Play ball! Soccer, that is.

By Jason Kirby - Wednesday, April 20, 2011 at 3:50 PM - 2 Comments

Michael Probst/AP

Football, footy, soccer—whatever you call it, most Americans still don’t get it. But that hasn’t stopped a few Americans, very wealthy ones, from taking a serious interest in the sport overseas. On April 11, U.S. billionaire Stan Kroenke bought Arsenal, the English soccer team, for US$1.2 billion in cash. Kroenke, who made his fortune in real estate development and then became considerably richer when he married Ann Walton of the Wal-Mart Walton clan, already sat on the team’s board of directors. Now the famed club is part of his growing sports empire, which includes the Denver Nuggets of the NBA and the NHL Colorado Avalanche. The deal came just days after basketball star LeBron James took a minority stake in the soccer club Liverpool. Last year, Fenway Sports Group, a company controlled by Florida hedge-fund manager John Henry and Hollywood producer Tom Werner, paid US$488 million to buy the club.

Canada expected to host 2015 Women’s World Cup

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, March 1, 2011 at 12:23 PM - 3 Comments

Canada’s only competitor in the bid for the Women’s World Cup of soccer in 2015 has dropped out. With Zimbabwe gone, it’s likely Canada will host the games. Canada’s bid must still be approved by FIFA. If successful, Canada would also hold an under-20 test event in 2014. This year’s Women’s World Cup takes place in Germany starting June 26.

CBC News

Chile's president gets a yellow card

By Nadja Drost - Friday, December 3, 2010 at 10:00 AM - 5 Comments

There are allegations that Piñera was involved in a coach's resignation ; Head coach Bielsa in November | Alex Ibanez/Presidencia de Chile; Ivan Alvarado/Reuters

The stunning rescue of 33 miners did wonders for Chilean President Sebastián Piñera. After the miners rose from the depths, Piñera’s popularity climbed by 10 points to 63 per cent, according to a poll conducted by Adimark, a government-commissioned polling firm. Now, his approval ratings may hinge on the future success of Chile’s national soccer team.

As he toured Europe shortly following the mine rescue in October, Piñera, who won the presidency last January, was treated as Latin America’s new star, still riding the crest of a wave of popularity. Until, that is, he found himself in the crosshairs of a controversy centred on perhaps the one thing Chileans will rally around more than 33 miners stuck underground: soccer. “Soccer is having an effect on politics, and the direct responsibility for this lies with the president,” said Mauricio Morales, a professor of political science at Diego Portales University in Santiago. “We have never seen this before in Chile. Never.”

Continue…

A coffee-table book with benefits

By macleans.ca - Thursday, October 7, 2010 at 4:00 PM - 0 Comments

Michael Cullen/ Mick Tsikas/Reuters Jack Bush's 'Thanksgiving.' 1954: The Painters Eleven/ Afghanistan defeats Russia to win

PAINTERS ELEVEN:THE WILD ONES OF CANADIAN ART
Iris Nowell

The Painters Eleven were abstract artists based in Toronto who banded together in 1953 with a goal: to make waves in the tranquil pool of Canadian landscape art. In other words, no more pine trees. The Painters Eleven drafted a statement, of sorts, saying, “there is no jury but time.” The work would speak for itself.
In her new book, Iris Nowell helps the rest of us understand this group of abstract artists who dared to create a footprint unlike the Group of Seven’s. So, who were they? Toronto’s top art teachers, illustrators, commercial artists and art directors. They joined the city’s established art societies, cannily, and tried to bring about change from within. It wasn’t easy, but they revolutionized contemporary art in Toronto and bestowed legitimacy on abstract expressionism after it had gained fame in America and the Automatistes had made inroads in Quebec.

Opening the hefty book, readers are immediately treated to 11 colour reproductions—no titles, no dates, no dimensions, no artist name printed politely at the side. Nowell is saying, “Look at these! The work deserves this lavish treatment.” And she’s right. Nowell has given us a coffee table book with benefits. Examining the members’ artistic development toward abstraction, she peppers the text with chatty anecdotes, biographic details and telling character descriptions. If you thought you’d heard all about artist Tom Hodgson’s carousing in his studio, called the Pit, think again. If abstract art was the group’s unifying force, so was boxing and booze—martinis, to be exact, and Walter Yarwood’s Bloody Murphy. Nowell recounts how socialite Alexandra Luke, one of the two females in the group, had to sell an Emily Carr painting to buy art supplies. Her book is an accessible account that leaves the reader with one burning question: who is the mystery benefactor who partially bankrolled this lush publication?
- JOANNE LATIMER

INVASION OF THE PROSTATE SNATCHERS
Mark Scholz and Ralph Blum

The humble prostate is man’s great unknown. Buried somewhere in our nether regions, it is a walnut-sized enigma that (I’m told) is crucial to the reproduction of the species and is accessible only via an almost comically uncomfortable process involving a finger, a rubber glove and a hospital gown. But is what usually follows as necessary as the medical establishment claims?

