Category Archives: World Cup

This Time for South Africa

Marcus Gilroy-Ware, who I went to several games with in South Africa, has produced this interesting short video about South African perspectives on the recent World Cup, featuring Achille Mbembe and Sarah Nutall (Visiting Professors at Duke this coming fall) among others. I also published a set of final reflections on the World Cup, with… Read More »

Finale

Two days after the World Cup final, the whole event seems slightly surreal. I’m returning from South Africa today, having survived on my last day here a gauntlet of baboons and a march up a gorgeous mountain, after arriving on the 26th of June just in time to see Ghana beat the U.S. I’ve had… Read More »

Univision, Latino (Dis)Unity, and the World Cup

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 »

World Cup Waterloos

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 »

Black Star Tragedy

Football, we learned last night during the Ghana-Uruguay game, is the most effective tool for mass torture every devised by the human race. A vast majority of the over eighty thousands fans in the stadium, and millions of viewers throughout the world, were left speechless and unwound by what we saw unfold. For me, it… Read More »

Why We Love the Vuvuzela

With apologies to my many vuvuzela-hating friends, here’s an essay (in French) written by Achille Mbembe and myself on experiencing the vuvuzela in South Africa. An English translation is available here.

Domenech becoming international political outcast

World Cup 2010: Raymond Domenech fails to take blame for France fiasco | Football | guardian.co.uk This article from the Guardian highlights the extent to which the French football crisis is becoming one of international proportions, now being taken up at the highest levels of the French government. At first glance, one might think: why… Read More »

Facing the Two-Day Football Fast

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 »