Beyond the Pitch

I hope you'll consider downloading my Kindle Single Beyond the Pitch: The Spirit, Culture and Politics of Brazil's 2014 World Cup. It represents a consolidation and expansion of my writing on the World Cup this summer for American Independent Media and Football is Coming Home.

Circus Without Bread

Football is Coming Home published my "Circus Without Bread: Reflections on Brazil 2014," which touches on just some of the World Cup-related topics I have been covering for the last several weeks for American Independent Media.

Brazil Bound

In a few days I'll be heading to Brazil for the 2014 World Cup. This is primarily a pleasure trip, but between my academic interests in sport, society, and politics and the fact that I'll be writing about the experience for a Texas newspaper group (I'll share links as I can) there is certainly a professional component involved (or that's my story, anyway).

I'm especially interested in comparing and contrasting the experience I had in South Africa with that in Brazil. Obviously not much will ever pass 2010 for me in terms of its meaning professionally and personally, but it should still be a wonderful opportunity.

I'm going to be based in Porto Alegre with my friend Jaime and his family, and as of now have tickets to three group stage games -- France-Honduras, South Korea-Algeria, and the one we are most anticipating, Nigeria-Argentina. I'll be supporting the Super Eagles, and all of the African sides while they will be all about Argentina. Then we have tickets to one of the knockout games, which will pit the winner of Group G (The Group of Death -- Germany, Portugal, Ghana, and the US) and the second place finisher in Group H (Belgium, Algeria, Russia, and South Korea).

I'll post occasionally and will try to link some of my pieces as I go.   

A Williams Soccer Player in Afghanistan

It is hardly news when a Williams alum takes a corporate job. It is news but not astounding to see a Williams alum play professional soccer. It is astounding news when just about any American not in the armed services takes a job in Afghanistan.

So it is especially amazing news to see the story of Nick Pugliese, a 2012 Williams grad who took a job in Afghanistan and then took advantage of the opportunity to play professional soccer for Ferozi FC of the Kabul Premier League. The telecommunications company for which he worked demanded that he choose between them and Ferozi FC. He chose to continue playing. You can see his story recounted here.  

The Five Greatest US Soccer Team Moments

In the wake of the United States soccer team's first-ever victory over Italy on February 29 (in Genoa, where the Italians had never lost), The Guardian's Sports Blog decided to compile the USA's Five Greatest Soccer Results. It's hard to quibble too much with the list (and really they take into account any alternative results, though it's hard to ignore the Algeria game in the 2010 World Cup that advanced them to the knockout stages) and I suspect that over time the win over Italy will recede, if slightly.

The list also brings a couple of thoughts to mind.

First: It's not exactly a rich history.

Second: Nonetheless, the trajectory is clear -- in the last twenty years or so, and especially in the last decade, the US has risen to become a legitimate second-or-third-tier presence in the Beautiful Game. And no, I don't intend that as a backhanded compliment. In a generation or so we have gone from being a backwater and punchline in the world's most popular game to being a team that can play with even elite teams without fear of being humiliated. Or at least without fear of being humiliated too badly.

Perhaps the biggest sign of the burgeoning respect our national team has earned? The Guardian blog post is not ironic, patronizing, or tongue-in-cheek and the comments are worth the read, which is truly rare in this day and age where bile is the default excretion online.

Chipolopolo Slays Les Elephants

Over at the FPA Africa Blog I am still trying to wrap my head around Zambia's victory in the African Cup of Nations. That stands as not only one of the great all time upsets, but as one of the great all-time sports stories.

On African Football

Over at the FPA's Africa Blog I address Jonathan Wilson's take on the state of African football. If Wilson is not the greatest living football (soccer, whatever -- the "football" versus "soccer" terminology debate is one of the dumbest, most pernicious, and most jingoistic in all of sport) writer in the world today he's in the conversation, but I think he has this one wrong.

South Africa Sport Report

Over at the FPA I have written a postmortem on the Springboks and Bafana Bafana. The Boks lost 11-9 to Australia in the quarterfinals of the Rugby World Cup in a game they absolutely dominated in every way but the scoreboard. Bafana crapped out of the African Cup of Nations in a way that boggles the imagination with the sort of coaching decision you'd expect from Andy Reid.

