Posttraditional Migrants

The “Hochstätt Philosophy”

FC Hochstätt Türkspor was founded in 1993 by a group of Turkish immigrants, who had moved to the Mannheim district Hochstätt in the mid-1970s. Some of them had already attempted to establish a soccer club before but failed. They were more successful once some members of FC Türkspor Mannheim, which had existed since 1978, decided to join them. After the club initially participated for one year in the “Turkish League” organized by the Turkish consulate, it joined the Baden soccer association in 1994 and played in the lowest division, where it quickly had some success. The club’s first team has been playing in the fourth lowest division (Kreisliga) since 1999. Apart from the club’s athletic accomplishments, the club members view the acquisition and regular use of the clubhouse as a success. In the first years of the club’s existence, approximately 90 percent of the players came from the district that is home to the club; that rate remains at about 80 percent still today. With few exceptions, the players of all the soccer teams as well as the members of the club and its executive committee are all “Turkish” immigrants. This holds true for the spectators and the visitors of the clubhouse as well; they are also almost exclusively “Turkish” male immigrants.

It strikes the eye that there exists a symbolic layer of meaning that the actors refer to as the “Hochstätt philosophy.” This “philosophy” is articulated and advocated by the club leadership, the executive committee members, especially the club chairman, and the first team’s manager. It is referred to, explicitly and implicitly, time and again, in the conversations among the group but also in the conversations and interviews that I conducted in the course of my participant observation research in the Mannheim soccer milieu. ¹

What are the particular ingredients that make up the “Hochstätt philosophy”? The main components are the principles of “openness” and “sincerity.” Both are principles of conduct that club members expect of one another in their dealings. They are complemented by the principles “friendship,” “peaceableness,” and “mutual respect.” The Hochstätt philosophy is thus a form of universal morality. It is neither specifically related to soccer, nor is it defined by ethnicity but refers to abstract values. It does not prescribe specific lines of action, refrains from dogmatic or social exclusion, and demands only “proper conduct.” The aspect specific to this philosophy is its universality. It is precisely its unspecific nature that protects the club against any attempt at pragmatic co-optation and allows viewing it as an end in itself. However, the Hochstätt philosophy is only activated in cases concerning the experiences of a historically very specific group: male Turkish immigrants in the world of soccer in Hochstätt. The philosophy is valid for this group only, and it aims to achieve social integration only among this group and regarding its interactions. The Hochstätt philosophy is geared toward making it possible for all members of the local community to participate in club life; it allows for very different orientations and preferences accordingly, as long as they refrain from raising claims to lone and universal validity.

Thus, at this point we may note that the Hochstätt philosophy provides an overarching baldachin for the world of FC Hochstätt that is wide in that it is universal and inclusive and also easy to relate to in that it is mostly refrains from ideological aggrandizement. Its principles serve to stabilize and secure ethnic self-organization. In essence, the philosophy is directed inwardly, providing ex post legitimation to the group as a whole as well as to individual orientations and those specific to certain subgroups. Another pattern of interpretation has an even greater presence than the anti-ideological ideology characteristic of the Hochstätt philosophy: it is that of friendship pertaining to the style of soccer played as the main mode of athletic interaction among the soccer team.

The Hochstätt Style

A style of play is a selection principle, a choice to pursue a sport in a certain way and not otherwise. In the case of soccer, Christoph Biermann and Ulrich Fuchs have characterized a team’s style of play in terms of how a team interprets a more general system of play and the set of tactical options that the system typically offers (Biermann and Fuchs 2004, 39). From this perspective, style must be viewed as a mode of expression and presentation that is a product of deliberate consideration and can therefore be accessed by way of reflection (for a more general discussion, see Goffman 1959; Hitzler 1992; Soeffner 2005). Hence, actors cannot escape stylization. However, only the performative and discursive enactment of a style makes it “my” or “our” style, thus rendering it into an identity marker. Only the conscious consideration of one’s own actions and their meaning forges a diffuse conglomeration of patterns of action and interpretation into a focused, clearly discernible style, not least by setting it apart from other ones.

