Sports and Violence: - History, Theory, and Practice

Sports and Violence

Sports and Violence:

History, Theory, and Practice

Edited by

Craig Hovey, Myles Werntz

and John B. White

Sports and Violence: History, Theory, and Practice

Edited by Craig Hovey, Myles Werntz and John B. White

This book first published 2017

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

and contributors

All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,

electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without

the prior permission of the copyright owner.

ISBN (10): 1-4438-1687-6

ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-1687-8

CONTENTS

Contributors ............................................................................................... vii

Introduction ................................................................................................ ix

I. Sports and Violence: The Historical Record

Chapter One ................................................................................................. 2

The Ugly Side of the Beautiful Game: Picturing Violence in Soccer

Daniel Haxall

Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 22

Shattered Nerves and Broken Bodies: Violence in Intercollegiate Football

and Automotive Racing during America’s Progressive Era

Brian M. Ingrassia

Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 35

Wheel Violence: The Perils of Bicycling, Past and Present

Duncan R. Jamieson

Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 48

The Mesoamerican Ballgame: Sport and Violence in the Beginning

Matt O’Mansky

II. Sports and Violence: Theoretical Approaches

Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 68

Dribbling on the Grave of bin Laden: Intercultural and International

Violence in the Carrier Classic

Raymond I. Schuck

Chapter Six ................................................................................................ 82

The Violence of Everyone and No One: Sport and Banality

John B. White and Myles Werntz

Contents

Chapter Seven............................................................................................ 95

Eliminating Bare Knuckle Fighting from NHL Hockey:

A Kantian Argument against Self-Mutilation

Matt Stolick

III. Sports and Violence: Empirical Assessment

Chapter Eight ........................................................................................... 118

Bullying in Professional Sports

Mark Hamilton

Chapter Nine............................................................................................ 129

“Killer Slides” in Major League Baseball: On-field Violence

and Entertainment Value on Sport

Brian H. Yim, Theresa Walton-Fisette, and James Tunney

Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 145

Aggression On and Off the Field: A Survey of Student Athletes’

Behaviors and Perspectives

Lori L. Braa

Chapter Eleven ........................................................................................ 157

Traversing Hegemonic Masculinity in Athletics

Dessie Clark

CONTRIBUTORS

Lori L. Braa is Assistant Professor of Sport Business at the University of

Mount Union.

Dessie Clark is a doctoral student at Michigan State University.

Mark Hamilton is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Ashland

University.

Daniel Haxall is Associate Professor of Art and Art History at Kutztown

University of Pennsylvania.

Craig Hovey is Associate Professor of Religion at Ashland University

and Executive Director of the Ashland Center for Nonviolence.

Brian M. Ingrassia is Assistant Professor of History at the West Texas

A&M University.

Duncan R. Jamieson is Professor of History at Ashland University.

Matt O’Mansky is Associate Professor in the department of Sociology,

Anthropology, and Gerontology at Youngstown State University.

Raymond I. Schuck is Associate Professor of Communication at

Bowling Green State University Firelands.

Matt Stolick is Professor of Philosophy at University of Findlay.

James Tunney is a graduate student at Kent State University.

Theresa A. Walton-Fisette is Associate Professor of Cultural Studies at

Kent State University.

Myles Werntz is assistant professor of Christian Ethics and Practical

Theology and T.B. Maston Chair of Christian Ethics at Logsdon

Seminary, Hardin-Simmons University

Contributors

viii

John B. White is Assistant Professor of Practical Theology and Faculty

Director of the Youth Spirituality and Sports Institute at George W. Truett

Theological Seminary of Baylor University.

Brian H. Yim is Assistant Professor of Sport Administration at Kent State

University.

INTRODUCTION

On the heels of recent media attention to concussions in American football

and domestic violence in the National Football League, there is currently

great interest among coaches and athletes at all levels, as well as many

others, to come to practical terms with violence associated with

competitive contact sports. There are, moreover, questions about the

relationship between sports violence and other habits and behaviors

among athletes and spectators, the formation of virtue in sports, moral

education in sports, and the intersection of sports, gender, and violence. In

some cases, sports function to inculcate virtue and channel aggression as

an alternative to conflict. This analogy, following some theorists, holds

true within spectators as well, who through their support of the aggression

on the field cathartically direct their passion into their support of the

game. These positive effects stand alongside other descriptions of sports

as producing “casualties of war” such as injured (especially concussed)

players with a determination to “play through it,” often leading to long-

term effects for the players.

With the growing attention given to topics such as these, this volume

fills a pivotal need. The questions, first of all arise at the level of culture.

From the international broadcaster ESPN, which regularly features stories

about the physical trauma of sports, to recent films such as Rush,

Concussion, Creed, and Southpaw, which turn on the violence of their

respective sports, there is an increasing necessity to examine the ways in

which our most valued sports are deeply dependent upon forms of

violence. As we saw in the 2016 Olympics, the question of the physical

sacrifices which accompany sports once again became a pressing one. But

even beyond the Olympics, these questions of how to appreciate athletic

excellence while also dealing with the violence which often accompanies

it, continue to be asked. In scholarly study as well, the relationship

between sports and violence is an increasingly important one. From

historians to sociologists to cultural ethnographers, sport is more and more

recognized as an underexplored cultural expression of value. Beyond

scholars, the question of sports violence is one which lingers at every

level, from professional to youth sports, as increasing numbers of people

have begun more critically to examine the way in which sports both

involves and encourages violence.

