In this past month of World Cup football, I have seen my facebook stream lit up by “friends” claiming that they are loving to watch coverage in Spanish. In many cases, these friends speak Spanish as a second language; I even have friends who don’t speak Spanish well at all, yet watch the Spanish coverage… Read More »
I’ve just returned from several days in Cape Town, where I saw the Uruguay-Netherlands game and once again learned the limited power of football to offer up moral clarity. After the Ghana match, I was sure I’d be able to take out all my rage and spleen at the Uruguayans in the next game, savoring… Read More »
It’s alarming to even consider, but for the next two days there will be no World Cup matches. After gorging ourselves on football of varying quality for the past weeks, we suddenly have to think of others things to do. Read a book? Take a walk? But to what end and purpose, when all we… Read More »
As Spain prepares to take on Switzerland on Wednesday, the world is abuzz with anticipation. Not only are Spain joint favorites with Brazil, but the tournament needs the Spanish team like a fish needs water. After one of the drabbest opening rounds in memory, fans everywhere are looking for reasons as to why things are… Read More »
Laura Wagner, a UNC Anthropology graduate student who was in Haiti during the earthquake (and wrote a searing account of her experience at Salon.com), has recently returned to continue her research there. On Saturday, she took this photograph in Port-au-Prince, in the neighborhood of Delmas 32. The chalk board in front of this damaged building… Read More »
Aleksander Hemon, who wrote a great essay on football in Chicago in Granta Magazine earlier this year called “If God Existed, He’d Be a Solid Midfielder,” is now writing a blog on football at the New Republic. This week, he offers up a great riff on the “ritual demise” of “Europe’s most annoying soccer club.”
There is a phenomenon in Spain, one that is on the lips of commentators of the Primera División all over the world, one that tinges any match involving Spain’s two biggest teams, Real Madrid and Barcelona: villarato. When I hear the word uttered on GolTv, on ESPN, even on the Fox Sport family of networks,… Read More »
The whole army of Spanish media outlets has been splashed with this bit of news, regarding the facebook page of suspected ETA members–ETA being, for those unfamiliar with Spain, the Basque separatist-terrorist group responsible for thousands of acts of violence since their establishment during the Franco dictatorship. From sports dailies such as AS to Marca,… Read More »
The major Spanish Copa del Rey upset of Villarreal by Celta de Vigo carries with it some telling anecdotes about the state of the game.
Perhaps cribbing the title of George Orwell’s famous 1938 account of the Spanish Civil War is a little much. But, seventy years on, with the question of the what status Catalonia has and should have within Spain still a serious issue, football has become an important battlefield in its own way. Yesterday’s victory of the… Read More »
