The Interview: Hanif Abdurraqib
The Interview: Hanif Abdurraqib
The MacArthur Genius Grant Winner and NY Times Best-Selling Author on Being a Columbus Crew Original Supporter, What He Loves About Soccer, Clint Dempsey, Julie Foudy, Rafa Márquez and Much More
I’ve been wanting to interview Hanif Abdurraqib for a while now. He’s a phenomenal writer, poet, cultural critic and interviewer who happens to be 1) a giant fan of the Columbus Crew, and 2) a soccer guy in general, someone who loves following the sport, playing it (at least a little bit these days) and talking about it. I had so much fun doing this interview, and I hope you’ll enjoy it too.
Here’s the headliner audio clip from our conversation:
The entirety of the written interview below is reserved for paid subscribers. As always, you can still get the entire free audio versions of my podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you like to go for your pods.
Grant Wahl:
Our guest now is Hanif Abdurraqib. He's a Columbus, Ohio, native and New York Times bestselling author of books like Go Ahead in the Rain, A Little Devil in America and the essay collection They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us. Last year, he was awarded a MacArthur 'Genius' Grant. He's also for our purposes a soccer guy, a long-time fan of the Columbus Crew who played soccer in college. Hanif, it's great to see you. Thanks so much for coming on the show.
Hanif Abdurraqib:
No doubt. Thanks for having me, Grant, I really appreciate it.
Grant Wahl:
Lots to talk about here, but my very first question is what's your original connection to the sport of soccer?
Hanif Abdurraqib:
Well, I mean, it's the Crew. I came to love the Crew before I even played the game. I was kind of late to the game as a player, but the Crew came around in ‘96, and this was when it was a free for all here in terms of, they were playing games in Ohio stadium before the first Crew stadium was built. And I was young, I was maybe 12, and there was a curiosity with the team because folks around knew the sport, and I knew folks who had somewhat of an affection for the sport, but it was also this curiosity. But they were an easy team to root for early because [Brian] McBride particularly, he was a real pleasure to watch.
And in those early years, I mean really, [Jeff] Cunningham, Dante Washington, those were my guys. But being immersed in the Crew at an early age got me into playing soccer. And yeah, I took to it and very quickly got at least pretty good at it. I mean, I had some natural ability that translated well. Speed, good balance, my instinctual movements were always really good. I arrived to the game with so many intangibles, all I needed to do was kind of learn the basics, and I picked those up pretty quickly.
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Grant Wahl:
What kind of player were you, and was there a stigma at all in those days? Because I remember, that was right around the time I started in the ‘90s my professional soccer journalism career, and there was still sort of this lingering stigma at the time about soccer in certain sections of the United States.
Hanif Abdurraqib:
Oh, yeah. I mean, and a Black American soccer player... I loved that Freddy Adu podcast you did. And I know you talked to my homie Clint [Smith] about this, who has much more to say about it than I do. But I mean, Columbus, Ohio, is landlocked and so much great soccer was coming out of the coastal region in that era. And so many great players were coming out of the coastal regions in that era, or at least places where it was a bit warmer where you could play all year round. This was a little bit before the indoor soccer boom, which hit when I was in, I think, late in the second half of my high school career and then into college, that's when indoor... There were like five indoor soccer facilities just in the central Ohio area. And you could play all the time because you could really only effectively play outside in Columbus for about two seasons, summer and fall.
“It is a question of learning how to maneuver the little bit of space you have well, and that's what I see in Clint Dempsey's game, right? He was so good at just making the most out of whatever small space he had to operate in. And that meant while he didn't always look as fluid as someone like Landon Donovan, his runs weren't always as crisp. But you know who I want in the box if the ball's bouncing around in the box? I want Clint Dempsey there. You know who I want if there's two defenders closing in and you’ve got to get by? I want Clint Dempsey there, because he will just invent something out of nothing.” — Hanif Abdurraqib
Spring's a little too wet, too consistently, and so the pitches would get just messed up beyond a salvageable playing situation, so there was some stigma about that. But also just I came up in an area where not a lot of people played soccer. Now that isn't because of anything other than the fact that I came up in a neighborhood that was just so basketball rich. I played basketball too, but the neighborhood I came up in, some of the great high school basketball players coming out of Ohio in that era were on the east side of Columbus. And the basketball courts on the east side of Columbus were hallowed ground. And so it wasn't about a lack of anything other than interest because I came up in a neighborhood that was just a legacy basketball neighborhood.
