On Holocaust Remembrance Day, we interview William Heyen about his poem “Parity,” concerning the 1944 football match at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Beside crematoriums, Nazis engineered the ultimate perversion of sport.
Football grounds around the world have a tradition of offering refuge from disasters. Stadiums and soccer itself offer shelter and solace in Haiti following the devastating earthquake Jan 12.
With Orthodox nativity celebrations upon us, we wonder if Ukrainian traditions of religious iconography and football offer creative ideas for recovering lost history and making one nation.
A six-team fulbito tournament in Lima in December concluded a nationwide competition involving more than 40,000 indigenous Andean women, who don colorful skirts(polleras) and play on weekends as respite from hard labors at home and in the fields.
The title of Aleksandar Hemon’s essay in the current Granta, “If God Existed, He’d Be a Solid Midfielder,” would not impress seminarians in Hemon’s adopted home, Chicago. But for the writer from Sarajevo, lack of soccer means spiritual death. With interview »
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Club América shirts predominate in the Georgia Dome in a friendly against AC Milan. The club has made itself a continental brand but has drawn loathing from Mexican compatriots, who shout, “Those colors make me sick!” With video »
Barack Obama has put executive-branch muscle and street soccer cred behind the United States bid for the 2018 or 2022 World Cup finals. In Jun 2010 he will attend Opening Ceremonies at Soccer City in Soweto.
Jun 23, 2009 | 0 comments | View Post
World football stands poised between an obscenity and a dream—the obscenity the £136 million to send two Lusophone footballers to Real Madrid, the dream a 2010 World Cup in South Africa that might make soccer here a sport for all.
The list of 35 feature films and documentaries at the 11mm Fußballfilmfestival in Berlin, 3–6 Apr 09.
Apr 03, 2009 | 0 comments | View Post
In the whirl of 17th-century London life, diarist Samuel Pepys had too many appointments to indulge in the well-established practice of street soccer. But, one frosty morn in Jan 1665, he notices a street “full of footballs.”
Mar 26, 2009 | 0 comments | View Post
Nicolas Sarkozy, France's president, has campaigned to relocate the remains of goalkeeper-cum-existentialist Albert Camus from their resting place in Lourmarin. More about language & literature »
Links
David Goldblatt calls The Global Game: Writers on Soccer "the first truly global survey of writing" on world football. Buy from Amazon » John Turnbull