Henry Kissinger on World Cup Strategy
Do soccer tactics reflect national character, as Dr. K. claimed in 1986?
A week and a half ago, I pointed out that contentions that nobody cares about the World Cup soccer tournament would likely vanish once the tournament got rolling.
OK, Team USA just crushed Paraguay 4 to 1.
I doubt if this 40-year-old essay by Henry Kissinger is all that relevant anymore — World Cup teams aren’t very representative of ethnic heritages these days — but it was astonishing in 1986 when the 10th paragraph turns into a disquisition on how West German soccer strategy has the strengths and weaknesses of the Schlieffen Plan of 1906:
World Cup According to Character
The Los Angeles Times
Sunday, June 29, 1986
by: Henry Kissinger
My cousin Kathy gave me a copy of Kissinger’s 1982 second volume of his memoirs, Years of Upheaval, about his service as secretary of state in the difficult years of 1973-1974. Each chapter ended with a page of Kissinger’s reflections for the benefit of his adoptive countrymen on the long-term national character of each country he’d dealt with: here’s what the Chinese are like, here are what you can expect the French to be like, this is what the Saudis are like, the Israelis can be expected to do X and Y, and so forth.
Not surprisingly, Kissinger applied the same framework to the 1986 World Cup:
I have been an avid soccer fan ever since my youth in Fuerth, a soccer-mad city of southern Germany, which for some inexplicable reason won three championships in a three-year period. My father despaired of a son who preferred to stand for two hours (there were very few seats) watching a soccer game rather than sit in the comfort at the opera or be protected from the elements in a museum.
Soccer evokes extraordinary passions, especially during the quadrennial World Cup competition ending today in Mexico City. It has been estimated that the Brazilian gross national product suffers a loss of hundreds of millions of dollars for every day Brazil plays, as rabid fans sit before television sets or radios. Statistics in other soccer citadels must be comparable.
Soccer lends itself to a competition of national teams because it requires an extraordinary combination of individual skill, teamwork and strategic sense. Since there are 11 players on each side engaged in continuous action, every game produces tactical necessities to be solved by improvisation on the playing field.
This was true even in my youth when soccer was much less complex and much more oriented to the offense. Then there were five forwards, three midfield players, two fullbacks and a goalie. The offense being numerically superior to the defense, goals were much more frequent then. By the late 1930s, managers sought to overcome this advantage by assigning the center half to shadow the opposing center forward. The creation of three de facto fullbacks constricted the attack which since time immemorial had been built around the center forward.
In the early 1950s, the Hungarians showed how to overwhelm this defense, turning their center forward into a decoy. He would move to the sidelines or toward midfield, drawing the shadowing defensive player out of position, creating an empty space in front of the goal.
But as in military strategy every offensive maneuver in soccer evokes a compensating defensive move. The answer to the roving center forward was a zone defense; defensive players were required to cover a certain area regardless of which player was attacking. Total soccer was invented soon thereafter; all players had to be able to defend as well as attack and to shift from one mode to another with extreme rapidity.
The modern style of soccer in fact emphasizes defense — with few exceptions like Brazil, Argentina and France. The basic alignment has become four defensive and four midfield players; the forwards have shrunk to two. Massed defenses can in general be overcome only by rapid thrusts involving very accurate passing. The result is a very tactical game, its complexity becoming a fascinating reflection of national attitudes.
The styles of leading soccer powers like West Germany, Brazil, Italy and England illustrate this point.
West Germany, a finalist today, is, with Italy and Brazil, the most successful team of the modern era. West German soccer entered the postwar era with no particular legacy. Postwar Germany’s newly professional soccer being as novel as the frontiers of the state it represents, it could adopt total soccer with a vengeance. The German national team plays the way its general staff prepared for the war; games are meticulously planned, each player skilled in both attack and defense. Intricate pass patterns evolve, starting right in front of the German goal. Anything achievable by human foresight, careful preparation and hard work is accounted for.
And there have been great successes. Of the last six prior World Cups, Germany has won two, was second twice, third once and out of the running only in 1978. At the same time, the German national team suffers from the same disability as the famous Schlieffen plan for German strategy in World War I.
The Schlieffen plan was to conquer more modern France first, even at the cost of slow-moving Russia conquering much of Eastern Prussia, and then turn around and wipe out Russia later. Reputedly, the great strategist’s last word on his deathbed in 1913 were: “Remember: keep the right wing very strong.”
Kissinger continues:
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