Free Ghoncheh, Jailed For Wanting To Watch Volleyball

Earlier this summer, Ghoncheh Ghavami stood outside Tehran's majestic Azadi (freedom) stadium, wearing a white scarf and holding up a placard.

With Hassan Rouhani promising a more moderate stance in Iran, she wanted to enter the stadium alongside male fans, hoping that the Islamic republic's ban on women attending big sporting events would finally be over.

As Iran's volleyball team hosted Italy later that Friday, Ghavami, 25 – who holds dual British and Iranian citizenship – was arrested with a number of other female fans who were peacefully demanding to be allowed into the match. She was released after several hours in detention but re-arrested in late June when she went back to collect her mobile phone, which had been confiscated after the protest. Nearly three months on, she remains in jail.

Amnesty International says she is being held in Tehran's notorious Evin prison, where she was kept in solitary confinement for more than 40 days before being moved to a shared cell.

"She is a prisoner of conscience, arrested solely for taking part in a peaceful protest against the ban on women attending volleyball world league matches in Tehran's Azadi stadium," said Amnesty.

Give My Goals for a Better World along with thousands of others are demanding her immediate release. Please take action here and/or here. #FreeGhonchehGhavami.

Allez les Algeriens! Part 2

In 1958, in the midst of Algeria’s war of independence against their imperial rulers France, Algeria formed a football team which for the first time wore the national colours. Its line-up included Rachid Makhloufi, Ben Tifour and other Algerians who were professional players in France. Makhoulfi had also been capped for the French national team.

Blockaded by the colonial power, Algeria only managed to play against Monocco – who were then banned from FIFA for several years – and engage in several low key but significant games organised by sports unions in some Arab and Eastern European countries. FIFA and the French football league blacklisted  the players involved and they were barred from ever returning to professional activity. This showed the bravery of the footballers who were prepared to give up everything, including a comfortable life as professional footballers, for the independence of their homeland and its people. 

However, after Algeria won its independence, the French football league had no alternative but to call up the players the fans longed for.

Further turmoil for the Football Associations of Africa’s World Cup Heroes

 

Much has been written about the turmoil surrounding Africa’s teams in the World Cup focusing on player bonus payments, corrupt administrators and indiscipline. The two African teams widely seen as faring the best of all the African nations involved, both on and off the field, were Nigeria and Algeria. Despite this success, both countries Football Associations have found themselves locked in controversy since the World Cup, which saw both teams qualify for the round of 16. 

In Algeria, football has been suspended indefinitely following the death of Cameroonian player Albert Ebosse, who was hit by a stone thrown by fans after his side JS Kabylie's home defeat by USM Alger in Tizi Ouzou in August. It is believed that the stadium in which the attack took place was under maintenance at the time of the game and fans threw loose stones that were lying on the ground. The question needs to be asked why the venue was used when construction works were still in progress.

Algeria's football federation made a statement stating it had postponed the league "in protest at the irresponsible actions of certain fanatics and hooligans who resort to violence in the stadiums which has reached an unacceptable level". 

An investigation into Ebosse's death, and a deeper inquiry into football hooliganism in the country, has also been ordered by the Algerian interior ministry. This comes as a major blow to the Algerian F.A. who have benefited from the positivity generated by the performance of their team in the World Cup and their much heralded support for the Palestinian people.

Nigeria's football championship has also been suspended indefinitely because of a referees' strike in protest at the crisis surrounding the leadership of the countries Football Association. Referees have taken strike action following a controversial Nigerian Football Federation (NFF) ‘election’ on Tuesday, which has split the governing body. The Nigeria players' union and top club managers have also joined the boycott of the Nigerian league.

Outgoing NFF president Aminu Maigari was to preside over a scheduled meeting to design a road map for elections to the NFF executive committee. But Maigari, along with the secretary of the organisation Musa Amadu, was unable to attend because he was detained for "general questioning" by the Department of State Security. In his absence Chris Giwa was elected NFF president by a group of members backed by the country's Ministry of Sport. 

This situation contravenes a directive by football's world governing body FIFA, who said a in a letter to the NFF last week that it must decide on a new date for "an electoral process that is free and open to everybody". The developments have resulted in a situation where Nigeria is in danger of being suspended from world football for government interference. 

The disputes within the NFF have already led to a Fifa intervention, international suspension and the enforced return – twice – of Maigari. Another ban could affect Nigeria's 2015 Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers against Congo and South Africa early next month. 

In addition to the deep divisions in the NFF, the Super Eagles are still without a permanent coach after Stephen Keshi's contract was not renewed after the World Cup.  He has agreed only to take temporary charge of the team for their two upcoming Nations Cup qualifiers, having grown impatient with negotiations over a new deal.

Football is an incredibly popular sport in both countries like it is throughout the continent but this is another example of how administrators and governments are failing the people they claim to act on behalf of.

Germany: Showing that another footballing world is possible

A lot has been said about the reason for Germany’s devastating 7-1 victory over the five time champions Brazil. I personally believe the success is down to the way German football has been structured compared to how other countries organise their game. There is always talk in the British press about how England can adopt the German system. Simply tinkering around the edges will not suffice; a whole revolution is needed if England is to drop its wild west capitalist approach to football and adopt a more social democratic interventionist approach like that practiced in Germany.

