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From Brazil's 'God Squad' To Bojan's Test Of Faith, Why Football And Religion Are Not Always In Holy Alliance
Sometimes even the beautiful game can’t come between a man and his God...
By Graham ListerThe news that West Ham United’s Israeli manager, Avram Grant, has been excused duty for the Hammers' league game against Stoke City this weekend in order to observe Yom Kippur — one of the holiest dates in the Jewish calendar, requiring Jews to fast and pray on Friday night and Saturday — has put the relationship between football and faith under the spotlight in a week when the Pope kicked off his state visit to Britain in Glasgow – a footballing city whose Old Firm rivalry is still defined by the Protestant-Catholic religious divide.
Through the tensions of sectarianism, the devout beliefs of individuals in the game, the inexorable spread of secularism and even the infamous ‘Hand of God’, the coming together of football and religion has long produced conflict.
Yet the prevalence of club chaplains and the familiar sight of players crossing themselves as they enter the pitch confirms that a certain accommodation has also been reached.
Just another manic Sunday
In the UK, condemned this week as aggressively atheist by one of the Pope’s entourage (who was subsequently dropped), bodies like the Lord’s Day Observance Society saw the work of the Devil in the decision to launch Sunday soccer on January 6, 1974 when four FA Cup ties were staged. Big crowds at all four made the experiment an irreversible success, to the chagrin of churchgoers. Oddly, the regular staging of a full league programme on Christmas Day until the mid-1950s had aroused much less controversy.
But keeping certain days holy clearly means a lot to some believers. Avram Grant – who may yet walk to the Britannia Stadium to attend the game in silence - might identify to an extent with compatriot Dudu Aouate, the Israeli goalkeeper currently playing for Real Mallorca. In September 2006, his then team Deportivo La Coruna’s fixture against Real Sociedad was scheduled for the night of Yom Kippur, on which playing football is one of the prohibitions.
As a compromise, Aouate said he’d take part in the match but then extend his observance of the Day of Atonement by a couple of hours to make up for non-observance time during the game. His decision upset many in Israel, some calling for him to be dropped from the national team.
The ultimate extra-time
•Another goalkeeper, Argentina 's Carlos Roa (right), who famously saved a David Batty penalty in a shoot-out against England at the 1998 World Cup, stunned football by announcing he was quitting the game because his Seventh Day Adventist religion would not allow him to train or play on Saturdays. That was shortly before 2000, when he was at the peak of his career with Mallorca, and he further declared his belief that the new millennium would signal the end of the world. He retreated to a farm in rural Argentina to await his fate, acting as priest to his family. When no apocalypse materialised, he swallowed his pride and came out of retirement, returning to Mallorca, then Albacete and finally Olimpo back in Argentina.
Gotta serve somebody
•Others have found football got in the way of their religious beliefs, too. Nigeria defender Taribo West (left) reacted to his own wealth and the materialism all around him by becoming a born-again Christian and pastor and founding his own church – the Shelter from the Storm Ministry - in Milan, where he played for both San Siro clubs. After he left Milan in 2000, he frequently returned there to preach in his church, which created friction with his new club Derby County. He was transferred to Kaiserslauten, where instead of attending Sunday morning training he preached to his congregation back in Italy. When the German outfit consequently sacked him, he stressed that, “The Lord is more important to me than a football club”.
Someone else who lost his job in football because of his spiritual beliefs is Glenn Hoddle, who was sacked as England manager in 1999 after publicly implying that disabled people were responsible for their own suffering. Hoddle, who also placed great trust in the powers of a faith healer, had said: “You and I have been physically given two hands and two legs and half-decent brains. Some people have not been born like that for a reason; karma is working from another lifetime.”
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Twenty years earlier, Wolves superstar Peter Knowles hadn’t waited to be pushed, but voluntarily gave up football to concentrate on studying the Bible and spreading the word as a Jehovah’s Witness. He stuck to his guns, though Wolves kept his contract open for another 12 years in the hope that he might one day return to the game. In 1991, Billy Bragg recorded a song, “God’s Footballer”, which was widely seen as a direct reference to Knowles.
The number of the beast
Others have found ways to keep the faith without quitting their careers, though certain compromises have had to be made. As a devout Muslim, Fredi Kanoute (right) insisted that wearing the Sevilla shirt, emblazoned with the name of sponsor and online gambling company 888, was an affront to his religion. He declared: “Gambling is the work of Satan. It is forbidden by the Koran and I will not play in a shirt that promotes it.” So he taped over the offending name in protest. And played.
