White supremacists the night before the 'Unite the Right' rally in Charlottesville. 2017. Credit: Zach D Roberts/NurPhoto via Getty
At first glance, Market Street Park seems to be just another tree-lined square, in a sunny Virginian city. But take a closer and perhaps all is not as sleepy as it seems.
The statue in the centre of the square is fenced off and signs warn: “City personnel only” Stroll closer and you’ll notice “THIS STATUE SAYS THAT BLACK LIVES DON’T MATTER”, scrawled in chalk on the ground. “WHITE LIVES MATTER TOO!” is the faded response angrily written directly beneath. The past is alive in Charlottesville.
Hate fulled riots filled this space two years ago. Plans to remove the statue of Robert E Lee, General of the Confederacy’s Army of Northern Virginia during the Civil War, had caused an angry coming together of neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Clan and assorted other racists and anti-Semites. The Unite the Right gathering shocked the world, left one woman dead and created in Charlottesville one of the ugliest confrontations in recent American history.
The white nationalist who rammed his car into a group of counter-protesters has since been sentenced to life for first-degree murder. But subsequent acts of far-Right terrorism have shown the Charlottesville attack to be part of a disturbing trend. Last month alone, a shooter in El Paso, Texas, shared a white supremacist manifesto online before killing 22 people while an attack that killed three people and injured 13 in Gilroy, California, is being investigated as a terrorism incident.
Meanwhile, across the South, monuments to the Confederacy and its heroes have come tumbling down — yet Charlottesville’s Lee is still standing.
If the violent attacks pose important questions about how America should best deal with the threat of far-Right terrorism, the debate over the statue is part of a parallel discussion: can the nation come to terms with the contradictions of its past in a way that can heal, rather than aggravate, the divides of the present? In Charlottesville that battle is being fought on multiple fronts.
How the states who seceded from the Union in defence of slavery a century and a half ago remember that chapter in their history has always been difficult. Things became more fraught in the summer of 2015, when Dylann Roof, a 21-year-old white nationalist fond of posing with the Confederate flag and at the graves of Civil War generals, murdered nine African-Americans in a church in Charleston, South Carolina. Since then, more than 30 cities have removed Confederate memorials.
Charlottesville’s councillors voted to follow suit in February 2017 — a move that sparked the far-Right protest, but also faced stiff opposition in the courts. According to a 1904 Virginia state law, local governments are allowed to build war monuments but are forbidden from removing, damaging or defacing them. The city’s legal argument is built on the claim that, because the statues had more to do with contemporary politics than any war at the time they were built, then they are not war memorials. It’s a battle destined for the state’s supreme court.
In the meantime, city authorities continue an awkward dance, erecting fencing and even shrouding the statues in black tarpaulin before a court ordered its removal.
Wes Bellamy, a Charlottesville city councillor, was involved in the campaign to remove the statues from early on. For him, the logic is simple enough. “The statues,” he tells me, “represent a racist ideology.” They depict men who fought a war in defence of slavery, were “vehemently opposed the equal rights of African Americans”, and owned slaves. “When those statues were put up, there were two Ku Klux Clan rallies that took place to celebrate. Those statues don’t represent the city that we’re trying to be at all,” he says. “They represent a domestic terrorist group who were traitors, who were inherently racist and who do not need to be celebrated in the middle of our city.”
Statues are meant to be hard to move, says historian Edward L. Ayers, author of The Thin Light of Freedom: The Civil War and Emancipation in the Heart of America, who was one of the experts on a recent commission to help the nearby city of Richmond decide what to do with its own Civil War statues.
But attitudes are changing. While the tiki-torch wielding far-right protestors who descended on Charlottesville inevitably grabbed the headlines, Professor Ayers thinks the reality among the mainstream majority is more encouraging. Debates like the one over Charlottesville’s memorials “can create the impression that people are dug in”, he says, but in reality things are less divided. “I’ve had many conversations about this around the country and I’ve seen people be broadly understanding of what the statues mean to other people. I’ve also seen people understand what the statues are not,” he tells me.
Opponents of removing the statues claim that doing so would mean erasing history, but Professor Ayers sees it differently. The statues, he says, “are called history, but they are a version of history; they were part of a process of revising history… The statues are not history, but representations of history.”
The representation of history being pushed in 1924, when Charlottesville’s statue of Lee went up, was the idea of the Civil War as a noble, if unsuccessful, defence of states’ rights and an honourable disagreement about the meaning of the US constitution. At the statue’s unveiling, Lee was remembered as a man who embodied “the moral greatness of the Old South”. Slavery was steadily being written out of the story.
The politics of the time cannot be disentangled from this lost cause revisionism. Far from shedding light on the past, the monuments were designed to hide important parts of it. The same year that the Lee statue was erected, Virginia passed the Racial Integrity Act, which criminalised interracial marriage and required that every child in Virginia be identified as “white” or “coloured” on their birth certificate. Two years later, the state passed legislation to enforce racial segregation at all public events in Virginia.
As Mitch Landreiu, a Democratic politician and then mayor of New Orleans, explained his decision to remove Confederate statues in the city in 2017:
“These statues are not just stone and metal. They are not just innocent remembrances of a benign history. These monuments purposefully celebrate a fictional, sanitised Confederacy; ignoring the death, ignoring the enslavement, and the terror that it actually stood for.”
The decision to remove statues, in New Orleans and elsewhere, has not been without opposition, but the Virginia law opposing the removal of war monuments means that it has been the site of a more protracted debate than other southern states.
For Professor Ayers, the difference between the way in which the monuments went up and how they are coming down is important:
“This is democracy. This is a political process. The statues were put up basically without political process because of the disenfranchisement of the African-American community. Now there’s new voices, and we would expect there to be more of a conversation, and that’s not a bad thing.”
