Football and Global Geo-Politics

I have always believed that strategic minded people can learn a lot from football, and I have previously written a two-part serial “Strategy Lessons from Football” on these pages. That series was later converted into a Business Strategy Technical Note which I used to teach business school classes and executive sessions. In recent years, I have seen further applications of football and sports generally, in economics and the just concluded World Cup has provided interesting insights in global geo-politics which I propose to examine in this article. My hypothesis is that the World Cup and indeed the overall structure of global football mirrors, explains and perhaps also predicts developments in international politics, economics and geopolitical strategy. The structure of global power is well known- Africa is marginal, a provider of raw materials and consumer of global products and technology. Africa’s resources are transferred unprocessed and in crude form to the developed economies and the continent has yet to find a successful, sustainable model for managing itself and transforming the lives of its people and nations. In spite of raw talent and abundant population, Africa sub-optimises. The West, essentially Europe and North America sit at the other extreme of the global power spectrum-dominant and imperial! With arguably lower pools of resources and talents, OECD nations deploy strategy, management, knowledge and technology, as well as an unemotional (you could say Machiavellian, but effective!) deployment of geo-strategic foresight to dominate Africa and the rest of the world. The West has exploited Africa through the ages–slave trade, colonialism, neo-colonialism, the structure of global trade, information and resource flows, and power projection to ensure that it always wins. South America is better than Africa- it has similar resources and human endowments as well as incredible talent, but suffers from the same inferiority complex in relations with the West, and like Africa, it never quite optimises its potential, perpetually missing the goal of global political and economic self-sustainability and leadership. Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Columbia, Chile, Jamaica, Uruguay are permanently “countries of the future” in global development lexicon, always threatening to catch up and overtake the West, but never quite doing so! Asia is catching up with the West, but hasn’t yet quite turned global leadership or dominance into a habit. Singapore is prosperous, but too small to affect global politics; Japan is strong, but also simultaneously somehow weak and never quite there; ditto South-Korea-successful, but not quite important?; China in spite of newfound global economic power, is still ruled by a communist system that constrains the creativity and self-expression of its over one billion people, except in commerce and manufacturing; India is a growing global economy with a huge population, but culturally inward- looking and isolated… and the Arab world is pre-occupied with religion and conflict, and most of its human potential is repressed and denied opportunity by dictators, tyrants and mullahs! Didn’t the recent 2014 World Cup in Brazil display all of these global geopolitical stereo types? Africa sent five hugely talented teams to the contest- Nigeria, Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, Cameroun and Algeria. The West Africans dominated the African contingent as Arab North Africa was engulfed in crisis and turmoil… in Egypt, Libya, Sudan while Algeria and Tunisia are just stabilising. The Middle East nations, minus the emerging Persian power, Iran whose pursuit of nuclear power in military geo-strategy mirrors the good account it gave of itself at the tournament, were absent! The South Koreans were enthusiastic and fast, but ultimately fizzled out, as did Japan. As for the African teams, not one fulfilled their early potential – Cote d’Ivoire’s largely talented team collapsed due to a lack of character and unity; Cameroun displayed gross indiscipline and lack of commitment; Ghana in spite of large talents and elaborate showmanship did not go beyond the first round; and both Nigeria and Algeria who did, duly slipped out without much ado in the second. The African teams, just like their countries self-destructed due to corruption, greed, lack of vision, commitment and ambition, weak technological capacity, and poor leadership! And most of the African teams, just like the raw materials and primary products we send into global markets, were made up of players playing mostly in Europe! Then let’s contrast South/Central America with Europe. South /Central America provided 7 out the 16 nations that qualified for the second round – Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Uruguay and Columbia, while Europe contributed six – Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, Greece, France and Switzerland. However, by the quarter finals, the arguably less-talented, but more technically-disciplined Europeans matched the more skilfully-endowed Latin Americans with four teams each. Further consider the four nations that got through to the semi-finals–powerful Germany, the de facto leader of Europe; Brazil the “B” in BRICS and an emerging economic super-power; Brazil’s neighbour and competitor, Argentina whose team included no black man, reflecting its historical effort to wipe out negroes from its history and consciousness; and Netherlands, a peaceful and prosperous European nation with very high standards of living. The display of German efficiency, precision and ruthlessness as they demolished Brazil 7-1 was typical of the “German Machine” and European superiority based on research and strategy, detailed planning and technical depth and industry; Brazil’s collapse was symptomatic of South American uncontrolled passion as emotional desire to win was not combined with tactical discipline and organisation resulting in erratic individualism and ultimately an unmitigated disaster. It is of course consistent with the geo-political dimensions of global football that it was Angela Merkel’s Germany, rather than Cristina de Kirchner’s Argentina that prevailed in the final, exploiting a 113rd minute lapse in Argentine concentration in a game the South Americans should have won in the first half. The Germans were true to geo-strategic form-compact, efficient, focused determined… and victorious. And now that America has realised the importance of football in projecting global power, we can expect intensified Yankee efforts to dominate the sport! And then you can expect the Chinese to follow suit!!!