Timothy Garton-Ash

There is some corner of a Spanish field that is for ever Beckham
Football unites us more than it divides us, and today's beautiful game channels tribal emotions along peaceful paths

I want England to win the World Cup. If England are knocked out, I hope that France will win. England's old "sweet enemy" needs a psychological boost these days, and I'd love Zizou Zidane's team, with hardly a white face in it, to help transform French attitudes to people of colour. If England and France are both out, I'll back Brazil or Argentina, because they play the beautiful game beautifully. Ivory Coast, the small, impoverished, war-scarred country I most wanted to take the prize, has already seen its team gone. What's the political effect of football? Does it stir up belligerent nationalism and xenophobia or contribute to international understanding and world peace? A bit of both, to be sure; but the net effect is positive.
Everyone knows the downside. There was, for example, the "football war" between Honduras and El Salvador, sparked by World Cup qualifying matches in summer 1969. In his wonderful first-hand account, Ryszard Kapuscinski reports that the Honduran team, after a sleepless night being pelted with rotten eggs, dead rats and stinking rags through the broken windows of their hotel, were transported to the match in armoured cars. "Under such conditions the players from Tegucigalpa did not, understandably, have their minds on the game. They had their minds on getting out alive. 'We're awfully lucky that we lost,' said the visiting coach, Mario Griffin, with relief."
The connection between some organised football hooligans and far-right xenophobic extremism is well-documented. Recent skirmishes between Polish and German supporters have hardly helped political relations across the Oder-Neisse line. There are shocking examples of racism from the stadiums of Europe. Earlier this year, when fans in the east German city of Halle shouted "dirty nigger", "shit nigger" and "ape" at Leipzig's Nigerian midfielder, Adebowale Ogungbure, he responded - quite appropriately - with a Hitler salute. Ludicrously, the public prosecutor started investigating him for "unconstitutional behaviour", but charges were rapidly dropped. In 2004, Spanish supporters directed monkey chants at the English winger Shaun Wright-Phillips. Arkan's "Tigers", the Serbian paramilitary killers, were partly drawn from supporters of Red Star Belgrade.
Football is tribal. The smaller tribes are clubs; the larger, nations. In the World Cup, we are witnessing a worldwide orgy of tribal national feeling. But national feeling is not necessarily nationalism - with its negative connotations of enmity and contempt. It can be patriotism, meaning that you love your own country without hating anybody else's. This is how I read the current explosion of flag-waving and spontaneous singing of the national anthem in Germany. Patriotism, not nationalism.
Today's highly organised game does not merely channel tribal-national emotions into relatively peaceful paths, with clear limits, well-enforced rules (on the pitch, at least) and handshakes at start and finish. It also quietly subverts those emotions. In Poland's opening game against Ecuador, there was a moment when the Polish crowd produced the most magnificent full-volume rendition of the Polish national anthem - the second most beautiful in Europe, after the Marseillaise. "Poland is not yet lost," they roared, "so long as we live!" As if in answer, Ecuador scored. You can have the greatest national spirit in the world, but if the other side plays better football, they'll win.
And when your national team is knocked out, what are you going to do? Sit at home, drowning your sorrows in vodka, beer or rum? No, you go and support someone else. Not as fervently, of course, but still ... By the time it comes to the final on July 9, a large proportion of humankind will be sitting in front of a television screen supporting someone else's country.
Often, especially in Europe, there's an element of humour in the way people support their own country and rubbish other people's, or vice versa. I just stepped out to buy a sandwich from my local deli in Oxford and came across a bunch of teenagers in enormous football fan hats, decorated with the red-on-white cross of St George. They spoke English with foreign accents. "Where are you from?" I asked one of them. "I'm from Barcelona." "But you're supporting England?" He grinned and put his hand on his heart: "My 'art is English!" "Oh," said the very English lady in the deli, "I'm really quite touched."
This sort of national cross-dressing is encouraged by the fact that so many players are more usually seen playing for leading teams in other countries: the French striker Thierry Henry for Arsenal, the England captain David Beckham for Real Madrid, and so on. So the club-tribal and national-tribal instincts cut across each other. In some recess of his heart, even the most nationalistic Arsenal supporter thinks of Henry as our man, who just happens to be temporarily playing against us. There is some corner of a Spanish field that is for ever Beckham. Here, incidentally, is an unsung achievement of the EU. Back in 1995, the so-called "Bosman ruling" of the European Court of Justice - named after the Belgian footballer Jean-Marc Bosman - determined that players should be able to move freely between European clubs, under single-market provisions for the free movement of services. Four years later, Chelsea were fielding a team without a single British-born player.
The result is a continuous European football lesson in multiple and transferable identities - far more effective than any civics classes or politicians' speeches. And a powerful argument against racism. Racists claim that people of different origins and skin colour are inferior. Every goal scored by Henry, every spin by Zidane, every inspired clearance by Ashley Cole, is the refutation. Beat that if you can, white thug. The most dramatic illustration of this is the French national team. The commanding heights of French politics, business and the media are dominated by smooth, mainly white types from the country's elite educational institutions, but when it comes to football, they have to call on the guys from the banlieues. Every World Cup victory for France is a defeat for Jean-Marie le Pen. Football is the European game par excellence, but increasingly it's also the world's game. Unless my ears totally deceived me, South Korea's fans cheered their high-octane team on to a draw with France to the tune of Beethoven's Ode to Joy. One balmy evening at the golden Shwedagon pagoda in Rangoon, I was approached by a young Burmese monk. "Aya Shiya!" he said, smiling serenely, "Aya Shiya!" What Buddhist blessing was this, I wondered, what ageless wisdom of the east? Finally I worked it out. "Alan Shearer!" he was saying; the Newcastle and England striker being almost a god to football-mad Burmese monks. There are very few places in today's world where you cannot break the ice with complete strangers by talking about Manchester United or David Beckham. Celebrity is a form of internationalism too.
In the end, football unites us more than it divides us. The often bloody 19th-century rivalry between imperial Russia and imperial Britain in the mountains of central Asia was christened "the great game". Today's great game is being played out in Iraq and over Iran. Better the beautiful game than the great game.
Guardian 22 de Junho