World Cup Blogs 30: Switzerland

When I was growing up I had a shortlist of countries I'd like to visit someday.  In a non-internet world and from a family that could never go overseas for a holiday it was more dream than aspiration.  In order of preference counting upwards the list was probably as follows;

5 Iceland - wild, cold and an island
4 Norway - snow, mountains, boats and fjords
3 Malta - the only hot one but somewhere we watched a film about in Junior School
2 Switzerland - snow, mountains, little trains going up mountains
1 Canada - huge, snow, mountains, big trains going past mountains

Of these five, I have (with no great sense of intention) visited four. Perhaps it is because my dreams were so sky-high that I have found each of them a little disappointing.  Canada was a lot more boring than I expected, Malta a lot more crowded (buildings as well as tourists), Norway, like Canada, quite sleepy and rather unfriendly though with wonderful scenery.  Iceland fared better though Reykjavik felt too much like a misplaced Reading with its modern malls and office buildings.

I liked each place but they were not the heaven on earth my imagination had built them up to be.  That's very similar to the way football fans look toward competitions like the World Cup - high expectation that is therefore doomed to somewhat disappoint.

Switzerland is the auspicious missing visit from my list - though I have visited other parts of the Alps in Bavaria and Austria.

Maybe one day I'll go there.   But . . .

I have only met - in close proximity - three Swiss people.  One, in one of my pastorates, was very nice but loved England and hardly ever went back to Switzerland even with family there.  Another was a Swiss girl I met when she was working at a Conference Centre I was connected to as a teenager.  She loved England too, and wanted to stay here instead of Switzerland.  The third was someone who lived with us for a year.  She hit new depths of off-puttingness by insisting that she hated (her word) snow and mountains . . .

In other words, my fandom toward Switzerland as a country has been gradually eroded by the people who belonged to it and who have themselves not appeared to be fans.

Hopefully the Swiss fans at the World Cup were more commending of their homeland. And hopefully anyone who meets me - even if they dislike the thought of being a Christian - will at least notice that I'm an enthusiast for Jesus.

World Cup Blogs 29: Sweden

Sweden put in a, well, Swedish performance in this World Cup.  Never incompetent but never exciting.  Their performance against England was as unremarkable as the Colombians' was eccentric.

I'm not sure what it is about Sweden that makes it so laid back - after all the Swedish winter presumably requires some determination to get through each year.  But laid back they are.  All the passion in our local IKEAs comes from the queuing customers from Britain.

When I visited Sweden some years back I did encounter some laid back elements in things spiritual.  Yet there were exceptions, and one especially glorious one.

I went to a church that caters for people like me by running parts of the service in English. It included Believer's Baptism and the Pastor asked just one simple question of each candidate. It wasn't, in one sense, the most satisfyingly theological baptismal question, yet a strangely fundamental one,

"Will you follow Jesus all the days of your life, and not turn back?"

Each candidate in turn affirmed.  The final candidate was a doctor who had come to Sweden from a difficult African country.  He was also asked the question, but his reply was not "Yes", or "I will". Instead he said, with a big smile, "Yes, of course".

Was he young and naive? Hardly - he was a Doctor. In that man I glimpsed the kind of faith that changes churches, communities and countries. This bewildering, to the outsider, commitment to things not seen is commented on in Hebrews chapter 11;

How did they do it? They saw it way off in the distance, waved their greeting, and accepted the fact that they were transients in this world. People who live this way make it plain that they are looking for their true home. If they were homesick for the old country, they could have gone back any time they wanted. But they were after a far better country than that—heaven country. You can see why God is so proud of them, and has a City waiting for them.

Am I, I ask myself, a competent Christian or an of course Christian?

World Cup Blogs 28: Spain

Writing this on a blisteringly hot day in London, I remember a journey in similar heat to visit this place in Barcelona.


It is impossible not to be impressed by the Nou Camp Stadium. History, in the football sense, has been made here time and again. It is the largest stadium in Europe and somehow creates a sense of excitement even when the only thing that is currently happening is that the grass is growing!

Then there is the Motto.

Most stadia have seats coloured to spell out something - frequently the club's initials or nickname. Not so Barcelona. Instead it spells out, in Catalan, the Motto,

MORE THAN A CLUB

The motto reflects the Catalunyan pride in Barcelona such that the club came to represent the Catalan nation and culture. This was especially true in the days of Franco's dictatorship when most expressions of Catalan culture were suppressed. Supporting FC Barcelona was a political act.  It has continued and been revisited in the Catalan pressure for independence since the last World Cup.

Football - other sport too of course - is often a MORE THAN.  Even this summer, England's unexpectedly extended stay into the semi-finals of the tournament did something positive in the unifying mindset of the country.

Life is never as compartmentalised as we are inclined to think.  Football Teams are never just football teams, houses never just houses, holidays never just holidays, churches never just churches; the weaving of life demands that we seek God's ways in it all.