The fact that that conversation was hijacked by the far-right should not detract from America’s determination to continue having the conversation, he argues.
“History is made in every form, and it’s going to have to be confronted in every form,” says Ayers. “From the viewpoint of a historian, watching people wrestle with the complexity of the past is not the worst thing.”
Another historic figure has also been targeted. As with Lee and Jackson, how the city remembers him is of more than just local importance. This time, however, the man in question is not a general who prosecuted a treasonous war against the United States, but Charlottesville’s most famous son, the founder of the University of Virginia, a founding father, the third President of the United States and the author of the Declaration of Independence.
Thomas Jefferson was all these things, but he was also a slave owner. His home, Monticello, sits on a hill overlooking Charlottesville. It was there that he kept as many as 130 men, women and children in bondage at any given time. He had five children with Sally Hemings, a slave. He freed only five slaves in his will on his death — the rest were sent to the auction block. Suffice to say, it is difficult to construct the case that Jefferson — the author of the words “we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal” — was an especially reluctant or grudging slaveholder.
This is why, in an extraordinary move, the city of Charlottesville council has voted to no longer celebrate Jefferson’s birthday, as it has done every year for decades. Instead, it will now mark Liberation and Freedom Day on March 3, the day Union forces arrived in Charlottesville in 1865.
Bellamy, who voted for the move, thinks it “goes hand in hand” with the campaign to remove the Confederate statues. “Thomas Jefferson was a white supremacist,” he tells me. “When he wrote the Declaration of Independence, it wasn’t for people who look like me, I was considered three fifths of a man,” says Bellamy, who is African-American. “And I think that not celebrating his birthday is one step closer to where we need to be in terms of like respecting everyone. You don’t have to like everyone but you do have to respect everyone.”
I ask Bellamy what hope there is for any kind of unity in America if the country cannot agree on memorialising the author of the Declaration of Independence.
“Unity? When has our country been unified? This is the 400th year since the first group of enslaved Africans came here. The idea that we’re happy when we’re unified I think is a fallacy. We’re happy when we’re entertained. But when it comes to treating people fairly and with respect and with equity and equality, there’s always been division… I don’t buy into the whole unified thing. I think we need to be talking about respect.”
There are many dividing lines in American politics — class, race, religion, geography and ideology — but an under-appreciated distinction is between those who acknowledge the complexity of the country’s past and those who tell a one-sided morality tale.
As time has gone on, Americans have been presented with a fuller picture of Thomas Jefferson, and commemorate his contribution in spite of his undeniable shortcomings. Confederate generals, by contrast, have been memorialised not in spite of, but for waging a war in defence of slavery. Questioning some states’ reverence for the latter means updating and broadening the ideals America should try to live up to. Ditching any commemoration of the former means doing away with those ideals altogether.
Here, those who think America’s past sins mean the slate must be wiped clean offer an unlikely mirror image to Donald Trump’s empty patriotism. The President is keen to insist he loves his country. When he tries to explain why, you start to wonder. His speech at the ostentatious “Salute to America” parade he threw himself to celebrate the 4th of July, for example, was revealing in its hollow tribute to little more than the scale of America’s greatness — the biggest and the best. There was “Go team!” spirit and respect for the “noble might” of “America’s warriors”, but little in the way of the values that have energised the country in the past and might energise it again in the future.
“They guard our birthright with vigilance and fierce devotion to the flag and to our great country,” he said of the military.
“Now we must go forward as a nation with that same unity of purpose. As long as we stay true to our cause, as long as we remember our great history, as long as we never ever stop fighting for a better future, then there will be nothing that America cannot do.”
It was an unexceptional account of what makes his country great; it could have come from the leader of more or less any nation at more or less any time in history. Similarly, those for whom America’s past is only something worth apologising for would strip the country of the tools it needs for self-improvement.
For some, Charlottesville’s slippery slope from Lee to Jefferson highlights the risk that, once you start questioning who should be remembered, it’s far from clear where you stop. The fear is that this cancel culture will come for everyone eventually. But just as it is unreasonable to hold historic figures to 21st-century standards, it is unrealistic to see history as set in stone. Those who rightly fear the consequences of a culture war over the past will not get very far by shutting down debate. Rather they need to fight for a better conversation.
Martin Luther King understood the promise and paradox of Jefferson’s legacy. In 1962, on the centenary of the Emancipation Proclamation issued by Abraham Lincoln, he said of the work of Jefferson and Lincoln:
“If our nation had done nothing more in its whole history than to create just two documents, its contribution to civilization would be imperishable. The first of these documents is the Declaration of Independence and the other is that which we are here to honor tonight, the Emancipation Proclamation. All tyrants, past, present and future, are powerless to bury the truths in these declarations, no matter how extensive their legions, how vast their power and how malignant their evil.”
There has not been a shortage of reminders of the ways in which the America has fallen short of its founding ideals lately. There is, and always has been, hypocrisy in America’s commitment to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
But as it reckons with its past, it is worth remembering that — from independence through the civil war and the civil rights movement to the present day — that charge of hypocrisy has been a prompt for perpetual improvement, not an obstacle to it.
Oliver Wiseman is the deputy editor of The Spectator World and author of the DC Diary, a daily email from Washington. He is a 2021-22 Robert Novak Journalism Fellow
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SubscribeI’m pretty sure the author will have had this article ready and waiting for Pele’s death. (I won’t use the modern idiom by writing “Pele’s passing” for obvious reasons!). It’s well-written, and ties in many of the political and wider social changes taking place around the time of the 1970 Final. I’d also add the 1970 General Election ( 3 days beforehand) and the announcement by the Beatles that they’d split up just a couple of months before that – the ending of several eras, in fact.
