Analysis : The Joys, the Kicks, the Boots

TEOTIHUACAN, Mexico — From the summit of the Pyramid of the Sun, the view stretches away in all directions to the mist-blue mountains that frame the Anahuac Valley.

Closer at hand, immediately below, in fact, lie the ruins of the ancient city of Teotihuacan.

It would be quiet up here, 207 feet above the maze of ancient walls and walkways, were it not for the persistent interruption by broken-toothed vendors offering crude silver jewelry, odd-shaped clay flutes and shiny obsidian carvings.

But for them, it would be a good spot to sit back and contemplate the past, both the ancient and the immediate. The story of the last 30 days takes on an entirely different perspective when viewed from a city whose story dates back almost 2,500 years.

When whole cultures can disappear, leaving behind neither their language nor their identity, of what possible import is a simple sporting event, a gathering of athletes for a few short days?

We grandly call it the World Cup, believing that it will somehow survive the centuries, that Diego Maradona will be a name remembered in, say, 2986. But we flatter ourselves, and deceive, too. These are transitory happenings whose meaning diminishes with each passing decade.

The real meaning of events such as the World Cup is simply in the satisfaction they bring at the moment they are held, and perhaps the memories they leave behind for a generation or so.

If they help produce friendships, if they foster peace, if they bring a little laughter, a little joy, to those who participate in them either as players or as spectators, then so much the better.

There is nothing more, and no one should expect there to be.

Mexico survived the 1986 World Cup and, conversely, the 1986 World Cup survived Mexico.

Because of that, the tournament must be regarded as a success. The doubts beforehand were plentiful, and they lingered well into the 30-day event.

Worries about the Mexicans’ ability to organize the May 31-June 29 tournament were loudly voiced--most often by the media--but the country’s inefficiency as a whole was more than offset by the warmth and friendliness of its people.

If airline flights were inevitably late, sometimes by as much as eight hours, there was always someone there with a smile and a greeting when they finally did arrive. The fact that “The Wave” became a popular in-flight entertainment also added to their enjoyment.

If overseas telephone calls took an inordinate amount of time to go through, there were always the local calls in Mexico City that could be made at no cost whatsoever.

If subtropical downpours each evening or night and sticky, cloying heat during the rest of the day made things unpleasant for some, there was always the realization that those who live here get just as drenched and just as hot.

Each visitor who came to Mexico in June has taken home a different impression of the country and its people. Likewise, they have left behind certain impressions of themselves and their own country.

What, for instance, could the people of Monterrey have made of the scores of drunken English fans who behaved abysmally and treated their hosts with contempt?

And what could the gregarious and well-behaved Danish fans have made of the armored troop carriers and rifle-toting soldiers who ringed Azteca Stadium on game days?

Perhaps all the security was necessary. Perhaps there were no terrorist acts or cases of fan hooliganism at the 52 matches simply because of the massive military and police presence. But the sight of so many grim-faced guards did not help the spirit of the tournament.

That spirit was hardly aided by FIFA, world soccer’s governing body, which, under the tottering leadership of 70-year-old Joao Havelange, has become an organization devoted more to making money than to making friends.

Havelange and his fellow FIFA board members proclaimed over and over again that everything was perfect, that there were no problems with communication, with organization, with the structure and running of the tournament. They then ignored the laughter or the howls of outrage that followed their remarks.

Like the Olympic Games, the World Cup has become a pawn of big business and of television. Organizations such as FIFA and the International Olympic Committee have sold out to the highest bidder. Television controls the timing of events and multinational corporations control the international sports bodies.

Half-empty stadiums are no longer a problem; the money pours in from television rights and from sponsorships, not from ticket sales. The official attendance figure for the 1986 World Cup is 2,407,431, but no one believes it.

That figure reflects the block sale of tickets as long as a year in advance to travel agencies, businesses and individuals who hoped to make a profit by selling them to the expected influx of World Cup visitors.

That influx never materialized, and the profiteers were left unable to resell the tickets in Mexico because they were priced way beyond the financial reach of the average Mexican fan.

The result was half-empty stadiums where the announced attendances included tickets sold, not people present.

When FIFA officials were asked why the unused seats could not be given to children’s organizations or charities, they turned a deaf ear, mumbling inanities about the stadiums not being made of rubber (to stretch to fit all those who would want to get in for free) and FIFA not being a charity.

