Two decades after hosting the World Cup final between Brazil and Italy, Los Angeles is paying tribute to the global game in a show celebrating soccer greats like Pele, Zidane and Eto’o.
“Futbol: the Beautiful Game” at the LA County Museum of Art (LACMA) uses photographs, paintings and videos to explore the fan worship of the sport’s biggest stars, as well as its economic power and social and cultural impact.
One of the most arresting pieces is an Andy Warhol painting of Pele, which the artist dedicated to the Brazilian icon in 1978, three years after he joined the New York Cosmos, his last club.
For Warhol, “it was about that concept of celebrity, in the same way that he would be looking at Mick Jagger or Elizabeth Taylor,” curator Franklin Sirmans said.
Pele, along with Germany’s Franz Beckenbauer and Dutchman Johan Cruyff, was one of the stars attracted to the US to try to popularize the sport and the North American Soccer League (NASL) in a country obsessed with baseball and American football.
The effort was a fiasco — the league, created in 1968, disappeared ignominiously in 1984 — but soccer’s governing body FIFA gave the US another chance by letting them stage the 1994 World Cup.
Despite initial criticism, the competition was a huge success, with full stadiums, well-functioning infrastructure and clear signs that Americans were actually embracing a sport that had long struggled to catch on here. A year later, Major League Soccer (MLS) was born. The professional league has gone from strength to strength in the two decades since then.
The 1994 World Cup takes center stage in the LACMA show, showcasing the dramatic Brazil-Italy final, in which Roberto Baggio’s missed penalty allowed the South Americans to win the global championship for the fourth time.
Other memorable moments included Argentine star Diego Maradona being kicked out for a positive drug test. Colombian defender Andres Escobar was killed when he returned home, after scoring an own-goal that ended his team’s run in the competition. A painting by artist Carolyn Castano is dedicated to Escobar.
Then there is the film Zidane: a 21st Century Portrait by Frenchman Philippe Parreno, in which 17 cameras follow every move by Zinedine Zidane — a French national icon — more than 90 minutes of a 2005 match.
Maradona’s infamous “Hand of God” moment that sank England in Mexico in 1986 is also turned into art, alongside a painting of Cameroon forward Samuel Eto’o at the 2010 World Cup.
The exhibition reflects some of the darker sides of the beautiful game, including fan violence and the power of money.
And there is humor — Mexico’s Miguel Calderon stitches together video clips of his national side from a string of matches against Brazil.
However, he only chooses flattering bits of footage. The final score? Mexico 17, Brazil 0.
The fans are represented in their own 90-minute audiovisual montage, showing Brazilian supporters singing, suffering, holding their heads in their hands and jumping with joy.
“You learn so many things about life in football, in the stadiums,” Sirmans said.
Or, as famous French existentialist writer — and goalkeeper — Albert Camus once said: “After many years in which the world has afforded me many experiences, what I know most surely about morality and obligations, I owe to football.”
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
Rafael Nadal on Wednesday said the upcoming French Open would be the moment to “give everything and die” on the court after his comeback from injury in Barcelona was curtailed by Alex de Minaur. The 22-time Grand Slam title winner, back playing this week after three months on the sidelines, battled well, but eventually crumbled 7-5, 6-1 against the world No. 11 from Australia in the second round. Nadal, 37, who missed virtually all of last season, is hoping to compete at the French Open next month where he is the record 14-time champion. The Spaniard said the clash with De Minaur was
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but