GOL?

by Yasmin Masidi

Memory plays strange tricks on one’s convictions. I come into this match with a vague affection for Slovakia based on their elegiac national anthem and a recollection that Tintin had visited Slovakia (Czechoslovakia, rather) in one of his many adventures. Wikipedia proves that I misremembered: the country I thought was Czechoslovakia in King Ottokar’s Sceptre was fictional, and in any case based on Albania, despite the fact that the situation in the story was analogous to the annexation of  Czechoslovakia by Nazi Germany.

What little sentiment buried, and the elevation of my knowledge of either country from “jackshit” to “fuck-all”, I settle for neutrality and the least sentimental setting I can find to watch the match. There are stalls in a nearby night market hawking World Cup shirts of the usual suspects: England, Argentina, Germany, the Netherlands, Brazil. But not Paraguay or Slovakia. Football support is predicated on sentiment predicated on emotion, but emotion is contextual as much as it is instinctive. The delight I felt upon encountering a Modesty Blaise comic strip in a 1960s newspaper, the dialogue translated into Malay and rendered in Jawi, would not be bittersweet if my discovery hadn’t happened within the context of heightened conservatism in which the very same newspaper is now a regressive force. The very idea of Modesty Blaise as a heroine to comics-reading children! Pass the smelling salts, pakcik.

So it is with football: our national football team is seen as a joke, and in its absence as the fulcrum for our passions as football fans, we turn instead to a market of broadcast packages and ads from shirt sponsors. It is unfair to characterise the man in a Portugal shirt two tables over as a dupe, or to say that the anger and tears shed by fans of England – their affections transferring over from the Premier League or university days overseas – are not genuine. We all arrive at our beloveds in different ways. I am, after all, someone who initially supported Germany out of a deep-seated loathing for the Three Lions but found herself loving the pragmatic Germans beyond reason (the seasonal trolling of England is a bonus).

But I wonder if Malaysian pirates would be churning out Paraguayan and Slovakian shirts if the narrative sold to us is not Cristiano Ronaldo or Wayne Rooney writing the future, but the story of a decent but unremarkable squad becoming the second CONMEBOL team to qualify for the World Cup, ahead of Argentina. Or if we’d be poring over the words of Vladimír Weiss if our media was full of stories about the team that qualified for the first time as an independent nation after the split of Czechoslovakia. If we were a country where racism hadn’t snuffed the life of a student from Chad attacked by a mob, would we see clusters of fans in Ghanaian jerseys at the local mamak cheering on the Black Stars? In a crowded market of jostling strips, perhaps there’s no room in Malaysia for teams outside the expected, or beyond arbitrary identifications that can be drawn easily, like religion.

The match begins. I recognise a few players from Serie A and the Bundesliga. A man a table over and a waiter pause, watching. The moment ends. Paraguay passes with verve and intent, Slovakia responds with tackles whose crunch would put a tin of crisps into shame. The coffeeshop is an anatomy of an unimportant match in an uninterested Bangsar crowd: a waiter scalpels between the tables, chairs and humans jutting out like ribs. Two women meet in close conversation over twin kidneys of fleshly bowls. The man who’d paused for the start of the match looks up at the TV screen again, twice, thrice.

Patrons leave and enter the coffeeshop in waves. Briefly I wondered which teams Modesty Blaise and Tintin would have supported in this World Cup. Would Modesty support England, in honour of her adopted home? I doubt it. Tintin, being Belgian, is unlikely to support Germany but may barrack for France or the Netherlands if pressed.

Paraguay scores a goal in the 27^th minute. For a brief moment the coffeeshop lights up with an appreciative groan – not so apathetic, after all. A man in a powder-blue shirt wanders in, sits at the table next to mine. He is waiting for someone who, as it turns out, never arrives. A mixed group of youths converge on a table outside, carrying two bunches of flowers wrapped in plastic. The commentator’s voice rises and falls with a chance wasted. No one looks up.

A family places their orders. One of the women alternates between watching the match and paying filial attention to the older woman sitting opposite her. The second half of the match is frenetic: a Paraguayan player dispossesses his opponent with a skill too intense to be cool. Slovakia continues to foul and give away free kicks like there’s no tomorrow. A man in a red checkered shirt stares stonily at the screen, and he is joined by a woman in black who follows the match with interest. We are now four, the watchers. A young man from the DVD shop next door saunters over for a look.

Riveros scores Paraguay’s second goal in the dying minutes of the match, his left foot kicking a decisive end to Slovakia’s hopes. Paraguay is, unbelievably, perched at the top of Group F. Joy blooms across the Paraguayan half of the Free State Stadium, red, white, blue; it drops into the din of the coffeeshop, and this time there is nary a ripple.

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