Geneva | A diplomatic thaw? While the atmosphere at Sunday’s Argentina–England friendly at Stade de Gení¨ve perhaps lacked the requisite hostility, “[t]he latest encounter featured punches on the terraces, songs about the Falkland Islands, jibes regarding players’ sexuality and general churlishness.” Some England supporters were heard chanting standard nationalistic ditties such as “You’ll never take the [...]
Port-of-Spain, Trinidad & Tobago | A cracking goal strike from some 25 yards elevated Trinidadian player Chris Birchall into cult status Saturday, enabling the Trinis to travel to Bahrain for the second leg of their World Cup qualifier level at 1–1. Birchall, who plays for Port Vale of Coca-Cola Football League One in England, is the first [...]
Johnny Warren had a “love affair with all things Brazilian” and harnessed a “fierce enthusiasm to drag football out from the shadows into the light,” writes the Sydney Morning Herald. (Robert Pearce | The Age) Sydney | Australia has marked a year since the death on 6 November 2004 of football advocate and reformer Johnny Warren (see [...]
Contalmaison, France | Remembrance Day, or Armistice Day, should have dawned with football scarves draped over the cairn honoring those who fell during the Battle of the Somme, including players from Edinburgh side Heart of Midlothian. Village mayor and farmer Bernard Sénéchal says that the structure, erected last year, “has given our village new life.” On [...]
Monrovia, Liberia | Two thousand supporters of the Congress for Democratic Change—the party of presidential candidate George Weah—rallied Friday afternoon to protest results that favored Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf in the Nov 8 runoff. “The streets of Monrovia don’t belong to violent people,” Weah told the crowd. “Do not, in the name of peace, go in the streets and [...]
Paris | Expanded comments from France and Juventus defender Lilian Thuram concerning the riots and arson attacks in suburban areas have appeared in the Times of London and elsewhere. He criticized remarks from France interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy, who had called rioters “scum” and taken a hard-line stance. “I grew up in a [housing] estate, too,” [...]
Atlanta | With Heysel, hooliganism and concerns for safety at the fore, Renzo Piano in the late 1980s received a commission for a World Cup stadium in Bari, Italy. Among other architectural models and renderings covering two floors at the newly opened High Museum expansion—also a Piano commission—plans for the Stadio San Nicola indicate an emphasis [...]
Fort-de-France, Martinique | On the Rue du Moulin de la Galette, on Square Van Gogh, in the Plain de Neauphle sector, in Trappes, south of Paris, Nicolas Anelka was raised. Rioting reached Trappes on Nov 3, and players on the France national side—presently on the Caribbean island of Martinique for a friendly, versus Costa Rica, to benefit [...]
London | The new Wembley Stadium, promoters claim, has more toilets (2,618) than any other building in the world. We are skeptical. If the Sears Tower in Chicago does not have more toilets, we would be sorely disappointed. Nevertheless, Simon Garfield writes at length about the cost overruns (the cost has rocketed to £757 million, up [...]
Copenhagen | Jens Sejer Andersen, director of Play the Game, pens an eloquent letter to FIFA after the governing body’s reply to queries about FIFA’s relationship with Burma. Andersen is pleased that Sepp Blatter had intervened in the case of arrested journalist Zaw Thet Htwe (see Nov 7), but argues for more transparency from FIFA and more [...]
Houston | Sheryl Swoopes of the Women’s National Basketball Association’s Houston Comets has come out with pride as a gay woman. Her decision has given greater attention to the image consciousness and complicated gender politics in women’s sports, including women’s soccer. “Do we market to [lesbians] or don’t we?” asks former Atlanta city council president Cathy [...]
Belfast, Northern Ireland | With a goal of building understanding and “a shared space for football fans on this island,” the governing associations of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland plan to discuss housing an all-Ireland soccer museum in Belfast. The idea originates with Sport against Racism Ireland (SARI), based in Dublin. Ken McCue of [...]
Copenhagen | The fourth “Play the Game” conference started Sunday, Nov 6, with a focus on sports corruption. Declan Hill of Oxford University reports that match-fixing in football is common, with the most egregious example perhaps Malaysia in the 1990s. “Up to 90 percent of games were fixed and often both teams and every official were bought,” [...]
Toronto | Toronto councillors, as of late October, have approved public financing for a 20,000-seat soccer-specific stadium to host a Major League Soccer expansion franchise in 2007.
Harare, Zimbabwe, Sept 29| Adulation and scorn for footballers often are two sides of the same coin, as demonstrated in Zimbabwe over the past month.
Portland, Oregon | U.S. Soccer Federation officials in 2005 improvised to fill out a slate of impromptu summer friendlies. One of those was a game against Ukraine, assisted on its visit by a West Coast–based expatriate known as “the mole.”
Listening to Scottish-football broadcasts over the Internet—a new season in the Bank of Scotland Scottish Premier League starts on 30 July—puts us in mind of ancestry and separation.
Tiffeny Milbrett, along with other women players from the United States, seek opportunities abroad to express themselves on the pitch. Milbrett has landed in Skellefteå, Sweden, on a contract for Sunnanå SK in a country that has made room for women athletes in an extensive network of sport clubs.
La Paz, Bolivia, May 4 | Periodically, unrest grips Bolivia as the marginalized and oppressed indigenous majorities clash with ruling European-descent elites. Years of struggle have taught poor Bolivians that official channels for lodging their complaints and bringing about change are useless.
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