How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization Read Online Free PDF Page B

collection of swords pays homage to the warrior Obilic as does a canvas-and-oil portrait of the medieval swain.
    On a shelf, in plain sight, a box advertises itself as containing a laser-guide for a pistol.
    In Arkan’s old oªce, I’d been granted an audience with his widow, the pop idol Ceca, the woman he had married on national television. She entered the room smoking a cigarette. Everyone had told me about her body. Now I understood what they meant. Her shiny green blouse failed to contain her enormous, silicone-filled breasts. This was not an unusual flaunting. Ceca won international renown for standing on the sidelines during Obilic matches in skintight leopard print outfits.
    She sat across from me on a leather couch. Before the meeting, my translator cautioned me to tread carefully.

HOW SOCCER EXPLAINS THE GANGSTER’S PARADISE
    Arkan’s family, he said, still had access to Arkan’s henchmen. I was not inclined to push the envelope that far. Besides, it wouldn’t have gotten me anywhere.
    From her experiences traveling in Europe with Obilic, she acquired savvy about Western journalists. She understood the need to puncture the aura of war criminality. “It’s horrible to make connections between politics and sports. I condemn any e¤ort to turn the game into politics,” she said with a look of earnest disgust.
    Over and over, she repeated, “This is a business, a game. Nothing more.”
    With her banality, it became easy to forget her evil.
    But she had a long history of dabbling in extremist politics. During the war, she played benefit concerts for Arkan’s ultranationalist political party. “You can be happy as me—just join the Serbian Unity Party,” she would announce to her many adoring fans. As the Serbian Unity Party’s Web site describes, she continues to fund a campaign to defend the Serb nation against the
    “white plague” of “non-Serb nationalities.” Even without Arkan, his party is run from her home. Last summer, she performed a concert at Red Star stadium, dedicated to Arkan, where she led 100,000 fans in chanting his name.
    But with her homespun charms and kitschy dance music, called “turbo-folk,” she succeeds wildly in fulfilling both parts of Hannah Arendt’s famous phrase about the banality of evil. “I’m the team mama,” she says. “That’s how they think of me. I want my players to look the best, so I give them Armani.” She describes a forthcoming trip to the NBA All Star game in Atlanta and speaks of the pleasures of decorating Arkan’s oªce.

Under Ceca’s presidency, since Arkan’s death,
    Obilic hasn’t had much luck. This is strangely fitting.
    The club really only existed as a tribute to the man—
    and what he represented. After I interviewed Ceca, she invited me to visit the club’s museum. Obilic’s top executive, a retired player, led me around the room. He showed me medals and photos. But the heart of the exhibit was a wall of photos that documented Arkan’s revival of Obilic’s fortunes. My tour guide pointed proudly and said, “Our father.”
    Serbia’s prime minister Zoran Djindjic frequently played soccer. In part, he played out of genuine enthusiasm for the game. In part, he liked the image that the game created, of youthful vigor. Elected in 2000, Djindjic sold himself to the country as the reformer who would reverse the damages wrought by the Milosevic regime. This was a program that necessarily put him on a collision course with organized crime, the bureaucracy, and the mafia-linked security services. It made him despised by the Serbian people, who hated his anti-inflationary policies and his close relations with the same European and American governments that had bombed Belgrade. With the political deck so stacked against him, Djindjic needed every Kennedyesque image he could get.
    Early in March of 2003, Djindjic played in a match between a government team and police oªcers. He arrived unannounced. Surprised police oªcers didn’t