Scissors Kick

“‘It is unacceptable that children are killed while they play football.’ So declares a statement by 62 professional footballers protesting the recent Israeli actions in Gaza. Posted on the website of Frédéric Kanouté, it includes some of the best known names in global football, notably Didier Drogba and Eden Hazard. It is a striking gesture, one with few precedents. It highlights how powerfully football and politics are increasingly intertwined in Israel and Palestine.” Soccer Politics

“Football is part of the creative economy because its value lies in ideas. Typically when we think of football, we tend to think of it as “big business.” Real Madrid made over $695 million in the 2011 fiscal year and the combined net worth of the top five richest clubs for 2011 is over $5 billion. But to put this into perspective, we need to realize that the combined value of the world’s five richest companies is nearly $2 trillion. We can all see that in the grand scheme of things, football financially pales in comparison to other sectors of industry. Yet football is both immensely powerful and popular. In FIFA’s latest Big Count, 270 million people—or four percent of the world’s population—are involved in football in some way. Further, more people watch the World Cup Final than any other single sporting events. This leads us to ask—is football really a business at all?” Soccer Politics

LUFC
“The business of a soccer club is to produce a winning team. At the end of the day sports are a form of entertainment. Too often, though, actions taken place in the board room or at the negotiating table take away from the entertainment displayed on the field. At times, the aggressiveness and sometimes greediness of clubs leads to failure on the field. Specifically, the mountains of debt some European clubs have amassed in recent years often do more harm than good for a club. Last year, players in La Liga — one of the world’s richest leagues — nearly went on strike when one club failed to pay wages.” Soccer Politics

“In the midst of the brewing crisis over the election in Haiti, I’m taking solace in small, containable observations. Jude Celestin, the ruling party candidate who now stands accused by twelve other candidates of having carried out fraud at the polls today, made a shrewd choice in his campaign colors. As Emily Troutman noted in a pre-election article on the candidates, the green and white of his posters and shirts are the same as those of the Brazilian national team.” (Soccer Politics)

“I am probably watching soccer with the wrong person. As my friend D. and I walk through the 40-degree heat of downtown Belgrade, where she grew up and returns in the summers, I spot a building-high vertical banner of an enthusiastic, fit young man in body paint hawking soda. ‘Refresh Your World!’ it implores.” (Soccer Politics)

“I was in Paris this week, and got to catch up with Lilian Thuram, who we hosted here at Duke last fall. He invited me to attend a PSG match with him at the Parc des Princes, and I of course jumped at the opportunity. The police have been heavily cracking down on some fan organizations at PSG, but they seemed spirited as ever, with the Boulogne Kop on one end, and Auteuil and the Paname United Colors on the other.” (Soccer Politics), (Lilian Thuram), (Soccer Politics – Lilian Thuram Visit)

“A student posted a link on my ‘Global France’ blog about a fascinating football tournament organized in Lebanon recently as a way of commemorating, but also burying, the wars that tore about the country starting in the 1970s. You can read her post here, and the full story here. Interestingly, while the match was intended to create a context for peaceful encounters between political groups that were once at war, it was considered to delicate an event to allow for spectators, though the event was broadcast on TV.” (Soccer Politics), (Google – Lebanese mark war’s outbreak with political soccer)

Hadi Aghili
“Thanks to my friend Negar Mottehedeh, and via a post from Enduring America, here are two videos from a January 6th game between Iran and Singapore, during which Iranian fans chanted anti-government slogans — ‘Ya Hossein, Mir Hossein,’ in support of opposition leader Mousavi in the 1st video, and ‘Marg Bar Dictator,’ (‘Down with the Dictator,’) in the second.” (Soccer Politics)

“John Turnbull, editor of The Global Game, shared with me some fascinating information about “three-sided football.” In early November, as part of the Bienniale d’art contemporain de Lyon, a tournament showcasing this unique sport was held in Venissieux, a banlieue of Lyon. The game was invented in the 1960s by a Danish Situationist artist, Asger Jorn. The goal is to subvert the antagonistic duality of traditional football by having a hexagonal field and three teams, as well as three goals.” (Soccer Politics)

“Perhaps cribbing the title of George Orwell’s famous 1938 account of the Spanish Civil War is a little much. But, seventy years on, with the question of the what status Catalonia has and should have within Spain still a serious issue, football has become an important battlefield in its own way. Yesterday’s victory of the Catalan ‘national’ selection against the Argentinian team, 4-2, represents the latest chapter in this long-running story. Coached by the legendary Johann Cruyff, with a lonely, exiled, Maradona watching from the stands surrounded by opposing fans, the Catalan team shone in a town used to rallying around Barca as a symbol of town and nation. But what does their victory mean?”  (Soccer Politics)