And an interesting thing for me was when I played select soccer, it was really important for my dad to find a Black coach because that was just so rare in central Ohio. All the teams were kind of coming out of the suburbs, and all the coaches were these largely white academy coaches who maybe just didn't have the kind of language or patience to deal with a young Black kid, in my case, who was learning the game rapidly, right? Who mostly needed time on the pitch more than anything. And so I found a coach and I found a team and as to what kind of player I was, versatility was kind of my thing. I was a defender for much of my life, and I could play anywhere in the defensive third up through the defensive midfield. Part of this was because I was fine with running, I was good at pacing myself.
And I know you know this, people who don't play soccer think you're just running all the time. When the reality is, if you have a team that is unified and effective, you're kind of running in your own little box, unless you're a box to box mid or what have you. But I was versatile through the defensive third and up to the midfield, and then occasionally I would play striker because I was very fast, but I had no real finishing ability in front of the net. But I sometimes think if you're fast, that puts pressure on the back line so that the people who do have finishing ability can kind of sneak around. And so I was more of a decoy when I played striker because the defensive back line is just like, "Well, that guy's fast, so we’ve got to track with this guy."
And then maybe that speed alone can make them lose track of what's going on around. But I was not very good at finishing in front of the net. I was very good at the kind of rebound type goals where if a goal is already laid out, the nets open, I can get to the ball faster than anyone else. But I'm not going to like dribble through a line and put a shot on goal with any kind of efficiency.
Grant Wahl:
Well, before we started recording, we were talking about Rafa Márquez of all people, the Mexican legend, and how you watched videos of him when you were playing. Were there any particular players at the time in Europe or elsewhere that you really liked or modeled your game after or watched a lot of their stuff?
Hanif Abdurraqib:
Other than Rafa, I'm a Newcastle supporter now, which that's not going well.
Grant Wahl:
You could say that maybe it is but actually a lot of it's not.
Hanif Abdurraqib:
A lot of it's not. It's so funny because when it comes to supporting teams in the Premier League, no one would care if I woke up tomorrow and was like, "Well, now I'm an Arsenal guy," But there is something like that loyalty. But back then, I was such a big MLS consumer, and I was such a big watcher of the women's game. Because if you remember, this was the late ‘90s where the women's game was having a resurgence, and I watched the midfielders all the time. In Columbus, it was easy to watch the great Frankie Hejduk, but I always watched actually the people who I would be defending in real time to pick up tendencies. That's how I kind of fell in love with folks like Jeff Cunningham and Dante Washington.
I loved watching Julie Foudy play. I particularly loved watching midfielders and strikers. I loved the reckless abandon of Brian McBride. And I knew so many folks who I was playing against were trying to model their games after these offensive players, because it was what we had access to. This was before the dawn of the internet as we know it now, and so everyone was watching folks that they had access to and modeling their games off of that access. And so that's kind of what I was doing too except for, I was reverse engineering that modeling and I asked myself, "Okay, well, If Jeff Cunningham is running down to pitch at me full speed, how would I defend that?" What would I take away?
It's so funny because in basketball, I was such a poor defender, and I remain a poor defender in basketball. But I think in soccer, what I love about it, and I know it's like this in basketball too but there's something about the small movements of basketball that require... It's just, in soccer, I made it such a mental thing of, this is a game now of what I can take away from you, and you conversely are thinking about what you can get over on me.
Grant Wahl:
Right.
Hanif Abdurraqib:
There's no pick and roll, we don't have to switch onto each other. There's something really thrilling about that. And so, yeah, I would watch these one-on-one matchups with offensive players, and that was my thing too. But Rafa Márquez was huge for me, because anytime you see one player control a section of the field like that for so long, in so many ways, I loved watching his Monaco tapes and the stuff in Mexico because I think that's when, his early mid-career, people really feared going through those midfields. He made people work, and I think that's all you have to ask. The defensive midfield position is such a glamorless position, but I think it's a position that you could really strike some fear in folks because you're making them work. You're making them work so hard that they don't even want to go through you to get to the back line. And then when they get to that back line, they don't have anything left to give. And so I just loved how hard he made people work to earn it.
Grant Wahl:
I want to ask you about something you mentioned in a New Yorker story you wrote in 2017, and the quote is, “If you are in love with soccer, your way of loving it must also speak to the way you love the world and all of its complications.” I really like that. And I'm wondering, what would you say is your way of loving soccer and how it connects to the way you love the world?