Introduction

This edited collection arises out of the 2016 Sports and Violence

Conference hosted by the Ashland Center for Nonviolence at Ashland

University (Ohio, United States). It contains 11 essays authored by an

interdisciplinary group of scholars reflecting on the confluence of violence

within organized sports. The three sections of book (history, theory, and

practice) create a full-scale exploration of this topic. The authors not only

detail past phenomena of sports violence, but offer ethnographic and

sociological explorations of the violence of sports, alongside philosophical

treatments of sports violence.

Some of the essays in these pages also explore the relationship

between violence and sports beyond violence within sport itself. They go

on to analyze how sport fosters and/or mitigates violence outside of sports

and how audiences and spectators contribute to and are shaped by the

practice of sports. By describing the effects of violence in sports beyond

simply its effects on athletes, the authors treat a wider range of sports,

from American football to soccer, boxing, mixed martial arts, and auto

racing.

We believe this volume will be of interest to two primary groups. The

first group consists of scholars and practitioners working in various areas

of sports and sports research, ranging from sociologists and historians to

those working with student athletes in academic settings. The second

group consists of practitioners who work more directly with athletes, such

as sports chaplains, athletics officials, and athletic trainers. By treating not

only history, but the theory and practice of the relationship between sports

and violence, our hope is that this volume will be a useful and welcome

contribution to the field.

PORTS AND VIOLENCE:

HE HISTORICAL RECORD

CHAPTER ONE

HE UGLY SIDE OF THE BEAUTIFUL GAME:

PICTURING VIOLENCE IN SOCCER

ANIEL HAXALL

In 1945, George Orwell famously wrote: “Serious sport has nothing to do

with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard

of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it

is war minus the shooting.”

While Orwell perceptively understood the

symbolic value of athletic competition, he overlooked the literal violence

engendered by sport. In some instances this occurs within the rules of

competition, particularly in “contact” sports like ice hockey and American

football, but other games possess their own codes of aggression and

hostility. Despite being hailed as the “beautiful game,” the sport of soccer

has long been plagued by violence, including clashes between fans and

combative athletes on the pitch. At times this violence includes shooting,

with the legendary “death match” in the Ukraine during World War II, and

La Guerra de Fútbol staged between Honduras and El Salvador in 1969,

proving that soccer and war often coexist.

While the topic has received

attention from sociologists and sport historians, this chapter offers a

unique perspective by examining the ways artists represent soccer and its

capacity for violence. As the world’s most popular sport, soccer appears

as a frequent subject throughout art history, and artists often employ the

game to symbolize a range of social and political issues, including

soccer’s volatile potency. By considering the international contemporary

The Office of Grants and Sponsored Projects and Department of Art and Art

History at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania supported this project.

The sport of “soccer” is commonly called “football” throughout the world; as

such both terms are employed interchangeably throughout this essay. A direct

statement will indicate if American gridiron football is being referenced, otherwise

all discussions of soccer or football should be considered analogous.

George Orwell, “The Sporting Spirit,” Tribune (14 December 1945).

For more on these events, see: Andy Dougan, Dynamo: Triumph and Tragedy in

Nazi-Occupied Kiev (Guilford: Lyons, 2001); Ryszard Kapuściński, The Soccer

War, trans. William Brand (1986; New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991).

The Ugly Side of the Beautiful Game: Picturing Violence in Soccer

scene, this study explores the charged emotional and physical climates

surrounding mass sport, focusing on the unique fervor associated with

soccer.

Fan violence and stadium unrest

One word has come to represent the notorious reputation of soccer fans

throughout the world: hooligan. This term conjures images of bloody

fights between rival fans, vandalism in the stadium and its surrounding

community, pitch invasions by supporters storming the field to disrupt

play, and vitriolic songs and chants exchanged on the terraces. Soccer has

been plagued by such behavior for decades, and as this summer’s

European championships proved, hooliganism remains a problem in

Europe. In recent years, the hooligan has been studied by academics,

featured in popular films and memoirs such as Green Street Hooligans

and Among the Thugs,

and received attention from artists who represent

the motivations and behavior of fanatics and violent fans.

Like many British children, Mark Wallinger grew up a football fan and

several of his artworks confront the causes and effects of unrest among

soccer supporters during the 1980s, the height of crowd trouble in the

English game. In Where There’s Muck (1985), Wallinger arranged ten

sheets of plywood in an irregular manner on the gallery wall, covering

each panel with charcoal drawings based on art history. (See Figure 1)

These include Thomas Gainsborough’s portrait of affluent land barons in

the eighteenth century and a nineteenth century image of a peasant

working as a live scarecrow. The title of the work stems from an old

English adage about the profits available within difficult jobs, however

only the lower class “scarecrow” performs such dirty labor and the

gentleman farmer maintains a healthy distance from menial tasks. The

contrasting images of wealth, privilege, and lifestyle become magnified by

Wallinger’s act of spray-painting “ALBION” across the panels.

Referencing fans of English football club West Bromwich Albion, this

Simon Kuper, Football against the Enemy (London: Orion, 1994); Gary

Armstrong and Richard Giulianotti, eds., Fear and Loathing in World Football

(Oxford and New York: Berg, 2001); Eric Dunning, Patrick Murphy, Ivan

Waddington, and Antonios E. Astrinakis, eds., Fighting Fans: Football

Hooliganism as a World Phenomenon (Dublin: University College of Dublin

Press, 2002).

Green Street Hooligans, directed by Lexi Alexander (2005; Burbank: Warner

Home Video, 2006), DVD; Bill Buford, Among the Thugs (London: Secker &

Warburg, 1990).

Chapter One

Figure 1: Mark Wallinger, Where There’s Muck, 1985. Plywood, charcoal,

corrugated iron, cellulose paint, 335 x 700 cm (131 x 275 ½ in). Tate Modern,

London.

graffiti appears in the shade of blue associated with the Conservative Party

who, in the 1980s, attempted to impose severe restrictions on soccer fans

they considered unruly hooligans.

