Tag: "Pathos"

Jean Baudrillard, 1929-2007 | Coining a ‘worldwide currency’ for football violence

Paris, Mar 12 | Little evidence exists of Jean Baudrillard’s rooting interests in football. The French philosopher, who died Mar 6, left behind a corpus of cultural reflection.

To him belonged clear-eyed, if not always clearly worded, explication of concepts such as “hyperreality” and “simulation”—with the latter implying more than Arjen Robben flopping around on the left-hand touchline. Such notions have lent themselves to football, including Baudrillard’s own essay on the Heysel disaster of 1985.

Mar 12, 2007 | 3 comments View Post

Ryszard Kapuscinski, 1932-2007 | A witness to (soccer) war that lay in wait

Warsaw, Poland, Jan 30 | Ryszard Kapuscinski, 74, who died on Jan 23, rarely wrote about football. Yet the title of one of his best-known collections is “The Soccer War” (Granta, 1990), in which the title essay, translated from the Polish by William Brand, chronicles Kapuscinski’s insertion into the Honduran capital as war breaks out with El Salvador across the shared border.

Jan 30, 2007 | 1 comment View Post

Ahmet Ertegun and Lamar Hunt | Adding spice, foreign and domestic, to American soccer

Istanbul, Dec 20 | New York Times popular-music critic Jon Pareles refers in the opening paragraph of his appreciation to the “sheer improbability” of Ahmet Ertegün’s career.

A reading of Ertegün’s life, even a superficial reading, demonstrates the often covert international influences on seemingly indigenous American art forms—on soul music and rhythm and blues, in Ertegün’s case—and on American soccer. The late Lamar Hunt, too, sought to bring the international spice of football to the U.S. sportscape.

Dec 20, 2006 | 2 comments View Post

Magnum opus | From Charlton to Cantona, book charts a Devilish history

Manchester, England, Dec 15 | The Independent calls them “£imited editions.” These are books seeking the reverence once granted the Gutenberg Bible, instant collectibles demanding coffee tables with reinforced legs.

The latest megabook publicity splash concerns the Manchester United Opus, nearly 80 lbs of silk-coated pages with a base price of £3,000.

Dec 15, 2006 | 1 comment View Post

Hungary | Ferenc Puskás dies, aged 79

Articles on the death of Ferenc Puskás at 79; Hugo Sánchez’s first statements as coach of Mexico; Ligo Revelacion in Decatur, Alabama; a grumpy columnist in Israel; and another study on sectarianism in Scottish football.

Nov 17, 2006 | 2 comments View Post

Hail to the Chief | Ntsoelengoe remembered before Absa Cup final

Ntsoelengoe

The Soweto-based giants of South African football, Kaizer Chiefs and Orlando Pirates, meet Saturday in the Absa Cup final. The sides face each other in a cup championship for the first time in 18 years. Despite the controversial location in the Kings Park rugby stadium here, 43,000 tickets were gone within minutes of going on sale. In [...]

May 19, 2006 | 4 comments View Post

Games of ‘invernale’ | Torino’s glory and remembrance

Turin, Italy | The torch of the 20th Winter Olympiad began its last-day descent from Superga Basilica, acknowledging a tragic component of city history before being transported to the rechristined Stadio Comunale north of the Torrente Sangone. On 4 May 1949 a plane carrying 18 members of “Il Grande Torino,” four-time winners of the Scudetto, crashed [...]

Feb 11, 2006 | 0 comments View Post

‘Frits’ Philips | ‘The last true patriarch of club soccer’

Eindhoven, the Netherlands | Belatedly we acknowledge the death on Dec 5 of Frederik Jacques “Frits” Philips, 100, founder with his father and uncle of the light-bulb company that became the conglomerate Royal Philips Electronics. In 1913, Philips helped found Philips Sport Vereniging, a sporting association for factory workers of which PSV Eindhoven, current leaders in the [...]

Dec 17, 2005 | 0 comments View Post

Best tributes | A ‘pink flamingo’ on the estates

Belfast, Northern Ireland | Linked in life to players like Pelé and Maradona, George Best in death continued to draw comparisons. Writers received extended column inches to describe the Best cortí¨ge on Saturday, Dec 3, and tied the public mourning and spontaneously created tributes in memorabilia and replica shirts to ceremonies that had acknowledged the passings of [...]

Dec 06, 2005 | 0 comments View Post

Best cortège | Parade to the white colonnades

Belfast, Northern Ireland | At 1000 GMT on Saturday, Dec 3, a cortí¨ge will depart the George Best family home in Protestant east Belfast and wind to the Grand Hall of Stormont Parliamentary Building, a white, colonnaded edifice on a hill. The Police Service of Northern Ireland said it was planning for more than 100,000 mourners. Both [...]

Nov 28, 2005 | 0 comments View Post

The late George Best | No end to allusions for a Piper and Pimpernel

London | George Best died at 1255 GMT at a west London hospital on Friday. News outlets had more than enough time to ready their copy, and the obituaries became available within minutes of his last breath. Perhaps the most comprehensive supply of pathos exists in a special section of Best’s hometown Belfast Telegraph.
The Best iconography [...]

Nov 25, 2005 | 0 comments View Post

French connection | Memorial to fallen Hearts players gives life

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 the [...]

Nov 11, 2005 | 0 comments View Post