football-is-a-country

Football

Jogo Bonito

Preparations for the 2014 World Cup have served as a trigger for what may become a major political and social movement in Brazil.

The left winger

A meditation on left footed footballers, especially wingers, given the conventional wisdom that lefties are always useful to have in a match.

The Blood of the Impure

The French national anthem is a pretty nasty song. It dreams, in one of its more memorable verses, that the “blood of the impure” will “irrigate our fields.”

Who are you rooting for

The historian Laurent Dubois watches the African Cup of Nations in Senegal and can't help mix it up with the history of colonialism and neo-colonialism in the region.