Set piece

In Amish country, FC Indiana builds 'multicultural vision'
FC Indiana in four years has become a force in women's club soccer in the United States, winning two Women's Premier Soccer League titles and one U.S. Open Cup. But despite origins within a Midwest Amish agricultural enclave, its influence extends worldwide. It has been linked with such players as Marta Vieira da Silva of Brazil and boasts a global scouting network - with contacts in R ussia, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Jamaica, Mexico and Nigeria - that would be the envy of many fully professional men's clubs.
POSTED IN Women's football | USA

The run of play

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).
Permalink | Comment

In clothing to conceal, football becomes 'means of fighting'
Toward the end of a Jun 17 National Public Radio interview, Marlene Assmann of BSV Al-Dersimspor discloses that her multicultural Kreuzberg side from Berlin again will brave Islamic strictures for a second friendly match in Iran. The first match had been the subject of a documentary film, Football Under Cover (29 Sept 07), that has made its debut on North American festival screens.
Permalink | Comment

Other voices
Chemistry Ph.D. Ibrahim M. Ibrahim (left), who died Jul 13 at age 67, made his mark as Clemson coach for 28 seasons, recruiting from Africa and elsewhere so American fans could see the game "played properly." ... Armenian president Serzh Sargsyan, writing in the Wall Street Journal, invites Turkish counterpart Abdullah Gül to Yerevan for a Sept 6 World Cup qualifier in order to mark a "new symbolic start in our relations." ... David Beckham's fondness for the phrase "going forward," borrowed from managerial jargon, indicates the crossover between the lives of sportsmen and business moguls, writes Lucy Kellaway in the Financial Times. Most are conformists; football brooks no deviance. ... Character actor Michael Sheen (The Queen) has a faux tan brushed onto his legs so he can channel the imperious Brian Clough lording it over skeptical Leeds Utd charges during filming of David Peace's The Damned Utd, reports Time Out London. ... After a lifetime of watching boyfriends and husbands play, a group of migrant seamstresses from Guatemala has formed an L.A.-based football team, the Los Angeles Times reports. The first time in cleats she felt "like a cow in shoes," says Celestina Hernandez. ... The fencing-off and sanctioned destruction of London's East End, in advance of the 2012 Olympics, has sacrificed 11 football pitches "trampled by hard-swearing enthusiasts," writes psychogeographer Iain Sinclair in the London Review of Books.

Heard on the terraces

"The mourning today that we feel on the anniversary of the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War is mitigated by our joy over yesterday's victory by the Russian team" (Patriarch Alexei II on Russia's advance to the Euro 2008 semifinal, quoted in Lyubov Borusyak, "Football as a Catalyst for Patriotism," Open Democracy, Jul 10).

Available at the interval

The Global Game | Writers on Soccer
Available for preorder
The writings gathered in this volume reflect the universal and infinitely varied ways in which soccer connects with human experience. Poetry and prose from Ted Hughes, Charles Simic, Eduardo Galeano, Günter Grass, Giovanna Pollarolo, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Elvis Costello - to name but a few - take us to a dizzying array of cultures and climes. From a patch of ground in Missoula, Montana, to a cleari ng in a Kosovo forest, from the stadiums of Burma and Iran to the northern lights over Greenland to remotest Sierra Leone, these writers show us soccer’s stars and fans, politics and rituals, as well as the game's power to encourage resistance, inspire faith, and build community.

Global Game products at CafePress ->

The Global Game covers the world of football and its intersection with daily life.

Learn more about our teaching resources. For more frequent site updates, please take advantage of the RSS feed and see our Facebook page.

© 2008 JZ Editing & Publishing

You are subscribed to the GlobalGame at example@example.com. You may automatically unsubscribe from this list at any time by visiting the following URL: http://www.theglobalgame.com/dadamail/mail.cgi/u/globalgame/.