• James M. Dorsey

Algeria reached the African Cup final for the first time in 29 years after defeating Nigeria. It can't be divorced from politics back home.

• Abderrahim Bourkia

The 2019 Africa Cup of Nations in Egypt and football’s peculiar hold on national identity.

• James M. Dorsey

Egypt got knocked out in the Round of 16, but the hosts have been hamstrung by multiple events, including the military's control.

• Loes Oudenhuijsen

Queer identities, widely accepted on the pitch in women's football, may be the way to challenge gender norms in some societies.

• 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.

• 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

The author, French: "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 Suzanne 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 Kylian Mbappé and hate Karim 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, a striker prone to making black power salutes, was left out out of Brazil's World Cup squad.

• 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.