www.youtube.com/watch?v=76iWe7pqqbI

Ah, soccer short films. Can’t get enough of ‘em, right? Actually, yeah, I haven’t seen very many of them either. But have no fear, we have a wonderfully crafted soccer short about a referee, a red card, a yellow card, and a series of decisions. And it’s hilarious.

Brought to you by Michael Mercy of Armchair Directors.

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Related posts:

1. Nutmeg Radio’s Interview with The Two Escobars Co-Director Michael Zimbalist – Part II
2. Nutmeg Radio’s Interview with The Two Escobars Co-Director Michael Zimbalist – Part I
3. Watch the Narco-Soccer Documentary “The Two Escobars” on ESPN

Here’s the second, and last, installment of my conversation with The Two Escobars co-director Michael Zimbalist. In Part II, we dig a bit deeper into interactions with various characters in the film, discuss the 1994 World Cup match between the U.S. and Colombia, and then get a little philosophical at the end. Enjoy!

***

NR:  Let’s talk about two interviews that I found particularly interesting. One of them was with Pablo Escobar’s right hand man, “Popeye” (John Jairo Vesasquez), and the other was with Francisco Maturana, the coach that qualified and took Colombia to the ’94 World Cup. Let’s start with Popeye. He must have told you some stories that didn’t make the cut. Do any stories come to mind that you’re willing to share?

MZ:  Popeye, of course, has been in prison for some time. Popeye actually served his initial jail sentence and he’s now serving time for a secondary charge for running a new operation while in prison. I think he’s scheduled to get out in less than ten years, from what I remember. He has spent a lot of time reforming, reading the bible, and giving himself to a higher power.

He said he still has this interesting relationship with Pablo Escobar in his mind. The night before his interview with us, he had a dream where Pablo confronted him about lifting the veil off of the Medellin cartel and revealing all these secrets. It was really difficult for him to confront Pablo about why he was doing this and breaking that bond of trust and secrecy. That’s the one that comes to mind.

NR:  And Maturana. One of the things that stood out to me was that he was so ridiculously eloquent about taking a step back and seeing what soccer meant to society. There was one quote on Colombia’s style of play where he said:

“When fans saw that personality, they said, ‘Yes, that’s who we are. That’s our team. Our identity.’ They embraced us and infused us with the joy that is the heart of our people. We manifested their dreams, ignited their passion. No longer were we Medellin or Cali. No. We were Colombia.”

He speaks like a book I would read.

MZ:  Oh, you don’t even know the half of it.

NR:  Did he come off in interviews as having a unique understanding about the role soccer played during this period?

MZ:  Maturana is a force of nature. It’s not just his understanding of soccer; he’s a philosopher. He has an amazing socio, political, cultural, historical perspective on the world. And he is recognized as such, not only within Colombia, but within the soccer world as being a visionary, and that doesn’t just include formations that he brings to the field and his training style, but also his relationships with players and his understanding of the importance of what the game can be. He also sat in political circles in Colombia next to the President in various debates that had to do with things that went far beyond sport because of his thought leadership and vision.

He was a dentist before he became a soccer coach.

NR:  Obviously related.

MZ:  (Laughs) Yeah, a natural step. But his references were just absurd. Absurdly brilliant. He would say something, and you would think, “Wow, that’s eloquent.”

A lot of the players talked about the curse of winning 5-0 [against Argentina in the 1994 World Cup qualifiers], and how the expectations were so through the roof, and what that did, not just with the pressure on the team, but with the government putting all its eggs in that basket, and people taking out mortgages on their homes and selling things just so they could bet on games. There could be a whole film just on that period of time.  And Maturana said, more than putting Colombia as a number one favorite, they almost “McCarthycized” them. The public expectations almost condemned them. I just loved how he expressed that.

And there’s the Don Vito Corleone inviting you to dinner thing. [In the film, when discussing players visiting Pablo Escobar in prison, Maturana suggests that if Don Vito Corleone invites you to dinner, you go.]

He also did a turn phrase on Albert Camus. On the fly, he was talking about what soccer meant to the culture and to him and said, “Football is my passion. I love it, and much of what I am, if I can lightly parody Albert Camus, I owe to football.” I thought, “You go, man!”

NR:  In addition to Maturana, you spent time with some legendary soccer players. During that period, I had a Colombia Valderrama shirt. He was one of my favorites. You spoke to Valderrama and Faustino Asprilla. What was it like to revisit such an emotional period with the players?

