Portugal since 2004 has tapped players from the United States and Canada for its national women’s teams. To Portuguese coaches and football authorities, these North American imports are “new Portuguese.”
Ian Plenderleith, not for the first time, has done great service by offering a synopsis and highlights in translation of director Britta Becker’s 90-minute documentary Die besten Frauen der Welt (“The Best Women in the World,” Jan 7).
The film chronicles Germany’s championship at the FIFA Women’s World Cup in Sept 07 and, along the way, points to “the obvious contrasts between the Germans and the US team that failed to advance beyond the semi-final.”
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.
Rabat, Morocco | Fulbright fellow Nicole Matuska wonders why players with the women’s club side she has been following for the past year are not watching the Women’s World Cup. “A paradox still exists. In spite of [their] achievements, the football field remains a masculine stage.”
Berkeley, California, Sept 20 | One of the important implications of Martha Saavedra’s research into women’s sport in West Africa is discovery of the extent to which football helps define masculinity in much of the world.
“For a woman to play [football] in many places is a transgression,” says Saavedra, associate director of the University of California-Berkeley’s Center for African Studies, in our Sept 4 podcast. “People think of it as saying something about what it means to be a man.”
Atlanta, Aug 23 | As soccer tacticians do, Spelman College coach Philmore George speaks of building a team from the back, using combination play to instill belief in the collective.
It makes sense, therefore, that the co-captains in George’s fourth season, which begins Sept 1, are defenders: seniors Ashley Hamilton and Rabiah “Rabi” Jamar. Together they not only have led the Spelman Jaguars from the back but the spread of women’s soccer into new territories in America’s fragmented demographic.
Normally we do not post goal videos, but that these are goals by a woman—albeit one of the world’s best-known players, Marta Vieira da Silva of Brazil—and that they were scored at a “lesser” football competition, the 15th Pan American Games in Rio de Janeiro, means that otherwise they will rapidly fade into obscurity, as if they had never happened.
Dois Riachos, Brazil, Dec 28 | Marta Vieira da Silva, proclaimed by FIFA on Dec 18 as the best player in women’s soccer, has been on the road for much of the past six years.
Beginning at 14, when she followed a path from the nordeste to Rio de Janeiro, seeking opportunity with Vasco da Gama, she has played around the world for age-group and the full Brazilian national team and now, professionally, for Umeå IK in Sweden. The journey took her to the Zurich Opera House last Monday night for recognition, at 20, on a gilded stage and with a golden trophy.
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.
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 »
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David Goldblatt calls The Global Game: Writers on Soccer "the first truly global survey of writing" on world football. Buy from Amazon » John Turnbull