In the following, I will reconstruct the FC Türkspor Hochstätt style in several steps. I will start with an ideal-type reconstruction. A successful play carried out by the first team during the 2002–2003 season will serve as the basis for this process of reconstruction. I will reconstruct the play in terms of the ideal style it represents, which is of course an analytical construct and, as such, does not tell us anything about the actors’ self-stylization. Only in contrasting the Hochstätt style with this construct in a second step will the specific nature of this style become discernible. In so doing, I need to consider (1) which pragmatic features are characteristic of this style, (2) what instances of symbolic aggrandizement it is subject to, and (3) how the actors interpret, compare, and assess it.

The play I have analyzed has as its starting point a free kick in Hochstätt Türkspor’s half of the field; it is the attacking team (Figure 1).

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

A play by FC Türkspor Hochstätt.

Player 1 passes the ball from the right edge of the center circle forward and to the right over a distance of six meters to player 2. In five steps, the latter takes the ball across the halfway line. An opponent blocks his path whereupon player 2 fakes a pass to the left with his right foot. The opponent reacts to this feint with a defensive move toward the center of the playing field. This creates space for player 2 on the outer right side of the field. He takes advantage of this open space by playing a pass over nine meters toward the right sideline. The pass is received by player 3, who moves back along the sideline to do so. Player 3 receives the ball with his left foot and passes the ball with his right foot over four meters past an opponent toward the center of the field into the feet of player 4, who is running toward him. Player 4 strokes the ball with his left foot and, in the process, turns his body toward the opponent’s goal; once the 180-degree turn is completed, he is in a position to pass the ball with his left foot past the opposing player to the center. In the meantime, player 2 has moved from the halfway line straight ahead to the center of the field and receives the ball with his right foot after a seven-meter pass from player 4.

He slows down, stops after six short steps, and then plays the ball on a bounce, forward over six meters, past the defender, toward the right corner of the penalty area. There is player 3, who had run forward on the right side. Being pursued by an opponent, he fails to cleanly control the ball as he receives it. The ball takes a bounce over a distance of five meters toward the right goal post, describing an arch of 2.5 meters in height. Player 3 and his counterpart run after the ball; under pressure from player 3, the opponent lobs the ball into the center of the penalty area. The ball bounces twice before player 5, coming from the left, runs away from his opponent and, with the outside of his left foot, shoots the ball past two opponents and the goal keeper into the middle of the goal just below the crossbar.

The first aspect that is noteworthy when we look at this play is the fact that the team needed only 27 seconds to move the ball from behind the halfway line into the opponents’ goal. This is accomplished without resort to the long ball. To the contrary, the five players of the attacking team involved in this play use five short passes. Player 2 is the only one to dribble the ball a few steps. Otherwise, the one-touch passing game is the dominant mode of moving the ball. The key to this play is that it requires a huge effort in terms of running from the players. Only by running to get into an adequate position are players 2 and 3 able to again receive the ball; only relentlessly pursuing the opponent allows player 4 to force his counterpart to make an inaccurate pass to the inside, and only thanks to reacting and running quickly is player 5 able to gain possession of the ball and score. Long passes are just as absent from this play as is dribbling. The players do not attempt to gain ground individually. No one tries to dribble past his opponent. Rather, the play is based on a moving triangle involving the players 2, 3, and 4.

The play I describe here resembles what Biermann and Fuchs have characterized as the “modern style.” The authors stress that all the options known to soccer were developed by the time of the World Cup in 1958 (Biermann and Fuchs 2004, 103). They trace how rigid systems of play eroded and, in consequence, style gained significance. The greater the range of potential plays and possible combinations to choose from, the more crucial become interpretation and the way plays are forged into a style and executed on the field. They describe modern style as a style that has developed since the 1970s, which is characterized by “players in constant motion, collective action at high speed, and a high level of individual skill, which comes to bear in team play only” (Biermann and Fuchs 2004, 114). The key stylistic device of a modern offense is the short pass. “On the field, it takes the shape of combination play within very limited space, where the participants have only brief possession of the ball” (Biermann and Fuchs 2004, 139).