Hanif Abdurraqib:
Well, because soccer is a global sport unlike a lot of other global sports, and of course there are some on par with it. Even as a young kid, I understood soccer as a global sport, which wasn't happening for me on other levels. I did not think about basketball as a global sport, well, I was about to say even though I was watching the Dream Team, but I think in part because I watched the Dream Team just blitz through everyone.
Grant Wahl:
Poor Angola, remember?
Hanif Abdurraqib:
Yeah. So I was like, "Well, I can't think about basketball as a global sport because no one's even close to..." But because I viewed soccer as a global sport so early because of America's performance in these World Cups where they'd be... I remember the first time I saw America in a World Cup, I forget which one it was. I was so foolish, where I was like, "We blow people out in sports, this is what we do." And I remember watching the World Cup, I was like, "What the fuck is going on?" And that's when it clicked. I was very young, but I remember being like, "Okay, this is because this game is different. This game is happening on a different level everywhere but here." Right?
But because of the global nature of it, and because of the level that it happens on in countries that aren't America, and because of the spoils that come with that competitive level, it's also just ripe for corruption and it's ripe for exploitation in ways that all sports are. But when you put in this full global ecosystem and global economy, it gets harder to ignore the realities of soccer as a sport that can exploit and do some real harm to not just the people adjacent to it but actually the people in it. Young people too. I mean, you're well-versed in this because you did the work on Adu, but the idea of the young phenom, right? And how that actually is a type of harm, that the global obsession with the phenom is best represented, I think, through sport, and soccer has such a real opportunity for that infatuation to flourish and damage folks, that very unrealistic kind of infatuation.
And so I think soccer has an individual toll, but it also has a global toll because there are entire economies that are at least in part built around what international clubs and international players can do for a place. I did a profile on Mo Salah before the last World Cup, and it required me going both to Liverpool and then going to Cairo and to Nagrig, the village in Egypt where he’s from. And the stark contrast in those places was so fascinating to me. Because Liverpool, of course, it's so richly historical that it felt to me that they just viewed him as another brick in an already established legacy. It's like, "Okay, well Mo Salah is singularly great, but he is maybe passing through here and then whenever his time here is done..."
This was also when there was a little bit of anxiety around whether or not he was going to stay in Liverpool, this is kind of back then. And there was this tone of like, "We'd love for him to stay but if he goes, we're Liverpool, and that's just it." But in Cairo, especially in Nagrig, in these villages in Egypt, it was kind of like, "He needs to thrive for as long as possible because for as long as he thrives, we thrive, and there are ways that that trickles back to us." And so it's now a necessity. And I'm not ascribing any kind of negative connotation to that, right? On a much lesser scale, I'm from an area where if one person makes it out, a lot of hopes hang on that person making it out, and so I get it. But it was interesting to me to see how one player can hold the fortunes of a country in their palms.
And as much as I understand that, I do think that's a bit of a tenuous relationship. And so my love for the game does come with all those complications and these histories. Because I've been on the sports documentary kick and I recently watched the Two Escobars documentary that ESPN did years and years and years ago, it was one of the early 30 for 30s. And I had watched it when it first came out and I hadn't seen it since. And I watched it again, and I came out of that really fascinated but also a little emotionally devastated. And I don't know, all of this is to say, I love the game a great deal and I'm thankful for what the game continues to give me as someone who barely plays competitively anymore but is still very immersed in it. But all of that is knowing that this sport, like any sport or like anything that has potential to drive an economy, is ripe for corruption and heartbreak and actual harm laid upon people invested in it.
Grant Wahl:
You're well-known for your music writing and criticism as well. Do you look at soccer in a similar way that you look at, say, music, or is it different for you?
Hanif Abdurraqib:
I don't think it's much different. But also, there's a musicality to the game that I actually think exists. Of course, we could do the sports metaphor where I talk about the poetics of moving the ball around, but I'm talking about the actual work that happens in the stadium. I get tickets to the Crew every year, and they're always in the fan section. It's funny because I used to sneak into games, right. Now I can admit that, because they don't care. But I used to sneak into Crew games and just get in wherever I could. It used to be a lot easier. Even before the new stadium, back when the Crew got good and whatnot, I couldn't sneak anymore, but it used to be a breeze used to sneak in. Pretty much, they would just let anybody in.
