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South Africa’s Bad Week
As mentioned below and elsewhere in Spolitical, South Africa’s snubbing of the Dalai Lama has opened up the 2010 World Cup hosts to much criticism. Now, mere days after denying an entry visa to the...
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Berlusconi and Football
Goal.com profiles Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi and the role soccer played in his rise to political power. Berlusconi purchased AC Milan in the mid 1980s, when the club was hemorrhaging money and not...
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This Week in Soccer Violence
With World Cup qualifiers going on around the globe, the hooligans are out in full force. Some dispatches … Ivory Coast vs. Malawi: A stampede at a soccer match in the Ivory Coast killed at least 22...
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Ivory Coast Fallout
Following the deaths of 19 soccer fans at an Ivory Coast stadium (originally reported as 22 dead), people are asking: what happened? What’s known is that there was a stampede to get inside the stadium...
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Soccer Diplomacy – Brazil
As Brazil angles for a seat on the UN Security Council, the nation’s footballers are being drawn into the fray. Brazil recently played a friendly in downtrodden Haiti, a gesture to curry favor with UN...
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Kissinger and the World Cup
Henry Kissinger, Nixon’s former National Security Adviser and Secretary of State and a Nobel Peace Prize winner, is now throwing his considerable powers behind the effort to bring the World Cup back to...
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Israel Soccer’s Raw Deal
After a crushing loss to Greece, it’s almost certain that Israel will once again fail to qualify for the World Cup. Israel is by no means a soccer power, but their qualifying road is harder than it...
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Ahmadinejad’s Soccer Power Play
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who, like Mike Krzyzewski and Jeff Samardzija, has a surname I will never fail to copy and paste, was hoping a recent World Cup qualifier against Saudi Arabia...
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Obama and the World Cup
President Obama, who’s set to aid and abet Mayor Daley’s latest, costliest vanity project, is also now throwing his weight behind the U.S.’s bid to host the 2018 or 2022 World Cup: “Soccer is truly the...
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Thailand, Political Unrest, and Soccer
As you may have heard, things aren’t going so well in Thailand these days. What’s notable is that the man at the center of the upheaval, exiled former PM Thaksin Shinawatra, has strong ties to soccer....
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