COMMENTARY The Jamaican soccer team's stunning run in the women's World Cup reminds us of a virtue we in the New World are supposed to prize: the underdog's leveling of the playing field.
Thank you, Reggae Girlz! You’ve relieved me of writing about Donald Albatross Trump.
There were a lot of grave hemispheric issues I could have addressed this week. Former President Trump’s federal indictment on trashing-U.S.-democracy charges. The arrest of Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s son on narco-money laundering charges. Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s arrest of much of his entire population on gang-membership charges.
But when you’ve covered the Americas as long as I have, you’ll jump at a chance to ditch the albatrosses who bring this hemisphere down on a daily basis, and highlight the sparrows who elevate the spirit that this hemisphere — the New World — is supposed to radiate.
That means the Reggae Girlz — the Jamaican women’s national soccer team, ranked 43rd in the world, who just accomplished what few thought possible. In only their second World Cup appearance (their first was in 2019) they advanced out of the tournament’s initial group stage to the round of 16. And they did it by tying the world’s No. 5-ranked team, France; then by tying and eliminating No. 8 Brazil on Wednesday in Melbourne, Australia.
READ MORE: At World Cup, my head says root for U.S. women. My heart says cheer for Reggae Girlz
The Girlz also got it done in spite of yet again having to overcome what they call the unconscionable neglect — if not the sexist dismissal — of the Jamaican Football (soccer) Federation.
As recently as 2014, in fact, the Federation wouldn’t even fund a national women’s team. The Girlz finally took the field thanks to the generosity of Cedella Marley, the daughter of Jamaican reggae legend Bob Marley. In just a few years they qualified for the big dance, the World Cup.
But the Girlz say the Federation treated them as if they were some transient novelty, like the female sluggers in the movie A League of Their Own, instead of the Caribbean island’s new showcase. In June, the players, including stars like Khadija “Bunny” Shaw, wrote an open letter complaining of the Federation’s “subpar” support even after Jamaica qualified for this current World Cup, co-hosted by Australia and New Zealand.
Players’ mothers say they had to light up that 21st-century bake sale known as GoFundMe to secure the cash the Girlz needed to do the thing right.
So far they’ve done the thing righteous.
The Reggae Girlz' mothers lit up that 21st-century bake sale GoFundMe to secure the cash to do the thing right — and they’ve done the thing righteous.
Sure, this is just soccer. Then again, this is soccer, the world’s most passionately followed game. So the Reggae Girlz are rocking a stadium-size psychological effect. They remind the western hemisphere of a virtue we cherish: the triumph of the underdog, the leveling of the playing field — the creative, democratic New World opportunity to quash whatever inferiorities the elitist ghosts of the Old World mindset try to make us see in ourselves.
In that regard, the fact that tiny Jamaica has advanced in this World Cup by ousting powerhouse Brazil is ironically gratifying.
Jogo bonito
That’s because in the last century it was Brazil who, more than any nation in this hemisphere, leveled soccer’s global playing field. Soccer was mastered and even reinvented in the Americas, or at least Latin America, largely to prove the New World could be equal or even superior to its former Old World colonizers. Between 1958 and 2002, Brazil won five of 12 men’s World Cups, playing its samba-esque jogo bonito brew of the sport.
The Brazilian writer Nelson Rodrigues said that helped the country shed its own sense of inferiority, what he called a “mongrel complex,” referring to its mixed-race identity — a self-affirmation symbolized by the team’s scoring genius, the Black icon Pelé. After Brazil’s 1962 Cup conquest, Rodrigues wrote, “Brazil has the creative potential of a nation of Napoleons.”
Jamaica’s Cinderella run in the South Pacific this summer is a fun-fresh display of that New World faith. So was this year’s uplifting performance by Haiti’s women’s soccer team, which itself made it to the World Cup for the first time ever. It admittedly lost every game it played in the tournament — but so did Jamaica in its 2019 debut.
Then there’s Colombia, ranked 25th in the world, which last weekend upset the No. 2 team, Germany. On Thursday, Las Cafeteras, as they're known, also advanced to the World Cup's round of 16. On Tuesday, their next opponent will be… Jamaica.
It’ll be a welcome chance to ponder the hemisphere’s sparrows instead of its albatrosses.