Wilson is right: it’s unfair to expect sporting greats to take a stand against political oppression. I’d go further and say i wish today’s sporting heroes would keep their opinions slightly more to themselves instead of using a natural talent for hitting or kicking a ball to try to influence political debate. They’re entitled to their opinions, but not undue influence, especially when they can only express such opinions in a fairly crass way.
Watching Pele’s movement and control of a spherical object transcends football, transcends sport. It’s human athleticism incarnate, and was simply a joy to watch.
I’m pretty sure the author will have had this article ready and waiting for Pele’s death. (I won’t use the modern idiom by writing “Pele’s passing” for obvious reasons!). It’s well-written, and ties in many of the political and wider social changes taking place around the time of the 1970 Final. I’d also add the 1970 General Election ( 3 days beforehand) and the announcement by the Beatles that they’d split up just a couple of months before that – the ending of several eras, in fact.
Wilson is right: it’s unfair to expect sporting greats to take a stand against political oppression. I’d go further and say i wish today’s sporting heroes would keep their opinions slightly more to themselves instead of using a natural talent for hitting or kicking a ball to try to influence political debate. They’re entitled to their opinions, but not undue influence, especially when they can only express such opinions in a fairly crass way.
Watching Pele’s movement and control of a spherical object transcends football, transcends sport. It’s human athleticism incarnate, and was simply a joy to watch.
I turned 13 in 1970 and was a football fanatic who was allowed to watch as many of the games as I could by indulgent parents – although my younger brothers were not so lucky. Everything he says about the luminosity of that tournament, the sun, sky, the iridescence of the pitches, the slight delay on the commentary and the occasional jerks in the pictures is correct – and adds to its charm and what now feels an other worldly time. That Brazil side were wonderful, certainly in midfield and attack – although the goalkeeper, Felix, I think, was a bit lairy – and the verve, elan and sheer joy they evoked with their performances still lingers in the memory. They also had powers of recovery, going behind in games (including the final) to win. The politics of the era were becoming apparant, even to a slightly aware North London grammar school boy who was hoping for wider horizons than the opportunities then available , but that World Cup, the sheer, dazzling glory and beauty of it, allowed us all to bask in a summer of pleasure and enjoyment of what probably cemented Brazil’s reputation as the inventors of the ”Jogo Bonito”. The Seventies were, as Wilson says, a decade where systematised football became the paradigm, but even now when we look back at the old footage, the dreadful pitches, the exuberance and spontaneity of crowds, the way the game was played, the savage tackling and the way players more or less used to get on with it, that too looks like another world. I have been a Spurs supporter pretty much all my life but if I returned to London (I have lived in Australia for 35 years) I am not sure I would want to pay the prices charged by Premier League clubs nowadays in the current corporatised game. Maybe I would go and watch the first club I ever saw play live – Hendon, an amateur powerhouse of the 1960s – where my dad took me when I was still at primary school!
Hendon, amateur powerhouse indeed. My first job in the 1970s was working with Peter Anderson, student accountant by day and dazzling winger for Hendon and Barnet by night. I also grew up watching the sublime Jimmy Greaves, who wouldn’t get a game today because he refused to tackle, much less do a ‘high press’.
I’d argue that the crass commercialism introduced in the 70s (Blatter has a lot to answer for besides corruption) led to the stifling tactical constraints on the modern game. With the huge sums of money at stake, it became more important for the sponsors and the clubs not to lose than to try and win. It amazes me that people accept to pay the ridiculous prices they do today to watch largely turgid exercises in passing the ball backwards and sideways.
At least we occasionally have the spectacle of a genius like Messi or Zidane transcending the current dross to take us back for a while to that golden age.
Don Review’s Leeds United? Bertie Mee’s
Arsenal. Thuggish centre backs etc. However nostalgic we might be, footballers along with all other sportsmen, tennis players above all, are much, much fitter and on the whole more talented than those of the 70s. Could an effective drunkard such as George Best last any time at all in.the modern game. (He might do, he’d simply have to sober up or leave the game). They practice more, they don’t go down the pub before and after matches etc. Tactical nous and the design and rules of the game itself often results in ‘boring’ draws. (I don’t believe basketball has a problem with low scores)
However, there are exceptions: the last World Cup Final was as exciting as any in history!
Don Review’s Leeds United? Bertie Mee’s
Arsenal. Thuggish centre backs etc. However nostalgic we might be, footballers along with all other sportsmen, tennis players above all, are much, much fitter and on the whole more talented than those of the 70s. Could an effective drunkard such as George Best last any time at all in.the modern game. (He might do, he’d simply have to sober up or leave the game). They practice more, they don’t go down the pub before and after matches etc. Tactical nous and the design and rules of the game itself often results in ‘boring’ draws. (I don’t believe basketball has a problem with low scores)
However, there are exceptions: the last World Cup Final was as exciting as any in history!
Hendon, amateur powerhouse indeed. My first job in the 1970s was working with Peter Anderson, student accountant by day and dazzling winger for Hendon and Barnet by night. I also grew up watching the sublime Jimmy Greaves, who wouldn’t get a game today because he refused to tackle, much less do a ‘high press’.
I’d argue that the crass commercialism introduced in the 70s (Blatter has a lot to answer for besides corruption) led to the stifling tactical constraints on the modern game. With the huge sums of money at stake, it became more important for the sponsors and the clubs not to lose than to try and win. It amazes me that people accept to pay the ridiculous prices they do today to watch largely turgid exercises in passing the ball backwards and sideways.
At least we occasionally have the spectacle of a genius like Messi or Zidane transcending the current dross to take us back for a while to that golden age.
