How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization

by Franklin Foer

  Like all boom markets, the Nigerian fixation betrayed an irrational exuberance. But there was logic behind it, too. During communism, Ukrainian soccer clubs had been state-run enterprises. When the regime ended, however, nobody bothered to privatize them. In many cases, nobody even paid their bills. The situation grew so dire that the Ukrainian game might have disappeared altogether. But the game found its saviors in the country’s richest men, the oligarchs. The Ukrainian oligarchs were men who had transitioned seamlessly to capitalism from their slots in the Communist Party bureaucracy, turning insider ties to the old state into new wealth. By covering the expenses, the oligarchs became de facto owners.

  The oligarchs announced great ambitions for their new possessions. They told fans that they wanted their teams to take places alongside the greatest clubs of Italy, Spain, and England. To accomplish such a gargan-tuan task, they would have to imitate the approach of these clubs. One thing in particular caught their attention: the prevalence of black faces. You could see why HOW SOCCER EXPLAINS THE BLACK CARPATHIANS

  the Western Europeans had so many of them. Africans had the skills and speed that Ukrainians lacked. They had ingenuity that could make a bland Eastern Bloc team look downright continental.

  Lviv had its own oligarch, Petro Dyminskyy. In communism, he’d managed the region’s coal mines. After communism, he amassed an incredible fortune—several hundred million dollars reportedly—buying and selling Western Ukraine’s bountiful gas, oil, and coal reserves.

  In the spring of 2001, he added to his holdings the local soccer club, named Karpaty Lviv after the nearby Carpathian mountain range. By investing a small bit of his fortune, Dyminskyy hoped that he could create his own, massively successful team. And with the media glow from this success, he planned on launching a career as a politician, following the Silvio Berlusconi model.

  Dyminskyy was no professional soccer man. But he could see the thinking behind the Nigerian purchases made by his fellow owners, and it appealed to him.

  When an agent from the former Soviet republic of Moldova o¤ered Edward Anyamkyegh for $500,000, Dyminskyy made the purchase. It seemed like a great deal. Everywhere Edward had played, he had scored goals. His c.v. included stints with Nigeria’s national under-17 team. He had youth, only twenty-three years, and a muscular upper body that looked suited to the physicality of the Ukrainian game. So when Dyminskyy unveiled his purchase to the people of Lviv, he promised that Edward would help catapult Karpaty to success.

  At the time, Dyminskyy showed no signs that he considered this venture to be at all risky. But he had put Edward into Karpaty’s green-and-white jersey, covered in Cyrillic lettering, a symbol of Lviv and Ukrainian nationalism. So Edward’s arrival at Karpaty represented more than the purchase of a contract, more than a test of a player’s mettle and an owner’s ability to put together a club. His arrival in the Ukraine was a cross-cultural experiment. In theory, Karpaty’s purchase of Edward had followed the rules of globalization to perfection. The Ukrainians had tapped the international labor market and come back with a bargain. To accommodate their new English-speaking purchase, they brought in a new coach who could speak in a language that their new star could understand. Like many companies from the poorer parts of Eastern Europe, they were adhering to the one-world model that had brought great success to thousands of American and European firms. The western strategy of globalization had, in e¤ect, been globalized. But was it suited to the rigors of life and soccer in the Western Ukraine?

  II.

  Edward walks me to his apartment. It is several blocks deep into one of the old Soviet neighborhoods of endless, relentlessly linear concrete. We met at the neighborhood McDonald’s. He brought along his wife and two-year-old girl. His wife, Brecing, has a sincere, soft voice. “You’re married? Give a hug to your wife for us. Give her a big kiss,” she says, tilting her head. Edward’s daughter, wearing cornrows and a jean jacket, stays close to his leg.

  For nearly two years, they have lived in this complex. Their daughter was born here. “You see, everyone HOW SOCCER EXPLAINS THE BLACK CARPATHIANS

  knows me. We’ve got no problems. They like me so much.” Edward always talks quickly, in a singsong cadence. When he describes his neighbors’ a¤ection, he looks to the ground and smirks. As we slowly move toward his home, he points to landmarks. “This is where I play ball with kids . . . this is the bank. You see, bank.” He translates the letters from the Cyrillic, one of the few Ukrainian words he says that he can decipher.

