The Social World

Abstract

On a damp morning in October 1998, a few days before theYom Kippur service, I drove out to Utterslev Mose north of Copenhagen to watch a recreational soccer match. Like most Americans, I know relatively little about soccer; my Danish friends tell me it is a game of intense strategy and intricacy, and I believe them, but it still looks to my untutored eyes like a bunch of men running randomly around a field and kicking a ball. That morning I was having particular trouble understanding the rules, which involved stopping play and shouting “Off sides” every time it looked as if someone might score. After a while I noticed another spectator, a sandy-haired man leaning against his bicycle near one of the goals, and I walked over to ask him what “off sides” meant. He explained in some detail, while I nodded and pretended to understand. Afterward, we chatted for a few minutes. It turned out that he was a journalist, a reporter for a weekly magazine on his way in to the office. He had seen the game in progress as he rode by. He had stopped in amazement when he saw the players on one of the teams—a mixture of tall, blond, fair-skinned men, obviously native Danes, and shorter, darker, curly-haired men, obviously Middle Eastern immigrants.