Not entirely, according to authors Ralph Blum and Mark Scholz, who paired up for what might be subtitled Conversations With and About My Cancerous Prostate. Blum has had prostate cancer for 20 years, and he uses his experience as an example of the near-uselessness of biopsies and resulting surgery—one alarming statistic reveals that roughly 80 per cent of prostate surgeries are unnecessary. Prostate cancer is the whale shark of the cancer world: slow-moving and benign. He and co-author Scholz, himself a doctor specializing in prostate cancer, talk about why men almost always opt for surgery: straight-up fear, the insistence of surgery-mad urologists who run “the prostate cancer world,” the human male’s tendency to want to cut the damn thing out and be done with it. Rather than have surgery, Blum embarked on self-treatment and active surveillance—closely monitoring cancer markers and trying a series of often out-there experimental therapies, some more successful than others. (Spirit-channelling shaman? Silver-infused water? Blum tried them all.) His methods are scattershot, and that’s just the point. By staying positive (and keeping an eye on the markers) there are hundreds of possible treatments for this particular cancer. A breezy and effortless writer, Blum writes endearingly about the emasculating travails of at once losing one’s libido and ability to perform, a side effect of testosterone blocking therapy, while Scholz gives a welcome wariness to the practices of much of the medical establishment. A worthy read for anyone about to assume the position.
- MARTIN PATRIQUIN

HOME AND AWAY:THE SEARCH FOR DREAMS AT THE HOMELESS WORLD CUP OF SOCCER
Dave Bidini

The singer-songwriter from the beloved (and now defunct) Canadian band the Rheostatics is known for writing about games that are played in unlikely places—baseball in Italy, hockey in Hong Kong. Dave Bidini’s latest quirky sport story is a mix of familiar and foreign, as he follows the Canadian homeless soccer team to Melbourne, Australia, for the 2008 Homeless World Cup Tournament.

Bidini does a fine job portraying the Canadian team: Krystal, an 18-year-old black woman who never fit in with her adopted family; Billy, the Greek, who played soccer professionally and then ran his family’s business until becoming hooked on narcotics; sane, sober Jerry, whose multiple failed business ventures left him destitute. Bidini affectionately recounts some of their signature plays on the pitch (street soccer, a four-on-four game with two seven-minute halves, is played on a smaller field to accommodate players’ fitness and health levels)—like the way Jerry would hold the ball underfoot like a man resting his foot on a curbside. And their awkward social forays. Billy suggested that the team adopt “Souvlaki” as its anthem.

“That’s a song?” asked the coach. “A song, a food. Whatever,” was Billy’s reply.

Bidini also aptly covers the range of homeless experiences represented by the 54 nations who competed at Melbourne, including the all-female Cameroon team who left their street babies back home. Bidini holds a “long-standing belief in the redemptive properties of sport,” and to some extent, his book reflects this ideal. After returning to Canada, Billy reconciled with his parents and Krystal started playing soccer semi-professionally. But Bidini also hints at the fact that homelessness is too complex a problem to be solved by a soccer ball. He mentions players getting high before games and going AWOL for days at a time. He asked a young, strung-out Australian woman what the tournament meant to her. “I don’t get very mushy about things,” she replied. “That’s my life, you know, and that’s how I f–ked it up.”
- DAFNA IZENBERG

THE LAMPSHADE
Mark Jacobson

In early 2006, just months after hurricane Katrina, Skip Henderson was prowling the melancholy streets of New Orleans when he came upon a junkie selling storm-ravaged items. Among them was a small lamp.

Henderson’s collector’s eye recognized the metal frame as a central European, mid-20th-century work. But the shade . . . What is this made of? he asked. “The skin of Jews.” Henderson had no reason to believe it, but sent the shade to a journalist friend, Jacobson, who passed it along to a genetic lab. The verdict arrived 118 years to the day after Hitler’s birth: human origin.

