Posted on 05/28/2014 9:13:23 AM PDT by Ravnagora
With two weeks to go before the World Cup, it’s time to get acquainted with who’s going to Brazil. Slate’s team-by-team previews will run in reverse order of the countries’ predicted finish at the World Cup. Team No. 24: Croatia.
There’s a famous Twilight Zone episode, “The Odyssey of Flight 33,” in which an airplane gets lost in the clouds. As the crew emerges from the fog, they find that they’re millions of years in the past. Looking out the airplane window at the dinosaurs below, the co-pilot, quaking with fear, addresses his passengers: “We’re in trouble.”
Feeling trapped in the past and terrified, he could just as well have been watching a Croatian World Cup qualifier. With their unapologetic displays of ethnic pride, these matches stand out as relics of a different era in world soccer.
International soccer is, by its very nature, a nationalistic endeavor. But in a Europe, where soccer is globally televised and the role of the individual nation-state is waning, bellicose displays of jingoism are—largely—a thing of the past. Simon Kuper wrote about how when Holland played Germany in a recent Euro tournament, nobody went overboard with the celebrations. Instead of soccer being a conduit for old nationalistic energies, he wrote, it became a display of a “kind of party nationalism, a holiday nationalism, where you paint your face with the national flag but wouldn’t dream of dying for your country.” That’s the type of nationalism most of Europe subscribes to, and the kind you’ll likely see at the family-friendly FIFA World Cup.
The Balkans, where the wounds of ethnic wars are still fresh, can be an exception. Croatia performs a very distinct, and very political, type of nationalism in its matches, a kind of behavior that makes much of Europe deeply uncomfortable.
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
poor Croatia...
He told me afterwords he was wondering when they were going to go into the Jewish neighborhoods and start breaking glass.
Ping.
Soccer......Landscaping with cleats.
Brazil land of public nudity and street urchins will be uncomfortable with something??
I live in Brazil. Nude and even topless sunbathing is illegal and Carnival (mardi gras) is only four days out of the year. Even during Carnival, the naughty parts must be covered. BTW: The Favelado will stomp any Croatian skinhead out of existence in 10 seconds.
I would love to visit Recife, on the Atlantic coast.
Croatians caused a lot of problems in Poland during Euro 2012.
This was an eye-opening series on just how crazy it is there.
The Real Football Factories “Croatia & Serbia”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXjpNbNicGg
“where you paint your face with the national flag but wouldn’t dream of dying for your country”
Putin reads this with glee. For 2000 years of human history, nations like this have a 0% survival rating.
Do they have any other type of coast?.......................
You live in Brazil now Clemenza??? Not enough Portuguese speakers in Newark? :-)
Yep, Feyenoord and Ajax is always a nasty affair.
LOL!
Recife is wonderful, but the beaches are shark infested. Hit Porto de Galinas a bit down the coast for one of the most beautiful beaches in the world.
Yep. Work to be done down here.
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