If England’s system is bad, the Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF) is the epitome of a crony capitalist system which has continued to centralise power without reforming at all. There has been a long history of corruption within the CBF which has been papered over by the previous success of the national team. Ricardo Terra Teixeira, the president of the CBF from 1989 to March 2012, was forced to resign in July 2012 after a Swiss prosecutor's report revealed that, during his tenure on FIFA's Executive Committee, he and his former father-in-law Joao Havelange (Former FIFA President) took more than $41 million in bribes in connection with the award of World Cup marketing rights. If this was not enough its current President Jose Maria Marin has also been criticised for corruption.  On January 25 2012, during the medal ceremony of the Copa São Paulo de Futebol Júnior, he controversially pocketed one of the winner’s medals that would be handed to Corinthian’s player Mateus.  Marin was also a member of the party of the old military dictatorship and he has been linked to the death of the journalist Vladmir Herzog in 1975.  Marin had previously made several public speeches criticising Herzog. 

Brazil’s domestic league has also been scarred by hooliganism, falling attendances and the ongoing exodus of young players to Europe. Last season, players conducted a series of protests under the banner of the Bom Senso FC (Common Sense) movement, calling for a reorganisation of the congested and confusing fixture calendar.

On the other hand Germany’s structures have been praised by progressive supporter’s groups around the world. The watershed moment for German football famously arrived at the 2000 European Championship in Belgium and Holland. An embarrassing performance at that tournament went on to trigger the transformation of the German game into a flourishing all-round culture that we have today. Fourteen years later Germany are in the World Cup final, after previous promising tournaments in 2010 and 2012. 

The German national team has benefited from the organisation of their league clubs. While growing stronger on the field, which met its pinicale in the all German Champions League Final in 2013, German clubs have purposefully retained traditions and atmospheres off the field too, attempting to balance the notion of football as the people's game in the super-commercial, globalised era.

In Germany, fans can still pay cheaply in their thousands to stand and watch their teams – 25,000 supporters in Borussia Dortmund's famed south stand Die gelbe Wand (Yellow Wall) pay a mere €11 (£8.95) a match to watch the former German champions. So, younger, older and less well-off fans can still go to games, alongside the high-end payers in the seats and luxury lounges.

The biggest change to the way German football is structured came about in 2001. This change was known as the “50% plus one rule”. This rule ensures that clubs must be controlled, with at least 50% plus one of votes on important decisions, by their members, the supporters. There is not an overseas owner in the league at all and many of its senior figures speak with bafflement at the English parade of foreign plutocrats possessing and funding the great clubs. The president of a Bundesliga club is accountable to and can be voted out by the members. The clubs and the league maintain that system because, they argue, it keeps the clubs rooted in their cities and traditions.

The "50% plus one" rule helps keep the clubs supporting the national team and grounded, focused on the football and fans, not just on the money. The Bundesliga also pays 3% of its TV income and 2% of its ticket income (second division clubs pay 3%) to the German FA to help fund grassroots training, development and social programmes. In Germany the club verein, or association, is a central feature of social life, and most sports clubs tend to be well organised, with decent facilities compared with the many British amateur sports clubs living hand-to-mouth and the rundown state of many local authority football pitches.

Football administrators with vested interests often talk about investing in youth structures to improve the national game.  Even though this is undeniably a good thing those in power conveniently ignore any changes which will affect the interests of the rich and powerful in and around football. These vested interests need to be continually challenged if we are going to get the changes we need to benefit our national teams and our supporters. 

Germany has proved that the system works.  It’s up to us make sure it is implemented.

Soccer Socialism

It is not common for a left wing European to admit his admiration for anything American, especially its “Soccer” team which has been much derided as minority sport in the USA. However, I am delighted that real football is growing in North America and the possibility of it coinciding with a shift to progressive thinking over the pond.

Much has been made of the United States' two previous World Cup matches breaking viewing records. The victory over Ghana attracted the biggest US television audience for a football match - 16m people. The draw with Portugal smashed that record with an average of 24.7m viewers. And the match against Germany in Recife is expected to surpass even that. To put this into perspective this is higher than the finals of the NBA and the Major League Baseball's hallowed World Series.

The right wing commentator and representative of the old dying America Ann Coulter has comically stated that: "Any growing interest in soccer can only be a sign of the nation's moral decay. The same people trying to push soccer on Americans are the ones demanding that we love HBO's Girls, light-rail, Beyonce and Hillary Clinton."

Even though the very premise is absolutely ludicrous, it is clear to me that Football is in no doubt an internationalist sport and if it is adopted as a sport of liberal America it can be a good thing in broadening the often too inward looking USA. This can only be helped by the internationalist nature of the national team which mirrors the USA in general which has seen a decline in power of the old traditional “conservative white order”.

Unlike the country as a whole the USA is more influenced by Europe rather than the growing Latin American population within USA (I am sure this community which loves football will become more influential in the national team in the near future). United States manager Jurgen Klinsmann is famously from Germany but he is not the only member of the American squad with links to the European nation. In total five US players were either born to American families in Germany or moved there as children. Including Jermiane Jones the former Blackburn Rovers player (another reason why I have soft spot for the USA team).

There has also been a growth in progressive analysis of football in America including by Dave Zirin at Edge of Sports, the Howler Radio Podcast and the academic Dr Tim Walters who founded the “Occupy Football” movement.

However, it should not go unnoticed that the US system of sport (such as the NFL, MBA and baseball) despite being more nationalistic and inward looking in nature, is certainly more socialistic compared to football in the way it is run due to the draft system, wage caps and strong player unions. 

Only time will tell whether the popularity of football will remain when/if they get  knocked out of the World Cup, and whether or not it will  be seen as part of a broader shift in social values in the country. This is an area I will be following closely.