Spanish Yin, Dutch Yang, and Shakespeare

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Andres Iniesta after scoring the winning goal

The commentators called it an ugly game, but I found something compelling about Spain’s victory over the Netherlands in yesterday’s World Cup final. And after all, regardless of what happened earlier in the game, how can one argue when the winning goal–and a beautifully struck ball at that–occurs just minutes before the end of overtime?

The very fact that the Dutch had to resort to thuggish soccer—a record number of yellow cards were issued—meant that the game invoked a familiar narrative: the eternal struggle between “dark night and eternal light” (to quote Henry Vaughan), between brutish earth and ethereal sky. As I was searching for a literary work that embodies this drama, my wife mentioned Shakespeare’s The Tempest, which I think fits the bill.

First, let me survey the game. Over the past few years Spain has been playing the most beautiful soccer in the world, and in the semifinal game it used its fluid style to run circles around a strong German team.  Holland declared it wouldn’t repeat the German mistake. It wouldn’t just sit back. It would “attack.”

It is ironic that the Dutch may have invented the beautiful style of soccer that the Spanish play. Johan Kruyff, perhaps Europe’s greatest player ever (the Dutch Pele), perfected “total football” in the 1970’s, when the Dutch twice went to the World Cup finals.  He then brought the style to Spain in the 1990’s as coach of the Barcelona team. The prospect of two countries playing “beautiful soccer” and attacking the goal had commentators salivating over the prospect of a wide open game for the ages.

But to attack the goal one needs the ball, and the Spanish are so adept at passing and dribbling that they don’t allow other teams to have it. Their play can be mesmerizing. For the first few minutes of the game, it appeared that they would repeat their performance against the Germans as they had several good scoring chances. Then the Dutch began attacking–but not the ball.  The  players.

One yellow call followed another and there was even a kung fu kick to Xabi Alonso’s chest that should have received a red card. But ugly though it was, the strategy was effective. Spain’s rhythm was thrown off. Their passing was no longer quite so crisp, and some of the turnovers in midfield led to promising scoring chances for the Netherlands.

In extra time, however, Dutch legs started to get weary, especially after they lost a defender to a second yellow card. It takes a lot of energy to keep chasing, and a misplaced clearance led to a crisp pass and a sublime finish.  Spain had won.

Seen in archetypal terms, the game was more than a game. It was as though Spanish precision had called forth its opposite, disruptive chaos, and the two roiled for control of the soccer universe. Holland was Spain’s dark brother, two soccer traditions sprung from the same seed where the Duch played yang to Spain’s yin. Could light prevail over darkness or would darkness subsume the light?

It was a drama Americans have seen in their own sports–say, when the Detroit “Bad Boy” Pistons went up against Magic Johnson’s elegant Lakers, when Pat Riley’s violent Knicks tried to bring Michael Jordan down to earth, when Bill Belichick’s defense disrupted the timing of Peyton Manning’s precision passing offense. Sometimes the light wins, sometimes the darkness.

In The Tempest we are greeted from the first with images of dark energy.  A tempest is blowing, and it mirrors political designs of usurpation.  The political turmoil is an extension of what has occurred years before when Prospero is cast out of Naples with his infant daughter Miranda and marooned on an island.  There he finds a spirit of the air, Ariel, imprisoned within a tree by the witch Sycorax.  With his powers he is able to free the sprite, but he cannot civilize the witch’s offspring, Caliban, who growls that the benefit he got from language is knowing how to curse. Caliban, in fact, even tries to rape Miranda (“to people this isle with Calibans”), and when Prospero orchestrates a fairy feast for Miranda and Ferdinand—“Oh brave new world, that has such people in it!” she says upon first encountering the man who will become her husband—Caliban blunders into the scene like a Dutch defender and disrupts the proceedings.

By the end of the play, although Prospero is not entirely able to subdue or control Caliban, a kind of synthesis is achieved–between male and female, spirit and earth, magic and politics.  Prospero can give up his magic staff and Miranda and Ferdinand will rule over a new order. Those who would have usurped the throne are at least in momentary retreat.

And so it occurred upon the Johannesburg pitch. Spain and Holland both played their roles and elegant soccer won out over the forces of disruption. If Spain had not been tested as it was, its beauty would have carried less conviction. For once in its long history of underperforming on the world stage, Spain managed to join beauty with toughness, airy touch with steely resolve.  Its victory, as a result, was that much more meaningful.

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