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FIFA
Posted inNews/Politics, Sport
Fifa, Blatter and SA crookery: No surprises
So Sepp Blatter gets the Fifa presidency again at the tender age of 79. He has been president since 1998, far too long to be in power over one of the most powerful, economy-boosting juggernauts the world has ever known. If a country gets the green light to host the World Cup, the payoffs for […]
Posted inNews/Politics, Sport
Ah yes…Jordaan and Africa’s first World Cup…remember that
By Bernadine Jones Fifa has been implicated in a scandal of note — bigger than Giggle-in-Chief ‘s Nkandla apparently. The South African 2010 World Cup tournament was punctuated by euphoria. South Africans forgot their flaws, their divisions, their classifications, and for one brief moment, we really were the rainbow nation, hosting “Africa’s first World Cup”, […]
Posted inEquality, Sport
The sociology of soccer
A few weeks ago, I was invited to respond to a paper at a seminar jointly hosted by the departments of sociology and anthropology at the University of Johannesburg. The presenter was soccer sociologist Dr Marc Fletcher, a post-doctoral fellow in the department and his paper interrogated as part of a larger thesis, that both […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Davos: Why isn’t education higher up on the agenda?
By Pauline Rose This week business leaders are gathering in Davos to debate global priorities at the World Economic Forum. The forum declares itself to be “committed to improving the state of the world”. So why isn’t education higher up on the agenda? On the face of it, there should be little need to make […]
Posted inSport
Sex and drugs and the Olympic roll
With the Summer Olympics in London approaching, most of the world will soon be captivated by the primitive spectacle of sport. National teams will compete for the irrational glorification of the nation state they represent, whatever their parentage, whether they were born in that country or elsewhere. The well-resourced nations will take most of the […]
Posted inGeneral, Lifestyle, Sport
These Chinese football imports are not fong-kong
The rate at which world top football stars are migrating to China, I am starting to believe Sepp Blatter that maybe, just maybe football began in the communist state. The latest this week was former Chelsea and Ivory Coast striker Didier Drogba who decided to part ways with the Yorkshire pudding for the Shenghai sushi. […]