The Little Team

You probably saw this on Deadspin, but if you didn't, watch it. It is just excellent.

Friday Fun

Dan Drezner (a Williams alum, by the way) imagines the lead paragraphs of prominent world affairs pundits if they covered the Women's World Cup.

Impumelelo on the World Cup (Self Indulgence Alert x2)

The latest issue of Impumelelo: The Interdisciplinary Electronic Journal of African Sports is now available. It includes a group of brief articles on "FIFA World Cup 2010 Reflections," including my contribution, "Ayoba!: Reflections From South Africa's World Cup. " (As long as I'm engaging in self indulgence anyway, the last issue of Impumelelo included my much lengthier "Stopped at the Try Line?: Rugby, Race, and Nationalism in Post-Apartheid South Africa.")

[Crossposted at the FPA Africa Blog.]

Stupid is As Stupid Does

You remember my argument that it is completely idiotic to try to make political generalizations abut a sport (you know, like associating soccer with socialism despite the fact that the National Football League is by just about any definition the most socialist professional sports league on earth)? Well, conservatives are at it again. Now they are claiming baseball as a conservative sport.

Is it stupidity? Is it rank dishonesty? At a certain point with modern-day conservatives it really isn't cost-effective to make the distinction, now is it?

Soccer and Socialism: The Real Connection

When I think about the nature of soccer in the United States I, perhaps bizarrely, am reminded of Werner Sombart's famous question, "Why is there no socialism in America?" That was one of my advisor's favorite questions to slip into a comprehensive exam (though I never got to tackle it in that format).

And I always had an answer that I thought was at least somewhat counterintuitive. In brief: In the period when Sombart lived and posed the question, there was and is socialism in America. It's just that in a two-party system having a few hundred thousand or a handful of million supporters means that you are a virtual nonentity. Socialist candidates and their allies scored several hundred thousand votes in myriad presidential elections in the first three decades of the twentieth century. In a parliamentary system they would have had a voice, and may have joined in coalitions with the major parties, giving them some power. But ours is not a system friendly to third parties, and none, including the socialists, have yet gained traction to the point of being a viable long-term force in American politics. It might happen someday, but the system so far has been resilient enough to fend off or co-opt such challenges.

In a very broad sense, the same thing can be said for soccer in America, though soccer and socialism otherwise have nothing in common, idiot conservative critics notwithstanding. The NFL is by just about any measure the most socialist sports league on Earth. After all, who benefits from sales of a Tom Brady jersey? Does that money go to Tom Brady? Nope. To the team for which he plays? Nope. It's split up evenly among every team in the league. Do the Cowboys get more television revenue than the Lions, given how many more people tune in to watch the Cowboys? Nope. TV revenue is split up amongst the comrades of the NFL. There may be plenty of reasons to like or dislike a sport. But tying it to one's political worldview is not one of them, and doing so is inane. All team sports are, I suppose, "socialistic" inasmuch as the individual subsumes him or her self to the larger whole. And by that measure all individual sports are more capitalistic, or democratic, or free, or what have you. But would you want to watch sports with a dullard who sees the world through such a knee-jerk and politicized lens?

People are always asking when soccer is going to take off in the United States. But it already has. And not just among kids. Soccer is tremendously popular in many circles in the US. It just is not as popular as our version of football or as baseball, or as basketball. But I have no reason to believe that it cannot surpass, if it has not already surpassed, hockey as the fourth major team sport in the United States. Furthermore, part of the reason why Americans have not embraced (but nor have they rejected) the MLS to the degree MLS boosters would hope, is that increasingly we can all watch English Premier League, La Liga, and of course the Champions League -- the best soccer in the world, in other words -- live in our living rooms.

If the two-party dominance in American politics has blinded us to undercurrents of discontent beneath the surface, the dominance of a handful of team sports, with massive fragmentation beneath those sports, has led many of us to be blind about just how big soccer is in the United States. We are not waiting for soccer to blossom here. It is blossoming. It has blossomed. And it will continue to do so.

