Diversity Wins the World Cup

What kind of Spanish name is Carles Puyol? It seems that, on the day he first entered this world kicking and screaming, whoever wrote out his birth certificate misspelled his first name. It should have been “Carlos” rather than “Carles,” right? But maybe his mother wanted something different, like those women who would rather name their daughters after some flower that only a botanist would know, like “Bougainvillea,” rather than “Rose.”

Carles Puyol, who scored the winning goal against Germany on a header off a corner kick by Xavi Alonso, allowing Spain to advance to the World Cup final, is from Barcelona. While any Spaniard might hotly deny it, the people around Barcelona would hasten to tell you that they aren’t really Spanish. They speak their own language, Catalan, and they probably consider themselves to be occupied by a foreign power, Spain. Therefore, you don’t ask for agua in a Barcelona restaurant unless the Spanish and Catalan words for “water” are the same.

Probably most of the people who saw Spain upset Germany are thrilled that Spain advanced to the final while Germany didn’t. Pulling for the heavily favoured Mannschaft is sort of like hoping that Nazi Germany would successfully invade Poland at the start of World War II in 1939. While you might be an admirer of “German efficiency,” you seldom want the Germans to win at anything, any more than you want the French to win. It probably has something to do with the War.

For those in the know about soccer, this is the first time in a long time that the World Cup will be contested by two teams that have never won it, since the Netherlands (who beat Uruguay 3-2 on Tuesday) have never won it either.

Only eight countries have won the World Cup since its first tournament in 1930. World Cup soccer has been dominated by a few countries: Germany, Italy, Argentina, and, of course, Brazil. With the exception of Argentina, who has only won the World Cup twice, Germany, Italy and Brazil have won it at least three times. In any given tournament (which comes only once every four years) all of these countries are almost guarantied to qualify after two years of elimination rounds.

I can’t help but ask where World Cup soccer would be without the imperialism of the nineteenth century. The hero for France in the 1998 World Cup finals (and the goat of the 2006 finals) was Zinadine Zidane, whose parents were born in Algeria. If you look at some of the faces on the French roster in any given year, a lot of them don’t look very French. Thierry Henry, the captain of Les Bleus until just before the finals in South Africa, has a face as black as the night, but he has as much right to claim France as his country as Zidane because he was born there.

But let's look at the German roster in 2010: with names like Miroslav Klose and Lukas Podolski, you would think that the Nazis held onto Poland after World War II. And how did Germany get players like Musil Özil, Sami Khedira, and Jerome Boateng, who are of Turkish, Moroccan, and Ghanaian origin respectively? Must be, Hitler conquered the world, right?

The truth is that the roster of any European team in any World Cup tournament will reflect the ethnic diversity of that country. Apartheid never won South Africa the World Cup, you know.

The Spanish roster is almost as ethnically diverse as the German and French rosters. Carles Puyol, Xavi Alonso, Andrés Iniestra, Gerard Piqué and Pedro are all Catalan, not Spanish.

Diversity wins games. Don’t think that the United States team wouldn’t be ecstatic to have any players as talented as Spain’s David Villa (who actually failed to score a goal against Germany) or Argentina’s Lionel Messi (who didn’t score a goal against anybody), regardless of race, creed, or national origin.

It’s all about winning. The Catalan midfielder, Carles Puyol, is the toast of Spain as well as Barcelona.

Viva España, and all its ethnic groups. And long live diversity.