Biermann and Fuchs further emphasize that a style is not simply a physical technique but an expression of a certain “idea of soccer” (Biermann and Fuchs 2004, 44): “Is it passionate or calm and cool, destructive or creative, flexible or more static, combative or playful, elegant or wooden” (Biermann and Fuchs 2004, 44). If we ask about the idea of social relationships implied in the modern style of soccer beyond the more soccer-specific and psychological qualities that Biermann and Fuchs refer to, we find that this style (pattern of action), which is played all over the world, shows high affinity to the interpretation pattern of arkadaşlık, friendship, which occupies a prominent spot in the social world of Hochstätt Türkspor. Werner Schiffauer (1983, 108–24) has underlined the prominent status of arkadaşlık in Turkey’s traditional rural culture. The latter is marked by a strict division between the internal and external sphere. The family represents the internal world of economic reproduction. This internal world faces an external one that includes the village community and extends to the neighboring villages, the district administration, and so on. This external world is considered to be hostile and a threat to maintaining the family and securing its survival. Social relationships are ordered hierarchically, depend on family status, gender, and age and are based on obligations toward the family and the village. Outside relationships are almost exclusively maintained by the male head of the family. In this social formation, arkadaşlık and especially the friendship between two young men forms an alternative world. It enables young men to entertain close relationships outside of the family. In contrast to the relationships within the family, those external relationships are characterized by their voluntary nature, by equality of status, and reciprocity. In these friendships, hierarchy, leadership, and the assertion of individual interests are tolerated only for a limited time and require that all of the friends forming the group recognize and accept them.

These principles governing the relationships among friends are mirrored in the play discussed above. The system of play is neither dominated by a playmaker nor is there a clear-cut division of roles. Rather, the players display a great degree of flexibility and leave their positions to create a numbers advantage in the vicinity of the ball. The triangle in motion constitutes a horizontal web of relations devoid of a control center or any other type of central command. The main principle of organization is not based on (the “star”) individually possessing the ball but on quickly relaying the ball to one’s fellow player, who follows the same principle. The high importance of arkadaşlık in the repertoire of interpretations encountered in this social world supports this understanding. The significance of “friendship” for the Hochstätt philosophy has already been mentioned. Arkadaş is a term frequently used when the manager addresses his players. The players often refer to friendship as well. When asked for reasons why they play for this particular club, players from outside the district mention the friendship among Turkish teams while players from the Hochstätt district state that they have been friends since childhood. Finally, the club leadership points out that the Hochstätt Türkspor players receive significantly lower expense allowances than the players of other clubs, claiming that the players accept this because of the friendships and the relationships among the generations that the club cultivates.

How can we typify the Hochstätt style if we compare it with the ideal type of “modern style” (as a global type of action) and its interpretation in the sense of arkadaşlık (as the ideal-type pattern of interpretation of Turkish immigrants)? If we look at the team’s offensive game, we observe that it often deviates from the pattern identified in the play discussed above. This is especially so regarding the game in midfield where offensive plays are regularly organized centrally: at the team meeting before the match, the manager designates one of the two players capable of playing the traditional playmaker position to assume that role. He is the pivot for the transition from defense to offense; he is the one who initiates most plays. Assuming a central position, he limits the flexibility and freedom of his teammates. If the opponent succeeds in neutralizing him (one-on-one coverage, double coverage), a flexible triangle offense can hardly be established. This kind of centralism of an offense organized around a key player is again encountered on defense. The team frequently plays with a sweeper. He plays flexibly behind the defense and acts as a security guard. His flexibility and freedom owes to the central defenders holding their position fairly rigidly. He thus limits the defense’s flexibility and renders laterally shifting the defense impossible. Midfield and offensive players neglecting defensive work also stands in stark contrast to the modern style. Offensive pressing, which is the key to quickly recovering the ball and maintaining a large share of possession, only rarely takes place. The forwards mainly perceive themselves as “strikers” and the attacking midfield players view their role as “creative playmakers,” both of whom are largely relieved of defensive tasks.

As a preliminary result, we may hold that FC Hochstätt Türkspor, for the most part, subscribes to a fairly conventional and conservative style of play, as is widespread among the teams of the lower German amateur leagues. However, the key aspect is that the actors, in their own perception, tend to strongly overrate and aggrandize the elements also present in their play that stand for a “modern style.” Although these elements play only a limited role in the team’s style of play, they are nonetheless interpreted as the true nature of their play; whenever they surface, they are highlighted and described in terms of representing the team’s “actual style” and a collectively distinguishing feature. In this respect, two things strike the eye. On the one hand, they define their “own style” in contrast to a style referred to as “typical Turkish.” On the other hand, they employ a peculiar interpretation of the principle of arkadaşlık.