World Cup Blogs 27: South Korea

As we saw with Nigeria a few posts back, there are countries of the world where, unlike contemporary England, the impact of Christian faith is rather greater than that of the national football team.  South Korea is one of those.

Here's a Baptist Church singing the Lord's Prayer.  It's a special choral event day for them, but just for the record I am also a member of a Baptist Church, we also have a gallery at the back, we sing, there are more women than men and we use the Lord's Prayer sometimes.  We also love Jesus.  Beyond that  the similarities are a little tough to find . . .

World Cup Blogs 26: Serbia

While the World Cup was consuming sporting hours, other sport continued.  This included Wimbledon tennis, the Men's Singles title being won, not for the first time, by Novak Djokovic.  He's Serbian, and was rather more successful than the nation's football team who were eliminated at the opening Group Stage.

Here's the Serbian World Cup squad - all 23 of them.

Goalkeepers: 

Vladimir Stojkovic 

Predrag Rajkovic 

Marko Dmitrovic

Defenders: 

Aleksandar Kolarov 

Branislav Ivanovic 

Dusko Tosic

Antonio Rukavina 

Milos Veljkovic 

Milan Rodic 

Uros Spajic 

Nikola Milenkovic

Midfielders: 

Nemanja Matic

Luka Milivojevic

Sergej Milinkovic-Savic

Marko Grujic

Adem Ljajic

Dusan Tadic 

Filip Kostic

Andrija Zivkovic 

Nemanja Radonjic

Strikers: 

Aleksandar Mitrovic

Aleksandar Prijovic 

Luka Jovic

The link with the Wimbledon champion is, I think, obvious.  But if you're struggling a clue is that when the first Yugoslavian team entered the World Cup before the Second World War it was made up only of Serbians and the others nicknamed it the 'Itchers'.

Yes, it is a rare thing to be a Serbian man and not to end in an 'ic'.  This lack of originality is easily sneered at, but unwisely so by someone like me, called Roberts.  The 's' stands for son of and so does the Serbian ic.

If the World Cup is full of diversity, the Serbians are perhaps around to remind us that in some ways we are all the same, wherever we are from and however successful we are.

World Cup Blogs 25: Senegal

This has been the second World Cup finals tournament for which Senegal have qualified.  At their first tournament in they surprised everyone by reaching the Quarter Finals..  In this year's tournament they made their mark in another, less satisfactory, way.

It is straightforward to decide a single game that is equal by having a penalty shoot-out, it is not so simple in the four-team Group Stage.  But what happens when two teams have the same points from the three results, drew with each other, and have scored and let in the same number of goals?

While it sounds a little unlikely, this scenario over three games in a low scoring sport with fairly equal teams is not that strange and nearly happened in a couple of groups.  And it DID happen in Senegal's group.

In such a case FIFA decided this time that the next determining factor would be yellow and red cards.  In this first use of that deciding system the team that was eliminated by the rule was Senegal who had accumulated two more cards to Japan. A first!

A classic example, then, of the life truth that little sins can grow into big consequences.

World Cup Blogs 24: Saudi Arabia

What could be more natural then adorning the pub with the flags of the 32 nations in the World Cup tournament?

But nothing in this world is simple.  In some places local pressure has insisted on the removal of the Saudi Arabian flag from such places because its Islamic connections should not be associated with alcohol.

In a previous World Cup FIFA (football's governing body) fell foul of the Saudis by intending to have footballs with a flag in each panel.  It turns out, then, that drinking by the Creed (for the Muslim Creed is written on the flag) or kicking it is not at all the thing to do.

I have some sympathy for the Saudi problem: every church has a set of dos and don'ts for its premises which can be similarly awkward.  The net effect of it all is to imply a general view that whereas sport unites, religion divides.  But maybe they need to choose to change their football participation or the flag.

Perhaps this kind of religious sensitivity is why the Lord Jesus shredded so many of the religious predilections of his day, eating and drinking with sinners, touching lepers, blessing children and healing on the Sabbath - just generally saying something about people being more important to God than religious rules designed to protect God but divide people.

World Cup Blogs 23: Russia

Russia have done a great job hosting the World Cup.  Despite pre-Tournament misgivings it has been very safe and straightforward into this final week.  Their team - almost incredibly - was the lowest ranked of the 32, below nations with inauspicious football reputations such as Saudi Arabia, Iceland and Panama.  Still, they did very well. The last shall be first . . . (well at least a lot higher than last anyway).

Running through the spirituality of Russia is an almost unique streak of similarly bizarre upside-downness: the holy fools.  Lest you think I have dug this from an obscure corner of Siberia I point out that St Basil's Cathedral in Moscow - featuring often in World Cup preliminary picture shots - is named after one such holy fool.

The monastic practice of foolery was an enactment of a Biblical theme found, for example, in Old Testament prophets who behaved in various unorthodox ways (including nakedness) and in Paul's teaching - e.g.