MZ:  Those guys are just legends, particularly in Colombia where soccer is much more than a sport. That period in time was so important. I don’t even have to go into it because it’s so obvious how important it was to their society. Those guys continue to be such idols.

But it was great to talk to them about that period of time. It was difficult also, revisiting certain memories, hearing them talk about how they got down on themselves for little things, or blaming themselves for moments that they didn’t get to spend with Andrés.

Andrés was such a character. Parts of this didn’t make it into the film, but Leonel [Alvarez] told us that he and Andrés always used to share a room. Andrés would keep him up all night because he was such a big talker and he would lie in bed and talk to him all night. In the morning, they’d get woken up to get on the bus and they’d both be sleeping with their mouths open because they hadn’t slept the night before. Andrés would always have drool dripping down his chin and they’d make fun of him for that.

Leonel said that there was this moment in the U.S. when it got to a point where he would be so tired that he would devise these plans to avoid being bunked with Andrés so he could get some sleep. He never had the courage to tell Andrés he was doing it. He said these really tender things about how he didn’t care anymore that he had been tired, and had he known he was going to lose his cherished friend, he would have stayed up all night and spent more time with Andrés. Moments like that were quite candid and touching.

NR:  Have you had a response or reaction from any of the players since the film’s release?

MZ:  A number of them have seen it. We’ve given all of the interview subjects the opportunity to see the film. Maturana said that he felt that it was the truth, that it portrayed what happened during that period of time, and that it was a well-formulated telling of that social slice in time, of that society and that sport. That’s generally been the sentiment.

Sometimes there’s a desire that less narco was covered, or that Pablo Escobar wasn’t a protagonist in this story. But there has also been an understanding that it’s virtually impossible to talk about the influence that the sport had on the society at that time without understanding how the sport became an alternative and a response to the violence of that time, which was generated by Pablo. At the end of the day, it almost became less about the funding of the team on a socio level than it was about the struggle for the soul of a nation, and the response to the violence that was generated from the sport. And that Maturana quote you mentioned really speaks to that.

We knew that this was going to be a subject that wasn’t going to have everybody overjoyed. It’s delicate.

NR:  Staying on the subject of players, I have to ask this. Colombian goalkeeper Rene Higuita is a legend. Aside from his trickery, he was a damn good goalkeeper. He has to be one of soccer’s all-time great characters and he plays a key role in the film. Did you try to get an interview with him?

MZ:  We actually lined up interviews with a number of players that we didn’t end up doing. We had interviews with [Luis Carlos] Perea and Freddy Rincon that we didn’t shoot. Of course there were individual cases, but we were a little too ambitious insofar as we had hundreds of hours of interviews and we had more hundreds of hours of archives. Our original contract was for a 53 minute documentary. We had enough material for a year of television.

NR:  Your own TV channel.

MZ:  Exactly. At least a ten part series. The other element that we were working against was that we wanted to get this film done and out in time for the World Cup. So we had a really short window of time. So the main factor behind the interviews that we didn’t shoot, in terms of the soccer, socio and narco side, was that we had way too much material already and we didn’t have an endless supply of time.

For Higuita, we had this interview that had been shot specifically covering the issue that we wanted to tackle with him. We weren’t going to be able to focus on that in our interview with him anyway and we already had the material that we wanted.

NR:  Let’s shift to the 1994 World Cup match between the U.S. and Colombia. It’s a match that you lead with at the beginning of the film and return to at the end. I remember watching the game and being very pleased, to put it mildly, at the result. For a lot of U.S. soccer fans, that match was memorable because no one expected the U.S. to get a result. From your time with a lot of people who experienced that match from the Colombian perspective, what was the impact of that one game for Colombia?

MZ:  It was devastating. We released a special edition of the DVD at the end of November, and there’s a short feature called “The Other Side” that’s about fourteen or fifteen minutes about the game told from the U.S. perspective. The contrast between the two teams could not have been starker. The U.S. team was never expected to put up anything. They were basically a bunch of young college kids as far as everyone was concerned, and Colombia was a favorite going in. The [U.S. team] had no pressure on them. The Colombian team was under these threats.

I don’t know how to describe [the impact of the loss] other than to say that everything that had been riding on this World Cup was lost. And then there’s Andrés, and the own goal, and what that meant for him, for his teammates, for his country. What was riding on that World Cup? It was much more than the players hoping to win a World Cup. It took years and years for the soccer institutions to recover. It took years and years for Colombia to start looking at their international image. So much of their international image was riding on this team. [Former Colombian President César] Gaviria had launched a multi-million dollar PR campaign – actually with a U.S. PR firm out of DC – to change the image of Colombia. The centerpiece was the Colombian national team, and Andrés was a primary spokesperson.

So the loss during the World Cup, and, moreover, Andres’ death, was catastrophic for Colombia’s image. That was bigger than the soccer loss, and even bigger than that was what it did to the self-esteem of the country. So much was riding on showing the world that [Colombia] has something good, something pure. Then, not only to have it all fall apart on a sports level, but then to have Andrés’ murder, really lifted the veil off of what was supposed to be the only pure thing in the eyes of many Colombians. After that it was clear that the soccer institutions were infected through and through with the narco money and influence. All bets were off. The extent of the devastation caused is hard to express.

NR:  Well, in an hour and forty-five minutes, you guys did a good job of concentrating all of those stories into a more than coherent narrative that leaves an impression. That’s only from watching it. I can only imagine what it must have been like to make. Has making The Two Escobars changed your relationship with the game of soccer?

MZ:  It did. It was really interesting to watch the [2010] World Cup. I’ll tell you that much. I was so psyched for the World Cup in a way that I’d never been. And the film broadcast for the first time during the World Cup on ESPN.

When [England’s] Robert Green made that blunder, I got three phone calls. Thankfully, the climate in England isn’t at the same place it was in Colombia in 1994.

Previously, I would have just looked at that and thought, “Awesome.”

It’s now interesting to think about some of the social work being done around the game. We shot a promo video with one of the organizations, Fútbol con Corazón, which is sort of an extension of the Andrés Escobar Foundation. And there are other organizations set up to deal with the hooligans. I’ve started to think about how we channel the catharsis, the positive energy that the stadium offers. How do we preserve and enhance that, and not run the risk of the mistakes and the negative energies and disappointments and rivalries that turn into something violent.

There’s a great focus on the positive side of the game now. In that sense, the film is a cautionary tale.

NR:  You mention some of the positive initiatives that have emerged from these events in Colombia. Riffing off of that, your company, All Rise Films, which did Favela Rising, which focuses on the power of music as an uplifting force in Brazil. Working on The Two Escobars, did you get the sense that there are notable similarities or distinctions between the transformative power of soccer and music?

MZ:  Oh yeah. I’ll answer that in a way that you probably wouldn’t expect. Just from a purely filmmaking point of view, my brother and I love the movement and the craft that’s involved in soccer, music, and dance. Having that space outside of a purely talking head environment was something that drew us to this story. The initial draw was just the exhilaration of having that space to play with. We knew that we’d have the opportunities to go into the game, to go into [Colombia’s] win streak, and to see some amazing plays like [Higuita’s] scorpion kick.

Going into that space, we would get these respites, these breaks where we didn’t have to use our brain, play with concepts, or deal with social issues. In certain ways, our journey as filmmakers [in these areas] parallels what both soccer and music offer in life; the ability to step outside of your experience and give yourself to another medium that’s just as human, where you can experience the same emotions you would in the world and wipe your feet at the door. I think, at a social level, the two have a lot of similarities.

NR:  I smell a soccer and music film. I’m thinking something like following Ronaldinho or Carlos Tevez around their respective music scenes. Or shooting a documentary about Diego Maradona taking guitar lessons. I have other ideas, but they will cost you. Any thoughts of making another soccer-related film in the future?

MZ:  Uh, no. (laughter) That doesn’t mean we’re not interested; we just don’t have anything lined up for the future.

NR:  Well thanks a lot, Michael. It’s been a blast. I appreciate your time, and I wish you continued success with the film.

***

You can learn a bit more about The Two Escobars at www.the2escobars.com.

Follow Nutmeg Radio on Twitter and Facebook!

Related posts:

1. Nutmeg Radio’s Interview with The Two Escobars Co-Director Michael Zimbalist – Part I
2. Watch the Narco-Soccer Documentary “The Two Escobars” on ESPN
3. Nutmeg Radio’s Cool Station: Roger Milla, Indomitable Lion (by Puma)

On the surface, The Two Escobars is a mesmerizing documentary about the tragic intersection of soccer and the drug trade in Colombia during the 1980s and 1990s. But just below the surface, the film reveals a deeper, personal story about a Colombian society simultaneously enriched and shaken to its core. It re-introduces us to legendary soccer icons, reducing them to emotional figures bearing the unique burden of simply being Colombian and incredibly talented during the rise of narco-soccer (loosely defined as the period when soccer was inextricably tied to and funded by narco-trafficking).

Framed by larger than life figures, drug-kingpin Pablo Escobar, and Colombian soccer player Andrés Escobar, The Two Escobars adds color to an era in Colombian history that, from the outside, could easily be viewed as a period of dramatic wins and losses, but in reality, was saturated with complexity.

I spoke with The Two Escobars co-director Michael Zimbalist about the film. In Part I, we discuss his background, the development of the story, reactions to the film, and begin speaking about his interactions with various figures highlighted in the documentary.

***

NR:  I don’t want to assume that because you made a film about soccer that you’re a soccer fanatic. In my head, everyone who mentions the word ‘soccer’ is a soccer fanatic, but I realize that’s a bit presumptuous. What was your background or interest level in the game before you began making The Two Escobars?

MZ:  Well, I can definitely say that both my brother (co-director Jeff Zimbalist) and I are more soccer fanatics now than we were before The Two Escobars. We’ve both always been big sports fans. We both played baseball growing up, and we played a little soccer, but it was never our primary sport. More relevant is that we both lived in Latin America for a period of years after graduating from college. I was living in Mexico during the one of the World Cups and it was total pandemonium. It was easy to get really involved in the soccer culture.

The film is a focus on the interaction of sports and society, as all the 30 for 30 documentaries were commissioned to be. The social side is such a big part of The Two Escobars, and that interaction and the power of the sport to capture the hopes and dreams of a nation, and all its highs and lows, is something that you can experience in virtually any country in the world during the World Cup, particularly in Latin America. In Mexico, it was so palpable.

NR:  You mention you and your brother having experience in Latin America. From looking at some of your past projects, it’s obvious that you both already had an interest in South American social movements. How did your interests evolve from that space into the final story laid out in The Two Escobars?

MZ:  Jeff and I were actually working together in Colombia developing a project about the first peace community in Latin America. ESPN reached out to us and were interested in doing a documentary for the 30 for 30 series. They were particularly interested in a story in Latin America and they didn’t have anything focusing on soccer. At that time, we were speaking with a close friend, Nick Sprague, who was a former soccer player himself, and had spent many years working in Colombia and was a huge fan of the Colombian national team.

We had been speaking about the death of Andrés Escobar, so when ESPN brought forth the idea that we bring them something, that was fresh on our minds and it just took off from there. We had a limited knowledge of the whole secret phenomenon of narco-soccer. We knew that there was more than met the eye that night with Andrés Escobar. It started out with more of an investigative spirit and wanting to understand, first and foremost, what happened that night. But really, the burning question was: What are the circumstances in a society that would lead to the murder of its cherished national hero for a mistake that he made on the playing field? There was an evolution of the story as we started doing more research and started the interviews, and the process evolved to go well beyond Andrés’ murder.

NR:  It’s a gripping story that you put together, complete with happiness, sadness, violence, transformation and aspects of legacy. But once you figured out the story, was there a broader message you were trying to convey with this film or that you realized the film was telling?

MZ:  It’s interesting because both my brother and I have always wanted to tell stories that are inspiring and portray the side of Latin America that we’ve come to know and love, which is very different than the common media portrayal as the hotbed of violence, corruption and drugs. We were concerned when we entered this story that it was a tragic story; the death of this 27 year old hero that was so pure who was called the “Gentleman of the Field.” We didn’t know at the onset what the message of the story was because we didn’t know the full story. We wanted to get to the heart of the story and what had really happened during that period of time in Colombia. Our own personal interests were hard to ignore. We were wondering if there was anything that could be learned from this period that might have some prescriptive elements that might not just be another negative portrayal because it certainly wasn’t my experience in Colombia.

One of the things that surprised us was knowing this was a really taboo subject and that virtually all of the interview subjects that we spoke with hadn’t spoken about this for years, if ever. The people we interviewed, particularly those close to Andrés, were talking about a period that was really traumatic and hard to revisit. And yet, we would sit down and talk with these people and it was kind of cathartic.

We interviewed 36 people and they tended to be 2.5 hour-plus interviews because they went into a space that was so infrequently visited. The question [to them] was why are you inspired to tell us this? Why do you feel that this is a story worth revisiting? Is there some prescriptive element for you? That’s where it came through that they really, particularly those close to Andrés, wanted to feel that his death and that the message he had, his dream of weeding out the illicit money from soccer and the country, wasn’t in vain.

It took this sacrificial lamb to move beyond that point and start afresh with a new foundation. And we have seen these great strides of progress in the time since Andrés’ murder in moving the country to a more secure place and cleaning up soccer.

NR:  The film revisits a period in Colombian history that was exhilarating and successful from a soccer perspective, but as you just mentioned, equally traumatic. After re-opening this door, as far as you know, what has the response been to The Two Escobars in Colombia?

MZ:  We haven’t had a wide release of the film in Colombia yet, so I can’t speak to that. But I can speak to the reaction of Colombians that have seen the film. I think there has been a Colombian in the audience at every screening I’ve been to, which has been extremely rewarding. If I can generalize about the overall reaction, there’s usually a sort of fear going into the film that it’s going to be another negative portrayal. The title is kind of scary, and maybe Andrés is going to be associated as a narco who rolled with Pablo. It’s just such a delicate subject matter. There has always been a certain fear going into it, and a surprise coming out of it.

By and large, the response has been quite positive. One of the comments that’s come out a lot, and this is from both Colombians and non-Colombians, is that the film gives an honest portrayal of the hard-working, peace-loving people of Colombia. In spite of half the story being a narco-story, a real sense of resilience and the [spirit of the] good people in Colombia that are fighting for something comes through.

And non-Colombians have come forward in Q&As and have said that it’s changed their perspective of Colombia, even though, ironically, the film does deal with corruption and drugs, because it gave them a sense of what the struggle is in Colombia that they really hadn’t understood before. There have been people who have reached out to their Colombian friends and sent us emails about interactions that they had after seeing the film that came from a more understanding place about why that person was so sensitive about being bad-mouthed for being a Colombian, or receiving a joke about being a narco when their family for generations had been fighting against those forces. That’s been a really rewarding debate.

NR:  The range of people you interviewed is one of the most impressive aspects of the film. You speak with Andrés Escobar’s family, Pablo Escobar’s family, former associates of Pablo Escobar, players, coaches, soccer administrators, and prominent politicians. The people highlighted in the film were intimately involved in this powerful story, yet amazingly candid. Was it a challenge to get people to open up about such a dark period?

MZ:  It was both a challenge and sometimes a surprise at how it became this cathartic process, and it swept both us and our interview subjects away on this journey.

My brother and I were both living down there during the time we made this film and we rented an apt in Medellin. It was very important to us not to pop into someone’s life with a camera and start filming. We got to know and spend time with a lot of the interview subjects both before and after bringing out the cameras. It was helpful to have a bit of a dialogue about what their parameters were and what they were willing to talk about, both in terms of their own emotions, but also working with our Colombian team to determine safety parameters and a certain protocol around that.

Anything involving narco is inherently going to involve some element of danger in spite of the fact that Pablo Escobar died over fifteen years ago. There are still many people in Colombia, including many of the people we interviewed, who won’t even say his name for fear of some kind of retribution. The last thing we wanted to do was put anyone in danger. We tried to approach everything gently.

From the soccer end, there’s another fear inherent in the story involving the soccer being played in Colombia during these glory years in the 80s and early 90s. That was real talent on the field. Those players were amazing. When you saw these amazing goals from [Faustino] Asprilla or amazing saves from [Rene] Higuita, that didn’t have anything to do directly with who was financing the team. So there’s a fear that exposing the connection between narco and soccer at that time would undermine that talent and the actual success that the teams had on the field. That created another obstacle in speaking with the soccer people.  And of course, the answer to the question is that the talent was real, but the money allowed the talent to stay in Colombia, and to flourish in Colombia, and to bring in talent from outside of Colombia, and get the best coaches and players, and build the infrastructure.

Without those contracts being paid, a lot of those players would have gone abroad. [Colombian coach Francisco] Maturana said in his interview that during this great winning streak in the [1994 World Cup] qualifiers, there were three players from the whole team playing abroad. When we shot the interview, there were over one hundred. The comparison makes that argument clear.

We wanted to do an interview with the president of the soccer federation during that period of time, Juan José Bellini. He had been in jail for six years for money laundering and really hadn’t been in the public spotlight at all since he got out of jail. A wonderful fixer, Jenny Gonzalez, was able to reach out and ask if he was willing to do an interview. He was very skeptical and had one condition; if we as much as mentioned the word ‘narco’, he would stand up and walk out. And that was fine with us. He knew what the film was going to be about, and we were just going to talk about soccer.

He did a judicious job of trying to describe the financial climate in Colombian soccer during that period of time without mentioning any of the illicit incidents. And then, on his own accord, he threw up his hands and basically said, and I’m paraphrasing, “Look, you can’t really talk about the economics of the sport at that time without mentioning narco.” It’s like trying to talk about the Chicago Bulls in the 1990s without talking about Michael Jordan.  He said, “Let’s just have it out and let’s talk about what happened.” And he went off for about 2.5 hours.

It was interesting because his main thing was that every day in Colombia there were revelations about police working with some narcos, and you don’t hear about the narco-police. Every day in Colombia there were judges who took bribes, and you don’t hear about the narco-courts. But one soccer player does this, or one player does that, and all of a sudden it’s narco-football because it’s such a cherished institution on a socio-cultural level.

NR:  You had a lot of conversations with a lot of fascinating people. What were the most memorable Two Escobars interviews?

MZ:  I’ll tell you one that comes immediately to mind that didn’t even make it in the film that we shot with a referee who was thought to be the number one referee in Colombia during the time, a former FIFA referee. He was very highly revered and was kidnapped during the period of strong armed tactics at the club level. He was kidnapped by a group of narco-trafficking interests and made to deliver a message to the other referees. He opened up and told us about the kidnapping; he literally hadn’t spoken about it for 20 years or so. He had spoken about it directly after it happened and then he decided not to speak about it again. It was an incredibly revealing, emotional, and vulnerable space to go into. We had put in it the film, but there were considerations for us in the editing room that made things quite difficult.

First and foremost, we wanted to tell the story. But there was always was going to be a safety consideration. Secondarily, there were ethical considerations. For example, with the referee, we had this anecdote about his kidnapping edited into the film during the part where we were talking about bribing and threatening referees. It worked like a charm, but it didn’t feel right after speaking with him for three hours and getting the whole story, knowing that this was the last thing that came out. We felt that if we were going to put this in front of the world, we would have to tell his whole story.

You could ask me about any of the subjects and I could tell you a story.

****

Well, that happened, but you’ll have to read about that in Part II, coming tomorrow.

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Related posts:

1. Nutmeg Radio’s Interview with The Two Escobars Co-Director Michael Zimbalist – Part II
2. Watch the Narco-Soccer Documentary “The Two Escobars” on ESPN
3. Nutmeg Radio’s Cool Station: The Green Soccer Journal

New entries into soccer’s relatively empty pantheon of English language creative outlets are few and far between. But that just makes it easier for inspired entrants to make their mark.

The Green Soccer Journal, based in the UK, takes some of the more mundane aspects of the game and ignores them, instead taking a more artistic and fashionable approach to presenting the world of soccer.

The articles (and obviously, contributors), photography, and overall feel of the magazine should all be welcome contributions for those who want to snuggle up on the couch during these frigid winter months and digest material not focused on the few details left to discover about Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi.

As the name implies, the magazine feels more like a soccer journal than a magazine of advertisements kind enough to accommodate a few words about soccer. Whether this approach works as a business model, we’ll see. But I’m desperately hoping that it does.

Slowly, the soccer universe is expanding. Following the growth of The Green Soccer Journal should be yet another fascinating case study. Judging from their first steps, it looks as if their team is focused in the right direction.

Now let’s just cross our fingers and hope that the next English language contribution to the soccer mag-o-sphere comes from North America. We have plenty of stories to tell too. Whether there are people to read remains the question.

Check out ISSUE ONE – WINTER 2010 from The Green Soccer Journal on Vimeo.

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1. Nutmeg Radio’s Cool Station: Roger Milla, Indomitable Lion (by Puma)
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3. Nutmeg Radio’s Cool Station: Air Diego Tees

That’s probably one of the finest titles you’ll ever read. It’s concise and accurate.

If Nate Berkus and Judge Joe Brown have their own shows, there is no reason why Emmanuel Eboue should not. The proper trajectory should be action figure then television show, not vice versa.

Not only is Eboue an action figure (that you can’t buy, if you were wondering), he also plays darts. I suppose what I’m trying to say is that Emmanuel Eboue must be on Twitter. And with that, enjoy Eboue and Jack Wilshere playing darts. How can you not love this guy?

One day you’ll get how all of this fits together.

(Action figure produced by Coolrain for Puma, of course.)

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1. The Movement: Emmanuel Eboué Must Get on Twitter
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If there was a flood and I was told to build an ark and gather a male and female of every species, I would decline.  All we would need is Emmanuel Eboué.

Let’s face it. The only reason Arsenal can show such joy on the ball (when they’re winning) is because they are inspired by a greater power. And that greater power is obviously Eboué, a man more powerful than four Vladimir Putins, half a Robert Mugabe, and Mark Zukerberg’s insecurity combined.

Eboué’s joy is infectious. His teammates have anointed Eboué the team’s best dancer and the funniest squad member. He might also be Arsenal’s best actor, but we won’t discuss that here.

The point is that Eboué makes his teammates and Arsenal fans smile (in spite of what some fans did to him two seasons ago). He’s the first to celebrate a teammate’s goal whether he’s on the field or sprinting from the bench to join the festivities. He’s the rare professional who still seems just happy to be here, even though he proved that he had the quality back in 2006 when he came out of nowhere to gently nudge Lauren out of the picture en route to the Champions League final (where I forget what happened). The man is happiness incarnate, something you can glean from this Puma commercial showing the essence that is Eboué, a commercial that might be the most awesome footage ever captured by camera.

A man so happy needs to be on Twitter and would be the perfect antidote to Reverend Run’s tweets (and Ryan Babel’s retweets of Reverend Run’s tweets). I would retweet the hell (pardon me, Eboué) out of Eboué’s tweets like they were Andrei Arshavin’s Q&A’s.

So I’ll make this pledge. We will tweet something Eboué-related every day until Emannuel Eboué joins Twitter. The tag will be #TwitterNeedsEboue or #WhyEboueMustTweet.

Feel free to join the movement. Feel free to tweet or retweet. But most importantly, enjoy Emmanuel Eboué, a man who puts Emmanuel Adebayor in perspective. And so I don’t end this with a reference to Adebayor, enjoy the most fantastic dance ever, made even more spectacular by Arshavin’s hesitant approach, an approach that confirms that behind every great dancer is an awkward teammate. Just ask Bolo Zenden.

If you enjoyed that dance, just imagine how much you’ll enjoy Eboué on Twitter.

(The Eboué shirt image at the top can be found here at the LA Gooners store.)

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I hope you enjoyed the “Air Diego” tees. If you like soccer and have a sense of humor, there’s no reason why you wouldn’t like them.

Next up on Station Cool, we head to Cameroon and Italy with Puma. Well, sort of. No, we’re not flying anywhere, but Puma will take you on an animated journey back to 1990, the year of the Indomitable Lion.

The video below chronicles Cameroonian legend Roger Milla’s return to international football and the havoc he created at the 1990 World Cup, while subtly providing some advice to aspiring corner flag dancers. It’s a short but inspiring story that I hope one day ends with Milla and a smiling Emmanuel Eboue opening a goal celebration school. But that’s an idea for another time.

This is another one of Puma’s many gems. Their commercials put all other soccer commercials to shame. It’s not even close. Time after time, Puma creatively captures the the essence of the game, drawing on real voices, music, and anything else necessary to bring genuine experiences and personalities to life. It’s the difference between watching a mega blockbuster and a classy independent movie. Although I don’t mind the occasional blockbuster, most of the time, you’ll find me taking in the independent with a beverage that gets by on taste instead of how exceptionally cold it is.

Anyway, sit back, relax, and enjoy the next 2 mins. 35 secs.

And thanks, Puma. Keep doing what you’re doing and leave the blockbusters to the other guys.

P.S. Notice how I used both soccer and football in this post.

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Amidst the bevy of muppetry that exists on Big Soccer, I sometimes find respite when I don’t feel like over-socializing, yet feel compelled to interact in more than 140 characters about things that most reasonable people would find as interesting as Paris Hilton discussing Sartre.

I’ve tried to make my significant other my soccer conversation partner through sheer force, but now I truly understand the plight of the missionary. No matter how suave one may be, converting the disinterested can border on impossible. But the same applies to stubbornness, which is why missionaries and the disinterested stubborn make such a magical pairing. I digress.

Upon failing to covert the other, I did what anyone in their right mind without an audience would do. I went online.

That was four years ago.

As those of you who have spent time on the Big Soccer message boards know, you can only last so long before developing feelings, mostly anger mixed with a splash of fury and exasperation. But despite these recurring sentiments, and even though I sometimes take extended breaks from Big Soccer, at some point, I inevitably return, although my participation rate has declined dramatically. Over the years, I have accumulated fake friends, fewer fake enemies, and a slew of bantering associates who love the same asinine thing I love. If I am being honest, I think I might even enjoy the company of some of my fellow BS compatriots, in a purely platonic way, of course.

I’m aware that meeting people you’ve met online can be shady business. We’re only talking soccer here, so it’s clearly not Chris Hanson shady, but the potential for catastrophe does exist, especially when expectations are created from fake identities. But these meetings may be virtually impossible to avoid. My new theory is that online and real worlds will inevitably collide when you persist on inhabiting the same online space for a significant period of time. As I recently learned, it’s just a matter of time.