Eisenberg et al. (2004, 151) argue that national soccer styles have largely disappeared as patterns of action in the course of the development of international soccer and that today “differences have been ironed out” (Eisenberg et al. 2004, 168). However, they stress that in soccer discourse, that is, the way soccer is spoken about, national styles still serve as stereotypical frames of interpretation and for purposes of distinction. The way the members of Hochstätt Türkspor refer to the “Turkish style of soccer” also testifies to this.

First and foremost, the Turkish style is characterized as a rude and overly physical mode of playing. Club members consider this as a type of action that is referred to as kabadayı in Turkish. The term is not easily translated. Literally, it means “the tough uncle” and might be paraphrased as a “fearless, scrappy swaggerer.” One of the defining qualities of this explicitly masculine category is, among other things, “to appear fearless in the face of the opponent.” The club leadership explicitly disapproves of such behavior and the current players look down on it as ridiculous. However, former players point out that kabadayı was indeed once characteristic of the team’s style of play. Particularly during the early years of playing in the German system, as the team played at the B level (the second lowest in the German League system), they recall that there were numerous incidents of violence, which were triggered not least by the, to some extent, brutal style of play. Yet, they also call attention to the German side who they accuse of often deliberately provoking fights during and after the match. Here, another interpretation comes into play, which is characteristic of the perspective underlying this perception and is also not specific to soccer: the concept of “Turkish honor.” In the eyes of many Germans, the “typical Turkish sense of honor” is, in fact, perceived as the cause of violent behavior on the part of Turkish players, whose pride, according to the German view, is hurt very easily and on numerous occasions, for instance, in the light of impending defeat, leading them to turn violent.

The former players oppose this view, claiming that fights were provoked by Germans insulting them, especially when playing against German teams from rural regions. “Son of a bitch” was a frequent insult, knowing that it meant a particularly deep hurt. The term indeed hits into the heart of the traditional Turkish concept of honor. As mentioned above, the rural lifestyle revolves around the family at its core. Only family unity and an unconditional commitment of all family members to family solidarity are able to ensure survival under the difficult conditions that agriculture is faced with in many Turkish regions (see Schiffauer 1983, 65). In such an environment, the insult “son of a bitch,” implying that one’s mother has engaged in sexual intercourse with other men beside one’s father, is a severe attack on the integrity of the family whose “honor” demands that the attack meet a resolute response.

Today, both kabadayı and violent behavior in response to provocations are claimed to belong to the past, and when such things do happen, such behavior is branded as “stupid” because it contradicts the constraints and opportunities involved in organized soccer. By contrast, the players are expected to be “smart.” Being smart, on the one hand, means risking fouls, like the Germans, only in attempting to conquer the ball and not out of “lust for a good fight.” On the other hand, it is considered “smart” to respond to troublemakers by athletic means, that is, by bringing to bear one’s superior soccer-playing skills.

In the same manner that the players voice disapproval of a “stupid” way of playing, they also criticize a style that they call “Kümmelgetümmel” ² (which might be loosely translated as “Turks rushing into the fray”) and they ironically identify as “typical Turkish.” The term refers to a style of play focused on possession of the ball where a host of players all rush to the ball at the same time. The style draws criticism since it hampers team play, fails to take advantage of available space for organizing one’s own game while, in turn, creating open space that the opposing team can exploit for its own attacking game. There appears to be no plan, a lack of foresight, and play seems to be unorganized, to promise little success, and is, therefore, ultimately irrational. The implicit charge of irrationalism aims at yet another aspect of the style of play that the players consider as “typical Turkish”: use of technical skills as an end in itself, which the players strongly disapprove of. This became particularly obvious when a player from the second Turkish league joined the team. His tendency to hog the ball and showcase his virtuosity caused raised eyebrows among the Hofstätt players, who labeled the player a “typical Turk.” His “exhibitionism” and “play without purpose” were considered incompatible with the style cultivated by the team and perceived as disturbing their game. When the player was on the field, the other players avoided passing him the ball even if he was in a promising position. After a few weeks, the player left the club again.

