Today we’ll be covering the NFL off-season and how many points are in a touchdown……
APRIL FOOLS.
Yeah no, we’re talking about the other football, and if you loathe it, don’t miss the What We Been Grokking section at the bottom full of fun recs. But don’t loathe it: our Sport Specials are about sport and LIFE — it’s all metaphor, eh.
“The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing”
So sayeth Archilochus, quoted famously (within certain circles) by Isaiah Berlin in his essay, “The Hedgehog and the Fox” (1953). The fox pursues MANY, sometimes contradictory ends (a relativist?), while the hedgehog has a “SINGLE, universal, organising principle” (an absolutist? a Sith lord?!).
Berlin’s point in the essay is that Leo Tolstoy, a Russian novelist, is a curious combination of a hedgehog AND a fox. Berlin goes on to classify other passerby (leaving out not a few white men):
Foxes: Shakespeare, Herodotus, Aristotle, Montaigne, Erasmus, Moliere, Goethe, Joyce
Hedgehogs: Plato, Dante, Lucretius, Pascal, Hegel, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Ibsen, Proust
We might add, for the sake of oversimplification and provocation, some post-‘53 humdingers (disagreements and additions in the comments):
Foxes: Elon Musk, Toni Morrison, Andy Warhol, Karl Ove Knausgaard, Barack Obama, Paul McCartney, Alice Munro, Prince, Taylor Swift, David Foster Wallace, Isaiah Berlin
Hedgehogs: Michael Jordan, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Bob Dylan, Kanye West, Steve Jobs, Alice Coltrane, John Lennon, Stephen Hawking, Jimi Hendrix, Quentin Tarantino, Malcolm X
Xavi the Hedgehog
We might further add to these expert classifications: Diego Simeone, coach of Atletico de Madrid, Argentine, fox, AND Xavi Hernandez, coach of FC Barcelona, Spanish, hedgehog. Xavi, newly appointed manager of Barcelona and a club legend as a player, faced off against Simeone in their first coaching matchup on February 6th. In the chirpy build-up to the game, Simeone said of Xavi:
I remember Xavi saying in 2016 on Universo Valdano (a programme on Spanish television) that Atletico Madrid's style wasn't a style for big teams. Now he will have the opportunity -- with all these new players arriving, he has eight now for three positions (in attack) -- he will be able to deploy the team that he wants, that he imagines, what he grew up with at Barcelona. When you have only ever experienced one situation, you don't understand any other. If you have moved around, experienced different situations in life, you understand that it isn't just about one thing. (ESPN FC)
It wasn’t looking too good for Barca, either, having been through something of a crisis in the last year(s) and losing, among other things: the best player to ever play the game (Lionel Messi) along with several critical knockout matches along with their corrupt president ALONG with a ton of money from mismanagement.
But Barcelona beat Atletico 4-2 and have since been on a TEAR of sorts (might as well disclose our bias sooner rather than later — we’re fans). Old (to the team) players are playing better than ever before (Dembele, De Jong), new/young players are stepping up (Gavi, Nico, Aubameyang, Ferran Torres, Adama Traore), and some of the best around are being just that (Busquets, Pedri, Alves, Pique). Off the field there’s a new Spotify mega-deal (our loyalties are torn between Barca and Neil Young) and even talk of a summer snag of Norwegian super-prodigy Erling Haaland.
All this has coincided with Xavi’s return to the club in November. Last seen on the premises winning their last Champions League as captain in 2016, he’s back to revive the project, and he’s doing it like a hedgehog, getting his team to play the only way he knows how:
A common critique of sports teams (and hedgehogs) is that they have no Plan B. They’re so committed to playing a certain way, their critics say, that they won’t give it up, even when it’s not working. These teams might reply, though, that no, it will work or it’s improving or it’s misfiring or just that they refuse to play another way — that a certain amount of faith (bravery?) is required.