Many criticized these efforts as rooted

in class politics, with Thatcher’s government punishing the same

demographic who suffered under, and protested, her economic policies.

Thus, the disconnect between the working class and Gainsborough’s

landed gentry parallels that of Albion supporters and Thatcherites, with

Wallinger suggesting the socioeconomic and political motivations of

disaffected citizenry and disenfranchised fans.

Such connotations became more pronounced in Wallinger’s National

Trust (1985), a three-part series of cruciform plywood panels covered with

drawings based on George Stubbs’ paintings of eighteenth century

laborers and photographs of the Heysel Stadium disaster of 1985. Stubbs

was popular for his picturesque compositions of animals and rural life, yet

Wallinger extracted the sections of his work featuring workers toiling

under the supervision of a mounted boss. The oak leaf logo of the National

Trust, the British conservancy agency dedicated to historic buildings and

natural ecosystems, appears on two of these panels, with the word

“Jerusalem” positioned in the central section. The Jerusalem promised by

name or deed escapes Wallinger and his working class protagonists, with

Martin Herbert, Mark Wallinger (London: Thames & Hudson, 2011), 14.

The Ugly Side of the Beautiful Game: Picturing Violence in Soccer

the artist critical of the “theme parks” created by the National Trust during

a time of war in the Falklands, industrial strikes in the north, and housing

crises throughout the United Kingdom.

Here, footballing violence again

symbolizes inequity and class exploitation as Wallinger drew some of the

thirty-nine soccer fans killed during the 1985 European Cup Final at

Heysel Stadium in Brussels. This tragedy occurred when Liverpool

supporters attacked Juventus fans, and substandard policing and stadium

infrastructure allowed a deadly crush to ensue. While most of the blame

and legal responsibility was levied towards the British crowds, Belgian

officials and police officers were charged with manslaughter for

negligence. Heysel was one of several disasters where deplorable stadium

conditions and inadequate security rendered fans helpless to avoid

suffocation, stampede, or fire in the stands.

Ultimately, Wallinger linked

such conditions to broader class struggles unfolding within Thatcher’s

England and Europe as a whole, and sport provided one outlet for

expressing dissent, whether through graffiti or physical altercation.

Where Wallinger linked fan violence to class conflict, Lyle Ashton

Harris explored the tribalism performed at soccer stadiums during his

fellowship at the American Academy in Rome in 2001.

While

documenting games in Italy, the artist captured the intersecting displays of

masculinity, class, and power that occurred on match days.

His

subsequent black-and-white prints depict riot police as they monitor fan

behavior, and throughout these images Harris locates intense gazes in his

subjects, particularly the focus of authorities as they survey the crowds. In

two photographs, uniformed officers wear helmets and carry batons, and

in each, a guardsman looks away from the camera towards a threat outside

the picture plane. The point of view adopted by Harris conveys the tension

at the stadium as he worked at field level and photographed his subjects

from below. This perspective generates a claustrophobic horizon with the

Ibid., 17-22.

For an overview of fan troubles in European soccer in the 1970s-90s, including

Heysel, see David Goldblatt, “If This is Football, Let It Die: The European Crisis,

1947-1990”, in The Ball is Round: a Global History of Football (London: Viking,

2006), 543-605.

For a discussion of Lyle Ashton Harris’ use of soccer to represent masculinity

and class, see my, “Pitch Invasion: Football, contemporary art and the African

diaspora,” Soccer & Society 16, nos. 2-3 (March-May 2015): 259-281.

Cassandra Coblentz, “Multiplicities and Singularities: Lyle Ashton Harris Takes

a Picture,” in Lyle Ashton Harris: Blow Up, ed. Cassandra Coblentz (Scottsdale:

Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art; New York: Gregory R. Miller & Co.,

2008), 49-50.

Chapter One

entire visual field of each photograph engulfed in crowds extending

beyond the frame. The nightsticks, visors, and other security measures of

the police force reinforce the threat of violence, and Harris juxtaposed

these portraits with wide-angle pans of Ultras, or extreme fan groups, in

Verona and other locales. Flags and banners, some of which declare the

soccer club to be the “love of my life”, are held aloft by spectators, while

other images detail fans climbing the fences constructed to keep hooligans

at bay. These photographs are populated almost solely by men, some

shirtless and others festooned in their club’s colors, linking the potential of

civil unrest with a performative masculinity centered around local

allegiance, synchronized chanting, and one-upmanship.

Where Harris positions us below the ultras in the stands, Ferdinando

Scianna assumed a bird’s eye view while photographing a clash between

(See Figure 2) Buenos Aires, Argentina. A member of the celebrated

photographic collective Magnum, Scianna frequently documents soccer

throughout the world, capturing the global game in Africa, South

America, and Europe. Some of his photos show humble pickup games in

small villages while others capture skirmishes among fans in Italy. His

series of images from 2002 depict riots between ultras of the team

Chacarita Juniors and police officers, demonstrating the boldness of fans

and severity of authorities. Perched above a fenced-in promenade at the

ground level of the stadium, Scianna sequentially presents a group of men

confronting police who retaliate with billy clubs. The dark uniforms of the

officers contrast with the bare skin of the shirtless crowd, and many of the

security force are photographed in the act of swinging their batons. One

shot isolates a bloodied officer striking a detainee while the next image

shows the fan prone on the asphalt. In another photograph, a father hurries

his daughter past the scene, holding his arm around her to provide

protection. The events captured by Scianna were hardly isolated incidents

for the barra brava of Chicarita Juniors, as their fans have a notorious

reputation following many brawls with rival fans and police.