I turned 13 in 1970 and was a football fanatic who was allowed to watch as many of the games as I could by indulgent parents – although my younger brothers were not so lucky. Everything he says about the luminosity of that tournament, the sun, sky, the iridescence of the pitches, the slight delay on the commentary and the occasional jerks in the pictures is correct – and adds to its charm and what now feels an other worldly time. That Brazil side were wonderful, certainly in midfield and attack – although the goalkeeper, Felix, I think, was a bit lairy – and the verve, elan and sheer joy they evoked with their performances still lingers in the memory. They also had powers of recovery, going behind in games (including the final) to win. The politics of the era were becoming apparant, even to a slightly aware North London grammar school boy who was hoping for wider horizons than the opportunities then available , but that World Cup, the sheer, dazzling glory and beauty of it, allowed us all to bask in a summer of pleasure and enjoyment of what probably cemented Brazil’s reputation as the inventors of the ”Jogo Bonito”. The Seventies were, as Wilson says, a decade where systematised football became the paradigm, but even now when we look back at the old footage, the dreadful pitches, the exuberance and spontaneity of crowds, the way the game was played, the savage tackling and the way players more or less used to get on with it, that too looks like another world. I have been a Spurs supporter pretty much all my life but if I returned to London (I have lived in Australia for 35 years) I am not sure I would want to pay the prices charged by Premier League clubs nowadays in the current corporatised game. Maybe I would go and watch the first club I ever saw play live – Hendon, an amateur powerhouse of the 1960s – where my dad took me when I was still at primary school!
“Mazy dribblers” are almost a thing of the past. Messi still gets away with because of his status in the game, and the rarity of dribbling nowadays means what he does stands out all the more. But what he does was once a common feature of the game. Nowadays, hardly anybody goes on a mazy run and takes on the opposition, man to man, ball at feet. They’d be too afraid of what the coach would say to them after the game, for being so “selfish”. Instead, it’s pass early, retain possession, tika-taka, cross from the wing etc. Of course, it is a team sport, but I remember the glorious selfishness of Best and the magical madness of Maradona, and the conjuring tricks of Zidane and Cruyff, and feel a sense of loss that something anarchic and individualistic has been taken out of the game.
Crossing is the biggest victim of the body-building culture of football these days. I genuinely believe that too much muscle bulk makes skilful play more and more impossible. Crossing a ball is not hard, because I could do it as a bumbling amateur 35-40 years ago. But there is hardly anyone in the EPL, paid £50-250k a week, who can cross a ball to a) pass the first defender; b) offer a central striker the chance to head for goal; and c) not have the cross bounce the far side of the penalty area, somewhere in the stands etc.
Not certainly in that way. It’s just that the number of brilliants does not increase in proportion to the volume of excavated rock. Magicians like Pele, Maradona, Cruyff, Zidane and, of course, Messi have been and will remain a rarity. And this is good…
Crossing is the biggest victim of the body-building culture of football these days. I genuinely believe that too much muscle bulk makes skilful play more and more impossible. Crossing a ball is not hard, because I could do it as a bumbling amateur 35-40 years ago. But there is hardly anyone in the EPL, paid £50-250k a week, who can cross a ball to a) pass the first defender; b) offer a central striker the chance to head for goal; and c) not have the cross bounce the far side of the penalty area, somewhere in the stands etc.
Not certainly in that way. It’s just that the number of brilliants does not increase in proportion to the volume of excavated rock. Magicians like Pele, Maradona, Cruyff, Zidane and, of course, Messi have been and will remain a rarity. And this is good…
“Mazy dribblers” are almost a thing of the past. Messi still gets away with because of his status in the game, and the rarity of dribbling nowadays means what he does stands out all the more. But what he does was once a common feature of the game. Nowadays, hardly anybody goes on a mazy run and takes on the opposition, man to man, ball at feet. They’d be too afraid of what the coach would say to them after the game, for being so “selfish”. Instead, it’s pass early, retain possession, tika-taka, cross from the wing etc. Of course, it is a team sport, but I remember the glorious selfishness of Best and the magical madness of Maradona, and the conjuring tricks of Zidane and Cruyff, and feel a sense of loss that something anarchic and individualistic has been taken out of the game.
Guardian journalist writing here: “perhaps unreasonable” to expect Pele to speak out against military dictatorship in Brazil.
2022: mandatory for professional footballers to indulge in gesture politics (usually at no cost to themselves). Criticism of anyone not actively supporting the range of “official beliefs” is expected.
Fascinating that people (doubtless most Guardian journalists amongst them) can support both these views at the same time whilst being unaware of any contradictions.
Personally, I don’t buy into the role model stuff or insistence that footballers have any more responsibility than anyone else to take a stand on political issues. That’s a personal choice – as are their own political beliefs.
Absolutely. The idea of footballers as “role models” is just ridiculous. I support a team in League Two of the EFL, and even there, some people regard bang-average journeymen footballers as someone to have their kids look up to. It’s embarrassing.
I would also take issue with the assumption that shooting left-wing students is necessarily a bad thing.
Absolutely. The idea of footballers as “role models” is just ridiculous. I support a team in League Two of the EFL, and even there, some people regard bang-average journeymen footballers as someone to have their kids look up to. It’s embarrassing.
I would also take issue with the assumption that shooting left-wing students is necessarily a bad thing.
Guardian journalist writing here: “perhaps unreasonable” to expect Pele to speak out against military dictatorship in Brazil.
2022: mandatory for professional footballers to indulge in gesture politics (usually at no cost to themselves). Criticism of anyone not actively supporting the range of “official beliefs” is expected.
Fascinating that people (doubtless most Guardian journalists amongst them) can support both these views at the same time whilst being unaware of any contradictions.
