How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization by Franklin Foer Page B
Authors: Franklin Foer
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does. Sitting in Ibrox, listening to the taunts of Rangers supporters, Catholics know for certain that some of these fanatics are members of the Scottish parliament and critics of Catholic schools. It’s hard not to be wary.
IV.
With Dummy’s Guinness-stained gray sweatshirt and blue jeans, he looks undeniably like a soccer fan. Don-
HOW SOCCER EXPLAINS THE PORNOGRAPHY OF SECTS
ald Findlay does not. He wears a three-piece suit with striped pants and a navy jacket constructed from lush Saville Row cloth. Across his vest, a gold pocket watch chain holds a miniature crown and family keepsakes.
His Gilbert-and-Sullivan facial hair covers his cheeks and then stops at his chin. At Ibrox, they a¤ectionately refer to him as Muttonchops. In his career as one of Scotland’s greatest barristers, he evinced a melodra-matic persona to match his overwrought attire. Findlay achieved his infamy by freeing some of his hardest clients, including hooligans on both sides of the Old Firm. His flowery oratory flooded the jury box with tears.
After the match, I met Findlay at a hotel bar.
Despite a legal career filled with high-profile successes, he will always be best known for his time as the flamboyant vice-chairman of Rangers. Attending games at Celtic Park, he’d sit in the box reserved for the opposing management. He’d deliberately show disdain for his surroundings, kicking up his wingtips and placing them on the box’s polished wood. Besieged by a torrent of verbal abuses from Celtic fans, he’d take long drags on his pipe, appearing utterly unmoved. When his Rangers scored goals, Findlay liked to celebrate as ostentatiously and gleefully as possible, the only man standing and cheering amid a sea of dejection. In interviews, he’d go a step further. He made a running gag out of the fact that he didn’t celebrate his birthday, because it fell on St. Patrick’s Day. Instead, he said that he celebrated on July twelfth, the anniversary of King Billy’s triumph. In his living room, he would stage Orange marches.
On a May night in 1999, his tenure at Rangers
came to an abrupt end. Findlay sang, “We’re up to our knees in Fenian Blood” on the karaoke machine, his arm drunkenly draped over a player’s shoulder. He had gathered with the rest of the Rangers club to celebrate a victory over Celtic. In his jubilation, he had repeated lyrics that Rangers supporters blare on a weekly basis, that leading lights of society had sung for generations.
Most of them, however, hadn’t been captured on a video that would be handed over to the Daily Record. On the same spring evening that Findlay raised his pint glass and damned the papists, Rangers’ darkest impulses were responsible for dark acts. Rangers fans stabbed, shot, and beat senseless three young Celtic supporters.
They murdered one and left another in critical condition.
If these events hadn’t coincided, perhaps Findlay could have defended himself in the press. But the environment wouldn’t stand for any excuses. The morning that the Findlay story broke in the paper, he resigned from Rangers management. Over the next few months, as Scottish eminences lined up to condemn him, he purchased pills and flirted with suicide. St.
Andrews University, where he had just finished a six-year term as rector, canceled its plans to award Findlay an honorary degree. The Scottish Faculty of Advocates, the body governing the nation’s lawyers, fined him 3,500 pounds.
Findlay had become the touchstone for a nation-wide debate. Delivering the keynote at the Edinburgh Festival, Scotland’s great composer James MacMillan declared, “Donald Findlay is not a one-o¤. To believe that is self-delusion because our [society is] jam-packed
HOW SOCCER EXPLAINS THE PORNOGRAPHY OF SECTS
with people like Donald Findlay.” He argued that Scotland su¤ered from a case of “sleepwalking bigotry.”
Newspaper columnists pronounced Findlay a national stain. But he had his defenders, too. Even
IV.
With Dummy’s Guinness-stained gray sweatshirt and blue jeans, he looks undeniably like a soccer fan. Don-
HOW SOCCER EXPLAINS THE PORNOGRAPHY OF SECTS
ald Findlay does not. He wears a three-piece suit with striped pants and a navy jacket constructed from lush Saville Row cloth. Across his vest, a gold pocket watch chain holds a miniature crown and family keepsakes.
His Gilbert-and-Sullivan facial hair covers his cheeks and then stops at his chin. At Ibrox, they a¤ectionately refer to him as Muttonchops. In his career as one of Scotland’s greatest barristers, he evinced a melodra-matic persona to match his overwrought attire. Findlay achieved his infamy by freeing some of his hardest clients, including hooligans on both sides of the Old Firm. His flowery oratory flooded the jury box with tears.
After the match, I met Findlay at a hotel bar.
Despite a legal career filled with high-profile successes, he will always be best known for his time as the flamboyant vice-chairman of Rangers. Attending games at Celtic Park, he’d sit in the box reserved for the opposing management. He’d deliberately show disdain for his surroundings, kicking up his wingtips and placing them on the box’s polished wood. Besieged by a torrent of verbal abuses from Celtic fans, he’d take long drags on his pipe, appearing utterly unmoved. When his Rangers scored goals, Findlay liked to celebrate as ostentatiously and gleefully as possible, the only man standing and cheering amid a sea of dejection. In interviews, he’d go a step further. He made a running gag out of the fact that he didn’t celebrate his birthday, because it fell on St. Patrick’s Day. Instead, he said that he celebrated on July twelfth, the anniversary of King Billy’s triumph. In his living room, he would stage Orange marches.
On a May night in 1999, his tenure at Rangers
came to an abrupt end. Findlay sang, “We’re up to our knees in Fenian Blood” on the karaoke machine, his arm drunkenly draped over a player’s shoulder. He had gathered with the rest of the Rangers club to celebrate a victory over Celtic. In his jubilation, he had repeated lyrics that Rangers supporters blare on a weekly basis, that leading lights of society had sung for generations.
Most of them, however, hadn’t been captured on a video that would be handed over to the Daily Record. On the same spring evening that Findlay raised his pint glass and damned the papists, Rangers’ darkest impulses were responsible for dark acts. Rangers fans stabbed, shot, and beat senseless three young Celtic supporters.
They murdered one and left another in critical condition.
If these events hadn’t coincided, perhaps Findlay could have defended himself in the press. But the environment wouldn’t stand for any excuses. The morning that the Findlay story broke in the paper, he resigned from Rangers management. Over the next few months, as Scottish eminences lined up to condemn him, he purchased pills and flirted with suicide. St.
Andrews University, where he had just finished a six-year term as rector, canceled its plans to award Findlay an honorary degree. The Scottish Faculty of Advocates, the body governing the nation’s lawyers, fined him 3,500 pounds.
Findlay had become the touchstone for a nation-wide debate. Delivering the keynote at the Edinburgh Festival, Scotland’s great composer James MacMillan declared, “Donald Findlay is not a one-o¤. To believe that is self-delusion because our [society is] jam-packed
HOW SOCCER EXPLAINS THE PORNOGRAPHY OF SECTS
with people like Donald Findlay.” He argued that Scotland su¤ered from a case of “sleepwalking bigotry.”
Newspaper columnists pronounced Findlay a national stain. But he had his defenders, too. Even
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