In 2014,

hooligans loyal to Chicarita Juniors killed a player from an opposing team,

attacking him in the parking lot after a contentious match was abandoned

due to violence on the pitch. Franco Nieto’s murder represented the

fifteenth death in soccer-related incidents in Argentina that year.

This

portfolio represents the extreme brutality of fan culture, and when

Sam Kelly, “Barras boys,” When Saturday Comes 271 (September 2009): 38.

“Argentine footballer Franco Nieto dies after attack,” BBC (4 December 2014):

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-30329576.

The Ugly Side of the Beautiful Game: Picturing Violence in Soccer

juxtaposed with Scianna’s other work of children playing football,

exposes the contradictions inherent in the beautiful game.

Figure 2: Ferdinando Scianna, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Cacharita football

supporters rioting in Concha de San Lorenzo during the match with Boca Juniors

and Cacharita, April 2002. © Ferdinando Scianna/Magnum Photos.

Mexican artist Gonzalo Lebrija similarly adopted a bird’s eye

perspective when capturing crowd disturbance in his video, Aranjuez

(2002). Lebrija filmed groups of men piled into violent scrums from his

apartment outside Guadalajara’s Estadio Jalisco, and as the slow motion

footage unfolds, the masses disperse to reveal women being groped and

harassed by male soccer fans, many of them wearing the green jersey of

the Mexican national team. These women are isolated, greatly

outnumbered, and fight to repel the outstretched arms of their molesters.

The camera focuses on one victim who is able to escape, only to have men

slap her buttocks as she flees. Accompanying the video is a high tempo

rendition of the Concierto de Aranjuez performed by Herb Alpert and the

Tijuana Brass, an American ensemble popular in the 1960s for playing

Latin music despite having no Hispanic members. Lebrija created a jarring

juxtaposition with horrific scenes of sexual harassment accompanied by

the peppy, disco-infused soundtrack. According to Carlos Ashida and

Baudelio Lara, the artist selected the score because the composer, Joaquín

Rodrigo, was inspired by Goya’s paintings of bullfights as well as the

Chapter One

festival of San Fermin in Pamplona that features the running of the bulls.

In this way, Aranjuez evokes a Latin sensibility but more importantly,

connects contemporary fan behavior to historic rituals and public

unruliness. Curators from the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de

Monterrey linked these actions to an “excess of euphoria,” where

“passions are unleashed in the environment of a celebration and violence.”

This display of power ultimately becomes a “collective apotheosis that

crosses the delicate line between popular merriment and violence.”

Indeed, the football fans in these images of violence—Wallinger’s

vandals, Harris’ ultras, Scianna’s rioters, and Lebrija’s chauvinists—each

enact forms of control over their antagonists, whether the upper class,

police, rival fans, or women. The struggle for power, and means of

rehearsing it publicly, occurs at the stadium, with soccer matches the

occasion for mass gatherings and disorderly conduct.

Violence on the pitch

Action on the pitch often incites fan behavior and vice versa. Many artists

represent the beauty and artistry of the game, but they also show how

competition can turn violent. For example, in Marc Fromm’s wooden

sculpture, Hit the Road Jack (2004), two rough-hewn footballers compete

on an artificial pitch, with one executing a slide tackle that sends his

opponent soaring through the air. (See Figure 3) The defender’s contorted

torso and outstretched leg suggests the sweeping motion that felled the

other contestant, while a repeating ball evokes its flight during the

encounter. Fromm left the athletes largely anonymous with no suggestion

of jerseys to render team affiliations in the unpainted carving. Some of the

athletes’ limbs remain bare tree stalks with bark intact, yet the artist

carefully modeled and painted Nike and Adidas cleats, distinguishing the

combatants by their corporate sponsorship. The violence of the play is

heightened by the expressive yell released by the victim of the tackle,

whom has one leg “hacked” off abruptly with no indication of his foot or

cleat. This double entendre stems from the vocabulary applied to sports,

where soccer players are “hacked” or “cut down” in the penalty box. As

such, Fromm’s decision to immortalize a foul—the ball is nowhere near

the play—challenges a tradition of sports monuments that typically

Carlos Ashida and Baudelio Lara, Gonzalo Lebrija: R75/5 Toaster (Paris:

Galerie Laurent Godin / Onestar Press, 2008), 140.

Patrick Charpenel, Mauricio Maillé, and Mauricio Ortiz, Futbol: arte y passion

(Monterrey: Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, 2012), 22.

The Ugly Side of the Beautiful Game: Picturing Violence in Soccer

celebrate heroic victories and noble deeds. Where many are cast in bronze

or carved in marble and set atop a classical plinth, Fromm’s piece is

crudely fashioned of wood and cheap Astroturf and set on a plain wooden

table. This unusual ode to the slide tackle recalls notorious episodes from

soccer history, notably the horrific injury suffered by Ewald Lienen of

Arminia Bielefeld, when Norbert Siegmann of Weder Bremen gashed

Lienen’s thigh with a kick, exposing his muscles and bone. This incident

occurred when the artist was ten years old in 1981, and as Jan Nicolaisen

and Andreas Höll note, “This horrible image scarred the collective

unconsciousness, and is the total antithesis of the game that is marketed

these days as family-friendly and easy entertainment.”

Figure 3: Marc Fromm, Hit the Road Jack, 2004. Alderwood, polychrome painted

wood sculpture, 105 x 102 x 79.5 cm (with table). Courtesy of the artist.

