Wisconsin - Packers and Steelers at the Super Bowl

One of the first subjects that has come on to my radar, in relation to Wisconsin, is the Green Bay Packers.  At first I thought they were some kind of food company (I'm still looking for a good Wisconsite recipe!), until an American friend told me that they are, in fact, a very famous football team and have just won the Super Bowl (Homer-Simpson-style, doh!).  My knowledge of football (or American football, as we call it in Europe) is pretty sketchy.  Despite having watched a million American movies or TV programmes, with references to quarter-backs and touch-downs, images of heavily-clad players wearing helmets with visors, I'm none the wiser.  I need to start with the basics of American football and try to figure it out as I go along!

American football seems to have grown out a college football game (which is probably why we see it so often in relation to high schools) - it's a mixture of rugby and soccer, with lots of new rules thrown in.  The team which is playing in offense needs to advance the ball into the opposing team (or defense)'s end zone, where they can score points, depending on how they've managed to get the ball there.  The best way seems to be by running really fast and crossing the line before anyone from the defense can catch you (a touchdown).



Football sticker from WHS archives

 In many ways, the Green Bay Packers is a good place to start.  They're the oldest professional football team in the National Football League (NFL), as they were set up in 1919.  They're pretty unique in terms of the NFL, in that they are the only major football team that isn't owned by an individual or corporation, but belongs to the people of Green Bay and Milwaukee, where the team originated.  The fans regularly sport fake cheeses on their heads, in keeping with their nickname, cheeseheads. It's also the only major team to be based in a small city - all other NFL teams are from one of the major US cities, eg the Dallas Cowboys or the New York Giants.  It's not the first time they've won the Super Bowl, in fact, they have won it more often (13 times) than any other team in the league, but it's still something of a victory for the underdog, when the only grass-roots team can bring home the Vince Lombardi Trophy, in defiance of the other, more commercialised, football giants.

There are 32 teams which currently compete in the National Football League.  In a combination of matches with rivals in their (more or less) geographical groupings, they finish the football season in early February with a final match called the Super Bowl, probably the largest televised sports event in the entire world!  The Green Bay Packers are grouped with the Chicago Bears, Detroit Lions and Minnesota Vikings and this year, at the Super Bowl, they faced off the Pittsburg Steelers 31/25 to claim the 2011 trophy.  Each Super Bowl is given a Latin number, rather than a year (which I guess adds a sense of drama) and this year was the Super Bowl XLV. 

It seems to be a massive event for most Americans and this year attracted a TV audience of more than 100 million and a physical audience of more than 100,000 spectators.  The game itself doesn't seem to last very long (not compared to cricket anyway!) and the mid-game entertainment at the Super Bowl has become a phenomenon in its own right - whether it's Gloria Estefan with Olympic Figure skaters or Justin Timberlake with Janet Jackson's 'wardrobe malfunction', the entertainment never fails to surprise, shock or, well, entertain!  This year it was the turn of the Black Eyed Peas to entertain the masses at the interval and the national anthem was sung by Christina Aguilera! 



Packer fans by drsethery

 With such a large television audience, it's also hardly surprising that the ads featured during the Super Bowl have also attracted a lot of attention.  Ridley Scott directed the famous Apple Mac ads in the early 80's.  This year, the car manufacturer, Chrysler, took centre-stage, with backdrops of Detroit and visuals of Eminem driving around the city!  It's such a big event that the major television networks (CBS, Fox and NBC) are given the broadcasting rights in rotation (this year was the turn of Fox).  Unlike the English FA cup, which is traditionally played at London's Wembley Stadium, the location of the Super Bowl changes from one year to the next.  Super Bowl XLV took place at the Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas.  Next year it will be the turn of the Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis to host the event.

All of this is completely new to me and, when the Super Bowl XLV took place last month on the 6th of February, I was blissfully unaware that it was even happening!  I promise to pay more attention next year, now I know the background of this league final.  It's also surprised me to learn how popular (American) football is in other countries.  There are 14 teams playing in the Irish American Football League, including the Belfast Trojans and the Dublin Dragons.  The British American Football Association (BAFA) has no less than 70 teams grouped into three divisions.  It's definitely a sport which is catching on here in Britain and Ireland, as well as many other countries in Europe, Asia and beyond!

