The race card

One football player says something so hateful that another player — renowned for his composure — tries to drive his shaved temple right through the other's belly. The second player is sent off, demoralizing his team, who eventually lose the match. The whole world is watching, but one comment muttered under someone's breath is not audible in the competing cacophonies of patriots and fans screaming themselves hoarse.

The second player does not regret what he did, but is sorry that children had to see it. He also refuses to repeat the words. Some words are harder to hear than actions, he says. A team of international lip-readers is called in. They pour over the tapes from every angle, attempting to establish the Truth. These partisans of the "is it still racist if nobody overhears it" school speculate that the one player called the other player's mother or sister prostitutes, terrorists, or worse.

As the ceremonies close and confetti rains onto the Italians in Berlin, the TVs here in Senegal cut to a claymation ad for Coca Cola that has been ubiquitous this past month. In the spot, entitled "Nous Parlons Tous Football" (We All Speak Football), a goal is scored and pairs of unlikely fans come together to celebrate: a lumberjack hugs a tree, a cactus hugs a balloon, a cuckold hugs his wife's lover, a scientist hugs his lab rat, and a line cook hugs his plucked chicken. The spectacle of sport will erase your differences, Coke assures us; but these are cartoon antagonisms, not the more familiar and fundamental fault lines. We may all speak football, but what happens when football talks back? What is saying to us? To speak football, should we try to decipher the nasty and inaudible words uttered in front all of us? Or can we read something more important in the lowered head and ashen eyes one man pushed over the edge?

Here in Dakar, groups of kids run cheering through the streets celebrating the Italian team's victory over the former colonizer, France, whose team is itself largely composed of French players of African, North African, and Antillean descent. Somewhere in France, a Le Pen voter cries into his beer over the defeat of les Blues. When we all speak football, what are we hearing?