Jan Nicolaisen and Andreas Höll, “Catalogue: Marc Fromm,” in Ballkünstler,

ed. Hans-Werner Schmidt (Bielefeld/Leipzig: Kerber Verlag, 2006), 74.

Chapter One

While Lienen’s injury might remain one of the more graphic examples

of violence between footballers, Zinedine Zidane’s headbutt of Marco

Materazzi during the 2006 men’s World Cup final is perhaps the most

infamous. An icon for leading France to World Cup and European

championships, Zidane was ejected in the final match of his career after he

struck the Italian defender. This assault was broadcast to over one billion

people around the world and cemented Zidane’s reputation for being

quick-tempered; he was issued fourteen red cards throughout his career.

The stakes of the match, bizarreness of the incident, and complicated

identity of Zidane rendered the headbutt culturally significant and a range

of artists and writers produced work about the event.

Adel Abdessemed

created perhaps the most surprising monument to Zidane, crafting a 5-

meter tall bronze statue of the headbutt. This sculpture towers over the

public and offers an ironic celebration of what the artist called Zidane’s

“moment of weakness.”

Abdessemed considered Zidane a compatriot

since he is Algerian and the footballer was born to Algerian immigrants in

France, yet the nature of this nationalistic connection remains problematic.

The artist undermines the grand rhetoric of sculpture by honoring defeat

rather than victory (Zidane’s team would lose the match after his

expulsion), and viewers wonder whether the artist admires Zidane’s

aggression and condones his behavior. Indeed, Abdessemed’s statue

received considerable criticism, from French school districts concerned

that its appearance at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris set a bad

example for children, as well as citizens of Qatar who protested its display

in Doha as idolatrous and inflammatory towards Islamic culture.

For a discussion of artworks that consider Zidane within the contexts of

immigration, colonialism, Muslim identity, and globalization, see my, “From

Galáctico to Head Butt: Globalization, Immigration and the Politics of Identity in

Artistic Representations of Zidane,” in Football and the Boundaries of History:

Critical Studies in Soccer, eds. Brenda Elsey and Stanislao Pugliese (London:

Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).

Adel Abdessemed, as quoted in Margherita Dessanay, “Adel Abdessemed: Art

with a Hammer,” Elephant 14 (Spring 2013): 93.

Adam Sage, “Fans furious as Zidane’s moment of madness is immortalized by

artist,” The Times (23 October 2012): 30-31; Robert Mackey, “Qatar Removes

Statue of Zidane’s Head Butt After Complaints,” The Lede: New York Times (30

October 2013): http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/30/qatar-removes-statue-

of-zidanes-head-butt-after-complaints/; Victoria Scott, “QMA moves Zidane head-

butt statue from Corniche to Mathaf,” Doha News (28 October 2013):

http://dohanews.co/qma-moves-zidane-head-butt-statue-from-corniche-to-mathaf/.

The Ugly Side of the Beautiful Game: Picturing Violence in Soccer

While Abdessemed drew his inspiration from the sporting incident and

not the various issues projected onto it,

Hassan Musa considered the

headbutt a postcolonial tour de force. In a series of artworks about the

clash between Zidane and Materazzi, Musa recast the footballers as

Delacroix’s famous painting, Jacob Wrestling the Angel (1861). (See Figure

4) In addition, he incorporated design elements from Asafo war flags into

the perimeter of his paintings and prints, symbolically linking Zidane, the

Algerian descendant, to Africans who resisted European rule. Citing Carl

von Clausewitz and his commentary on war, Musa claimed that many

Africans consider soccer a continuation of politics and praised Zidane for

retaliating against European hegemony.

Indeed, some in the press

praised the midfielder as a “good Muslim” for defending his family’s

honor after Materazzi allegedly insulted them.

Regardless of the politics

attached to the headbutt, this instance of violence remained within the

purview of sport. In one work from the series, Musa included text from a

lawyer’s blog that points out how, instead of the judicial system, sporting

governance administers the fines and other punishments for such behavior,

and athletes usually avoid legal prosecution for similar assaults.

For many artists, soccer functions as a valuable metaphor because of

the ubiquity of the game and its applicability to a range of concerns. As

Chris Beas explains, “Football is this sort of cauldron of different aspects

of life, whether it’s violence, beauty, politics or economics. There are all

these social aspects of the game outside of the physical act of playing, so

for me, it’s a great place to gather information.”

In his tabletop tableau,

International Friendly (2007), Beas appropriated plastic figurines of the

game’s biggest stars and arranged them into complex groupings. Set on

simulated turf, these athletes compete in a cluster away from the ball,

leading us to question their activity. The title, International Friendly, is an

Email correspondence with the artist, September 18, 2014.

Hassan Musa, http://www.pascalpolar.be/site/oeuvresview.php?no_inv=musa-01-

059.

Yasmin Jiwani, “Sports as a Civilizing Mission: Zinedine Zidane and the

Infamous Head-butt.” Topia: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies 19, no. 11

(Spring 2008): 26.

English translation from Hassan’s Musa website,

http://www.pascalpolar.be/site/oeuvresview.php?no_inv=musa-01-18.

The original appeared on: http://www.maitre-eolas.fr/post/2006/07/10/397-le-

coup-de-boule-de-zidane-est-il-passible-de-la-correctionnelle.

Chris Beas, as quoted in Rhea Mahbubani, “Soccer is artist’s muse,” Coastline

Pilot (May 28, 2014): http://www.coastlinepilot.com/entertainment/tn-cpt-et-0530-

laguna-art-museum-chris-beas-20140529,0,889409.story.

Chapter One

Figure 4: Hassan Musa, The Good Game I, 2008. Assembled textiles, 212 x 142

cm. Galerie Pascal Polar, Brussels.