Sevilla’s own compromise, to appease both 888 and Kanoute, was to agree on a charitable donation to a cause supported by Kanoute, if the striker would carry on scoring while wearing the devilish garment.
The God squad & Fifa’s commandments
In sharp contrast, some footballers have used their on-pitch attire to advertise their faith, in the process giving Fifa something of a crisis of conscience. Well, an embarrassing dilemma anyway. The world governing body controversially disciplined the Brazil team for some overt declarations of Christian allegiance during a Confederations Cup final. Stars including Kaka and Lucio revealed T-shirts with slogans such as “I Belong to Jesus” and “I Love God”, and after their victory players and coaching staff formed a circle and went down on their knees in prayer.
Fifa has regulations which specifically ban players from making displays of a personal, religious or political nature on the pitch, and sent a warning letter to the Brazilian football federation reminding them of this to ensure no repetition. In doing so Fifa risked accusations of being anti-religious.
On God's team | Kaka & Ambrosini promote their faith at Milan
But Jim Stjerne Hansen, secretary general of the Danish football association, reacted by urging that all religious statements be banned from football. He said: “Just as we reject political manifestations, we should also say no to religious ones. There are too many risks involved in clubs, for example, with people of different religious faiths.”
Penitent shoot out
That Brazil team was successful, but God doesn’t always provide the assists. When Barcelona starlet Bojan Krkic (left) failed to convert a chance to score the winning goal against Chelsea in a Champions League semi-final, he questioned his Catholic faith. After heading wide at 0-0 with only three minutes remaining when it looked impossible to miss, he said: “That’s a goal God would have normally helped me score. I don’t know what happened. I crossed my chest as I came onto the pitch, so this doesn’t really make sense.”
His team-mates consoled him, assuring him that God still loved him. Coach Pep Guardiola (allegedly) revealed: “He was pretty down in the changing room. We reassured him that if God didn’t love him, he’d just be a normal person, probably working in an office or cleaning the streets of road-kill or something.”
Better than sects
The issue of faith has sometimes attached itself to entire clubs in somewhat provocative fashion. It is well known that Rangers are perceived as a bastion of Protestantism, and their city rivals Celtic the expression of Irish/Scottish Roman Catholicism. When Graeme Souness was appointed Rangers manager in 1985 he boldly pronounced that sectarianism was out and that he’d sign Catholic players. Three years later he signed former Celtic striker Mo Johnston, who became the first high-profile Catholic to join the Ibrox club. Some Rangers fans responded by burning their season tickets in disgust.
In the Netherlands, Ajax are widely regarded as having Jewish “roots", and in the 1970s fans of rival teams began taunting their Ajax counterparts by calling them the Jews. Although relatively few Ajax fans are actually Jewish, they responded by embracing this identity, calling themselves "Super Jews," chanting "Joden, Joden" at matches and adopting Jewish symbols such as the Star of David and the Israeli flag.
Tottenham Hotspur fans had done much the same in England, though in north London, the support of the large and vital Jewish community is actually fairly evenly split between Spurs and Arsenal. Gunners fans often revile those of Spurs with anti-Semitic chants, but ironically Arsenal embrace their own Jewish support and usually publish a New Year's message in Hebrew in their relevant matchday programme.
Taking to the pulpit
Some players have managed to enjoy fulfilling careers and then devoted themselves full-time to their religion. For example, former Manchester United and Norwich City midfielder Phil Mulryne, 32, is now training to become a Roman Catholic priest, while Gavin Peacock (right), who represented QPR, Gillingham, Bournemouth, Newcastle and Chelsea with distinction, has relocated to Canada to study theology with a view to becoming a Christian minister.
Maybe it’s ironic that in today’s material world professional sport is seen by some as the antithesis of spirituality, even as football becomes so popular in many countries that it is regarded by others as almost a religion in itself. But maybe too it’s as well to keep a balance between reverence and irreverence.
That was neatly encapsulated outside a church in Liverpool in the mid-1960s, where a poster chastising the ungodly posed the challenging question: "What will you do when the Lord comes down among you?" A Scouser wrote underneath it: “Move St John to inside-right.” Ian St John was, of course, the Reds' prized centre-forward at the time.
www.goal.com/en-india/news/2292/editorials/2010/09/17/2123285/from-brazils-god-squad-to-bojans-test-of-faith-why-football
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