World Cup 2018

Football, Free on the Streets

Andrew Esiebo’s “Goal Diggers”—an exhibition of photographs on the irrepressible love West Africans have for football—reminds us that the simple desire to chase a ball is one of our commonalities.

July 23, 2018

World Cup 2018: Football Sans Frontières

Social democracy isn’t just the way to win at public health outcomes; it’s the way to win at sport, too.

July 17, 2018

World Cup 2018: A View from the Stands

The emotional locus of this tournament is more in living rooms and bars around the world than here in the place where the thing is actually happening. That’s not because there is anything wrong with Russia. On the contrary, it’s been very pleasant here.

July 13, 2018

World Cup 2018: Croatia

The Croatian team has three exceptional players who became exiles as a direct result of the conflict. One can’t help but suspect that it is the hardships of their youth that has enabled them to meet with such success now.

July 11, 2018

World Cup 2018: England

Some 20 million Britons saw the Sweden match on telly. Viewing figures of this kind belong to another era, before the Internet punctured the idea of nations’ watching the same thing at the same time. What is going on? 

July 10, 2018

World Cup 2018: Russia

Russia and its people—my people—have long had a fickle relationship with football. They’re educated consumers and investors, but finicky admirers, whose hearts wander at the drop of a hockey puck and the first hint of snow.

July 5, 2018

World Cup 2018: France

If Les Bleus are to mark the twentieth anniversary of their 1998 triumph with a party next month, they will have to find some way to express the most expansive, spontaneous, and progressive notions of Frenchness we know they’re capable of.

June 29, 2018

World Cup 2018: Morocco

On Monday, against Spain, we had little left to play for—except, perhaps, some honor. But in an amazing game that twice saw Morocco go ahead against one of the world’s top teams, we earned a 2-2 draw that left Moroccans proud of the national team despite its not making it to the next round.

June 26, 2018

World Cup 2018: Egypt

For Egypt, success at international soccer has proven elusive. And the World Cup has again become the mirage we endlessly chase and the uncomfortable reflection of questions we refuse to confront.

June 24, 2018

World Cup 2018: South Korea

By 2017, the young people of the 2002 World Cup generation had become the electoral core of Korean society. In the cold of winter, they chanted and sang to demand a restoration of democracy. Like the Taegeuk Warriors team in 2002, against the odds they won.

June 23, 2018

World Cup 2018: Belgium

The technical flair gained from the “street soccer” of its migrant communities has enlivened and improved Belgian soccer as a whole—and this was achieved, remarkably, in the midst of a fragmented society run by a dysfunctional political system.

June 22, 2018

World Cup 2018: Senegal

In 2002, Senegal—playing its first ever game in a World Cup championship—humiliated France. By beating its former colonizer at sport, the Senegalese team had lifted a people and dignified a nation.

June 21, 2018

World Cup 2018: Argentina

That real possibility that we could have actually won and didn’t, that we still can, is what makes the anticipation unbearable: the fear of a painful, ultimate failure that we’ve grown used to anticipating. This is our national parable.

June 20, 2018

World Cup 2018: Peru

On their way to Russia, the players heard the news: El Capitán Guerrero’s ban had been frozen. Back in Peru, 30 million fans woke up to the revelation, neither an acquittal nor a declaration of innocence. But a suspended sentence had never felt so much like redemption.

June 19, 2018

World Cup 2018: England

I am always shocked by the way it takes hold, this faith in England, the desire for England to go all the way, as they say, in spite of the long record of thwarted hopes, hopes that are so necessary a prelude to the lingering after-taste of ashes in the mouth.

June 17, 2018

World Cup 2018: Mexico

The ball shot off Cuau’s left foot into the net for a spectacular goal—golazo!—that tied the game. At that instant, a passion for Mexican futbol, for El Tri, entered me like a lightning bolt through that antennae held out the window, pointed up at that legendary Mexico City sky.

June 16, 2018

World Cup 2018: Brazil

The nation is now facing a major political and economic crisis with no end in sight, but suddenly, this became only a minor nuisance—out go social equality, political stability, and true democracy; in come Pelé, Ronaldo, and Neymar to let us brag to the rest of the world.

June 15, 2018

World Cup 2018: Hope Wins

Jules Rimet started the World Cup in 1930. The 1970 tournament in Mexico helped to transform his beloved sporting event into the outsized media spectacle we know today, awash in cash and global, not just in name, but in reach.

June 14, 2018