The attitude of the FIFA officials soured more than a few journalists, who openly accused them of ineptitude and corruption.

Columnist Alan Robinson, whose impressions--sometimes insightful, sometimes bizarre--appeared daily in the Mexico City News, made the point without concealing any anger.

“The worst thing about the World Cup is that it was held here and allowed to emphasize the gulf between the haves in the stadiums and the have-nots outside,” he wrote in Monday’s edition. “I don’t care how well Maradona plays football. I don’t care how well anybody plays football. To hell with football. The most inspiring moments in the game aren’t worth a growl in the belly of a hungry child.”

As far as the quality of soccer is concerned, the 1986 World Cup will be remembered for two things: the play of Argentina’s Maradona and the drama of the France-Brazil quarterfinal in Guadalajara.

As for the rest, it was no better and no worse than the dozen World Cups preceding it. There were no innovations, no new tactical advances, and precious few goals--only 132 in 52 games.

The fact that three of the quarterfinals had to be decided on penalty kicks caused a stir, but as yet no one has been able to think of a better method--certainly not as long as television controls not only how long the games must last but when they must be played.

More than a few famous names made their final curtain call on the world stage--not the least of them Italy’s Paolo Rossi, the Soviet Union’s Oleg Blokhin, Brazil’s Zico, Socrates and Junior, Northern Ireland’s Pat Jennings and France’s Michel Platini.

Had the World Cup merely been a matter of 52 matches, with the athletes having free access to the media and the media being able to concentrate solely on the athletes, it might have been a more enjoyable tournament.

But sports is not like that any more. Now, it involves politics, finance, drugs, corruption and controversy of a hundred other kinds.

No longer is it possible simply to say who won and who lost.

Nowadays, the winners and the losers sometimes are not even on the field.

In Teotihuacan, the crumbling remnants of ancient buildings cast shadows across the long grass.

Lizards, sun-bathing on top of the time-worn stones, skitter silently away at the approach of a stranger, disappearing between the cracks in the wall.

Fifty miles or so away, in Nezahualcoyotl on the outskirts of Mexico City, the story of another wall is still being written. It, as much as anything, tells the true tale of the 1986 World Cup.

Nezahualcoyotl is the world’s largest slum, a polluted city of 2.8 million people crammed into 26 square miles of dirt and dust, where unemployment is 50% and the unpaved roads turn to rivers of mud when it rains.

It was here, inexplicably, that organizers of the tournament decided to play three of the World Cup’s first-round games.

Local government officials, afraid that Mexico’s image would suffer if the world’s press and foreign fans saw the abject conditions in the city, decided to do something about it. If they can’t see it, they can’t write about it, was their reasoning.

So, before the World Cup, they built a wall around those portions of Nezahualcoyotl nearest Neza ’86 Stadium. Roads were paved, facades were added to the fronts of stores and houses, and a fresh coat of brightly colored paint was slapped onto anything that looked uglier than normal.

It didn’t work. Because bus drivers taking reporters and fans to the stadium inevitably became lost, their passengers were treated to the full misery of Nezahualcoyotl. It made for a striking contrast with the well-dressed rich in their stadium boxes.

But there was something else that impressed visitors to Neza ’86. On game days, the streets were lined for mile after mile with throngs of people, young and old, every one of them smiling, laughing, waving and cheering.

Too poor to attend the matches, their World Cup consisted of watching the traffic instead.

Now, with the visitors gone and the World Cup over, the government has added injury to insult. First it wanted to hide its poor from view. Now it wants them to pay for it. Taxes have been raised by 30% to cover the cost of building the walls that failed to conceal the truth.

It was American photographer Annie Liebowitz who was commissioned to produce the official World Cup posters. What she came up with was a series of 20 or so strikingly ugly portraits combining soccer with the pre-Hispanic ruins of Mexico.

Obviously, like almost everything else to do with Mexico ‘86, it failed to hit the mark. Perhaps Liebowitz chose the wrong locations; soccer is, after all, a working-class sport.

Teotihuacan has all but disappeared. Nezahualcoyotl will be here for a long, long time.

And in its dusty streets, the children will still be playing soccer and dreaming of the day when they can really see a World Cup.