I’ve been terribly remiss about updates over the past few weeks winding down a project, but wanted to post this fascinating examination by Yann Casseville of Basket Le Mag of the NBA’s deep roots, which I helped contribute a few ideas to.
Women’s World Cup Countdown
Looking Good: The FFF Turns 100
Battle of the Ballgames
Sports Diplomacy Part 2
The Grande Dame of Hoops Courts
Sport Diplomacy + Digital Diplomacy: Part I
The World’s First Viral Soccer Moment
Rounding out my coverage of how our global sports world was significantly shaped by the First World War a century ago is this recent piece for The Athletic. Reporting on “How the Great War Made Soccer the World’s Most Popular Sport—and Led to Its First Viral moment,” I learned a lot more than I anticipated. As a sports specialist with a sub-specialty on the First World War (thanks to my work on the U.S. Department of State and U.S. Embassy France’s World War One Centennial project), I thought I knew the story’s key turning points. But as Jean Williams and Arnaud Waquet reminded me, there were many more.
Of particular interest to many is how the war era served as a golden age of women’s soccer, in Britain and elsewhere. Crowds of 10,000 paid to watch women play in 1917 and 1918, and a few years later, some 55,000 people crowded into Goodson Park to watch a women’s match. As Williams pointed out, makes you wonder why organizers of women’s professional soccer today don’t look to the ways that their predecessors shined 100 years ago in terms of getting the crowds out en masse with regularity...
Global Hoops: Superpower and Growing Superstar?
Conjuring good fortune on West African pitches is more complex than mere superstition
When soccer news from outside of Europe penetrates the global consciousness, it is often some outlandish item, a curiosity of the can-you-believe-it variety. Two of the more famous incidents to come from West Africa since the turn of the millenium include the February 2002 arrest of Cameroon head coach Winfried Schafer at the Africa Cup of Nations for allegedly planting an amulet on the field and, in the summer of that year, the wild ride of Senegal’s team at the World Cup, where their success was rumored to be aided by the country’s marabouts, which are similar to shamans.