Personally, I don’t buy into the role model stuff or insistence that footballers have any more responsibility than anyone else to take a stand on political issues. That’s a personal choice – as are their own political beliefs.
Why is it that when a leftist columnist writes about anything, the first thing mentioned is the politics of the host country, especially negative if it is right wing and a total whitewash if it is from the left. In a bit of psychological dive, I detect the same biases regarding the right wing crass commercialization of sport vs. the beautiful game of the barrio where art and beauty emanate.
Did every successful player in the world overcome immense poverty to reach the heights of skill and wealth that footballers have? Says something about capitalism, doesn’t it?
I’m glad Pele was able to capitalize on his skill, more power to Messi, Ibrahimović, Cristiano, and the rest of the millionaires created in the modern game of Futbol.
But, where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?
«Why is it that when a leftist columnist writes about anything, the first thing mentioned is the politics»
Seems I know the answer. It’s because they are politically and sexually obsessed at the same time and put their political views into any sphere just like they put their penises into any hole
Ah, the intellectual heights that you conservatives reach! The beauty of your prose, the elegance of your exposition!
It wasn’t always like this. But sadly it is like this today. Leftists just stopped thinking around 1968 and all they do is regurgitate hate. It’s very sad.
It wasn’t always like this. But sadly it is like this today. Leftists just stopped thinking around 1968 and all they do is regurgitate hate. It’s very sad.
What was the definition of a fanatic? Someone that doesn’t shut up and doesn’t change the subject
Ah, the intellectual heights that you conservatives reach! The beauty of your prose, the elegance of your exposition!
What was the definition of a fanatic? Someone that doesn’t shut up and doesn’t change the subject
Why is it that when a rightist BTL commentator writes about anything, the first thing mentioned is the politics of the author, especially negative if it is left wing and a total whitewash if it is from the right.
There you go, I’ve corrected that for you!
«Why is it that when a leftist columnist writes about anything, the first thing mentioned is the politics»
Seems I know the answer. It’s because they are politically and sexually obsessed at the same time and put their political views into any sphere just like they put their penises into any hole
Why is it that when a rightist BTL commentator writes about anything, the first thing mentioned is the politics of the author, especially negative if it is left wing and a total whitewash if it is from the right.
There you go, I’ve corrected that for you!
Why is it that when a leftist columnist writes about anything, the first thing mentioned is the politics of the host country, especially negative if it is right wing and a total whitewash if it is from the left. In a bit of psychological dive, I detect the same biases regarding the right wing crass commercialization of sport vs. the beautiful game of the barrio where art and beauty emanate.
Did every successful player in the world overcome immense poverty to reach the heights of skill and wealth that footballers have? Says something about capitalism, doesn’t it?
I’m glad Pele was able to capitalize on his skill, more power to Messi, Ibrahimović, Cristiano, and the rest of the millionaires created in the modern game of Futbol.
But, where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?
I know not relevant to Pele, but I would argue the beautiful game and “Jogo Bonito” (sure I spelt that wrong, too lazy to check) died not in 1970 but in 1982, with the defeat of that Brazilian midfield.
You get it Samir. The author doesn’t.
I think you should ask yourself why football is only about attacking and not a competition between attack and defence. The Brazil team in 1982 couldn’t defend to save its life against Italy so why should they be handed the world cup just because they were great attackers?
You miss the point. It’s nothing to do with being handed the World Cup. Brazil didn’t change the way that they approached World Cups forever, because of their victory in 1970. They changed it forever, because an equally gifted team lost in 1982. That’s why Samir said it was the end of ‘O Jogo Bonito’. Since 1982, Brazil have gone out to win the tournament and not to play the most beautiful football.
They were close if memory serves me right Italy were benefited by the referee. They did have an horrible goalkeeper
Not so much about the ref really, Rossi getting into form at just the right time, calamitous errors by Junior and Cerezo that led to two Italian goals, a poor centre forward by their standards..and Italy weren’t really a bad team themselves overall.
Still, sometimes you don’t need to be a winner to be remembered. As with Holland 74 and Hungary 54.
If both Brazil and France has gone through to the final in 82, would have been some game. If…
Not so much about the ref really, Rossi getting into form at just the right time, calamitous errors by Junior and Cerezo that led to two Italian goals, a poor centre forward by their standards..and Italy weren’t really a bad team themselves overall.
Still, sometimes you don’t need to be a winner to be remembered. As with Holland 74 and Hungary 54.
If both Brazil and France has gone through to the final in 82, would have been some game. If…
You miss the point. It’s nothing to do with being handed the World Cup. Brazil didn’t change the way that they approached World Cups forever, because of their victory in 1970. They changed it forever, because an equally gifted team lost in 1982. That’s why Samir said it was the end of ‘O Jogo Bonito’. Since 1982, Brazil have gone out to win the tournament and not to play the most beautiful football.
They were close if memory serves me right Italy were benefited by the referee. They did have an horrible goalkeeper
You get it Samir. The author doesn’t.
I think you should ask yourself why football is only about attacking and not a competition between attack and defence. The Brazil team in 1982 couldn’t defend to save its life against Italy so why should they be handed the world cup just because they were great attackers?
I know not relevant to Pele, but I would argue the beautiful game and “Jogo Bonito” (sure I spelt that wrong, too lazy to check) died not in 1970 but in 1982, with the defeat of that Brazilian midfield.
Yet another article that doesn’t deliver what promises in the title. I thought I was going to read about the fundamental way football changed with introduction of “the systems “. How it became more European. How the differences between Latin America and Europe became less sharp. I thought I was going to read about Cruyff and Beckenbauer. I thought I was going to read about how dull 90 and 94 were. I thought I was going to read about the quixotistic pursuits of Tele Santana in 82 and 86 (the best national team I ever saw playing, Brazil with Falcao, Sócrates, Juniors and Zico). But no, all I got was a tirade about how Pelé sold out. What a waste of time.