The Ugly Side of the Beautiful Game: Picturing Violence in Soccer

ironic play on words because exhibition soccer matches are referred to as

“friendlies,” yet the scene depicted here is anything but amicable. Players

in national team jerseys grab each other and fight, and statuettes designed

as toys become the means for projecting violence. John Terry of England

tackles Spanish defender Carlos Puyol from behind while the former’s

compatriot Steven Gerrard flattens French goalkeeper Grégory Coupet.

An acrobatic Thierry Henry of France boots British icon David Beckham

in the head, while England forward Wayne Rooney kicks a prone

Zidane.

Is this scrum a brawl, the type of behavior football struggles to

prevent? With each combatant wearing their country’s colors, this work

recalls the nationalistic rhetoric frequently attached to tournaments such as

the World Cup, where military metaphors or political undertones become

grafted onto the game. As Christopher Bollen observes, “Much of Beas’s

work revolves around the symbols and obsessions that forge national

identity. Soccer certainly creates the collective patriotic unity that can also

lead to discrimination and violence.”

While the type of aggression represented by these artists can mar

competitive matches, the sport of soccer is also associated with diving and

other theatrical forms of gamesmanship. FIFA, the world’s governing

body of soccer, has tried to remove this component from the game,

granting officials the power to caution players for “unsporting behavior.”

Among the infractions listed in this category is “simulation,” defined by

FIFA as “attempts to deceive the referee by feigning injury or pretending

to have been fouled.”

In his three channel “video sculpture,” Caryatid

(Red, Yellow, Blue) (2008), Paul Pfeiffer captures footballers falling to the

ground in acts of simulated violence. Pfeiffer carefully manipulated

footage of soccer matches, removing extraneous details from each looping

video. The focus of the camera, and by extension the viewer, centers on

the athlete toppling to the ground and writhing in agony. The

melodramatic nature of these maneuvers contradicts conventional means

of representing sporting heroes. The normal grandeur and physical

prowess associated with sport is replaced by loss and theatrics, while the

For a discussion of Beas’ tribute to Zidane, No That Really is El Cid, He Only

Thinks He’s Zizou (2007), as well as other works by the artist, see my essay

referenced in note 6.

Christopher Bollen, “The Art of the Game,” V Man (Spring/Summer 2006): 91.

FIFA, Laws of the Game: 2015/16 (Zurich: Fédération Internationale de

Football Association, 2015):

http://www.fifa.com/mm/Document/FootballDevelopment/Refereeing/02/36/01/11

/LawsofthegamewebEN_Neutral.pdf.

Chapter One

title playfully reverses gendered assumptions concerning the body. A

“caryatid” refers to a classical maiden often used as an ornamental column

in Greek temples. However, men collapsing in fits of hysteria and

fictionalize being assaulted, replace the upright support offered by these

female architectural devices.

The sportsmanship expected from athletes

becomes compromised by deceit and weakness, a reversal of the virtues

instilled upon sport.

Politicized sporting violence

The violence portrayed by Beas, Abdessemed, and Musa certainly carries

sociopolitical implications as matches between clubs and nations often

serve as surrogates for past issues and contentions. The artwork of two

South Africans further articulates the capacity of sport to represent

histories of civil dispute and partisanship. In a series of cartoonish

drawings, illustrator Anton Kannemeyer caricatured black athletes playing

soccer with a white man’s head. (See Figure 5) Kannemeyer rendered

these figures according to racist stereotypes, with the black footballers

having ultra dark skin, oversized lips, and nappy dreaded hair, while the

white “ball” is balding and blond with pink flesh tones. The athletes wear

the national jerseys of South Africa, projecting a symbolic reversal of the

apartheid policies that brutalized black South Africans for decades. In

addition, the work acknowledges the way sport was applied by many,

including Nelson Mandela, to foster unity and reconciliation following the

abolition of segregation. Victory at the rugby World Cup and hosting the

FIFA men’s World Cup in 2010 symbolized the newly free South Africa,

where fans of all ethnicities could applaud the accomplishments of

multiracial athletes. As Kannemeyer admitted, “That's the only way I get a

sense of nationality—through sports,” yet despite these developments, the

“post-racial” state of contemporary South Africa and soccer remains

plagued by bigotry and violence.

Racial epithets similar to those lampooned in Kannemeyer’s cartoons

continue at football matches and violence among fans often stem from

wide-ranging ethnic and regional differences. For example, one of his

drawings depicts the Orlando Pirates in action, one of South Africa’s most

“Paul Pfeiffer, Caryatid (Red, Yellow, Blue), 2008,” Albright-Knox Art Gallery

(13 July 2014): http://albrightknox.tumblr.com/post/91646673430/paul-pfeiffer-

caryatid-red-yellow.

Colin Liddell, “Interview: Anton Kannemyer,” Alternative Right (11 June

2014):

http://alternative-right.blogspot.com/2014/06/interview-anton-kannemeyer.html

The Ugly Side of the Beautiful Game: Picturing Violence in Soccer

popular and iconic clubs yet a team that has been involved in two of the

worst stadium disasters in African history. The “Sowēto Derby” is the

fierce rivalry between Orlando Pirates and Kaizer Chiefs, and on at least

two occasions, competitions between the two ended with mass casualties.

Figure 5: Anton Kannemeyer, Untitled (Rugby and Soccer Juxtaposition), 2011.

Black ink and acrylic on paper, 59 x 96 1/2 inches installed, 59 x 48 1/4 inches per

New York.