In identifying irrational behavior as “typical Turkish,” the players demonstrate the extent to which they not only subscribe to a rational worldview (or at least a rational concept of sports) but have also internalized the discourse of the “irrational Oriental” (see Nandy 1983; Said 1978). Drawing boundaries is thus the key mechanism in adopting a style of play as “our style.” Boundaries are drawn by a discourse that sets this style apart from the “Turkish style” and performatively excludes players that subscribe to an “unfitting style.”

The comparison with the style that the players interpret and reject as “typical Turkish” demonstrates that they do not simply “apply” the Turkish arkadaşlık principle on the field but also interpret it in a specific way. If we consider at once the components that make up the “typical Turkish” pattern of action—kabadayı, “the Turks rushing into the fray,” and “exhibitionism”—we are able to reconstruct an ideal-type style that is in accordance with the pattern of interpretation I have referred to as arkadaşlık. In this ideal type, there are no clearly identifiable and definite leaders and no set positions on the field. Rather, the players are oriented toward the ball and move on the field individually. Each player attempts to gain possession of the ball as often and maintain possession as long as possible while he seeks to showcase his virtuosity in the process. Individual achievement is the most cherished value. If a player’s “lust for a good fight” gets him into trouble, he is immediately supported by his teammates/friends regardless of the consequences. The pronounced individualism that marks this kind of style derives from the nature of the relationship implied in arkadaşlık. Even though it facilitates close relationships on equal terms (and thus solidarity between individuals, which involves an unconditional commitment to one’s friend), it is nonetheless defined by the rationale of nonfamilial relationships in traditional Turkish culture: exhibiting individual strength and ability aims at demonstrating the will and capacity to engage in conflict if necessary, that is, in cases when equal status is questioned. This must be demonstrated toward friends as well since they do not belong to the family and, as members of the outside world, are also perceived as a potential threat. This version of arkadaşlık is in clear contrast to the ideal type of arkadaşlık described above where the focus is not on the individual but on the social network. It further stands in contrast to the style that FC Hochstätt actually plays, which is defined by clearly assigned roles on the field and a hierarchical order within the team and which I have reconstructed by contrasting it with the ideal.

The Hochstätt Türkspor style of play becomes possible not least because family, honor, and friendship does not play the same pivotal role in the actors’ lifeworlds as had been the case in the traditional Turkish community. The situation of the Turkish immigrant community in Hochstätt is different in that family and intergenerational relations are less hierarchical and less significant because the family has lost its role as the core unit of economic reproduction. This leads to the eroding significance of traditional friendship relationships as well, which once represented an alternative world to that of the family. Previously inconceivable status differences in friendship relationships now become possible, which is reflected in their interaction in the world of soccer.

Above all, all of these elements indicate the modern nature of the changed Turkish conception of friendship. In German, the concept of friendship is etymologically closely related to the semantic field of kinship via the Old High German term friuntscaf and forms a contrast to the German term Kamerad, which can be translated as friend or buddy and stems from military jargon where it is used to refer to a fellow soldier. This holds true for the Turkish term arkadaşlık as well, which dates back to fairly recent history. Arkadaş was originally a military term meaning the fellow soldier who covers one’s back (arka) and thus gives protection against attacks from behind. ³ Both terms, Kamerad and arkadaş, refer to vital relationships involving issues of life and death, which are nonetheless of a segmentary nature in that they do not involve the whole person but pertain to the person merely in terms of his or her temporary and role-related participation in a specific subworld. In the context of sports, arkadaş today also includes the opponent—just as in the German term “Sportkamerad” (sports buddy).

Ultimately, the FC Hochstätt Türkspor style reflects the “intercultural” nature of this social world and the club’s integration in the world of soccer. The club members use sports and the ideal of sportsmanship—which is rooted in English culture and refers to a system of behavior that allows to engage in controlled physical aggression within the confines of a system of rules, implies that the outcome is accepted without any aggression, etc. (see Gorer 1967, 77)—in order to strengthen certain elements of traditional Turkish culture against other aspects of that culture. In this sense, FC Hochstätt Türkspor cultivates a sports culture that is indeed of an intercultural nature. The criticism of a style of play classified as “ethnic,” the declining significance and transformation of patterns of action that are not specific to soccer, such as arkadaşlık and kabadayı, and the adjustment of these patterns to the constraints and dominant rationales of action in the German amateur soccer milieu are all expressions of the commitment to the rules and the pragmatism of the world of soccer of which the Turkish players are part.