You had to wait until 20 minutes in the game, and then no one would care. But it's funny, because as soon as I could afford them, I started getting tickets in the Nordecke, in the fan section, and I still do that even though the Crew now that there's a bit more local notoriety. The Crew would be like, "You want to sit in the box, or do you want to sit down by the field?" It's like, "No, I'm in the fan section." Because there's a chorus there, right? Now this of course did not originate with the Crew obviously, but what I love about watching games on TV, particularly Premier League games, is that you can hear the swelling chorus from people who are all entrenched in one small space trying to do the best they can to propel their team forward.
And it's not like it matters if you can sing or not. It's not even like it matters if you know all the words to a chant. One of my favorite things, one of my absolute favorite things about going to Crew games and sitting in the caldron of that fan section is watching the people who are definitely new there, who are easy to spot. They're easy to spot because they sit, and then after a while they kind of take stock of everything. It's like, "Okay, everyone else is standing up. And if I want to see, I'm going to have to stand up." And then watching them slowly get into the understanding of this is a place where volume is required all the time. And watching them learn the chants by proximity, there's a beauty there, there's a musicality to that.
It's corny in a way, it's corny that in the Crew stadium and in MLS stadiums all over the country there are these chants that are just reverse-engineered from Premier League chants or reverse-engineered from ‘80s pop songs or whatever, but it's a really beautiful thing. And so for me, when I think about the game, I think about the chorus of fandom. I think about the rich chorus and choir that exists in the stands, and there's a musicality to that that is more compelling to me than any kind of metaphor I could make about ball movement as musicality.
Grant Wahl:
I like that. Do you have any particular favorite Crew memories? You mentioned some players, coaches, anything like that?
Hanif Abdurraqib:
Oh, yeah. I mean listen, both cups first of all, but the ‘08 one especially, because I got to be in the stadium for that, and that was life-changing. It's funny, some of my favorite Crew goals are either of... Well, they are of consequence, but there was the one Crew goal in recent memory that always sticks out to me was the Wil Trapp one against Orlando, that one that he just ripped from like 40 yards out, because I feel like Crew fans only remember that goal, but that game was pretty disappointing overall. They had a run of games that felt a little disappointing, and they should have been up on our Orlando, I felt, by a lot. And I remember when it was coming down to it, I was like, "I'm getting out of here." Because that goal came at the death, really at the death.
And I had a moment, I was like, "I'm going to get to my car. This is a draw, whatever." And I remember the minute I set foot outside of the stadium, I heard the crowd. At the old stadium you could feel the ground shaking when people lost it. And I heard the crowd, I was like, "Aw, man." And as I was walking my car, I was like, "All right, I missed the game-winning goal but it was probably not that nice of a goal." And then I got in my car and watched the video and I was like, "Oh, God, I missed one of the great Crew goals of all time." But yeah, I mean the Kei Kamara goal back in, someone will have to fact check me on this, I want to say it was 2015 or ‘16. The header that got them past Montreal. I mean, that was so singularly great.
The Justin Meram playoff goal that came nine seconds into the game. So many of my memories are goal-related, but those early games too where you could tell the team was just feeling their way around. I have such a great affection for those early Crew teams, late ‘90s, early 2000s teams, that were sometimes competitive, sometimes not, but always kind of delightfully chaotic. I mean, to be fair that wasn't unique to them. I think so many of the MLS teams were figuring themselves out at that point and they were just kind of messy. It wasn't always good soccer, but it was always entertaining soccer, and there were personalities. I mean, talk about someone like Frankie Hejduk, that's a personality.
The Crew for a while had one of the great personalities in the game, and up and through the 2000s those teams meant the world to me. [Guillermo Barros] Schelotto and Chad Marshall, these were people who were great not only because of what they did on the pitch but because I really admired them, you could just see them around. It was the first time, or maybe the second time, when I was coming up, there was a women's basketball team here called the Columbus Quest. They played in a league that is now long defunct, but it was the ABL? Yeah, the American Basketball League. And Katie Smith played for them, and those games, you could go to them for pretty much no money. I would see them around, but it was different with the Crew because I was a little older and there was a consistency. It was like, this team is here to stay.
And so I loved those dudes, but yeah, I mean nothing to me tops ‘08, the first cup. Don't get me wrong, the second one was great because it felt like the Crew had been counted out from the beginning of the season, and they were continually counted out. And to see that triumph and the way they won that last cup, I mean, just pure domination from whistle to whistle. It was incredible to watch, but that first one was just... The elation I felt. I didn't sleep that night. I didn't sleep at all, it was incredible.
