From Amish heartland, FC Indiana gives women’s soccer ‘multicultural vision’

Lafayette, Indiana, Jul 18 | Some of FC Indiana’s multicultural talent—losers to Pali Blues, 1–2, in the W-League Championship on Aug 2—gathers for a preseason photo opportunity: top row, left to right, Ria Percival (NZL), Veronica Phewa (RSA), Christie Shaner (USA), Fatima Leyva (MEX), Kristin Luckenbill (USA), Kelly Parker (CAN), Laura Del Rio (ESP); bottom row, left to right: Lena Mosebo (RSA), Aivi Luik (AUS), Julianne Sitch (USA). (Photo courtesy PDA | FC Indiana)

Media | What’s that echo? Gary Smith, on the Fugees

Long-form Sports Illustrated writer Gary Smith again has applied his odd epistemology to soccer (“Alive and Kicking,” Jun 23). In 8,000 words, he writes passionately in his familiar mode of author-vacated all-knowing about the Fugees of Clarkston, Georgia—ground already well plowed by Warren St. John of the New York Times (see 25 Jan 07). (Jun 19)

A big day for Haiti, a big day for little Haitians

Miami, May 31 | Haiti past, present and future came together early in May on an urban oasis in Little Haiti. After 10 years of negotiation and bureaucratic delay, an all too rare inner-city, publicly funded, full-size soccer pitch opened on one-time industrial ground north of downtown. With multimedia and podcast.

History | Were Paterson FC the first stateside association football club?

Which was the first American association football team? Some evidence points to Oneida Football Club of Boston, honored with an obelisk in Boston Common as “the first organized football club in the United States.” While Oneida played one of the football codes—perhaps a soccer-rugby hybrid—beginning in 1862, photographic evidence offered by a descendant of a Paterson FC captain suggests that the New Jersey side, formed in 1880, staked claim early to playing by the Football Association rules established in London in 1863 (see also Mar 30). (Apr 16)

History | Remembering New Jersey’s immigrant soccer past

Newark, New Jersey, Mar 30 | At the start of its 13th season, MLS lacks a nuanced appreciation for history. But the sense of American soccer as a game among immigrant enclaves has been preserved, with regional focus, at Sport Clube Português and within a northeastern amateur league featuring divisions along ethnic lines (see New York Times coverage).

Islands | A multihued archipelago, tuned to soccer’s harmonics

Honolulu, Feb 29 | Gamba Osaka’s 6–1 victory over Houston Dynamo in the Pan-Pacific Soccer Championships final added another jot to the history of the Japanese on the Hawaiian Islands—a history that spans three centuries and that has helped create a multicultural population well-suited to building soccer from the grassroots.

Islands | The pan-Pacific soccer paradise

Far from defying convention, soccer on the Hawaiian Islands is mainstream, with a year-round youth soccer schedule and active adult leagues, including the Women’s Island Soccer Association (see Michael Tsai, “Can the Pan-Pacific Soccer Tourney Deliver?” Honolulu Advertiser, Feb 18). Such grassroots strength—for additional background, see our report of 7 Jun 06—has helped lure the Pan-Pacific Soccer Championships, which starts Feb 20. (Feb 19)

Fields | A new place to play in Little Haiti

Miami, Feb 9 | A cultural renaissance in Miami’s La Petite Haiti (Little Haiti), the most populous Haitian neighborhood outside the Caribbean nation, continues as a community complex and soccer park conceived 10 years ago come to fruition.

A series of soccer games on 3 May will conclude two days of inaugural events, including an art exhibition at the nine-acre site at Northeast Second Avenue and 59th Street.

History | Soccer fields, for King and Atlanta, lent space to move ‘beyond Vietnam’

Atlanta, Feb 5 | His work in ministry, as a public speaker and as face of the American civil rights movement prevented him from developing strong sporting enthusiasms, but at least once in his career Martin Luther King Jr. stepped onto a soccer field.

Metaphorically, King’s strides on the Sacramento State pitch in Oct 1967 point toward soccer as a place of social change in America of the civil rights era.

USA | Tide of comment swells after challenge to ‘soccerphobes’

Soccer bashers and advocates for soccer often take on roles in the United States resembling bickering marriage partners, rehearsing old lines and grievances in a zero-sum debate in which the game acquires the capacity to corrupt or to save. Guardian Unlimited writer Steven Wells (see 31 Oct 07) compiles a roster of the sport’s critics, including some unexpected voices from academia, and adds an important observation often missing in the meaningless discussion over whether soccer will displace American games (“The Truth the Soccerphobes Refuse to Face,” Jan 17). (Jan 22)

Women’s football | Hope Solo earns our truth-telling award

Jan 1 | The first recipient of a new award for truth-telling in world football is Hope Solo, who stood tall in goal for the U.S. national team at the Women’s World Cup and again when defending her version of truth after a bizarre goalkeeper switch before a Sept 27 semifinal versus Brazil.

Media | The stoning of Steven (w/ podcast)

Guardian blogger pricks both sides of US/UK sporting divide

Philadelphia, Oct 31 | Unable by temperament and conviction to create a “conventional” sports report, Steven Wells has built a Web 2.0 following by trusting his punk-poet instincts and inducing an irony-challenged foamy slaver among his American and UK readership. With 40-minute podcast.