Prior to this year’s FIFA World Cup, which France won last night in Moscow by defeating Croatia 4-2 in the final, I had never experienced a World Cup without my Italy. To make matters worse, my secondary teams, USA and South Africa, also did not qualify. What would it be like to follow the most …
On Tuesday, June 2, Sepp Blatter announced his intention to resign as FIFA president just four days after winning reelection to a fifth term — an electoral victory that simply could not have happened without the support of FIFA’s African members. According to unofficial calculations, the 133 votes secretly cast for Blatter came from Africa …
The day before the magic kingdom opens in São Paulo, WKAR’s “Current State” host Mark Bashore interviewed me about the politics of the World Cup. We discussed FIFA profits and institutional reform, special World Cup laws and extraterritoriality, nation-building, development, civic protests, and what the future holds for Brazil, on and off the pitch. Originally …
An antidote to Shakira and Pitbull! “Afri Can” is a charity single by Replay GH, a Ghana-based group featuring Zed Ay Kay (Replay GH), Fuji, Farid, and Gustav. It brings together influence from the five African countries that have qualified for the Brazil 2014 World Cup: Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon, Algeria, and Ivory Coast. According to the artists, “the …
I was recently interviewed by BBC Brasil‘s João Fellet and asked to compare the hosting of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa with the preparations for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. Below is the Portuguese text of what transpired [translate] and a link to read the full article. 15 May 2014 BBC Brasil …
Recently, I spoke with Liz Timbs, the creator of Imbiza 1.0: A Digital Repository of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. Imbiza (http://imbiza.matrix.msu.edu) is an open-access web-based project that uses a highly modified theme on a WordPress framework. Objects contained in Imbiza were catalogued and preserved using KORA, the digital repository and publishing platform …
The Garrincha of futbology, David Goldblatt, admits he’s neither Brazilian nor a Brazilianist as he begins his recent public lecture at Pitzer College in California. Then, like Garrincha, he feigns left, goes right through through Brazil’s World Cup history, pivots on slavery, Lusotropicalism and GINI coefficients, does a give-and-go with Mario Filho, dribbles around Benedict …