Outcasts!

Steve Menary

Description

'Outcasts! The Lands That FIFA Forgot' examines the much tarnished reputation of FIFA, the governing body of world football, and just how they justify the exclusion of some 'nations' from their organisation while welcoming others. For two years, Steve Menary traced the incredible journeys of the teams that FIFA refuse to recognise - either for reasons of political expediency, or because FIFA just believed they could not compete with the likes of Montserrat on the world stage. Intrigued by just why anyone would want to play for such no hoper 'nations', he became drawn into a scene which surprised him in its positive approach to both the beautiful game and nationalism, and eventually resulted in the FIFI (Federation of International Football Independents) 'Wild Cup', featuring teams from officially non-existent countries such as Zanzibar, Greenland, Tibet and Northern Cyprus, being successfully staged in Germany prior to the FIFA World Cup in 2006. Along the way, he discovered the dentist from Greenland who risked his career to play for his 'country', the pitch battle amongst kit manufacturers to sponsor the Tibetan national football team and why the Gibraltan 'national' football team might just force an end to centuries of dispute over the rock between Britain and Spain.

Sujets

• World Cup

Informations

• Publié par: Pitch Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 30 novembre 2007
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781909178403
• Langue: English

Extrait

OUTCASTS:
The Lands That Fifa Forgot
Shortlisted for the 2008 Football Book of the Year prize
by Steve Menary
http://outcasts-book.blogspot.com/
© Steve Menary 2008, 2012
The right of Steve Menary to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
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First published in eBook format in 2012
Pitch Publishing A2 Yeoman Gate Yeoman Way Durrington BN13 3QZ www.pitchpublishing.co.uk
eISBN: 978-1-909178-40-3
eBook conversion by eBookPartnership.com
INTERNATIONAL
Adj 1. existing or occurring between two nations 2. agreed on or used by all of many nations Noun 1. Brit a game or contest between teams from different countries 2. Brit a player who has taken part in a contest between teams from different countries 3. (International) any of four nations founded between (1864-1936) to promote socialism or communism
Oxford English Dictionary 2006
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book would not have been possible without help from a number of people, who I would like to thank – in particular Gavin Hamilton at World Soccer for commissioning work that enabled me to research large sections.
Thanks also to Brian Oliver at The Observer and Andy Lyons at When Saturday Comes , who commissioned work that helped write this book as did Jens Sejer Anderson, who also asked me to speak on the same subject at the 2005 Play the Game conference in Copenhagen.
A big thank-you to Allison Heller at Housebuilder, Emma Crates at Construction News and Tracey McVeigh at The Observer , who all commissioned journalism un-related to this book but which helped pay for some of the trips to find the teams covered here.
Thanks to Mark Cruickshank for kindly supplying the results section included here; to Soren Andersen, Jennifer Tennant and Rafael Maranhao for their translations; and Arnon, Slavic and Massimo for their great company at the ELF Cup. Also thanks to Jean Luc Kit and Christian Michelis at the NF Board; Andreas Herren at Fifa; Andrin Cooper at the FA; Thomas Helseth at the Norwegian Embassy in London; Brian Partington at the Island Games Association and Steffen Frahm and Bastian Kaufhold at the Wild Cup.
In individual places, I am very grateful for the help from: Jens Brinch, Jens Tang Olesen and Irene Jeppson at Sermitsiaq (Greenland); Peter Coleman and Vince Stravino (North Mariana); Patrick Watts (Falklands); Michael Nybrandt (Tibet); Joseph Nunez (Gibraltar); Pèire Costa (Occitània); Cengiz Uzun (Northern Cyprus); and Ante Jovna Gaup, Leif Isak Nilut, Hakan Kuorak (Sápmi).
I would also like to thank the photographers who supplied images – Ante-Jovna Gaup; Chris Burke; FIFI/Corbis; Max Hamilton and The Shetland Times – plus Claire Faragher; Andy Stevens for his proof-reading skills; Tom Green for his help with the website and Adrian Chiles and David Conn for giving this book some credibility
Finally, a big thank-you for the cover and many of the photos and much else to Chris Burke and the biggest thank-you of all to Simon Lowe for being willing to publish this book.
CONTENTS
Introduction by David Conn
Foreword by Adrian Chiles
Preface
Chapter 1: The World According To Fifa
Chapter 2: The Channel Island Divide
Chapter 3: The NF Board
Chapter 4: Greenland On Tour
Chapter 5: The Falklands Conflict
Chapter 6: The Island Games
Chapter 7: The Isle Of Man In Europe
Chapter 8: Between A Rock And A Hard Place: Gibraltar
Chapter 9: The Turkish Republic Of Northern Cyprus
Chapter 10: The Language Of Football: Occitània
Chapter 11: Monaco
Chapter 12: And Then There Was One: Kosovo
Chapter 13: The Wild Cup
Chapter 14: Africans Out In The Cold: Zanzibar
Chapter 15: Tibet and The Kaos Pilot
Chapter 16: The Viva World Cup
Chapter 17: The Football Missionaries Of North Mariana
Chapter 18: The World Cup That Didn't Exist
Chapter 19: Football As Religion: The Vatican
Chapter 20: Tribal Football: The Sami
