The Underdog Complex: On Why Panamanians Love Brazilian Soccer and Americans Hate the Yankees

As most of you know, I am here doing anthropological fieldwork. My research is basically about the historical relationship between people, politics, and the environment in the region surrounding the Panama Canal. Interesting stuff, for sure, but the World Cup doesn´t happen every summer, so I have been heading out with friends to catch some games. If this was formal research and I was asking you for money, I would call watching sports at a bar participant observation, a term used by anthropologists to describe a research strategy based on the idea that you can learn a quite a bit by hanging out, talking with folks, and paying attention to what they say and do. As ethnographers and journalists have learned, this type of non-scientific research works; it helps us to better understand how others know and behave in the world. And, in doing so, it can sometimes call into question ideas that we take for granted, providing a glimpse of the cultural baggage that we all carry.

To undermine our understandings about the way that the world works can be disconcerting, but it can also reveal what my grandpa called ¨the damndest things.¨ In this case, I am thinking about the sports we watch and our investments in these games. I am thinking about cultural attitudes towards winning and losing, towards places we live and those we don´t, and towards ourselves and others. While much has been written about the decades of losing endured by fans of the Red Sox, Cubs, or Buffalo Bills, people don’t really ask why the American fans of these ¨losers¨ don´t change sides and support perennial winners like the Yankees or Lakers. In Panama, by comparison, soccer fans turn out en masse to support Latin American powerhouses Brazil and Argentina but show markedly less interest in more geographically proximate countries like Costa Rica or Mexico. Now, granted, to compare U.S. professional sports and the World Cup may be a little unfair. In American baseball or basketball, next season always looms on the horizon, providing hope -- the talented first baseman rising from the minor leagues or the All-star shooting guard who is about to become a free agent. The World Cup, on the other hand, is a competition of nations that occurs only every four years. But this only seems to reinforce my argument – shouldn’t fans be even more national- or regionalistic, more connected to nearby places, when flags become involved and a bad loss lingers for nearly a half decade before it can be properly avenged?

For those of you who haven´t been following the World Cup, Brazil, a perennial powerhouse and favorite to win it all, was upset 1-0 (and generally outplayed) by France in the quarterfinals the past weekend. But I am getting ahead of myself here. I need to back up another week in order to illustrate what I am thinking about. On June 22, several days after arriving in Panama, I went out to a bar in downtown Panama City to see the Brazil-Japan game. Japan went ahead early and only two people in the bar – a Japanese student in the blue national jersey and me – stood up and cheered in a sea of yellow and green. To everyone’s surprise, the first half ended with Japan ahead 1-0.

The Brazil that stepped onto the field to begin the second half was a different team. They played the fluid, creative soccer that they are known for -- el JUGO BONITO, or the ¨beautiful game,¨ the call it in Portugese and now in the global Nike marketing campaign. The goal Brazil scored to tie the game was a beautiful thing. Two-time FIFA World Player of the Year, Ronaldinho, struck a loping cross from the left sideline over the penalty area to an open Cicinho, who played a perfect header back across the goal face to a waiting Ronaldo. Header...GOOOOAAAAL. The bar goes nuts. I look around and people are on their feet, high-fiving, dancing, yelling slurred messages into their cell phones.

This game was probably Brazil´s best game of what was, by their standards, a below-average Cup (i.e. they didn’t win it all). As the crowd spilled out of the air-conditioned darkness and back into the bright, humid afternoon, I was confused about what had happened. On the surface, I had no more or less at stake in the game than anyone else. So, why did I naturally root against Brazil, while everyone else was cheering for them? “Maybe it’s just me,” I thought at first. But that didn’t make much sense. I flashed back to watching the Yankees-Red Sox World Series in a different bar – this one in Chapel Hill -- a year and a half before. We were united over pints that night, not necessarily in support of the Red Sox (though that was true for some), but hoping against hope that the Yankees would lose for once (see Steve´s article on Yankee-hating). And, what´s more, that they would lose to the ultimate losers. But this all makes sense, you might say – it comes down to geography. Brazil, like Panama, is a Latin American country. True. And I would agree with you if I hadn´t seen neighboring, but less dominant teams, like Costa Rica and Mexico play and receive little to no support. I would agree with you if vendors on the side of every major road in Panama City weren’t doing brisk business in Brazil and Argentina jerseys, with nary another nation’s jersey in sight. Panamanians, to make a gross generalization, like Latin American soccer teams, but love the best teams.

How can we make sense of the seemingly very different ideas held by Americans and Panamanians about who are “our teams” and how they came to be? Any theories?