"Closed for soccer".

• Author: Galeano, Eduardo
• Position: The Upside-Down World - Viewpoint essay

Colombian Pacho Maturana, a man with vast experience in these battles, says that soccer is a magical realm where anything can happen. And this World Cup confirmed his words: It was an unusual World Cup.

The ten stadiums where the Cup was played were unusual, beautiful, immense, and cost a fortune. Who knows how South Africa will be able to keep these cement behemoths operating, a multimillion-dollar waste that is easy to explain but hard to justify in one of the most unjust countries in the world.

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The Adidas "Jabulani" ball was unusual, slippery, and half mad. It fled hands and disobeyed feet. It was introduced despite the fact that the players didn't like it at all. But from their castle in Zurich, the tsars of soccer impose; they don't propose. That's their way.

It was also unusual that finally the all-powerful bureaucracy of FIFA at least acknowledged, after so many years, that it would consider finding a way to help the referees in decisive plays. It isn't much, but it's something. And it was time. Even these voluntarily deaf functionaries must have been able to hear the racket set off by the errors of certain referees, which reached the level of horror in the final game. Why must we see on television what the referees didn't or perhaps were unable to see? Almost all other sports--basketball, tennis, baseball, and even fencing and car racing--normally use technology to resolve doubts. Not soccer. Referees are authorized to consult an antique invention called a "watch" to measure the duration of games and extra time, but no more. And the justification provided for this policy would be comical if it weren't so obviously suspect: Error is a part of the game, they say, leaving us dumbfounded as they discover that to err is human.

It was unusual in the first African World Cup in history that African countries, the host included, did so poorly. Only Ghana survived until its defeat by Uruguay in the most moving game of the whole competition.

It was unusual that the majority of the African teams retained their agility and yet lost their inventiveness and daring. Many ran but few danced. Some believe that the coaches of these teams, almost all European, had a hand in this general chilling of their play. If this is the case, they did no favor to a game that promised so much joy and exuberance. Africa sacrificed its virtues in the name of efficiency, but there was a distinct lack of efficiency.

It was unusual that certain...