High Jack

This chapter examines the operations of FIFA in the CONCACAF zone. In this regard, it examines three main areas: (i) the use of public or celebrity type diplomacy, courtesy of David Beckham, as part of the English bid to host the 2018 World Cup; (ii) the blurred nature of the distinction between state and non-state actors in the context of Caribbean soccer, given the fact that a former senior vice president of FIFA was also a senior member of the Government of Trinidad and Tobago; and (iii) the implications of this overlap for the workings of the state and the governance of the game. In addition, it is argued that FIFA has practiced a dark form of soccer diplomacy in this area, be it in relation to state or non-state actors, which has been marked by adherence to its “own rules of the game” to the general detriment of the sport.

“Football More Important Than Berlin”

In the early 1960s Portugal and the Netherlands confronted the problem of East German participation in the UEFA Junior Tournament and Olympic qualification. Although not very important tournaments, domestic governments feared they would cause a public backlash against themselves and NATO should the East Germans not be allowed to participate. These games became tied up with debates over NATO policies, national interest, and public opinion. The popularity of football prompted some states to attempt to use the national interest exception to the East German travel ban. These football matches brought the Cold War into the smaller NATO member states’ national boundaries. By hosting sporting events the Netherlands and Portugal engaged directly with their NATO allies over Cold War policies with which they did not fully agree or which they believed would cause public opinion problems at home and abroad. NATO diplomats, foreign ministries, and the leaders of national and international football federations spent months in protracted negotiations over whether minor football matches involving the German Democratic Republic would even take place during the height of the Cold War as each group attempted to appear blameless in the court of public opinion.

Introduction

Sport and diplomacy have been mutually intertwined in transnational networks of governance and competition—not just on the field of play—and the nongovernmental bodies controlling the sport play an important role within the relationship between soccer and diplomacy. The repeated uses of the game of soccer by so many states across the globe, spanning every continent reveals how integral the sport is to international relations. As soccer has pursued a goal of global engagement to consolidate its position as the world’s preeminent sport in the past century, it has increasingly had to reckon or negotiate with the nation-state. Simultaneously, as state sovereignty has been challenged by the constituent and much-debated forces of globalization, so have longstanding characteristics of soccer’s operation—most notably in a contested relationship between the national, regional, and international level. This introduction addresses those aspects and provides an overview of the book.

“The Finest Ambassadors”

In 1955, the US national soccer team landed at the Keflavik airport in Iceland for a government-sponsored three-match tour for the purposes of building goodwill. The exchange occurred as Icelandic public opinion mounted against the American military presence at Keflavik. With this tour, and a subsequent return tour of the Icelandic national team to the United States the following year, Washington used soccer to deal with the Keflavik situation specifically and the political realities of the region more broadly. The global game possessed a unique ability to cut across political lines, as evidenced in how the tours were mediated by Icelandic newspapers of varying political persuasion. It also explores how strategic mishaps—at the level of both federal and sport governance—were not enough to sully the goodwill-building potential of the venture on the whole.

Sheilas, Wogs, and Poofters in a War Zone

This chapter charts the visit of the Australian football soccer team to South Vietnam in 1967 during the Vietnam War. It scrutinizes the claim made by former captain of the Australian soccer team Johnny Warren that the team was sent with the connivance of the Australian governance to provide a propaganda boost for the South Vietnamese government. The incomplete archival evidence does not substantiate Warren’s claim that the Australian government cynically sent the Australian team to Saigon to firm up the position of the South Vietnamese government. Despite his position in Australia, Warren has been influenced by American debates about the legacy of Vietnam. This fits a wider pattern whereby Australians have conflated the American experience of Vietnam with their own when coming to grips with Vietnam.

The World Cup Is Ours!