Grant Wahl:
I can still see it in my head because I was in the stadium too, the pass to Hejduk for the goal.
Hanif Abdurraqib:
Yeah, that Hejduk goal. The thing about that, it was like, "You don't have to do anything else." He's obviously a great player and icon in Columbus, but he's always going to have that because of his performance there, and he's one of my favorite Crew players of all time. I do think that, in terms of my favorite crew players of all time, it's an ever-shifting thing because it was Jeff Cunningham and then it was Frankie and then it was [Federico] Higuaín. I loved Higuaín because I was so thrilled to see the news of him coming back and retiring as a member of the Crew. And I know that he did not always rub his teammates the right way, and I know that he was a bit enigmatic, and he was small.
I'm not a tall person, and I was always one of the smaller people on the pitch, but he just played so hard all the time. And one of the things that let me down was that it felt like the teams he was kind of at the center of got really close to glory and never really achieved it, and then achieved it right after he left. It's one of those things where it was like right after he left, they rose to the top.
Grant Wahl:
I want to ask you something because I used to cover basketball and soccer, and I've only been soccer full time since ‘09. But when I used to cover basketball, people would say, and this is about the early 2000s, American basketball players played too much “streetball” and that's a bad thing and that's why the U.S. was not winning the gold medal at the 2004 Olympics. So this is before the more recent Dream Teams started winning again. But at the same time, when I was covering soccer, people would say about American players, they don't play in the streets like they do in Brazil, and that's why American soccer isn't good.
Hanif Abdurraqib:
Right.
Grant Wahl:
And I was just like, "Which is better? I'm hearing one thing in one sport and one thing in another sport." What's your sense of all that?
Hanif Abdurraqib:
Well, you know who did come up playing like that is Clint Dempsey.
Grant Wahl:
Yeah.
Hanif Abdurraqib:
And people like to say that, but Clint Dempsey's play was not always celebrated. Clint Dempsey's play was sometimes derided by how unorthodox he was, and how much of a scrapper he was, but that's how he grew up playing. And Clint Dempsey is without question one of my favorite players, one of my favorite athletes of all time. Without question one of my favorite soccer players of all time, probably my favorite American soccer player of all time without question, because his game was unorthodox and because he saw the pitch differently. I came up playing soccer not for my club but for my school. It was Columbus City high school and this is a school in Columbus city league schools had that same stigma attached where it was like, "Well, these kids grew up playing in the street." Because we didn't have the resources or whatever else that the suburban schools had that dominate the state tournaments.
But it is a question of then learning how to maneuver the little bit of space you have well, and that's what I see in Clint Dempsey's game, right? Is that he was so good at just making the most out of whatever small space he had to operate in. And that meant while he didn't always look as fluid as someone like Landon Donovan, his runs weren't always as crisp, right? But you know who I want in the box if the ball's bouncing around in the box? I want Clint Dempsey there. You know who I want if there's two defenders closing in and you’ve got to get by? I want Clint Dempsey there, because he will just invent something out of nothing, and that to me is kind of the spirit.
It translates to that basketball, that “streetball,” that so-called pejorative that was mostly projected upon Black players. It's that same thing because it's about making space out of little pockets of space. I grew up playing short-sided games of soccer with goals that were literal cardboard boxes anchored down by whatever, rocks, right? In these small spaces. And so naturally one of my skills is quick lateral movement, short sprints, these kind of things. I joked about not being able to finish well, and some of that is because of how I came up playing the game but I'll tell you what, I'll find a way to finish if the ball's bouncing around in the box. And so, it was weird, because I remember that narrative of like, "Well, American soccer players don't play out in the streets,” but then when the rise of Clint Dempsey happened, there were people who were deriding his game and the way he played because it didn't look clean and it didn't look...
I always remember that goal he scored against England in the World Cup, right? Clearly a goal's a goal, listen, a goal's a goal. I remember one of my earliest coaches, all the teams I played on had great defenses, and sometimes a bad goal will trickle in and we'd be very proud of ourselves. We'd be like, "You didn't give up any clean goals." We would call them, or you didn't give up any good goals. Coach was like, "A goal's a goal." And so I'm very much of the belief that a goal's a goal. But let's just say Clint Dempsey's goal versus England, it was guided by angels that were maybe not of his command, but when he scored that goal, I was like, "Of course, that's the kind of goal he scored on this stage." Of course it is.
