"Show me how a man dances," said a prominent South American coach,"and I'll know how he plays football."
The connection between the two activities is clear. Imagine a footballer with the ball at his feet.
He can give a pass over long distance or short, in the air or along the ground, forwards, backwards, to the sides or diagonally, using his right foot or his left. He doesn't even have to pass. He can run with the ball, dribble or shoot.
It is usually said that football owes its extraordinary global popularity to the fact that it is a simple game. But it is equally true that such simplicity includes an almost limitless variety of movements.
It means that the game can be interpreted in different ways. Different people, different cultures, can express themselves through football just as they can through dance.
Michelangelo used to argue that painting began not in the hands, but in the mind. It is the same story with football and dance.
Where the mind leads, the feet follow.
The French writer Tony Cartano is fascinated by the Argentine dance tango, and its precursor milonga. He comments on the "schizophrenic dimension of tango, and especially milonga. The dance appears totally rational, extremely structural and logical seen from outside. But when you are dancing it is something extremely passionate, full of commitment.
" This contradiction between the emotional and the rational is one of the distinguishing marks of Argentine football. On the one hand, the game and its tactics are surrounded by a logical and sophisticated debate of a level hard to find anywhere else in the world. On the other, Argentine football is charged with an emotional current so deep it defies all rational analysis.
There is much of this in tango and milonga, dances developed in the brothels that were such important social centres of late nineteenth and early twentieth century Buenos Aires. Displaced, homesick male immigrants and desperate prostitutes were all caught up in a confused mix of hopes and needs, dreams and fears. And on the football field when Argentina score the goalscorer is often caught up in an attack of anger, as if he is finally managing to cast out all of these emotions.
By way of contrast, when Brazil score there is an explosion of joy, often accompanied by choreographed dance steps of celebration - for which Africa must be given much of the credit.
When Brazil finally freed its slaves near the end of the nineteenth century they gravitated towards the cities. In Rio, especially, their African rhythmic heritage blended with influence of European immigrants to form samba. Like so much African-based music, samba was a form of social celebration, whose hypnotic rhythm enabled the dancer to transcend the difficulties of everyday reality and experience a sense of freedom.
It is no surprise that this rhythm took control of Brazilian football as the game, initially restricted to the elite, was taken over and re-interpreted by the poor.
The people found in football a form of freedom, first as a source of pleasure, and then as professionalism took hold, as a possible escape from a life of limited prospects. Samba has become synonymous with Brazilian soccer.
To this day the crowd's favourite moment is when a feint or a shimmy of a player causes his opponent to fall over. Even if the defender is instantly back on his feet he has been made to look ridiculous and inelegant. To be accused of having an inflexible waist is one of the worst insults a Brazilian player can hear.
It is all very different from the British game, where physical strength and reliability are prized above all else. The values of British football reflect the industrial society that created it.
England was the first country to experience the industrial revolution. Those countries which came later could skip some of the stages of the English process and start straight away with more advanced technology.
In England, low technology meant more need for muscle power, more need for everyone to pull together - on the factory floor, down the mine shaft, and on the football field. Being the first urban, industrial nation meant that the British working class suffered more and longer.
Torn away from rural traditions, forced to work endless hours in bestial conditions, it is no surprise that the art of seduction took a beating.
Sex became rapid and matter-of-fact, a few squelching noises in between gasps of gin and beer.
The football equivalent is the English obsession with getting the ball forward early, with trying to force a way through the opposing defence rather than having the skill and patience to play their way through.
Again and again English football has been undone by its lack of subtlety.
It needs to dance more - not the mechanised, robotic jerks of rave music, but something more joyous, seductive and expressive.
Dance teachers in the UK, then, are carrying an enormous burden of responsibility. Not only can they help people stay fit, increase their cultural level and perk up their love life.
They can also help England win the World Cup for the first time since 1966.
| About Tim Vickery | ||||
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Tim Vickery writes on South American football every week on the BBC website, every fortnight on the website of Sports Illustrated, and every month in World Soccer magazine. He can also be heard every Friday night/Saturday morning on BBC Radio 5 Live's World Football Phone In. | |||
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