As part of his broader efforts to improve Brazil’s position within the international system, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Lula) frequently invoked a rhetoric about national identity that relied heavily on football. These efforts helped Brazil win the right to host the 2014 World Cup, and Lula and his successor, Dilma Rousseff, continued to utilize rhetoric that emphasized a mythical Brazilian identity as well as the valuable legacies for the country from hosting this mega-event. Whereas this language may have helped achieve the diplomatic goals of the Workers’ Party presidents within the international system and FIFA, this rhetoric failed to persuade the domestic population, resulting in widespread protests and significant challenges inside the country. Nonetheless, by evoking rhetorical myth and elevating it within diplomatic endeavors, Presidents Lula and Rousseff used football and the hosting of the 2014 FIFA World Cup as a form of representation of identity and national policy, projecting a specific image of Brazil abroad to help achieve the goals of expanding and enhancing the country’s status.

Creating Football Diplomacy in the French Third Republic, 1914–1939

In 1920, the French Ministry for Foreign Affairs created a special section within its propaganda services in the aims of fighting the image of a postwar exhausted France, utilizing soccer within its efforts. This section created a soccer diplomacy and contributed to spreading French influence despite the weakness of French football and French decline in the 1930s. This chapter exposes and explains the contradiction and the paradox of this kind of soccer diplomacy. French diplomats began to understand that soccer matches and competitions were a new and sometimes efficient way to spread propaganda or to analyze the evolution of international relations in the interwar period. Yet, despite the dynamism of the sport and tourism service at its beginning, the government gave little financial help to the French Football Federation, especially when France organized the World Cup in 1938. The French state’s support of football within international relations in the 1930s demonstrates the challenges of soccer diplomacy. Even with the creation of a specific branch of the foreign ministry that focused on sport, international matches and major events such as the 1938 FIFA World Cup reveal the limits of the ambitions of this kind of soccer diplomacy.

“Because We Have Nothing”

The case of the 1962 World Cup sheds light on the relationship between the global Cold War and local popular culture in Latin America. Matches between teams from different sides of the Iron Curtain provoked commentaries on life in the Soviet Union and the possible advantages of state-controlled economies. It spoke volumes about the political scenario in Chile rather than in the United States or the Soviet Union. At the same time, football directors navigated Cold War divisions within FIFA to procure their support for Chile’s bid to host the Cup. When hoping to sway the Eastern bloc countries, directors emphasized the vibrant Chilean labor movement and respect for Socialist and Communist parties. This strategy paid off, garnering the vote of both the Soviet Union and the United States. The reluctance of the conservative Chilean government of Jorge Alessandri to invest in the event made it clear that Alessandri had little interest in using the World Cup to promote a political agenda. Nonetheless, the World Cup of 1962 demonstrates how informal actors understood themselves as ambassadors, debated the Cold War, and rendered sport a site of political performance.

Football, Diplomacy, and International Relations during Francoism, 1937–1975

Throughout the decades under Franco, Spanish foreign policy often used football as a diplomatic tool. In a totalitarian system where sport was subject to political government interests, football allowed the regime to show a positive image of Spain, favoring its progressive integration into the European context. Before the end of the Spanish Civil War in April 1939, Francoism started to implement a new model of sports politics. Franco understood that this activity might be a benefit to his international legitimation, an aid to the political control of the Spanish society, and a propaganda tool. Spain experienced a radical ostracism from the international sporting context during this period, reducing its international football relations to those countries ideologically close to Francoism such as Germany, Italy, and Portugal.

Playing on the Same Team

This chapter highlights how states have utilized football as a signal to the international community of a new status—using soccer as a rite of passage or power. This theoretical chapter considers different models for thinking about how sport and diplomacy or soccer and diplomacy fit together, particularly how they mirror broader themes in diplomatic history. For those used to studying the history of diplomacy, much about soccer will seem familiar. The structure of international soccer lends itself well to international relations scholars’ preference for utilizing three levels of analysis: the international, national, and individual, and FIFA’s structure is akin to the United Nations General Assembly, granting each member one vote.