Homage to Catalonia

By Franklin Foer

In Europe and Latin America, your fate as a soccer fan is predetermined. Your father's team tends to become your team, end of story. We Americans are blissfully liberated from the weight of such history. When we become passionate about international football, we have the luxury of choosing our allegiances, of falling in love with whichever club suits us best. This freedom means that you will never tether yourself to an eternally hopeless bottom-dwelling club--unless that's your masochistic bent. You can pick a club that squares with your identity--be it gritty and hardworking, or champagne flash.

This was, indeed, a beautiful freedom--until this month. I had adopted two European clubs as my own, watched their games every weekend, wasted work hours reading blogs about them, emotionally invested myself in their travails. But last week my two beloved teams, Barcelona and Arsenal, played each other in the final of the UEFA Champions League in Paris. What glory! What pain! This was the sporting equivalent of those thought experiments about desert-island cannibalism. Which of my loves would I be forced to eat?

I have, over the years, constructed a theory that linked Arsenal and Barcelona in an alliance of virtue. Like the cartoon superheroes that reside together in the Hall of Justice, Arsenal and Barcelona had, in my mind, joined to battle the game's bad guys--namely, Chelsea and Real Madrid, the Yankees of European football.

My teams share the same essential strengths. They eschew boring defensive security for the pleasures of relentless attack. Both exude an irresistible cosmopolitanism. Or rather, Barcelona, founded by a Swiss man, has always exuded cosmopolitanism, and Arsenal learned to do so under the stewardship of Arsene Wenger, its urbane French manager. Both combine their exciting international style with a heavy dose of localism. Arsenal coupled the Frenchman Thierry Henry and Dutch genius Dennis Bergkamp with an English-dominated back line. Barcelona fields true Catalan heroes such as Carles Puyol.

I adore Arsenal too much to concoct reasons for turning against it. But Barc,a, as the team is known, is nearer and dearer to my heart, ever so slightly. My love for the team sprang from my love of the city. A cousin of mine had fought for the republic in the Spanish Civil War. Why would a Polish Jew, who had never before set foot in Spain, journey across Europe to take up arms with the Catalans? As a boy, I began reading about Barcelona's resistance to Franco and developed a romance with the city. During my teens, I finally made a pilgrimage to Catalonia. It was the week before the New Year, and Barc,a had no matches scheduled. But to celebrate the holiday season, the club had opened the doors of its stadium, the Nou Camp, to the public, gratis. I sat in a line in the parking lot with young kids, eager to catch a glimpse of the pitch, and old men, eager to visit the trophy case--and I converted.

While, over the years, my view of the Spanish Civil War has grown more nuanced, my view of Barc,a has grown ever more romantic. During the era of the Franco dictatorship, Barc,a was the lone place where the Catalans could shout in their own language and denounce the authoritarian regime. No government would dare challenge 100,000 men in the throes of fandom. Franco understood that the Catalan people needed a place to vent their frustration, and Barc,a provided just that.

No soccer team is going to be a perfect reflection of your politics--and it may even be perverse to think of the game that way. But Barc,a represents a liberal nationalist spirit that makes for a powerful reprimand to both ethnic chauvinism and facile criticisms of the nation-state. Barc,a is the ultimate symbol of the Catalan people--one of their most glorious achievements, a monument to their language, history and struggle. But, at the same, it is a bastion of pluralism. Its anthem explicitly welcomes immigrants, and over time it has served as a powerful instrument for assimilating newcomers into Catalan society.

So when Barcelona and Arsenal finally met last week, I had to make my choice. For a week leading up to the game, I dressed my 14-month-old baby in her Barc,a tracksuit, earning her approving cheers from my Latino neighbors in Washington as she waddled down the street. (O.K., some Americans do inherit their fandom.) I nodded, proudly and smugly. But there was no way for me to fully enjoy this game, to root against the Arsenal players I love. Even though Barc,a won, 2-1, I fear that a part of me lost.

Franklin Foer is editor of the New Republic and author of How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization