There’s Something About Messi. A Short Word from Javier Marias

I fell horribly and irreparably out of love with football several years ago, but I could not resist tuning in to watch Barcelona v AC Milan face off in the Champions League on Tuesday night. There are some sports events that demand your attention, no matter how fickle your relationship. I was glad that I did. Barcelona were sublime, AC Milan brave but outclassed, and the majestic, mighty Lionel Messi was, well, majestic and mighty. And yet…

There is something about Messi. What is it that feels so remote? Watching I recalled a wonderful, short piece I had stumbled across not too long ago, A Touch of Genius, in El Pais (April 2012) by (the equally majestic and mighty) Spanish writer Javier Marias. He captures that remoteness perfectly.

“With oddly universal accord, soccer legend has it that there are four in the pantheon of Supreme Genius: Di Stéfano, Pelé, Cruyff and Maradona. There have been attempts to add other names, such as Ronaldo and Zidane in recent years, but they haven’t caught on, for one reason or another. These players have had a prolonged decline, or have not been continuously amazing throughout their careers. So they stand on a lower level, together with names like Puskas, Suárez, Beckenbauer, Butragueño, Raúl, Kubala, Xavi and Bettega.

To be admitted to the ranks of Supreme Genius you need a lot: supernatural mastery of the ball; telescopic and aerial conception of the play (as if the player, as well as on the grass, were suspended in the air, at a great height, for a “God’s-eye” view of the field); a long career without notable ups and downs; a capacity for making a champion of a team of merely competent fellow players (the case of Napoli with Maradona, of Santos with Pelé, and even the Barça of Cruyff); and the ability to conjure miraculous goals of great beauty, the kind that leave the beholder stupefied, wondering how they have been possible, in spite of the difficulties in their way or the apparent innocuousness of the preceding play. Anything else? Yes, perhaps there is something.

To judge by his career so far, it seems that Messi is the fifth Supreme Genius in the history of soccer. We Madrid fans have long been observing him with close attention, and unremitting dread. He causes panic as soon as he is in charge of the ball, however far away from the opposing goal. You feel he can dance through seven players in his way and make a killer pass to a player on his side, or dance through as many more, the ball apparently sewn to his foot, for a killer goal of his own. A strange intuition seems to tell him just where the ball is going and just how fast. He has the virtue of paralyzing his rivals. How else to understand how he can run from sideline to center and pop a shot into the goal, with no one stopping his advance? The impression is that the defenders are in doubt, or don’t dare. Like deer dazzled in the headlights, they surrender to the inevitable.

I would have no doubt that Messi is not only the fifth Supreme Genius, but probably the best of the five, except that today we see him so much more often than the others as to make comparisons difficult. If I have used the conditional it is, however, for two other reasons. First, given his youth, we don’t yet know about the length and ups and downs of his career.Messi seems to be a robot lacking in drama, both on the field and off

The other is more indefinable and subtle. In manual and mathematical arts there are cases of exceptionally gifted people who were a bit simple as individuals. This has happened, too, with poets (often), and even with certain novelists. When they speak, or write articles, they are a little disappointing; their general intelligence seems not to rise to the level of their talent or gift. One feels that this would not have been the case with Dante, Shakespeare, Proust or Eliot.

I know the soccer player is not an artist. He does not even have to speak at all. But for a figure to be Supreme, you want to perceive in him a complexity, an intelligence not entirely oriented to soccer, or at least a personality not without enigma – such as that of Zidane. I don’t know about Pelé, but Di Stéfano and Cruyff gave hints of complexity. Maradona seemed tormented, and thus radiated something of mystery and humanity. This is what is absent in Messi, who seems to be a robot lacking in drama, both on the field and off. For the Supreme Genius category the operative word is awe, a blend of admiration, dread, amazement, reverence and fascination. Messi inspires the first four but not, alas, the fifth.”

Ali post-Fight and Frazier mid-fight

Just two great photographs. I love Angelo Dundee checking out Ali on the monitor.

Happy Birthday Muhammad Ali

“A rooster crows only when it sees the light. Put him in the dark and he’ll never crow. I have seen the light and I’m crowing.” – Muhammad Ali

Muhammad Ali Surprises Kids on Candid Camera, 1974

How to make a young boy’s day. Year. Life so far…

(via Open Culture)

Ali Jab (versus Patterson)

More Words of Muhammad Ali, by Louis Vuitton and Yasiin Bey

Part 3 of Louis Vuitton’s beautifully realized Core Values campaign. Words of Muhammad Ali: Float

 

Parts 1 and 2 here

The Greatest Words of Muhammad Ali, by Louis Vuitton and Yasiin Bey

Hip-hop emcee, Yasiin Bey (formerly Mos Def), and calligrapher, Niels Shoe Meulman, pay homage to The Greatest, and sport’s greatest showman, Muhammad Ali, in this video for Louis Vuitton’s Core Values campaign. Drawing on Ali’s most famous quotes, Bey adopts the role of storyteller, bard and (literal) ringmaster to glorify the heavyweight champ. The results, directed by Stuart McIntyre, are beautiful. Both visually and lyrically dazzling.

Teofilo Stevenson, 1952-2012

 “What is a million dollars compared to the love of eight million Cubans?”

This week the greatest amateur heavyweight to have ever laced a pair of gloves died, aged only 60. The phenomenal Cuban, Teofilo Stevenson, won consecutive Olympic gold medals in Munich 1972, Montreal ‘76 and Moscow 1980 and had Cuba not boycotted the LA Olympics in 1984 he almost certainly would have added a fourth title to this triptych. He was crowned world amateur champion in 1974, 1978 and 1986, Pan-American champion in 1975 and 1979 and was one of only three fighters to win three Olympic golds, alongside Laszlo Pap of Hungary and his fellow Cuban, the titanic Felix Savon. It is an extraordinary record.

Despite this remarkable feat, however, he is even more famous in his homeland for his refusal, aged 22 and possibly at the peak of his powers, to fight Muhammad Ali for an unconfirmed $5,000,000. Even in the face of rapacious advances from promoters Don King and Bob Arum. For that reason he is held up alongside Che Guevara and Fidel Castro himself as a post-revolutionary Cuban icon. It was this snub, to the USA, the CIA and all agents of capitalism, and delivered with the immortal line above, that has cemented his place in history. Both political and sporting. As a result he enjoyed the untainted adulation of an entire nation, and the global left, for the remainder of his life.

Whether or not he would, or could, have beaten Ali will remain the subject of barroom debate among boxing fans, from Havana to Honolulu, for many years to come. Tactically amateur and professional boxing are related by only the thinnest of bloodlines. But his death marks the passing of a preternatural  fighter, a giant of a man in every sense, and a unique political era.

Here is the Guardian obituary:

Boxing holds a special place in the hearts of Cubans, and after Fidel Castro banned professional sports in the early 1960s, the country quickly became a dominant power in the amateur rings. Their biggest star was the heavyweight Teófilo Stevenson, who has died after suffering from heart disease aged 60. Stevenson was the second boxer, after the Hungarian László Papp, and the first heavyweight, to become a three-time Olympic gold medallist. (His fellow Cuban heavyweight Félix Savón has since accomplished the same feat.)

Stevenson famously turned down a potential million-dollar payday for a fight against Muhammad Ali, which would have been billed as an epic confrontation between American democracy and Soviet-style communism. “What is a million dollars,” asked Stevenson, “compared to the love of eight million Cubans?” The match would have been intriguing; tall, handsome and formidable, with a seemingly unmarked face, Stevenson was the amateur Ali. But he was rarely tested by the three-round amateur bouts.

I was at the Montreal Forum in 1976 when Stevenson won his second Olympic gold medal. His opponent, the Romanian Mircea Simon, was respectful of Stevenson’s dominance and edged warily around the ring for two rounds, landing the occasional long-range jab, to the delight of his corner. In the third and final round, he tried to land a punch. Stevenson deployed a powerful right-handed counter, and SSimon’s corner threw the towel into the ring immediately.

Stevenson was born in Cuba’s eastern Las Tunas province. His father was an immigrant from Saint Vincent; his mother was a first-generation Cuban whose parents had come from Saint Kitts. Big for his age, and otherwise seemingly unfocused, he began sparring seriously at nine and by his early teens, coached by John Herrera, had won his first junior title.

Soon he was training in Havana under the Soviet coach Andrei Chervonenko, who began teaching him the style perfected in eastern Europe to take advantage of amateur scoring, which counted all punches landed equally. Combined with the more professional style he had already learned, Stevenson quickly established himself. He lost in the national finals at 17 and won bronze at the Pan American Games in 1971, after losing to the highly touted American Duane Bobick.

At the 1972 Munich Olympics, Stevenson and Bobick met in the quarter-finals, in what was probably the greatest fight of Stevenson’s career. The fight went into the decisive third round, and he won after putting Bobick down three times. Stevenson then easily won his semi-final, and he took the gold when Romania’s Ion Alexe withdrew due to injury. This began Stevenson’s unprecedented run of domination in the amateur ranks. He won the 1974 World Championships before a wildly partisan crowd in Havana and the 1975 Pan American Games in Mexico City before his Olympic victory in Montreal. These were heady times for Cuban sport – Stevenson and the athlete Alberto Juantorena were arguably the biggest stars of the 1976 Olympics.

Stevenson’s only losses during this time came in dual meets with the Soviets, in 1973 and 1976, to Igor Vysotsky, but he won further World, Pan American and Olympic titles, the latter achieved in Moscow in 1980. His streak ended at the 1982 World Championships, with a loss to Italy’s Francesco Damiani, but he would likely have won a fourth Olympic gold had Cuba not boycotted the 1984 Games in Los Angeles; Stevenson had beaten Tyrell Biggs, who won the Olympic gold, in a Cuba-US dual meet before the Games.

Stevenson won the 1986 World title at super-heavyweight, but retired in 1988 after another Cuban boycott – this time of the Seoul Olympics – cost him another chance for a fourth gold. He ended his career with 302 wins and only 22 losses. Stevenson then lived in relative luxury in Havana. He became a coach with the national team, and rose to the vice-presidency of the national boxing federation. It was while travelling with the national team from a match against the US in 1999 that he was arrested at Miami airport, accused of headbutting an airline employee. Released on bail, he returned to Havana, and never faced trial, but said that he had been provoked by Cuban exiles in Miami, because he was an internationally successful Cuban sports figure.

In January this year, Stevenson was hospitalised with a blood clot. He was gladdened by the outpouring of support he received from around the globe – “even from Miami,” he said.

He is survived by two children.

• Teófilo Stevenson, boxer, born 29 March 1952; died 11 June 2012

Dark Side of the Lens

The breathtaking, award winning video from artist and waverider, Mickey Smith

(via)

Muhammad Ali v Oscar Bonavena, 1970 (Amazing LIFE Photos)

As was perhaps befitting of a man who had evolved from merely a cosmically gifted champion into a genuine global superstar, by the 1970s Muhammad Ali’s fights had become so much more than merely international sports events. As his fame grew and grew, so his fight-nights morphed into something extraordinary, almost surreal, somewhere between a catwalk show, a film premiere and a Harlem grindhouse. They became an irresistible whirlpool for celebrities, hustlers, pushers and pimps. Where the rich and not-so-famous came to strut, jive and swagger. To be seen and photographed. Where vanity and ego swelled cavernous arenas, the smell of greenbacks and chinchilla threatened to overwhelm. And where, frankly, what happened in the square ring was almost incidental.

The zenith of this ringside showboating was almost certainly Ali’s iconic 1971 championship fight against Smokin’ Joe Frazier, at Madison Square Garden, NYC (famously photographed, again for LIFE magazine, by a ticketless Frank Sinatra.) But here are some fantastic photographs of a slightly earlier contest, from 1970, against the cast-iron Argentine Oscar Bonavena, also at MSG.

They are a wonderful document of the time, the place…and the intoxicating attitude.

(For the record, Ali knocked out Bonavena in the 15^th round. The only time the Argentine was stopped in his craeer.)