{"id":1115,"date":"2010-06-15T14:51:04","date_gmt":"2010-06-15T18:51:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=1115"},"modified":"2010-06-15T14:51:04","modified_gmt":"2010-06-15T18:51:04","slug":"the-peoples-favorites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2010\/06\/15\/the-peoples-favorites\/","title":{"rendered":"The People&#8217;s Favorites"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When Brazil and North Korea kick off this afternoon, it will be a one-sided matchup of, perhaps, the two most fashionable teams in the tournament. Brazil\u2019s <em>Sele\u00e7ao<\/em> is the tournament\u2019s most skilled team and, under head coach Dunga, might be also its most disciplined, but international supporters find themselves drawn to the squad less for its status as favorites than for its country&#8217;s exported image of an enviable Carnival culture\u2014exuberant, indulgent, scintillating, sexy.<\/p>\n<p>The Hermit Kingdom is a more improbable fan favorite\u2014an unknown team from an unknowable country, \u201cas secretive about its. . . training as about its weapons buildup,\u201d as one newspaper put it. <em>The Wall Street Journal<\/em> has reported that the North Korean team is, on average, two inches shorter than their South Korean counterparts\u2014a height difference mirrored in still-diverging national averages\u2014and it&#8217;s hard not to read into that fact the horrific history of growth stunted by North Korean famines.<\/p>\n<p>North Korea does boast one star\u2014Jong Tae-Se, known as \u201cthe People\u2019s Rooney,\u201d a native Japanese who plays in that country\u2019s J-League and who has never lived in North Korea. Off the field, he seems to have what counts as flair among his teammates\u2014traveling with a PlayStation and an iPhone, declaring his desire to play in the English premiership\u2014but in the lead up to the Cup he has also shown himself a model subject of the Kim dynasty, promising a Stakhanovite output of one-goal-per-game. He has also guaranteed that his team will advance over Brazil, Portugal, or the Ivory Coast\u2014showing an even more deluded sense of national purpose. For this, he and his compatriots have been celebrated by just about every media outlet covering the cup\u2014including, even, the normally gimlet-eyed New Republic, with their \u201cFive Things You Don\u2019t Know About North Korean Soccer.\u201d An earlier version of the DPRK team was called &#8220;a squad of Charlie Chaplins,&#8221; and for the next ninety minutes, their great dictator won&#8217;t be the only one going crazy for these unfortunate tramps. The loyalties of imperious fans run impulsive and contrarian, and sport may be the only form of international relations in which irony can freely reign.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When Brazil and North Korea kick off this afternoon, it will be a one-sided matchup of, perhaps, the two most fashionable teams in the tournament. Brazil\u2019s Sele\u00e7ao is the tournament\u2019s most skilled team and, under head coach Dunga, might be also its most disciplined, but international supporters find themselves drawn to the squad less for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[84],"tags":[192,194,191,193,195,86,85],"class_list":["post-1115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world-cup-2010","tag-brazil","tag-dunga","tag-north-korea","tag-peoples-rooney","tag-selecao","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The People&#039;s Favorites by David Wallace-Wells<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"June 15, 2010 \u2013 When Brazil and North 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