“Every Saturday was derby day in Lebanon,” noted James Montague’s football travelogue When Friday Comes, “where Sunni met Shia, Shia met Druze, Christian met Muslim. Violence was inevitable.” In an article in today’s New York Times, Montague revisits football in Lebanon. The article casts a spotlight on Theo Bücker, the German coach of Lebanon’s national team, on the eve of the biggest game in Lebanon’s history: a World Cup qualifier against the United Arab Emirates. Needing a single point to earn a place in the final stage of the Asian Confederation 2014 World Cup qualifying round, Lebanon rallied around the team.
I don’t care if someone is Christian or a Muslim,” Bücker said. “There are only good and bad football players, that is all.” He goes on to add with the confidence typical of outsiders: “The Lebanese are tired of all the problems of the past . . . They are happy that this is uniting them.” In the end, UAE won 4-2, but Lebanon still managed to move on to the final ten.
Read the NYT article here.
Further Reading:
Danyel Reiche, “War Minus the Shooting? The politics of sport in Lebanon as a unique case in comparative politics,” Third World Quarterly, 32, 2 (2011): 261-277.
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