is not a bad song but is an openly patriotic American song, which makes it a strange choice in a French sporting event. I started giggling when I heard the first chords of the song filter through—really? I thought.

When the players were announced, a short clip of them earnestly waving, thumbs-upping or whatever played. It looked like something straight out of the 70’s.

Basically what this proves is whomever works with that section of the stadium has no irony whatsoever, which is a dangerous quality for a semi-public job.

Also it shows huge room for improvement on the part of the Parc des Princes people, which I guess makes sense, seeing as they manage to pack the stadium anyway—who cares about good service when you’ve got 37,181 (they counted) paying customers?