Thinking LBJ in RSA

I'm beginning to have one foot in both of my worlds now. Obviously I'm still physically here in South Africa and will be for another week. At the same time, for UTPB's second summer session I am teaching a graduate seminar, "LBJ's America," that started last night. For this first week I am conducting the class via email, and they have a host of assignments that they need to be responsible for, including getting going on their final projects. I also have a proxy conducting class for me, so all of my bases are covered.

While my obsessions for the past month have been almost exclusively tied to the World Cup and larger questions about sports and politics and the history of soccer in South Africa I am now also thinking about LBJ, both as a symbol for the culture wars but also in terms of his place in modern American history. The first book we are reading is Robert Dallek's one-volume biography of LBJ, a truncated version of his two-volume masterpiece. The title of his second volume, "Flawed Giant," which covers the period from when the big Texan became Vice President through his death pretty accurately sums up Johnson both as a man and as a politician. We will be exploring the 1960s, and especially the period from 1963, through the lens of one of the era's dominant figures.

In the meantime, the semi-finals of the World Cup commence today. As the rate of games slows, South Africa is slightly less World Cup besotted. As usual you can read more here.

Bots to Durbs

I flew from Gabarone to Durban via Joburg on Saturday. With several days between leaving Bots and needing to be up in Pretoria to give my paper at a special session of the Historical Association of South Africa's Biennial meeting I realized I could freeze my tail on the highveld or I could enjoy a few more days on the beachfront in KwaZulu-Natal. KZN won out. As always, you can follow me at the FPA Africa Blog.

Revived in Durban

I'm now in Durban on South Africa's Indian Ocean coast, South Africa's favorite holiday destination. My hotel looks directly out onto the Ocean, and between me and the water lapping on the beach is the FIFA Fanfest. You can read all about it over at the Foreign Policy Association's Africa Blog. I will just add this -- there is something rejuvenating about going from freezing on the highveld to sitting with the windows open as I write this smelling the ocean air and listening to the already-growing bustle on the waterfront.

Tonight I hit the Nigeria-South Korea game. Meaningless? You bet? But it should be a fun game at what, if last night's glace was any indication, is the most spectacular of all of the new World Cup stadiums. Go Super Eagles!

Update, World Cup Edition

Hey, I've been babbling on at the FPA Africa Blog and even on Ephblog. The World Cup, so far? Awesome.

In Addis Ababa

I am in Addis Ababa (see here for more), have not slept in 40 hours and since my hotel room seems to have ESPN International, which is supposed to have the Celtics-Lakers game overnight (it's after midnight now and I just got to my room), it looks like I'll roll out of here tomorrow morning (5:00 wake up!) on virtually no sleep. And then of course I get into Joburg with just hours to spare before the South Africa-Mexico game.

In the meantime, you might know this guy. You might think he's me. (He's not me.)

FPA Group Stage Previews

I now have my brave and inevitably wrong predictions for and previews of the group stages of the World Cup posted over at the FPA Africa Blog. I've only been following world football for a few years now, so if I were you I'd run to Ladbrokes or your local bookie and bet the exact opposite of everything I wrote. I'm off on my three-day travel adventure starting at 6 tomorrow morning. In the thirty or so hours that follow I'll go from San Antonio to Dallas to Washington to Rome to Addis Ababa.

The Travel Schedule -- Self Indulgence Alert

Posting will be light for the next week or so (though I am going to try to stockpile some content on Monday and Tuesday) as the big travel week begins. A sense of where I'll be:

Monday: Odessa to San Antonio.

Wednesday: San Antonio to Washington, Washington to Rome.

Thursday: Rome to Addis Ababa

Friday: Addis Ababa to Johannesburg. I should land about three hours before the South Africa-Mexico game. With a little luck I'll get to my bed and breakfast in Sandton (in Joburg's northern suburbs, possibly the most affluent community in all of South Africa, a place I have never stayed and don't belong, but my preferred Melville is fully booked.)

Saturday: Johannesburg to Rustenburg (and hopefully back later that night after the US-England game.)

Sunday: Joburg to Pretoria for Serbia-Ghana game, and hopefully back.

Monday: Joburg to Cape Town. I'll be in Cape Town for five days before heading back to Joburg for the Slovenia-USA game at Ellis Park.