I agree with you on this – a great man has died, he was a miracle on the pitch, almost like ballet.
When Maradona died last year, there were nothing but accolades about how the kid from the bário became one of the greatest of all time.
But with Pelé – THE greatest of all time, we get this drivel about how he “sold” viagra etc (anyone but me remember Michael Jordan’s underwear advertisements?).
A great man, a hero of Brazil (like Babe Ruth in the US), passes on and we are told how he helped to ruin football – May he rest in peace!
(full disclosure/ I’m a Yank from Chicago who has lived in Brazil for 5 years and become an obsessed “soccer” fan).
Currently there is a disconnect between the Brazilian team and half of the Brazilian public because of many of the footballers’ open support for the racist Bolsonaro. Pele himself gave Bolsonaro a signed shirt.
Your point? Pelé is racist-adjacent because he signed a shirt for the President of Brasil?! The time Brasileiro is to be condemned for political preferences (don’t tell me, you mean that Bolsonaro is “fascist”, racist, running dog capitalist?).
Half the country voted for Bolso and have for Lula – who was put in jail for 12 years (after appeals to the appellate and Supreme Court) but then, after the statute of limitations had run, came up with a new ruling to let him off on a technicality without disputing any facts of his taking “something of value” from the corrupt government he oversaw. In the 90’s, he inaugurated the Sao Paolo Forum with Fidel Castro for Latin American “socialism” , and now he promises to bust the recovering budget with “social Justice” spending!?, and you worry about signing a shirt.
Anyway, as I noted above, a great man has passed away, and his body is not cold in the grave before this article whines about changes to Association Football and Pelés part in it – unlike the praise that Maradona received after he passed last year. Talk about racist!
Right. Just call the guy you don’t support “racist”. That’s what political discourse is nowadays. D*mn lazy, but at least you don’t have to make a cogent argument.
Pele didn’t give a sh..t about politics.
Neymar supported Bolsonaro. Whatever you may think of him, and I think very little of the guy, he left the institutions untouched. We can’t say the same of some of Lula’s pals, namely Kirchner and Chavez. It pisses me off the double standard. Bolsonaro gets more international oprobion that the Venezuelan regime , one third of Venezuelans left the country! Or Cuba, in 2022 2% of Cubans fled the country. Castro was another great friend of Mr Lula that presided over the Mensalão , one of the biggest corruption scandals of the history of the Americas! Maybe there was good reasons to prefer Bolsonaro to Lula.
Is there a disconnect between the other half of the Brazilian public and any footballers who don’t support Bolsonsro?
Maybe the issue isn’t his “racism” but the fact that leftist leaders and voters stopped growing since the mental age of six.
Your point? Pelé is racist-adjacent because he signed a shirt for the President of Brasil?! The time Brasileiro is to be condemned for political preferences (don’t tell me, you mean that Bolsonaro is “fascist”, racist, running dog capitalist?).
Half the country voted for Bolso and have for Lula – who was put in jail for 12 years (after appeals to the appellate and Supreme Court) but then, after the statute of limitations had run, came up with a new ruling to let him off on a technicality without disputing any facts of his taking “something of value” from the corrupt government he oversaw. In the 90’s, he inaugurated the Sao Paolo Forum with Fidel Castro for Latin American “socialism” , and now he promises to bust the recovering budget with “social Justice” spending!?, and you worry about signing a shirt.
Anyway, as I noted above, a great man has passed away, and his body is not cold in the grave before this article whines about changes to Association Football and Pelés part in it – unlike the praise that Maradona received after he passed last year. Talk about racist!
Right. Just call the guy you don’t support “racist”. That’s what political discourse is nowadays. D*mn lazy, but at least you don’t have to make a cogent argument.
Pele didn’t give a sh..t about politics.
Neymar supported Bolsonaro. Whatever you may think of him, and I think very little of the guy, he left the institutions untouched. We can’t say the same of some of Lula’s pals, namely Kirchner and Chavez. It pisses me off the double standard. Bolsonaro gets more international oprobion that the Venezuelan regime , one third of Venezuelans left the country! Or Cuba, in 2022 2% of Cubans fled the country. Castro was another great friend of Mr Lula that presided over the Mensalão , one of the biggest corruption scandals of the history of the Americas! Maybe there was good reasons to prefer Bolsonaro to Lula.
Is there a disconnect between the other half of the Brazilian public and any footballers who don’t support Bolsonsro?
Maybe the issue isn’t his “racism” but the fact that leftist leaders and voters stopped growing since the mental age of six.
Currently there is a disconnect between the Brazilian team and half of the Brazilian public because of many of the footballers’ open support for the racist Bolsonaro. Pele himself gave Bolsonaro a signed shirt.
What a strange comment. Pele’s commercial activities are mentioned almost in passing as part of the change to football’s corporate world – hardly a ‘tirade’. You might have thought that it was going to be an article about how the game as played has changed, but it isn’t, so why whinge!
The title is “football died after Pelé”. I do think I was right in assuming it was about football or at the very least I expected a bit more about the scoundrels that took FIFA’s helm.
The title is “football died after Pelé”. I do think I was right in assuming it was about football or at the very least I expected a bit more about the scoundrels that took FIFA’s helm.
Absolutely agree..
That 82 team was sensational. But I think you can mount an argument that the 74 Dutch side, with Cruyff, Neeskens, Van Hanegam, Rensenbrink, Kiezer et al were equally good – perhaps in a more structured ”alternative” fashion. That they didn’t win in either 74 or 78 (even without Cruyff) remains a mystery to me
I agree with you on this – a great man has died, he was a miracle on the pitch, almost like ballet.
