Christmas Day for Football Fans

Football is a Country's Elliot Ross has describes the World Cup Final, every four years, as Christmas Day for football fans, just better. The champion this time is Germany.

James Rodriguez, probably the best Colombian player of his generation, takes on Brazil's defense during a match at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. Photo via WikiCommons.

So there you have it. After 120 minutes and a great goal by Mario Goetze (whose name will now be part of German lore like Gert Muller and Andreas Brehme), Germany are World champions. It’s been a magical month. But it is also basically the last time (till the next World Cup in four years) for journalists and pundits (yes, that’s a real profession now) to trot out cliches for a while about Messi’s “magic” versus the “German machine.”

Tomorrow we’ll return to our lives, especially Brazilians who have to pay the bill for FIFA’s untaxed profitsrebuild their football reputation from scratch (start by firing Scolari) and can’t hide their business behind empty slogans of mixing anymore. So now we have a summer of expensive, meaningless friendlies between top European club teams featuring their reserves playing in Asia and North America coming up, and the English media (and 101 great goals) convincing us all over again of the superiority of the Premier League. Which is a good time to remind ourselves that most people play the game away from advertising boards or without pundits and close-ups.

A Football Dreams tryout in Thiès, Senegal.

Further Reading

From Cape To Cairo

When two Africans—one from the south, the other from the north—set out to cross the continent, they raised the question: how easy is it for an African to move in their own land?

The road to Rafah

The ‘Sumud’ convoy from Tunis to Gaza is reviving the radical promise of pan-African solidarity and reclaiming an anticolonial tactic lost to history.

Sinners and ancestors

Ryan Coogler’s latest film is more than a vampire fable—it’s a bridge between Black American history and African audiences hungry for connection, investment, and storytelling rooted in shared struggle.