He was really off balance and I remember he did this random turnaround and just let the thing go. That went in, I feel like even he was surprised. And this isn't saying that Clint hasn't had some literally phenomenal goals, but the goals of his that I love the best are the messy ones because I think he has that impulse of, you have to score no matter what. You have to score no matter what's in front of you, and he's not as interested in aesthetics. And so I feel like there is a school of American soccer thought that is so interested in aesthetics but is also interested in what it takes to become good enough to compete. And I think those two things are at odds sometimes because I don't really care about pretty goals.
I like seeing them if they happen, don't get me wrong, I like watching them, but I love players who are gritty, who are going to get in there and mess things up for folks. And what I was saying earlier about speed and instincts, even when Clint Dempsey wasn't scoring, he was messing things up against the back line to make it so that other folks could score, and those are the scariest players. Those are the attackers that I was most worried about. I never found myself really worried about attackers who could dribble well because, again, if it's a game of what I can take away from you, well, I can always push you to the sideline. You can have fun dribbling out by the sideline, I know how I can maneuver you.
But if it's a player whose whole purpose is, how can I get back here and just mess things up for all of you? How can I get you thinking about if I'm onside or not? How can I get you thinking about what's going to happen not after the first shot but after the shot when the ball's bouncing around, that kind of stuff. So Clint Dempsey had that instinct. And this is not to say that there are not other American attackers I have not loved in my life. I mean, there are a great many American attackers I love, but none more than Clint Dempsey because of how he played.
Grant Wahl:
Couple more questions here with Hanif Abdurraqib, I really appreciate this. I'm enjoying the conversation. You mentioned earlier, our common friend, Clint Smith, another massively accomplished writer, former soccer player. Have you both talked about soccer together much over the years?
Hanif Abdurraqib:
Of course, absolutely. He's a big Arsenal guy, and so he sometimes revels in that and sometimes feels pain as we all do. But we’ve had parallel experiences. We both played in college. We played different positions. He was a striker, I believe, full time, all the time, striker. It's interesting because I actually think Clint has a lot more fascinating things to say about the game than I do when it comes to race and the historical impact of race on American soccer. But most of what we talk about is just our time and experience actually playing the game. And it's funny, if I could do like a pickup game of writers and other folks who have played, it would be great. It's funny though because weirdly I think I'm maybe in what might be the best physical shape of my adult life, but my desire is at an all-time low.
So it’s this thing where, sure, I can get up in the morning and run seven miles because my brain is wired to do that right now. But after that, if you're like, "You want to go kick the ball around?" It's like, "Are you kidding? Absolutely not." And so it's this thing where, and I feel like maybe Clint shares this, the mind and body are at odds because I feel like I can't play a full 90 right now but I could play a hard 45. I'd need to be subbed out at halftime, but I could play a full 45, but do I want to? Absolutely not. Whereas I think these things, it's reversed. When I was in my early 20s, I was like, "I want to go out and play a full 45 but my body can't make it through that." And so I'm forever at odds, and I feel like maybe Clint is in the same world as I am.
But yeah, we talk about the game a bit, mostly our memories playing because I mean, overall, the game is pretty far behind. I play pickup basketball now more than I play pickup soccer, but I do think I would make a good coach. I don't have the time to coach now, but I do think I would make a good coach because I was late to the game and because of the lateness to the game, I had to consume so much of it very quickly and then parse through that consumption in ways that were both beneficial to me and not, and I had to study the game everywhere. Even when I was playing FIFA as a kid, I had to study the game through the lens of playing FIFA. I don't know. So the short answer is yeah, Clint and I chop it up about soccer often.
Grant Wahl:
I'll ask you about this because you mentioned wanting to coach at some point because I remember following you on Twitter and in 2020 you had this tweet thread about how you were asked to coach a high school soccer team in Columbus, and you were interested and it didn't end up happening. Would you be willing to share the story?
Hanif Abdurraqib:
Yeah. So in 2020 there's a school on the east side, I won't name them obviously, even though the school's not at fault at all, that asked me to coach for a season. It was just going to be like a season thing. Right before the season started, the coach they had in place, one of his parents had passed away and he had to take leave from the team, and so the team was in a tough spot. And this was right when summer conditioning started, and they were like, "We just need a coach. Can you help us out?" And I was like, "Yeah, I'll help out for a season, of course." At this point I had the time, it was in the fall of 2020, and so there was some anxiety around COVID soccer season and all that, but I had the time and they were pretty safe about it and so I'd said I'd help out.