Something like this seems to have been going on between Xavi and Simeone. Xavi represents the “Barca DNA” which is to say an entire mindset, a desire to keep the ball, to play quickly, and to win the ball back as soon as possible through pressing. This is what made the Barcelona team of 2009-16 so good. It’s what’s won Pep Guardiola all his titles – and Messi and Iniesta and a string of other greats. It’s what won Spain Euro 2008, the 2010 World Cup, and Euro 2012 — an unreplicated three-peat. But it can also lead to things like 7-0 Champions League losses to Bayern Munich. 😶🤭😬
It is a dominating style and one that Xavi looks to have brought back. It will be interesting to see, though, what comes of it. There is so much retroactivity inherent in labeling and categorizing “styles,” but one thing makes it familiar here: it’s coming out of the Dutch-born, Catalan style, and — even if special players are perhaps required — it looks to be back in its native state.
After the 4-2 win against Atleti, Xavi had this to say:
[Diego Simeone] looks for something completely different on the pitch. He is completely the opposite and his football is completely the opposite to what we want to do and we knew that. I think he said that he didn't like what he saw from our training sessions a few years ago. He sees football in a different way. This isn't me trying to disrespect him at all. This is normal. There are many, many, many different ways of playing football, and he sees football in a completely different way. If no one puts his side under pressure he doesn't really know how to react. Atletico feel comfortable without the ball, and we are completely different, completely the opposite. We feel very uncomfortable without the ball, so it's completely the opposite to what Barça want to do. (BEIN)
The last laugh never lasts too long, though, and there’s more to it here than Simeone as the versatile pragmatist and Xavi as the principled idealist. Perhaps more than anything we might come to understand all the different kinds of unifying principles, all the different hedgehog-y ways of playing football, of living life. Perhaps it isn’t that Simeone is a fox at all — but rather a different kind of hedgehog.
For another hedgehog, check out this pitted interview with Dani Alves:
What We Been Grokking
Book: Hurricane Season, Fernanda Melchor, 2016 (trans. Sophie Hughes)
First of all, Sophie Hughes accepted our LinkedIn request, so there’s that. But c’mon, this is one of the best, grittiest, realest books — with ridiculous, Molly Bloom-style, unending sentences — that we’ve read from this century. Recommended by a close friend of the mag, its a mythical, violent story about a witch in a small town in Mexico and what people will do.
Substack: “false profits” (sic) by “paul (from bible)” (sic)
A truly cryptic, prophetic, avant-garde testament to decentralization, ephemera, and post-modernism that could only exist in 2022. Here’s a crazy piece on the new (by our millennial standards) rapper Yeat — that somehow mentions William Blake, Chief Keef, and Jean Baudrillard:
Film: Embrace of the Serpent (2016)
Woah, another tip-top pick (we’re going to be all out soon), but this movie is bonkers. Made by a Colombian, the story is based on the true events of 2 European explorers/colonizers looking for sacred plants in the Amazon about 100 years ago. Separated by 30 years, both white men meet indigenous shaman Karamakate, who lives alone and is the last of his people. He Virgils them down the river, almost against his will and the will of the forest, as they encounter dread sign after dread sign of the changes that are coming to Karamakate’s world: rubber plantations, seriously darko missions, and some great, general lack of synch. The movie’s resonances with Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now are no coincidence, we’d imagine, and the whole film is shot in the jungle in beautiful black and white — until the very end… 👀
Instagram account: @publicdomainrev
Sh*t like this in the public domain (but watch out, if it’s free you’re probably the product):
Music: DakhaBrakha
Some Ukrainian rocklords who are quite simply on one. As one correspondent put it: “Dakhabrakha some deep dive vinyl crackle og senderonis.” We’ll take our own advise, though, and say less. 🤯🔥
Word/phrase: “glove compartment”
Driving gloves were considered necessary equipment in early cars, many of which were mostly open to the weather, to prevent the cooling effect of fast-moving air from numbing drivers' hands. Gloves are still considered necessary equipment on motorcycles for the same reason, although, unlike cars, most motorcycles do not have glove boxes.
In Barbados, South Africa, and Zimbabwe, as well as parts of southern Minnesota and northwest Wyoming, the glove compartment is commonly referred to as a "cubby-hole" or "cubby."
It is also occasionally called a jockey box, especially in the upper Rocky Mountain states in the United States, such as Idaho. (Wiki)
🙏 DVD
Pepito is another hedgehog;)
Can a fox become a hedgehog though ... or vice versa? Or is one perpetually stuck with the way of thinking that they grew into?