  The communists didn’t build to last; and the postcommunists haven’t had the resources or desire to repair. Sidewalks and roads have a topography that alternates between piles of pavement and craters. All around, glass facades have shattered. Soot covers the shards that remain in place. Shirts and bags and socks hang from the branches of trees like ornaments.

  Although there’s nothing too fancy or warm about the interior of the Anyamkyegh apartment, it is an immaculately tended contrast to the dark, dingy hall-way. A tiny oil painting of a flower hangs alone in the living room, with action photos of Edward stu¤ed into the corner of the frame. In a corner, a mattress lies on the floor with blankets and sheets neatly piled on top.

  Edward and Brecing sleep here. They like to fall asleep in front of the television. “Sit down,” Edward directs me into a chair. He perches on its arm and reaches for the remote. “I have satellite and cable,” he says and turns on African American rap music videos.

  Edward removes his black Reebok baseball hat, puts his elbow on his knee, and leans on his palm.

  “How does a Nigerian find his way to the Ukraine?”

  He rubs his hand over his face and begins to nar-rate his journey through the global soccer economy. For generations, the Anyamkyegh family farmed

  near the provincial capital of Gboko, not far from Nigeria’s eastern border with Cameroon. Edward’s father did well by his profession. In a nearby village, he owned groves of mangoes and guava, which he trucked to corners of Nigeria that didn’t have such fertile land as Gboko. Returning from his farm one evening, he tried passing a concrete truck in his small car on a narrow highway. Edward was seven when he died.

  A decade or two earlier, Edward would have followed his late father into agriculture. Now, there were many distractions. Agents scoured places like Gboko for teens they could sell to European soccer clubs. This sounded glamorous and an opportunity to make unthinkable sums. Boys began to dream of playing on the continent. Enough local examples made these fantasies seem plausible. Queen’s Park Rangers of London bought Edward’s own older brother, one of seven siblings. And from the time of his father’s death, Edward began telling friends that he would become a European star, too.

  There was another reason that this wasn’t such an implausible notion for Edward: He was a man-child. At fifteen, he had sprouted pectorals and biceps. When the best local professional club bought him, the papers predicted that he would be one of the greatest strikers to ever emerge from Gboko. Word of Edward’s talent, how he could outrun the older players and out-muscle the younger ones, reached the coaches of the national squad. They plucked him for a spot on the team sent to the Under-17 World Cup in Ecuador.

  A youth team doesn’t sound like that big a deal. But in Nigeria, it is an enormous deal. National television HOW SOCCER EXPLAINS THE BLACK CARPATHIANS

  broadcasts the team’s games. Newspapers closely and harshly monitor its progress. After Edward’s team lost to Ghana in the final of the African championship, pundits prodded the coach to purge half his squad. But inevitably it is agents that keep the closest watch. Many of these agents made grandiose promises to Edward. Of the many o¤ers for representation, Edward picked an agent from the Ivory Coast called Ahmed. There was one part of his presentation that Edward liked best: Ahmed said he had already completed a deal with a club in Bordeaux, France.

  Just before the World Cup, Edward made his first trip out of Africa. He traveled to the south of France, as wondrous a place as he had imagined. I
t inspired him to his highest caliber of play. During his two weeks of tryouts, he scored three goals playing on Bordeaux’s reserve team. But one afternoon, Edward’s agent told him that they would leave France the next day, much earlier than planned. “Why? Why are we going?”

  Edward asked. “Because there’s paperwork that needs to be finished in Africa,” his agent replied. Satisfied with the answer, Edward returned to Gboko. Ahmed told him that he would pick him up in a week and they would return together to France. He never came. Later, Edward learned the details of the sordid transaction.

  Bordeaux had given the agent $5,000 to pay Edward for his tryout. When Bordeaux learned the agent had used this money to bring other Africans to France for audi-tions with competitor clubs, it scuttled the deal.

  This act of venality seemed to curse Edward.