Chapter One

First, in 1991, a “friendly” exhibition between the clubs ended with forty-

two deaths at Orkney’s Oppenheimer Stadium when clashes between fans

led to a stampede that crushed dozens. Ten years later, in 2001, forty-three

fans were killed at Ellis Park Stadium in Johannesburg due to it being

overcrowded and poorly policed. These were not isolated incidents and as

Cora Burnett suggests in her study of the Pirates-Chiefs rivalry, these

brawls stem from the socialization of impoverished male youths, wherein

violence provides a means of validating oneself and earning peer

recognition.

The bellicosity suggested in Kannemeyer’s drawings reflect

a painful component of apartheid’s legacy: reciprocal aggression used to

reclaim the power lost under white supremacy.

As such, Kannemeyer’s

footballers earn agency through sport, one introduced to Africa by

European merchants and missionaries, and then utilized to further European

hegemony through the networks of colonialism and globalization. By

symbolically defeating the white Afrikaner at his own game, and by

extension Europeans in international tournaments, these sportsmen embody

Homi Bhabha’s critique of Western imperialism, wherein colonizer

becomes colonized.

Kannemeyer’s compatriot Kendell Geers also utilized the metaphor of

heads as balls, covering soccer balls with rubber masks representing

various political leaders. This “team” consists of Winston Churchill, John

F. Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W.

Bush, Tony Blair, Jacques Chirac, Gerhard Schröder, Yasser Arafat, and

Saddam Hussein. In Masked Balls (2002), museumgoers encounter these

objects scattered across the gallery floor and are encouraged to kick them

about, while in Dirty Balls (2002-06), the balls are suspended in nets from

the ceiling. Both formats enact a playful projection of political violence

reminiscent of the decapitations of heads of state throughout history.

Disturbingly, Geers’ work bears similarities to contemporary practices, as

news agencies reported that members of the Islamic State played soccer

with a decapitated head in Damascus and the organization’s desensitization

training for children featured similar games.

The fantasies and realities of

Cora Burnett, “The ‘black cat; of South African soccer and the Chiefs-Pirates

conflict,” in Fighting Fans: Football Hooliganism as a World Phenomenon, eds.

Eric Dunning, Patrick Murphy, Ivan Waddington, and Antonios E. Astrinakis

(Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2002), 186-188.

Ibid., 189.

Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994).

Rim Haddad, “Fleeing the horror of IS atrocities in Syria,” AFP (6 April 2015):

https://www.yahoo.com/news/fleeing-horror-atrocities-syria-193048393.html

The Ugly Side of the Beautiful Game: Picturing Violence in Soccer

soccer violence appeared in other works by Geers, including a performative

intervention staged at YOUNGBLACKMAN in Cape Town in 2009. For

this exhibition, Geers threw several bricks through its storefront windows,

giving the gallery the appearance of having been looted. As Andrew

Lamprecht noted, the vandalism of the space referred to fears expressed in

the media that hooligans would cause trouble at the 2010 men’s World

Cup hosted in South Africa.

While such concerns proved baseless, the

shattered glass reenacted legacies of racial and class disturbance that

plague not only soccer but South Africa as well.

War and militarism

The political implications of football date to the origins of the modern

game and intensified during the First World War. As Iain Adams and John

Hughson have written, soccer appears in several artworks from the Great

War, representing the military’s use of football to foster camaraderie,

enhance fitness, and provide respite from the trauma of combat.

While

soccer offered a sense of leisure and normalcy away from the trenches, it

also helped initiate one of the war’s worst battles. Crispin Jones

commemorated this episode in a work commissioned by the Manchester

Art Gallery for an exhibition coinciding with the European championships

hosted by England in 1996. In Captain Nevill (1996), Jones printed an

oversized photograph of one of the balls used by Captain Wilfred P.

Nevill at the Battle of the Somme in 1916. Nevill purchased two footballs

and offered a reward to the platoon that could get their ball to the German

line first.

A text panel accompanying Jones’ photograph offers a first-

hand account of the battle’s progression:

Oman Benotman and Nikita Malik, The Children of Islamic State (London:

Quilliam Foundation, 2016), 49: http://www.quilliamfoundation.org/wp/wp-content/

uploads/publications/free/the-children-of-islamic-state.pdf.

Andrew Lamprecht, “Cape Town 2010: Smashing Shopfronts,” African Arts 44,

no. 2 (Summer 2011): 41.

Iain Adams and John Hughson, “‘The First Ever Anti-Football Painting’? A

Consideration of the Soccer Match in John Singer Sargent’s Gassed,” Soccer &

Society 14, no. 4 (2013): 502-514; Iain Adams, “Football: a counterpoint to the

procession of pain on the Western Front, 1914-1918?,” Soccer & Society 16, nos.

2-3 (March-May 2015): 217-231.

Alexander Jackson, “Football and the First World War in Fifteen Objects” in

The Greater Game: a History of Football in World War I (Manchester: National

Football Museum; Oxford: Shire Publications, 2014), 26-27.

Chapter One

As the gun-fire died away I saw an infantryman climb onto the parapet and

into No Man’s Land, beckoning others to follow. As he did so he kicked

off a football; a good kick, the ball rose and traveled well towards the

German line. That seemed to be the signal to attack.

While Nevill was killed in combat that day, his men seized their position

and this particular football earned mythical status and now resides in the

permanent collection of the Queen’s Royal Surrey Regimental Museum.

Importantly, Crispin Jones did not submit artifacts from the more popular

football story of World War I: the legendary Christmas truce of 1914

when English and German troops ceased combat and gathered in No

Man’s Land to stage a friendly kickabout, share cigarettes, and sing

holiday carols.