With that, Jacobson’s utterly engrossing and profoundly disquieting search for answers is off and running. He re-examines the postwar stories that the Nazis didn’t just murder Jews by the millions but rendered their body fat into soap and their skin into leather. Ilse Koch, the so-called Bitch of Buchenwald—immortalized in the B movie Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS—reportedly ordered such lampshades made, once as a birthday present for her husband, the camp commander. Buchenwald’s American liberators displayed a table of horrors that included a purportedly human-skin lampshade. But that lampshade disappeared, no others surfaced and no charges were ever entered in war-crimes trials. Most scholars long ago dismissed the beliefs as myths that captured the essence of a genocide both diabolical and prosaically industrial.

Even the shade’s drug addict seller, who had stolen it from an abandoned home, had no real reason to think it was a Holocaust artifact. He was just one of the many people Jacobson encounters—all of them of an age to remember the old stories—who somehow instinctively recognize the shade for what it is. In the end, its stubbornly murky origins matter less to Jacobson than a single question: what on Earth should he do with it? No Holocaust museum would accept it, leaving Jacobson, as he leaves the reader, with a hard choice: bury the shade—and all hope of further discovery—or keep both in the land of the living.
- BRIAN BETHUNE

GREAT HOUSE
Nicole Krauss

As she did in The History of Love, the American writer weaves seemingly disparate stories around a singular object—this time, a massive desk—and only at the novel’s conclusion do all the interconnections become clear. There’s a solitary novelist in New York who borrowed the desk from a passionate young poet, subsequently tortured and killed in Pinochet’s Chile. In Israel, a widower struggles to make sense of his antagonism toward his adult son. In London, a waifish pair of siblings rattle around an antique-filled house while their father combs the Earth to find the furniture the Nazis stole from his parents before killing them. Nearby, a professor of literature stumbles across a secret that his wife, a supremely self-contained woman now suffering from dementia, has kept all her life.

Each story takes the form of a confession, and each is, in itself, deeply compelling, both because the characters’ voices are so distinct and because their situations are so richly imagined. Here’s the New York novelist explaining a lover’s reasons for dumping her: “The gist was that he had a secret self, a cowardly, despicable self he could never show me, and that he needed to go away like a sick animal until he could improve this self and bring it up to a standard he judged deserving of company.” And here’s the widower, berating his son for renting a BMW: “You’re such a big shot that you can’t accept a Hyundai like everyone else? You have to specially pay extra for a car made by the sons of Nazis?”

As in her previous two novels, there’s a lot about the writing life—many of the characters are writers, or would like to be—but Krauss no longer seems to be angling for an A from the postmodern tricksters who have influenced her style. Here, narrative is the point. She doesn’t quite tie everything together convincingly in Great House, but the characters feel so real, and the sense of loss they share is so powerfully distilled, it’s easy to forgive minor construction flaws.
- KATE FILLION

GOD AND SEX: WHAT THE BIBLE REALLY SAYS
Michael Coogan

A serious scholar (editor of  the New Oxford Annotated Bible) with a sense of humour, Harvard lecturer Coogan has long been bemused by the way all sides in various debates, from abortion to same-sex marriage, reference the Bible without knowing much about what it really says. The language of sex and of beauty is culturally specific, he points out, and while the male speaker in the Song of Songs clearly means high praise for his lover when he compares her hair to “a flock of goats streaming down from Mount Gilead,” a modern beau would be ill-advised to say as much to his beloved. Likewise, sexual euphemisms, which range from the familiar carnal overtones of “knowing” to the less often recognized use of “feet” for genitalia: the Israelite heroine Jael was able to drive a tent peg into an enemy commander’s skull because “between her feet he knelt down, there he fell, wasted” (Judges 5:27).

The meat of the book, though, lies in Coogan’s discussion of what Scripture says about current hot-button issues. Almost all sexual transgressions involving women, from adultery to incest and rape, are treated as property crimes, because they usurp another male’s rights to a woman or diminish her financial value. Abortion is not mentioned, and the few references to fetuses are not clear about their status as human persons.

