23rd July 2010
Soccer Explains Nothing
“Stop looking to the World Cup for history lessons. It’s just a game and, frankly, that’s good enough.
12th July 2010
I Invented the Vuvuzela
“I invented the vuvuzela 35 years ago but, of course, it’s only since the start of the World Cup that it has become quite so well known globally. Whatever people may say about the sound it makes, it has never been so popular. That makes me proud; I see so many visitors taking vuvuzelas home with them, to Europe, South America and beyond.
28th June 2010
In search of the perfect round rolling object
“The soccer ball brought to Kashmir in 1890 is a far cry from the hi-tech one of today – so’s the game.
14th June 2010
How Did Sport Get So Big?
“Once, it was only a game. Now sport is a never-ending drama, a soap opera watched all over the world. Tim de Lisle works out how it happened.
10th June 2010
Playing for the World
“Why football—please don’t call it soccer—is the most important sport in history: a lingua franca for 204 countries, an expression of national identity, and a powerful link between multi-millionaire athletes and the man on the street.
Target Anxiety: the Penalty Shootout Reconsidered
“The penalty shootout is the monster under soccer’s bed. There are good reasons for this. Well, there are reasons, anyway, and they grow knotted and blighted from the nature of the penalty kick itself.
(Thanks, Eush)
8th June 2010
Football is War
“The notion that international sporting competitions inevitably inspire warm fraternity – an idea advanced by Baron de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympic games – is a romantic fiction. The violence of British football hooligans, for example, reflects a peculiar nostalgia for war. Life in peaceful times can be dull, and British glory seems a long way in the past.
3rd June 2010
How a Soccer Star Is Made
“The youth academy of the famed dutch soccer club Ajax is grandiosely called De Toekomst — The Future.
