it i a Dante ie cn Ni eco wa he i soni

hipaa ci a i

BRAZILIAN SOCCER STAR PELE

_.. his $7 million contract with

the New York Cosmos is changing the game.

By MIKE GIDORA

Whither pro soccer?

Historically, soccer has been a
game of the working class. The
earliest soccer teams grew from
trade unions, and workingmen’s
clubs in England and the rest of
Europe, and they appealed directly
to the working people who sup-
ported them.

Manchester United, one of the
most fabled of all soccer teams,
was originally formed by a number
of trade unions in that city. The
Tottenham Hotspurs originated
from a workingman’s club in
London. Nearly every English
soccer team has a similar origin.

They appealed to the working
people of their area economically
as well. Ticket prices were always
set at a very low rate; so that the
working people could attend the
games. Most important of all, the
men who played the game were
working people.

As basketball in the United
States is a game which dominates
the working class areas of
American cities, soccer has always
been the game of the working class
in the rest of the world. Soccer, like
basketball, is a game which the
working class can afford to play. It
requires little in the way of
equipment, justa round ball and an
area to run in. :

That is one of the reasons for
soecer’s amazing success around
the world. -

But, when soccer came to North
America in the form of the North
American Soccer League, all that
changed. The NASL was formed by
a group of millionaires who wanted
to be able to say that they owned a
major league sports franchise. It
was imposed on ¢he various cities
with no effort made to introduce
the game to the areas. It didn’t
take, and the league nearly
collapsed, dwindling to six teams
at one point.

Then the popularity of soccer as
a sport began to pick up, for
precisely the same reasons that it
is so popular everywhere else in
the world. It was easily accessible,
and very inexpensive. Soon it
became one of the most widely
played games throughout Canada
and the United States, and in 1975
over one million boys and girls
were playing soccer in an
organized fashion in the U.S., with
an even larger number playing in
Canada.

The NASL teams found them-
selves hiring local soccer players
for their teams. The St. Louis stars
had nine players from St. Louis in
their lineup, and the owners of the
franchises, looking to make a few
more dollars decided that it was
time to expand the league. After
the league expanded, things
levelled out a bit, and attendance

remained at about 8,000 people per
game, but it was steadily in-
creasing. As more local players
joined the teams, the appeal of the
sport widened.

But because the NASL is run
primarily as a business operation,
and is run by men with little un-
derstanding and knowledge of the
game of soccer, there has been a
distinct Americanization of the
sport, and it may well represent
the death of the NASL.

Instead of strengthening and
developing the ties with the
communities which were emerging

through the acceptance of the.

game, the NASL owners attempted
to introduce the star system to
what is basically a community-
oriented game.

The first indication of the
direction which the league was
heading came when the New York
Cosmos (owned, incidentally, by
the Transamerica Corporation)
signed the world’s most famous
soccer player — Pele of Brazil — to
a $7 million contract. Pele’s
signing spurred several other
NASL teams to sign their own
international stars such as George
Best of England or Portugal’s
Eusebio. Suddenly, the American
and Canadian players with whom

the local soccer fans identified and »

paid to watch play, were no longer
wanted. :

Just as suddenly, the price o
tickets began to jump, because
someone was going to have to pay
Pele’s $7 million contract, and you
can bet that it wasn’t going to be
the Transamerica Corporation, but
rather (the ticket buying public.

Vancouver’s entry in the NASL,
the Whitecaps, which featured
mainly local players last year,
have indicated that they are going
to go the same route. Already they
have released a number of
Canadian players in favor of
European stars, and those that
have been kept on are being asked
to accept substantially smaller
contracts.

The reaction of the Vancouver
soccer fan will be hard to gauge
‘until the season begins next week,
but it is a lot more difficult to en-
courage the development of
Canadian athletes when the home
team is doing everything that it
can to discourage them.

Rather than closing off op-
portunities for local soccer players
by shutting the team’s doors to
them, the Whitecaps should be
actively involved in promoting and
developing juvenile soccer players
in the Vancouver area. That’s the
tradition of the game, and that’s its
basic appeal. But, it isn’t business’
way.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—APRIL 9, 1976—Page 10

Two worth considering

DOG DAY AFTERNOON. Starring
Al Pacino. Directed by Sidney
Lumet. At the Richmond Square
and Guildford Town Centre
Theatres. :

With the announcement of
nominations for Best Picture, etc.,
for the annual Academy Awards, I
decided, considering there would
be tremendous publicity
surrounding the major films, to
review the choices.

As we all now know, the winner
on March 29 was the anti-
establishment One Flew Over the
Cuckoo’s Nest. It could as easily

have been the anti-establishment -

Dog Day Afternoon.

Dog Day Afternoon was superb
and human. Written by Frank
Pierson, it depicts the actual
events that took place in a New
York City’ bank on a steaming
afternoon during an amateurish
robbery attempt.

Two clumsy thieves are holed up
with the bank’s staff after a bot-
ched armed robbery. In no time the

bank is surrounded by what seems *

the whole New York Police
Department. The film outlines
what happens once the police
arrive.

The thieves, Sonny and Sal,
reject a demand to surrender,
easily concluding they are in a
good position as most of the bank
staff is inside with them.