Now in order to coach in Ohio, you have to get registered and go through all the things that the Ohio High School Department of Education required, so I did that. I took the CPR test. I watched all the videos, all the what-to-do videos and all of that. And I submitted my coaching packet requirement things which involved me disclosing that in my early twenties, I had been arrested a few times. I was like, "Here were my charges." And by this point they were from anywhere between 12 and 18 years ago. And so I was like, "These were over a decade ago and I haven't really been in trouble since, and I don't think that should matter, but anyway, I know you need to have this information so here's this information."
And the Ohio Department of Education took that, and then I didn't hear anything for a while, and the season's coming up. And I was like, "I need to know if I'm coaching this team or not. If I don't get this certification then I can't coach this team." And what's actually happening is this is doing a disservice to the players because they need a coach. And so the Ohio Department of Education gets back with me and says, "Well, we have to do a hearing. We have to have a hearing about these charges because right now you're ineligible to coach." And I said, "This feels weird to me because I don't think the age of these charges should matter, these charges are very old." So I was like, "Sure, let's do a hearing."
And their whole thing was like, "Okay, we'll set a hearing date and we'll get that going." And I didn't hear from them at all. And the season’s now started and I can't coach, and so the team is floating without a coach. And I email them back and I say, "Listen you all, we need to get this hearing scheduled. You said you would send me paperwork to do this hearing and I haven't heard anything." And they said, "Well, we're looking at your charges and you're just not eligible. You're just not eligible to coach." And I said, "You say that, but you also offered a hearing so I'd like to do a hearing." And they said, "Okay. Well, we'll send you the paperwork." Paperwork never came. At this point, I told the team, you’ve got to find a different coach, and the school was heartbroken and very understanding.
And the athletic director of the school was speaking to the Department of Education on my behalf because he knew me a little bit, all these kinds of things. And I didn't hear anything from the Department of Education for months and months and months. And in March of 2021, just out of curiosity, I emailed again and was like, "Hey, so you said it would be this amount of time. It's been like seven months, eight months, and I haven't gotten paperwork for a hearing. So I still would like to do it. The coaching job is done, but I’ve got some things I'd like to say to some folks, so I would love to do this." And they're like, "Well, unless you can show us that your criminal record's been expunged and you can show us that you've lived the life of not being in trouble for a certain amount of time or whatever." And I was like, "All right, I'm just not with this shit." I'm not with this thing where I have to prove that I'm quote-unquote okay now.
And so I left it alone because at that point it was like, I don't really trust what you're asking me nor why you're asking it of me. It has to be said that around this time I was doing some local organizing with Columbus city school students who wanted to get police out of schools, right? And I was like a notable person doing that organizing. I was a person speaking at rallies, and so it dawned on me at that point maybe these things are connected. And then the “resolution” was after the MacArthur was announced and I was in both local and national press and all that, the literal week after, I get an email from the Ohio Department of Education that says, "We've approved your coaching certificate."
To be clear, I hadn't been in contact with them for months. I didn't ask for approval. And when I emailed them, I was like, "This is funny. Can you explain to me what happened?" They just said, "Well, the rules changed and so you're eligible now." And I was like, "Yeah, I bet they did. I'm sure they did."
Grant Wahl:
I'm laughing but I'm not, you know what I'm saying?
Hanif Abdurraqib:
Yeah. No, I mean, when I got that email it was infuriating, but I was also laughing. And so now I'm eligible to coach in Columbus if I want to. If the time arose and the right situation arose, I would make the time for it. Very truly, I would make the time for it. If my old high school was like, "We need a coach." Or something like that, I would make it work. But I was really soured and heartbroken by that whole experience because I'm also someone who works with folks who were previously incarcerated and who come out into the world, and I'm passionate about that because I was someone who was previously incarcerated and reentered the world and very quickly learned how challenging that is.
And to be clear, I was not even incarcerated all that long. And so it was disheartening for me that these small and great denials build up, and the way that incarceration strips away humanity continues when someone is no longer incarcerated because the cultural impulse is to continually punish all these things. And so that was a real downer for me and it really soured me on the experience. Now I will say that, in terms of individual educators and schools, everyone is great in Ohio. The Ohio Department of Education is a separate body than the school. And so I do want to stress that because teachers and educators and administrators in Ohio and central Ohio specifically have been so good to me in my work and all that for years and years and years and years.