Image credits:

The image of the Green Bay Packers sticker has been provided copyright-free by the Wisconsin Historical Society in their Visual Materials Archive, which is also available on their flickr photostream.  It's a fascinating archive and I think it's great when historical societies preserve images in this way and make them available online to educate future generations! 

The image of the football fans celebrating the Packers win at Super Bowl XLV was provided by flickr user drsethery aka Seth Carlson, a freelance multimedia designer who is originally from Park Falls in Wisconsin.  You can see more of drsethery's photos on his photostream. 

The sheer joy on the faces of the fans is surely worth all the hard work that a team like the Packers puts into the game?  Thanks Seth for sharing this image with us, using the Creative Commons license.

The Netherlands - Voetbal, Vermeer and Trockener Kecks

Since I started learning about the Netherlands, there has been a lot in the news, blogo- and twittispheres about next year's World Cup in South Africa.

I must admit, I'm not a big fan of football or voetbal, as the Dutch call it. However, the Netherlands is the first country on my learning journey, where football has come to the forefront and I feel the need to give it due respect.

One of the most famous footballers and, later, managers to come from the Netherlands is Guus Hiddink. I'd never heard of him before this, but the more I read about him, the more I find his story fascinating and he certainly seems to have had many ups and downs in his career.

He played for De Graafschap (a team from Hiddink's home province, Gelderland - nicknamed the Superboeren or 'Super Farmers')  for many years before moving, like a lot of 70's players, to the US and then returning to De Graafschap for the last two years of his career as a player. He then went on to manage a lot of national teams, including the Dutch national team, in the 90's, but I'm guessing his legacy will be getting the South Korean national team to the semi-finals of the FIFA World Cup in 2002, hosted by South Korea and Japan.

He's become somewhat of a national hero in South Korea and is the first foreigner ever to be given honorary South Korean citizenship, not to mention a lifetime of free flights with Korean Air and a holiday villa on the popular South Korean holiday destination, Jeju-Do (Jeju Island). 

After South Korea, he went on to manage the Australian national team and was very popular there, being nicknamed 'Aussie Guus'. He currently manages Russia but, as the Russian team were knocked out of the World Cup qualifiers by (rather embarrassingly) tiny Slovenia, I imagine he's in for another career change sometime soon.

Something I like about Guus is the fact that he put his foot down on racist banners in the stadium, when he was managing Spanish team Valencia. He's from a little village called Varsseveld, which is in the province of Gelderland, on the border with Germany. You can visit the Guus Hiddink museum there, if you're in the neighbourhood.

Apart from voetbal, I've also been reminding myself about some of the great painters that came from the Netherlands. Probably my favourite is Vermeer, who spent his life in Delft and seemed to capture the eeriness of the Dutch interior, the stale, damp light of a life spent indoors, as evidenced by some of his most famous paintings including The Milk Maid and Girl with the Pearl Earring. I've read the book, of course, and seen the movie, starring Scarlett Johansson.

I've been listening to lots of Dutch music over the past few weeks and I'm posting a link on YouTube to one of the songs that I really like, Ik denk nooit meer an Jou (I don't think about you any more) by a band called Trockener Kecks.  I really love this song, by saying I don't think about you anymore, he's kind of admitting that he does think about her/him all the time. I'm not sure whether the repeated refrain 'noit meer, noit meer, noit meer' sounds in Dutch like the word 'nightmare', as it does in English?  The nightmare of losing someone you really love - poignant.

It's also a beautiful montage of photos of Scarlett Johansson, which I thought was quite apt. Happy listening!
The image of Guus Hiddink was provided copyright free by http://www.iccsports.com/ (not surprisingly, a Korean website) through their flickr profile. 

The image of Vermeer's The Milkmaid is in the public domain and is taken from Wikimedia Commons.