What starts as a police demand
that they give themselves up is
turned by the quick-thinking Sonny
to his advantage. The police stir
and sweat, curse and then give in
to Sonny’s demands.

Sonny asks that his lover, a man,
be brought to the scene. He tells the
television audience that he at-
tempted the robbery so his lover
could have a sex-change operation.
The surprised police comply and
the media makes great hay about
“two homosexual bank robbers.”’

At first nervous, the bank staff
soon realize that Sonny and Sal are
amateurs and have no intention of
really hurting them. They are
more afraid of the police outside.

The zaniness of the situation is
intensified as they all eat pizza and
Sonny makes calls to Leon, his
lover, and to Angie, his wife.

The sensitively treated phone
call scenes reveal what pressures
drove Sonny to attempt the bank
robbery. Anunemployed Viet Nam
vet, Sonny feels powerless as he
cannot support his wife and
children. Nor can he help his male
lover have the expensive
operation.

Poverty and financial impotence
drive the disturbed Sonny into
armed robbery in the hope it will
come off easily.

In New York, in the Seventies,
we know the police will not allow
Sonny and Sal to get away with
their caper. The police bring in the
cool and deadly FBI, who trick
Sonny into captivity by seeming to
agree with his demands.

Dog Day Afternoon, directed by
Sydney Lumet, is a crazy, gripping

Soviet films
to be shown

Mount Pleasant residents will
have an opportunity to take in
some Soviet films on two evenings,
April 14 and 28, at 7:30 p.m. Both
showings will be in the Mount
Pleasant Public Library, 370 East
Broadway in Kingsgate Mall.

Sponsored by the Canada-USSR
Association, the films featured
include travelogues and
documentaries from various Soviet
republics. Admission is free.

and very human movie. It is about
America in the Seventies, in the
nuttiest city, New York. It is a
statement against the rising police
state that,forces outrageous
solutions to relatively simple
situations.

Al Pacino as Sonny gives us the
best performance of his career. His
Sonny is pure New York — insolent
and touching, well-informed but
crazy.

It is easy to ruin a movie based
on a real event. This is avoided
because Dog Day Afternoon does
not just re-enact this bizarre story,
but gets beneath it.

— John Lamont

Ibsen's
Hedda

HEDDA. With Glenda Jackson,
Jennie Linden, Peter Eyre,
Patrick Stewart and Timothy
West. A Royal Shakespeare
Company production directed by
Trevor Nunn. At the Varsity
Theatre, Vancouver.

Three-quarters of a century
before either Betty Friedan or
Germaine Greer had begun to
question the values that middle-
class society had imposed on
women, the Norwegian playwright
Henrik Ibsen was exploring some
of the issues in the society of his
own day.

The figure of Nora in his play, A
Doll’s House is perhaps the most
familiar and the most readily
identifiable by modern-day
standards, but the heroine of
another play, Hedda Gabler also
suffers from the stifling con-
formity that society demands of
her.

The Royal Shakespeare Com-
pany has now produced a film
version of Hedda, starring Glenda
Jackson in the title role and if it,
like Ibsen’s original play, is a
historical drama whose outlook is
somewhat limited by time in which
it was written, it still has
something to say to contemporary
audiences.

“Tt is the want af an object in life
which torments her.”’ Ibsen said of
Hedda in his notes. A strong-willed

Sunday

at the
Britannia Complex
1661 Napier

TOPICS TO BE DISCUSSED INCLUDE
EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES
EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES

YOUTH & CULTURE
RECREATION

woman, dominated by the image of
her father, the late Colonel Gabler,
she seeks an outlet for her will. But
it cannot be a career or a social
position because that is not
morally acceptable and Hedda is
haunted by the thought of scandal,
of how society may judge her
should she step beyond its boun-
daries.

Conformity makes a monster of
her as she strives to exercise her
will by controlling the fate of
others and ultimately she becomes
trapped by the results of her own
actions. But she will not submit.

Counterposed with Hedda is the

very human figure of Mrs. Elvsted |

who does have an object in life and |

seeks its fulfilment — despite

society.

‘The role of Hedda is a complex |

and demanding one but Glenda

Jackson, whose reputation as @ |

consummate artist has long beet |

established, handles it superbly,
suggesting the complexity of the
woman without the Freudian

overtones that have often been |

read into her character. Jennie
Linden is also striking as the
frightened but determined Mrs.
Elvsted.

More of a challenge for the Royal

Shakespeare Company was the |
task of transforming Ibsen’s |

dramatic values into film values.
Like many of his plays, the
development of Hedda Gabler

relies heavily on a close interplay |
of dialogue which could not simply |

be reproduced in the film.

In making the transformation,
director and screenwriter Trevor
Nunn did a creditable job. The
heavily shadowed areas and evel-
present curtains in the house im
which all the action takes place

create a sense of the. stifling |

morality which is at once 4
creature of the society but also one

which Hedda imposes on herself. |

Tight, intense close-ups strengthen
the tension between the key
characters.

A difficult film Hedda is
nevertheless worthwhile fo!
anyone seeking a respite from the
standard fare on theatre row. Atl
for those who have seen her if
other roles, Glenda Jackson’
performance may be incentive
enough.

April 11

—Sean Griffi® |

youth conference

for
vancouver east