  Although Nigeria had been a favorite to take the World Cup, the team flamed out in the quarterfinals against minnows from Oman. The result shamed Edward, as

  did the fact that his teammates had all departed to play for European clubs. The torment of these thoughts prevented Edward from concentrating on the game and maintaining his fitness. Playing for his Gboko club, he ripped thigh muscles in both legs. Because of his state of mind, Edward’s Gboko club worried that he would neglect his rehabilitation, ruining any hopes of return.

  They placed him in a hospital, where he remained for eight months, stuck in his own head.

  Edward’s return to the pitch has a mythic quality.

  Inserted in a game—with the coveted Nigerian Challenge Cup on the line, a tied score, and painkillers flowing through him—he added the decisive goal. A few days later, he sat in the back of an open convertible that displayed him to adoring Gboko. A few months later, he achieved his European dream. His new club might not have been nearly as prestigious as Bordeaux.

  It might not have been even the most prestigious club in the former Soviet Republic of Moldova. But at least the club Sheri¤ resided in the city of Tiraspol, and Tiraspol was on the continent.

  Moldova had experienced its own Nigerian fad. At Sheriff, Edward played with two compatriots. For a season, the arrangement worked wonderfully. Edward scored 11 goals and won player-of-the-month honors.

  The Moldavians asked Edward to naturalize and play for their national team. But as his eighteen-month contract came to its close, other clubs began to make overtures to him. One team in the United Arab Emirates tendered a lucrative o¤er that Edward badly wanted to accept. Behind Sheriff’s back, he went to visit the HOW SOCCER EXPLAINS THE BLACK CARPATHIANS

  prospective team. After Sheriff’s ownership expired, he would join them.

  Sheriff, however, had other ideas about Edward’s fate. It wanted to sell his contract to another club before it expired. That way, they could cash in on Edward’s success, too. According to Edward, when club oªcials learned about his trip abroad, they visited his wife and seized her passport. Edward didn’t know how to call the Nigerian embassy and wasn’t even sure that a Nigerian embassy existed in Moldova. Upon returning to

  Moldova, Edward made it clear to the club that he would accept whatever decision they made for him.

  They decided to sell Edward to Karpaty Lviv.

  III.

  The Lviv faithful idolize a twenty-eight year-old dentist named Yuri. In addition to expertise in drilling molars and scraping tartar, he captains Karpaty Lviv. As part of the culture of the Soviet game, players often obtained advanced degrees. Besides, only after the arrival of capitalism have players earned salaries that can sustain them through post-playing days. Yuri now earns enough that he doesn’t bother practicing. But after he retires, he’ll spend a few months reviewing his books and then will open shop in Lviv.

  Yuri met me at the Viennese Co¤eehouse on

  Prospekt Svobody, Freedom Avenue. If I didn’t know Yuri was local, I could have guessed. Like almost every Ukrainian man in Lviv, he carries a purse and has deep blue eyes. In conversational style, the people of Lviv pride themselves on having an analytical, circumspect manner, an attribute they ascribe to the presence of thirteen universities and thousands of academics in their town. Yuri prefaces every statement with, “I can only speak from my own experience, but. . . .”

  Lviv loves Yuri not only for his skills, but because he is one of them. He grew up in Lviv, went to every Karpaty home game as a kid, and wanted nothing more than to play for his beloved team. And they love him, because he represents the city exactly as the people want to see themselves portrayed: articulate, handsome, humble, and hardworking. When he plays badly, he’ll admit it without any exculpation. His work rate betrays an inexhaustible passion for his team.

  During his captaincy, Yuri has presided over one of the most tumultuous eras in the history of Karpaty.

  After Edward arrived, the team bought an eighteen-year-old Nigerian attacking midfielder with cornrows, named Samson Godwin. Because the old Ukrainian coach couldn’t speak English with the Nigerians, the club brought in a new Serbian manager, who had spent ten years playing for Southampton Football Club in England. The Serb, in turn, recruited four players from former Yugoslav countries. Suddenly, Yuri skippered a polyglot unit that included a coach and players whose languages he couldn’t himself speak.