When Maradona died last year, there were nothing but accolades about how the kid from the bário became one of the greatest of all time.
But with Pelé – THE greatest of all time, we get this drivel about how he “sold” viagra etc (anyone but me remember Michael Jordan’s underwear advertisements?).
A great man, a hero of Brazil (like Babe Ruth in the US), passes on and we are told how he helped to ruin football – May he rest in peace!
(full disclosure/ I’m a Yank from Chicago who has lived in Brazil for 5 years and become an obsessed “soccer” fan).
What a strange comment. Pele’s commercial activities are mentioned almost in passing as part of the change to football’s corporate world – hardly a ‘tirade’. You might have thought that it was going to be an article about how the game as played has changed, but it isn’t, so why whinge!
Absolutely agree..
That 82 team was sensational. But I think you can mount an argument that the 74 Dutch side, with Cruyff, Neeskens, Van Hanegam, Rensenbrink, Kiezer et al were equally good – perhaps in a more structured ”alternative” fashion. That they didn’t win in either 74 or 78 (even without Cruyff) remains a mystery to me
Yet another article that doesn’t deliver what promises in the title. I thought I was going to read about the fundamental way football changed with introduction of “the systems “. How it became more European. How the differences between Latin America and Europe became less sharp. I thought I was going to read about Cruyff and Beckenbauer. I thought I was going to read about how dull 90 and 94 were. I thought I was going to read about the quixotistic pursuits of Tele Santana in 82 and 86 (the best national team I ever saw playing, Brazil with Falcao, Sócrates, Juniors and Zico). But no, all I got was a tirade about how Pelé sold out. What a waste of time.
I notice no women have so far commented on this article, which goes some way to support my view that if truth be known few women give a toss about football and probably most team sports (any more than I do) ! They have more sense.
That makes it even more ludicrous and incongruous that the BBC take pains to have several female commentators for football and darts. Credit where it is due though, the women commentators put on a tremendous show of being interested in the proceedings!
I notice no women have so far commented on this article, which goes some way to support my view that if truth be known few women give a toss about football and probably most team sports (any more than I do) ! They have more sense.
That makes it even more ludicrous and incongruous that the BBC take pains to have several female commentators for football and darts. Credit where it is due though, the women commentators put on a tremendous show of being interested in the proceedings!
As an American, I have never really been into the sport. That being said, this was beautifully written.
Americans tend to feel they’re not getting their money’s worth unless there are lots and lots of scores. The thing about soccer is that you can have an absorbing 0-0 finish, and an exasperating 4-3 finish marred by errors.
The rest of the world has an instinctive feel for football, since we’ve all tried it – in the backyard, in the schoolyard, in the park etc.
And, having tried the skills yourself, it gives you an appreciation for 2 things – how simple a game soccer is (“jumpers for goalposts”, almost no kit needed), and how difficult it is to play well.
Without that practical immersion, you may never develop a love for the game.
Many years ago, I was at a corporate event, held in the Dallas Cowboy’s stadium. Tremendous stadium, retractable roof, air-conditioned etc. Obviously, those Y-shaped American football posts. 2 rock bands, lashings of free beer, burgers, and, best of all, a couple of thousand American footballs lying about, so that, instead of being shrived by PowerPoint, we all charged around and had football kicking competitions.
I was middle-aged, and only average at free kicks. But we were gods compared to the American guys. All the non-American blokes (Paddies, Brits, S Americans etc) could kick the ball over the bar from a reasonable distance. Not a single American there could kick snow off a rope. It was genuinely startling. The first American kicker in our informal group, a big fit young lad placed the ball, stepped a few paces back, ran up, swung his foot, and completely missed the ball, before almost falling on his arse! Many more sliced the ball completely sideways.
Initially, I thought they must surely be taking the p, or be drunk, for I had never seen such a woeful exhibition of kicking in all my life. It was pinch-yourself-in-disbelief bad. But on talking to them, I realised they were not drunk at all, and they weren’t messing about. They were trying their best. They just literally had never kicked a ball in their lives before.
People from the rest of the world play soccer, rugby, Aussie rules, Gaelic football etc, and all of these sports required you to be able to kick a ball. American football just has one guy dedicated to kicking, and the rest of them, professional “footballers” need never kick a ball in their lives.
Of course, by now bursting with smugness at being so easily able to school our US friends in the art of place kicking, later in the evening, the tables were turned on us when the competition turned to throwing the ball. We could fling the ball to an average level, not too long and not too accurately, but lots of the US guys could launch it like a rocket, high, dead straight, with pin-point accuracy, and for twice or three times the distance we could. Throwing a ball is part of US culture, and their facility with that skill was obvious – they were as excellent at throwing as they had been dire at kicking.
As things stand though, lack of widespread cultural familiarity with soccer means that, despite recent relatively good showings by the US women and men, soccer still looks set to be a minority sport in the US.
That’s why it’s so sick that the USA is trying to enforce cultural mores of the USA onto the global game. They seriously want quarters, not halves; they never stop calling squads ‘rosters’; they never stop calling dressing rooms ‘locker rooms’; they think they should own the top European clubs and try and force a closed-shop Superleague on the world.
They really do need to learn that they are 5% of the world’s population and a pretty barbarous 5% at that.
A Cuban immigrant to the USA explained to me that Americans can’t understand admiring a passage of play if it didn’t result in a goal. They expect a reward for each piece of good play. That’s why basketball is so popular.
That’s why it’s so sick that the USA is trying to enforce cultural mores of the USA onto the global game. They seriously want quarters, not halves; they never stop calling squads ‘rosters’; they never stop calling dressing rooms ‘locker rooms’; they think they should own the top European clubs and try and force a closed-shop Superleague on the world.