Results
Appendices
Sources
The Cast
Introduction
by David Conn
There are so many fascinating stories in this book that, as a football commentator might say, it is difficult to pick out the highlights. Perhaps the most significant phrase of all is one written almost in passing in chapter five, the fascinating account of football's place in the life and history of those blasted islands, the Falklands. Describing the moment it dawns on the manager, Patrick Watts, that his ecstatic match commentary is useless because he has lost his connection to Port Stanley where there has been a power cut, Steve Menary writes that "as the only journalist there", he thought it would be only decent to lend Watts his tape recorder.
That phrase is clearly written not to boast of the extreme lengths travelled to produce this engaging, warm and human story of football in the outer reaches of the world. It was just a fact. Steve Menary has gone to the places other journalists have never reached, and returned to write his far-reaching book. No other journalists felt that the Island Games tournament in the Shetlands was one which need trouble their diaries, but in this book the most important stories are the ones flung far from the great clubs and nations which fill the back pages.
Like the best sports or football books, this one places the game, and its universal, great appeal, in the widest context – charting, unexpectedly at times, great social and historical events, swirling around what might be simple tales of 22 men and a ball. It says a great deal about the connectedness of the modern world, and football's central place in it, that a book about the most obscure corners of human habitation can discover so much that feels centrally relevant. A great deal is revealed by these small communities' relationships with the great countries around them, and anybody who has ever played or supported football will recognise the same passions and tensions in the game being played out on the Shetland Isles as at Wembley, Hampden Park or anywhere.
Steve Menary is a journalist with a great capacity for research and chasing down the relevant facts, and here he has applied that appetite to the most ambitious of targets: world football, at its edges. For readers who want to know their writers have given them 100%, there will be no doubts here. Beyond the sheer lengths gone to witness and understand what football means in the lands that Fifa forgot, he has also delivered an absorbing, engaging and thought-provoking account of the miracle which is football itself, a common language in a close, divided world at the beginning of the 21st century.
Foreword
by Adrian Chiles
I write this in a close season. It could be any close season in British football. The weather's rubbish and there is nothing but transfer news and speculation in the newspapers. The facile annual merry-go-round of footballers endlessly changing loyalties is well underway. Oh yes, and a famous footballer who recently became a father has been caught with his pants down in a hotel somewhere with some woman he met in a casino, or something.
The big clubs are firmly stamping their carbon footprints down on money-spinning tours on other continents. Some of the smaller clubs are paying big bucks to some famous foreign teams to come over and field disinterested second strings in pre-season friendlies.
We idly wonder who'll do well in the coming season but any accountant could tell us who's going to finish where. All they have to do is write down a list of clubs in order of how big their wage bills are. At the end of the season the league table, in any division, will more or less exactly match the accountant's list.
So where is the soul of football? I think it's in this book. For sure, there's something magnificent in the big players, big teams, the big championships and the monstrously beautiful stadiums. But nothing ever moves me so much on planet football as the sight, from the air, of a pitch scratched out on some unsuitable earth. I saw one in Bosnia once, in the middle of the war. And in South Africa too, 20 years ago. Even, often, on some crappy scrap of ground in a rougher part of Glasgow, Hull, Clapham Common or wherever
The stories in this book of these countries' attempts to make their way in the lower reaches of Fifa's consciousness are movingly analogous to all those pitches carved so determinedly into the ground.
Preface
This is a story of jealousy, excuses, death, collusion, nepotism, political intrigue, bitterness, war and shenanigans and mal-administration; all in the name of football. It is full of ludicrous desires, dedication beyond belief, egos, one-upmanship and attempts to achieve the impossible.
But it is also a story of the triumph of humanity over despotism, spirit over administrative constriction and the expression of nationality in the purest sense over politically-drawn boundaries. Football is a sport which has been consumed by politicking, consumerism and money for much of our times. The process of writing this book brought me, over two years, into contact with hundreds of people who play the game for the very best of reasons – for the love of the game itself. That they do so in order to express some kind of national identity, barred by the powers-that-be, made the task all the more joyful.
Some of the people I met were incredible characters with amazing personal stories who rejoice