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Thou Shalt Not Play Soccer?
Soccer has often been called a religion. Both soccer and religion boast an incredibly high number of passionate devotees. But some extremists in the religious community see the game as a threat to...
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Player Focus: Benny Feilhaber
Benny Feilhaber (left) playing for the USA U-20 national team When American midfielder Benny Feilhaber signed for Hamburg in 2005, he returned to the part of the world his grandfather had left over...
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Kaká: Soccer’s Most Famous Evangelical
Goal celebrations generally fall somewhere in between raw displays of emotion (see Marco Tardelli in the 1982 World Cup final), incredible athleticism (can anyone beat Julius Aghahowa for that?), and...
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Argentina’s Obsession with Diego Maradona
Anyone who has taken even a passing interest in the career of Diego Maradona was not surprised when he was hospitalized last month. Maradona’s latest medical adventure turned out to be acute hepatitis,...
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Review of Jafar Panahi’s Offside
Jafar Panahi is a reknowned Iranian filmmaker who chooses to deal with controversial topics in his work. His movies (Crimson Gold, The Circle, among others) have been heralded abroad and banned at...
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Review of Sacachispas: Documenting Argentina’s Passion
Argentines are nothing if not passionate. They attack tango, wine, and politics with gusto. But none of these things compares with their true passion: fútbol. Soccer connoisseurs worldwide are familiar...
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When Religion Gets in the Way of Soccer (or Vice Versa)
Before the year 2000, Carlos Roa never would have expected to be playing for Argentine club Olimpo today. He didn’t think he’d be alive today, let alone playing football for a living. Carlos Roa, a...
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Soccer Superstitions
very once in a while, stories pop up in the Western press about odd goings-on at a soccer match in a remote part of the world. These stories contain sordid details of spells placed by witch doctors,...
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French Converts to Islam
A relatively small, but growing trend in Europe involves Christian converting to Islam. Despite the heated “clash of civilizations” rhetoric that 9/11 has provoked, many people are stepping across the...
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Some Team Names Are All Greek to Me
Many trace the origins of many aspects of Western society to ancient Greece (though not all: in his essay Anthropology and the Savage Slot, Rolph-Michel Trouillot claims that “Greece did not beget...
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