  This was a big change for Karpaty. Even in the Soviet era, it had been renowned for its localism.

  Where most Ukrainian clubs contained players from Russia and the other republics, Karpaty consisted almost exclusively of men from Lviv and its environs. HOW SOCCER EXPLAINS THE BLACK CARPATHIANS

  This meant that Karpaty games reflected the implicit political reality of Western Ukraine: Lviv viewed itself as struggling against Russian masters who had imposed communism upon them. Of course, it was dangerous to make anything of Karpaty’s political symbolism. The state was always listening. An old-time chairman of the club has admitted that he supplied the KGB with Karpaty tickets, so agents could overhear any politically tinged shouts in the stadium. Nevertheless, people deeply felt the connection between their club and their national aspirations. When Karpaty won the USSR Cup in 1969, its fans sang Ukrainian songs in the Moscow stadium. The people of Lviv watching the game at home on television wept at the sound of their language resounding through the capital of their conquerors.

  As he drank tea, Yuri explained this history.

  “Karpaty never had political power; it never will have more money than the clubs in Kiev or Donetsk [the industrial capital of Eastern Ukraine]. But it has had a sense of spirit that has helped make up for these disadvantages. The big moments in Karpaty’s history happened when the team had local players and unity.”

  With the arrival of the foreigners, the team had nothing resembling unity. It broke down into factions.

  You would walk into the team dining room and find the various nationalities eating at their own separate tables.

  They would sit apart on the team bus and at practice.

  For sure, it didn’t help matters that the Ukrainians couldn’t converse with the Nigerians. (They had a much easier time integrating the Yugoslavs, whose language has close relations with Ukrainian and whose culture has the same Slavic underpinnings.) There were, how- ever, less appealing reasons for this split within the team. Edward had been the most expensive acquisition in the history of the club. He earned, his teammates imagined, much more than they did.

  Yuri had become particularly perturbed with the Nigerians. Too many of his fellow Ukrainians complained that the Nigerians weren’t trying very hard. Yuri agreed with this assessment. He felt the Nigerians didn’t run enough or sacrifice their bodies. The Karpaty jersey didn’t mean anything to them. For goodness sake, Edward and Samson said quite freely that they viewed the Ukraine as a mere way station on their routes toward the leagues of Western Europe. He felt their arrogance and indi¤erence would tear the club apart.

  After one practice, Yuri pulled Edward and Samson aside. He told them that they needed to increase their e¤ort, to work with the rest of the team. “The
y were somehow o¤ended with such a conversation,” he

  recounted to me. The next thing he knew, “Edward and Sampson went to Dyminskyy [the president of the club]

  and told him that players weren’t giving passes to the Nigerians. The president met with me. He was furious,

  ‘Why isn’t the team giving passes to the Nigerians?’ I told him, ‘Do you not think I’m giving my best? I live for this team.’ ”

  A day after meeting Yuri, I watched Karpaty practice. They trained in a village meadow. A rusty old rail car stood at one end of the field, a place for players to change clothes, although most players preferred to strip in public view. Team owner Petro Dyminskyy sat under an awning in front of this car. Even though it was a hot HOW SOCCER EXPLAINS THE BLACK CARPATHIANS

  spring day, he wore black. He remained ominously silent through the proceedings. The team went through its drills—small groups playing games of keep away, exercises in crossing and heading the ball. For each of these, Edward and Samson worked together. None of the other players volunteered to join them. Coaches filled those vacancies, even the Serbian head coach joined to give enough bodies. Under the blazing May sun, they worked their well-fed middle-aged bodies into supersaturated sponges of sweat.

  IV.

  On a street corner outside my hotel, I tried to make conversation with two sportswriters. One had been trained as an atomic scientist. Neither really spoke much English. We waited for a translator to arrive. As they filled the awkward silences with the phrases they knew, Edward serendipitously drove past us in an old beat-up cab with a cracked windshield. His driver slowed down for a moment and he put his hand out the window. I grabbed it. The other writers nodded in his direction. When Edward turned the corner, one of them chuckled. “Monkey,” he said in English. “Bananas,” the other one chimed.