"For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe."

The historic church in Russia is known as the Orthodox Church so it is amazing to think that its perhaps most iconic church is named after a saint who adopted a life of shoplifting.  I'd call that unorthodox.

Basil shoplifted and gave the proceeds to the poor; more orthodox (for a Holy Fool) he spent a lot of time naked (this is Russia remember, a little chilly in the winter).  He also chained himself with heavy chains, also a common practice adopted by Fools.

St Basil's Cathedral was taken into state and secular ownership in 1929. Because it was too iconic to destroy, God was taken out of it instead,  Doing away with God seemed quite a trendy idea in the 20th Century.  Perhaps the authorities at the time failed to see the irony of St Basil's being taken for atheism.

As the Psalmist wrote: The fool has said in his heart "There is no God". There is a greater fool than a holy fool and someone who tries to remove God is such a one.

World Cup Blogs 22: Portugal

In recent years Portugal's football team has become something of a supporting cast for one, Cristiano Ronaldo.  Ronaldo is one of the World's most famous footballers.

When I was younger the Portuguese team of those days was also dominated by the reputation of one star player - Eusebio.

Neither of these players, however, came from Portugal.  Eusebio was from Mozambique (a Portuguese colony at the time of his birth). Ronaldo is from Madeiras, islands way off the coast of Africa in the Atlantic Ocean.

Madeiras, which had been previously known, was made a colony of Portugal in the fifteenth century when an Atlantic storm blew some Portuguese ships off course and they ended up in one of its bays and found refuge there.

So, you never know the beneficial long-term effects of a troublesome storm: this might be a relief to any of us, including the British Prime Minister just now.

World Cup Blogs 21: Poland

Poland features large in the life of the UK these days with workers and shops and signs that figure in our daily lives.  The affinities with Poland run deeply into the history of the Second World War.  The football history runs simply back to one memorable night, October 17 1973, the night that brought England's first failure to qualify for the Finals Tournament.

Having won the 1966 World Cup and played moderately successfully in the 1970 tournament nobody was ready for the possibility that England would not even reach the tournament in 1974.  But in the decisive game against Poland  at a full Wembley the inevitable victory would not come.

Poland's goalkeeper was Jan Tomaszewski (now a Polish politician).  His heroics secured the draw Poland needed; his proneness to unorthodox goalkeeping with some errors had him labelled a clown by the then great Brian Clough.  Years later Clough was man enough to apologise publicly for that slur which had proved so untrue.

Opponents are rarely clowns.  That night something happened to England that blew an aura away, Sir Alf Ramsay, the heroic winning manager of 1066 fame, was sacked and having failed to qualify for that World Cup they also failed, four tears later, to qualify for the 1978 tournament too.

Opponents are rarely clowns. In the deeper issue of life the Scriptures encourage us to take the battle seriously.  The whole of Ephesians 6, for example, is a call to spiritual arms.  Jesus repeatedly advised his disciples to watch and pray.  Those who think their opponent is a clown are likely to end up knocked out.

World Cup Blogs 20: Peru

I have one lifelong, abiding admiration for Peru's football team.  Until recently I thought this admiration was largely my own, but the good old internet has uncovered that I am far from alone.

When I say lifelong I mean from the 1970 World cup onward as I only heard the 1966 finals on the radio, and anyhow Peru did not qualify.  Here's a picture:

What do I admire?  The design of the Peruvian football shirts.  To an untutored eye just another shirt perhaps, but in reality unique in their design and strikingly stylish and memorable. Click on this sentence to read one of many articles that share my opinion.

So, although I couldn't readily call to mind the name of a single Peruvian footballer or a single Peruvian football result, I could easily remember or draw a picture of their kit.  They must have had a very clever stylist to design something so lastingly admired in the crowded field of football kits.

But no. 

It turns out that the design is derived from school footballers wearing a red sash over their shirts to distinguish them from the boys in the other team.  One of life's greatest and divine principles is that beauty is so often found in simplicity.  Consider the lilies, how they grow . . .

World Cup Blogs 19: Panama

This, Panama's first (football/soccer) World Cup, was quite exciting for them, I'm sure.   What will linger in the English memory (and let's be honest, the World Cup section of the English memory is far from full) is that Panama graciously let England score five goals to lead 5-0 at half-time.  Coupled with the 6-1 final score it makes England seem vaguely significant.  Perhaps its unthinkableness even inspired the unthinkable victory on penalties this evening.

Panama is a small nation and have a valid second excuse in that football is not their most popular sport.  That is baseball.

Now if there was a Baseball World Cup . . .

In fact, from 1938 until 2011 (with various gaps) there was a Baseball World Cup.  Panama never did manage to win it.  

What is, I imagine, really irritating is that England (or rather Britain) did.  They won it in 1938 against the United States.

There are few enough ways in which England resembles God, but at least they do in this frustrating way of appearing to have always been involved in everything and somehow doing very well.