• Clovis Bergère

Who gets to host future editions of the men's soccer World Cup is not just big business, but also a bargaining chip in international relations.

• Susan Thomson

The Arsenal 'Visit Rwanda' sponsorship deal is government image management 101.

• Kangsen Feka Wakai

Star players in Cameroon's national soccer team have always doubled as PR pawns for the protracted rule of Paul Biya, the country's aging and hard-line head of state.

• Ron Krabill
• Danny Hoffman

Organized US Soccer is perceived as middle class and white. Seattle, Washington wants to break with that via its professional women's team.

• Laurent Dubois

Is France's World Cup championship team a bellwether for France's political future?

• Grégory Pierrot

"When the game is over in Russia, I’ll go play another at the field down the street. I’ll find a song to sing on the way."

• Emily Lever

The 2010 World Cup was tumultuous for France; both an athletic failure and a site of social conflict. The French Football Federation doesn't want to repeat it.

• Haythem Guesmi

Fascists love Mbappé and hate Benzema. Between these two lies the problem of romanticizing the French team as an African team.

• Annette Joseph-Gabriel

A possible French victory hovers like a thin layer of hope that barely veils the simmering anger at France’s neglect of the islands and pessimism about the future.

• Damola Durosomo

Focusing on sports allegiance to Nigeria, offered a break from pondering over all of its social ills.

• Gianpaolo Baiocchi

In 1982, Reinaldo, Rei (“King”) a striker prone to making black power salutes, was left out out of the country's World Cup squad. Two other rebels, Socrates and Zico, made it though.

• Ron Krabill
• Danny Hoffman

Watching the World Cup with a young Nigerian professional footballer in Seattle, U.S.

• Heleen Debeuckelaere

The success of Belgium's national football team as a key site for political struggles over identity, race and immigration.

• Grégory Pierrot

en ce moment, le plus français de tous les français est un gamin noir d’origine algérienne et camerounaise nommé Kylian Mbappé.

• Philip Janzen

Soccer came to Ghana with “a Jamaican educationist." That's the popular version. It's not entirely correct.

• Grégory Pierrot

You want to troll French fascists? Tell them the truth: the most French man in the world right now is a black kid called Kylian Mbappé.

• Kangsen Feka Wakai

At Italia 1990, Cameroon pulled off the greatest upsets in football in the history of the World Cup--against Maradona's Argentina.

• Steven Friedman

One of the weirder displays of Pan-Africanism descended on Johannesburg’s Soccer City on the evening of July 2, 2010.

• Alex Hochuli

Brazilians have a complicated relationship to the Seleção, clouded by political crises, the parliamentary coup and the decline of a national style.

• Sean Jacobs
• Sebastian Abbot

Two of Africa's standout talents at Russia 2018--Moussa Wague and Francis Uzoho--were shaped by a football academy in Qatar. A new book tells that story.