Before I wrote books that anyone cared about, these folks were so good to me and remained so good to me, and I would do anything for them. Which is why if the right thing came up and a school was like, "We really need a coach. And these kids are eager to learn the game." I would probably do it because I care that much about young folks in central Ohio.
Grant Wahl:
Last question for you, how much of the World Cup will you watch? The men's World Cup later this year.
Hanif Abdurraqib:
I feel so conflicted about it, but I know I'm probably going to watch. It's one of those things where I feel really conflicted about it. I feel really conflicted about every corner of it, but I think when it comes down to it, I'll probably watch. Man, I love the World Cup. It's one of those things that I love it so much. I mean, I loved AFCON, I watched Africa Cup of Nations. I love these kinds of things. I love Euro Cup even more than like Champions League stuff. I love the kind of national/international/continental pursuit that exists in these kinds of tournaments. And I always play things by ear, we'll see how I feel. I do feel like I will probably want to watch the World Cup and then maybe if I feel a little gross watching it, I'll tap out, but I do love it.
I admit, I mean to be fair, the World Cup is always a source of conflict for me. It's not just this year, but it has been a source of conflict for me at least the last three times out, but I do love it and I love the storylines of the World Cup. I love the theatrics of the World Cup. I love the players who emerge during the World Cup. I can think about James Rodríguez, who just had that World Cup a couple times, and that's the kind of thing I love to see. I'm a writer and so that means I love narrative, I love stories. And I love how sports offers opportunities for both individual and collective narratives to emerge, and I think the World Cup allows for that like a few other things.
And so complications aside, I do keep returning to it and I imagine I'll return to it this year. I also think this year's a bit more intriguing than past years. It feels like there's some parity involved that will be enticing for me. And so, yeah, I think I'll be at the doorstep of it and we'll see how I feel this time around.
Grant Wahl:
Hanif Abdurraqib is a New York Times best selling author and a MacArthur award winner. Thanks so much for coming on the show.
Hanif Abdurraqib:
No doubt. Wait, are you allowed to support a team or are you not allowed to talk about individual teams you like?
Grant Wahl:
It's funny because I almost have an easy out because I'm American. So my childhood team was the Kansas City Comets indoor team in the ‘80s. And if I have a team that I say that I support, it's Boca Juniors because I spent a lot of time in Argentina over the years. I've lived there for three months in ‘95. Did my college thesis down there, traveled with the Boca fans, and journalistically I don't really write about Boca ever. So I have an easy out as opposed to like my British friends who grew up Arsenal fans and now cover Arsenal and they sometimes-
Hanif Abdurraqib:
And can't like talk about it?
Grant Wahl:
... Don't want to put it out there publicly, yeah.
Hanif Abdurraqib:
Were you around when the Wizards hit KC?
Grant Wahl:
So yes, first the Wiz by the way, until they had to change the name. My first year in New York was ‘96 and I had a Wiz logo, a magnet, on my fridge. Then they changed the name and I thought, "I'll keep the Wiz logo on my fridge." And so I was into the Wizards, and I just am amazed that Kansas City, my hometown, remains the only place I think where MLS has turned around an apathetic situation toward the MLS team and completely changed it. Soccer and MLS is big in Kansas City. And you took an original team and did that, rebranded. So I think that's awesome. I love the stadium there. I love going back and the fact that Saturday nights are soccer nights in Kansas City.
Hanif Abdurraqib:
Yeah.
Grant Wahl:
You go to see an MLS game. So I do feel something there. I have to write about them from time to time, and so I keep that in mind. We had Peter Vermes, the coach, on the podcast not too long ago, but I haven't had to deal too much with personal feelings or anyone accusing me of anything. And in fact, sometimes the Kansas City people, fans, have gotten on me on certain things. So I take that as a badge of honor, I guess.
Hanif Abdurraqib:
That's real. No doubt. I had to ask. I meant to ask that earlier, thanks for indulging me.
Grant Wahl:
Thanks for the conversation, that was awesome.
Hanif Abdurraqib:
No doubt. Thank you so much, Grant. I love your work, and I'm glad I get to consume it in as many ways as possible as someone who loves the game and is always looking to continue that love. Thank you for your work.
Grant Wahl:
Awesome, thank you. Likewise.
I really enjoyed listening to this interview, thanks Grant