They really do need to learn that they are 5% of the world’s population and a pretty barbarous 5% at that.
A Cuban immigrant to the USA explained to me that Americans can’t understand admiring a passage of play if it didn’t result in a goal. They expect a reward for each piece of good play. That’s why basketball is so popular.
Americans tend to feel they’re not getting their money’s worth unless there are lots and lots of scores. The thing about soccer is that you can have an absorbing 0-0 finish, and an exasperating 4-3 finish marred by errors.
The rest of the world has an instinctive feel for football, since we’ve all tried it – in the backyard, in the schoolyard, in the park etc.
And, having tried the skills yourself, it gives you an appreciation for 2 things – how simple a game soccer is (“jumpers for goalposts”, almost no kit needed), and how difficult it is to play well.
Without that practical immersion, you may never develop a love for the game.
Many years ago, I was at a corporate event, held in the Dallas Cowboy’s stadium. Tremendous stadium, retractable roof, air-conditioned etc. Obviously, those Y-shaped American football posts. 2 rock bands, lashings of free beer, burgers, and, best of all, a couple of thousand American footballs lying about, so that, instead of being shrived by PowerPoint, we all charged around and had football kicking competitions.
I was middle-aged, and only average at free kicks. But we were gods compared to the American guys. All the non-American blokes (Paddies, Brits, S Americans etc) could kick the ball over the bar from a reasonable distance. Not a single American there could kick snow off a rope. It was genuinely startling. The first American kicker in our informal group, a big fit young lad placed the ball, stepped a few paces back, ran up, swung his foot, and completely missed the ball, before almost falling on his arse! Many more sliced the ball completely sideways.
Initially, I thought they must surely be taking the p, or be drunk, for I had never seen such a woeful exhibition of kicking in all my life. It was pinch-yourself-in-disbelief bad. But on talking to them, I realised they were not drunk at all, and they weren’t messing about. They were trying their best. They just literally had never kicked a ball in their lives before.
People from the rest of the world play soccer, rugby, Aussie rules, Gaelic football etc, and all of these sports required you to be able to kick a ball. American football just has one guy dedicated to kicking, and the rest of them, professional “footballers” need never kick a ball in their lives.
Of course, by now bursting with smugness at being so easily able to school our US friends in the art of place kicking, later in the evening, the tables were turned on us when the competition turned to throwing the ball. We could fling the ball to an average level, not too long and not too accurately, but lots of the US guys could launch it like a rocket, high, dead straight, with pin-point accuracy, and for twice or three times the distance we could. Throwing a ball is part of US culture, and their facility with that skill was obvious – they were as excellent at throwing as they had been dire at kicking.
As things stand though, lack of widespread cultural familiarity with soccer means that, despite recent relatively good showings by the US women and men, soccer still looks set to be a minority sport in the US.
As an American, I have never really been into the sport. That being said, this was beautifully written.
An interesting article but a very stupid title. Football didn’t die after Pele, it just changed. Despite the corruption at FIFA and the state takeover of top European teams, the game as a spectacle at the top level is as good if not better than it was back in 1970.
However the World Cup is no longer the top level as regards quality, that accolade passed to the Champions League a few years ago. The group stages of that competition can be a drag, but once it gets to the knock-out matches, then that is the time to watch the best football in the world today.
An interesting article but a very stupid title. Football didn’t die after Pele, it just changed. Despite the corruption at FIFA and the state takeover of top European teams, the game as a spectacle at the top level is as good if not better than it was back in 1970.
However the World Cup is no longer the top level as regards quality, that accolade passed to the Champions League a few years ago. The group stages of that competition can be a drag, but once it gets to the knock-out matches, then that is the time to watch the best football in the world today.
In short, the grass was greener and the girls were sweeter
Written by a guy that was too young to have witnessed any of that.
Bro, I’m 69 and I’ve seen Pele and Maradona play, but that doesn’t stop me from enjoying Messi’s playing
By the way, Messi is the best dribbler I have ever seen.
Bro, I’m 69 and I’ve seen Pele and Maradona play, but that doesn’t stop me from enjoying Messi’s playing
By the way, Messi is the best dribbler I have ever seen.
Written by a guy that was too young to have witnessed any of that.
In short, the grass was greener and the girls were sweeter
Saldanha, the Brazilian coach for the 1970 World Cup, was crazy and was very likely not sacked because of his left wing politics. These are pure speculations by the author… The truth is, that he didn’t want Pele to play. Pele never cared about politics, but only about the “beautiful game”. Saldanha lied and claimed, Pele was nearly blind and therefore unable to play. This was a huge shock for Pele, as he was desperate to challenge himself at this time in his career, it was all personal for him this time (according to his interview) and not about his beloved Brasil.
Saldanha, the Brazilian coach for the 1970 World Cup, was crazy and was very likely not sacked because of his left wing politics. These are pure speculations by the author… The truth is, that he didn’t want Pele to play. Pele never cared about politics, but only about the “beautiful game”. Saldanha lied and claimed, Pele was nearly blind and therefore unable to play. This was a huge shock for Pele, as he was desperate to challenge himself at this time in his career, it was all personal for him this time (according to his interview) and not about his beloved Brasil.
Hey was not George Best the best ?
No. Next question.
You do have to show up every once in a while a actually play a couple of games. Maybe if he had played for England instead of NI…but he was a drunk, even at that time it was unsustainable.
No. Next question.
You do have to show up every once in a while a actually play a couple of games. Maybe if he had played for England instead of NI…but he was a drunk, even at that time it was unsustainable.
Hey was not George Best the best ?