Instead, the artist offered a reminder of conflict and war

during the 1996 European championships, an event celebrating peaceful

athletic competition among European nations. In this context soccer does

not beget harmony and union, rather it initiates bloodshed and jingoism.

While Jones engaged the literal intersection of soccer and war, George

Afedzi Hughes connects the militaristic language used in sports to the

aggression that plagues human history.

His painting, Parallel (2009-11),

makes this connection overt, as a black soccer boot corresponds with the

pale silhouette of a machine gun. (See Figure 6) The word “STRIKER” is

emblazoned across the painting, a term that refers to a goal-scoring

forward as well as the handler of the weapon. By pairing soccer cleat with

firearm, Hughes said he wanted to acknowledge the game’s “potential to

create hostile rivalry between members of opposing teams, resulting in

riots before and after games. The nationalist tendencies of soccer have

often been catalyst in racist behavior amongst fans towards minority

players.”

In addition to the hawkish metaphors used to describe athletic

competition, Parallel suggests how the industries of sports and militarism

Private L. S. Price, as quoted in Martin Middlebrook, The First Day on the

Somme (New York: Penguin, 1972), 122.

John Gill, Introduction to Offside! Contemporary Artists and Football

(Manchester: Manchester City Art Galleries and Institute of International Visual

Arts, 1996), 9.

Stanley Weintraub, Silent Night: the Story of the World War I Christmas Truce

(New York: Penguin, 2001).

For an extended discussion of artworks by George Afedzi Hughes that utilize

soccer as a sociopolitical emblem, see my, “The Politics of Soccer in Contemporary

Ghanaian Art,” in Picturing the Beautiful Game: Essays on Soccer and Visual

Culture, ed. Daniel Haxall (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017).

Email correspondence with the artist, 13 September 2015.

The Ugly Side of the Beautiful Game: Picturing Violence in Soccer

Figure 6: George Afedzi Hughes, Parallel, 2009-11. Acrylic, enamel, and oil on

canvas, 71 x 97 in. Courtesy of the artist.

often overlap. For example, Nike sells “Soldier” hightops and the

“Hypervenom Phatal” soccer cleat, with the “F” of fatal replaced by “Ph”,

while Umbro caused outrage with their “Zyklon” shoe because the product

name unwittingly matched that of a chemical weapon used in the

Holocaust.

As Hughes stated, Parallel “shows two distinct paths that

humanity could choose from. Both paths involve some form of contest,

except the militarist choice has fatal consequences. Soccer is a form of

civilized contest with the intention of winning games and selling

merchandise.”

These paths often collide as stadiums designed for sport and leisure

become sites of bloodshed during times of war. The National Stadium of

Chile in Santiago illustrates this reality and its complex legacy inspired

two artworks about memory and loss. This arena was constructed in 1937-

38 and hosted numerous soccer tournaments: the South American

Championship (1944, 1945, 1955), Copa America (1991 and 2015), and

men’s World Cup (1962) including the tournament final won by Brazil

Jonathan Petre, “Umbro drops its Zyklon shoe after Jewish protests,” The

Telegraph (29 August 2002):

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1405692/Umbro-drops-its-Zyklon-shoe-

after-Jewish-protests.html.

Email correspondence with the artist, 13 September 2015.

Chapter One

over Czechoslovakia. In addition, rallies for significant cultural and

political figures were held at the National Stadium, including Pope John

Paul II, Fidel Castro, and Pablo Neruda. However, the venue served a

different purpose during the 1973 coup d’état that overthrew President

Salvador Allende: it became a detention center with over 40,000 people

held at the stadium during the military junta. Interrogations, torture, and

executions occurred throughout the facility, and a building that once

brought Chileans together to support their national soccer teams embodied

fracture and civil war. Recognizing the profound significance of the

National Stadium, two Chilean artists developed projects about

reconstruction and healing within its confines.

In 2009, Camilo Yáñez filmed and photographed the renovations of

Chile’s National Stadium that would modernize the venue and honor the

nation’s bicentennial in 2010. For National Stadium 11.09.09, Santiago,

Chile, he projected two feeds of a continuous pan of the stadium at sunset.

The pink sky coupled with an audio recording of Carlos Cabezas’ rendition

of “Luchin” adds an elegiac expressivity to the video installation. “Luchin”

was written by Victor Jara, a Chilean poet, songwriter, and activist who

was tortured and murdered at the stadium during the junta. Jara became a

symbol of the brutality of Pinochet’s regime and the quest for justice

through the legal conviction of his killers remains ongoing. To honor this

man and the circumstances of his death, Yáñez selected a song about

overcoming catastrophe as “Luchin” tells of the fragility of life and need

for children to live freely. With this soundtrack playing in the background,

cameras scan the removal of terraces. Piles of discarded seats and excised

sod offer bodily projections of the lives lost during the dictatorship. The

artist hoped the destruction of the stadium could express the tragedies

experienced within its walls, saying, “The work somehow tells the story of

the stadium and Chile without a script or characters. It conveys the pain

and hope that have been so intensely experienced there.”

Three years before the renovations of the National Stadium, Sebastian

Errazuriz staged a different type of intervention at the site, planting a 10-

meter tall, live magnolia tree in the center of its soccer pitch. (See Figure

7) The stadium functioned as a public park for a week, culminating in an

exhibition march between the Chilean men’s national team that played in

the 1998 World Cup and an “all-time” squad. Proceeds from this game

benefitted charity, with nearly 20,000 fans in attendance to see Marcelo

Salas, Ivan Zamorano, and other legends negotiate a surreal obstacle in the

Untitled (12th Istanbul Biennial), 2011 (September 17 - November 13),

http://12b.iksv.org/en/sololar.asp?id=51&c=4&show=metin.