Last month while in New York, I came out of the online closet.

I ran into a guy who is a frequent pint consumer at Nevada Smiths, New York’s legendary soccer pub. We’ve shot the proverbial feces on several occasions at Nevadas, so we just picked up where we left off. This time, however, our chat veered from the match, segueing into a conversation that recently took place on Big Soccer.

I bit.

“Wait, you’re in [Forum B]? What’s your name?” I asked.

“[FakeName].”

“Oh, snap. I’m [FakeName2].” (I said “snap” rather than snapping, which would have been awkward.)

And there it was, the full, naked, face-to-face disclosure. The good thing is that he was someone I had already decided was a relatively sane contributor to the board. Not that I am the arbiter of all things sane, but in my head, I am.

The rest of my day at Nevadas, with one exception (mentioned below), was smooth like Christopher Cross.

Here is what I learned from my self-outing:

1) Admitting to a real person that I am AwkwardName X from Internet Chat Room Y is partially embarrassing. Sure, this isn’t some perverted club, but it is a perversion of sorts, which makes coming out of the closet liberating, but unnerving at the same time. Your lesson: Liberation comes at a price. So do libations. Nothing worthwhile is free.

2) Shortly after outing myself, a few others joined our conversation. One of them revealed himself to be another character I was familiar with on the Big Soccer boards. I immediately did not like his real life persona. This guy was more aggressive in person than he was online, which I found odd. Revisiting some of his posts in my head, I concluded that he’s the type of guy to use message boards to test his theories before heading out to the pub to regurgitate opinion after opinion as fact, as if he worked for our beloved club. If I could have shoved him back into a computer, I would have. His real life character permanently tainted his fake character. Since then, I have vowed to battle him online whenever possible, whether I agree with him or not. Your lesson: Be prepared to make enemies.

3) If you plan on meeting someone for the first time from Big Soccer, bring a friend. Best case scenario: Three friends hang out. Worst case scenario: Two friends hang out. Both of these scenarios are better than you and an enemy hanging out on a double-date for two hours. Your lesson: Avoid torture.

4) The interwebs has made being a fan more exhausting than ever. Your lesson: Learn to hate the interwebs.

I hope these lessons serve you well.

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3. Watch the Narco-Soccer Documentary “The Two Escobars” on ESPN

Jeff and Michael Zimbalist’s documentary The Two Escobars brings us a tale of a nation gripped by crime, drugs and a passion for soccer.  At the time (circa 1994), Colombia was seen as one of the world’s most reviled narco-states and one of the world’s best soccer nations, at one point ranked 4th in the FIFA rankings.  During this period, many Colombians were hoping that victory at the 1994 World Cup would help rebuild the country’s tattered image.  Unfortunately, that dream was never realized.  Colombia’s hopes came crashing down with one errant kick during the World Cup by Andres Escobar, one of the team’s star players.  Escobar’s subsequent murder was a cold reminder of how the violent drug trade controlled everything within the country, including soccer.

The Two Escobars walks you through an era in Colombia when drug money flowed through virtually everything in public life, a period during which soccer enjoyed both a meteoric rise and a cataclysmic fall. Mesmerizing stuff, really.

If you haven’t already seen The Two Escobars at a film festival near you, make sure to catch this fascinating documentary so that you have something interesting to say about the relationship between cartels and the local and national teams in Colombia when the conversation comes up at work.  It’ll make you a more well-rounded person.

The Two Escobars will air on Saturday, July 17 at 12 PM on ESPN2.

Oh, what was that? An exclusive interview with the directors? And you want to see a preview of the action? Well, you’re in luck. Head over to Telegraph 21 to check out the film preview and for an exclusive interview with Jeff and Michael Zimbalist. You’re welcome. And thank Telegraph 21 too. They’re special.

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And check out our friends over at

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“If you want to see football in Africa, look at this.” Sergi Agustí, Director

In the past, we’ve brought you soccer-related documentaries from the fine folks over at Telegraph 21, an online video magazine that features some of the best documentary films and art videos from around the world.  This time, Telegraph 21 takes us to war-ravaged Sierra Leone, where a group of young amputee war veterans took it upon themselves to advocate for peace and demonstrate another way to deal with differences. With grit and determination, these young men have used their passion for soccer to change their lives for the better, and have become inspiring models for their communities.

Take in part of a riveting soccer game, and meet a group of extraordinary young athletes in today’s excerpt from One Goal.

Learn more about One Goal over at Telegraph 21. While you’re over there, check out some of the other features to explore some wonderful work.

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