As for homosexuality, the last of the New Testament’s three condemnations (Romans 1:26-27) speaks of homoerotic relations as divinely imposed, a concept, Coogan notes, “not very far from the modern view that sexual orientation is innate,” not chosen. The Old Testament’s two explicit references are found with other instances of Israelite rejection of what scholars call “category confusion”: crossbreeding animals, planting different crops in the same field, wearing clothing woven from different kinds of yarn. Needless to say, these are prohibitions long ignored. And just as we no longer scan the Bible for agricultural advice, Coogan concludes, we ought to be at least as wary about its social policy prescriptions.
- BRIAN BETHUNE

How a team loses actually matters

By Stephen Marche - Thursday, July 22, 2010 at 11:00 AM - 0 Comments

Alessandra Tarantino/AP

Winning isn’t everything. It’s not the only thing, either, as Vince Lombardi would have us believe. It is, in fact, a rare thing. (Just ask the Dutch, who have now flubbed out of a record three World Cup finals. Their loss was rough and they took it badly, whining about the referee without cause.) The World Cup in South Africa 2010 produced one winner and 31 losers, many more if you include all the teams that never made it to the tournament. And while Spain will go down in history, the rest will all be forgotten. Which is a shame. The losers, after all, make up the bulk of the competitors and the way they lose is so much more revealing than the way they win, each defeat a minor insight into national characteristics. To steal from Tolstoy: all victories are alike; every defeat is miserable in its own way.

Continue…

Why we don't watch soccer

By Colin Campbell - Thursday, July 22, 2010 at 11:00 AM - 20 Comments

Getty Images

In 1988 the United States won the right to host the 1994 World Cup. For soccer fans, this was to be the beginning of the end of their sport’s struggle for relevance in North America. But nearly 25 years later, little has changed. Aside from the once-every-four-years hoopla surrounding the World Cup, soccer remains a third-rank pro sport in the U.S. and Canada.

America’s World Cup playoff match against Ghana last month drew 19.4 million viewers in the U.S. Significant, but far less than the 27.6 million who watched the U.S.-Canada Olympic hockey final. In Canada, the World Cup was the most watched program in the last week of June, with about two million viewers—about the same number who watched Global TV’s police drama Rookie Blue. Neither the arrival of Major League Soccer in 1996 nor its luring of stars like David Beckham stateside have been able to propel the game into the big leagues of North American pro sport.

Continue…

Newsmakers

By macleans.ca - Friday, July 16, 2010 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

Unforgettable goal, unforgettable friend
When Andrés Iniesta clinched the World Cup after smashing home the game winner deep into overtime, he honoured his friend Dani Jarque. Spain’s humble playmaker tore off his jersey, revealing an undershirt with the words “Dani Jarque: always with us” written in blue marker. Jarque, a teammate on Spain’s lineup since the pair cracked the under-15 squad, died a year ago, aged 26, a month after being made captain of Espanyol.

Continue…

The mogul and the damage done

By Sonya Bell - Thursday, July 1, 2010 at 1:40 PM - 1 Comment

Hussein Malla/AP

Vuvuzelas roar to life at dawn in South Africa, like many wild beasts that roam the savannah. Their single, painful note bellows from dusty shantytowns to air-conditioned shopping malls. They merge into packs at game time and wail as one in the streets, startling World Cup visitors who spin around in search of elephants.

Yes, the innovator of the vuvuzela admits—the noise keeps him up at night, too.

Continue…

World Cup Week in Review: Week 2

By James Doyle - Monday, June 28, 2010 at 5:00 PM - 1 Comment

Day 9

Netherlands 1-0 Japan

Japan and the Netherlands each arrived in Durban with a win in the bag. Things started slowly, however, as the Japanese worked to stifle Dutch creativity in a midfield that sorely lacked the influence of injured playmaker Arjen Robben. A tentative first half ended with just one shot on goal apiece, but the Dutch came out gunning after the break, with Robin van Persie finding ways to come to grips with the Japanese defence. The pressure finally paid off in the 53^rd minute when Wesley Sneijder’s strike had enough venom to push past Japanese goalkeeper Eiji Kawashima’s hands and into the net. Fighting uphill, Japan were forced to open up their game, but couldn’t engineer a way back into the contest.

Ghana 1-1 Australia

Brett Holman gave the Socceroos the start they needed after an opening-match drubbing by Germany, firing home a lucky rebound in the 11th minute. But the Australians were to prove their own worst enemy once again, as Harry Kewell was sent off for using his arm to block a free kick on the goal line. Asamoah Gyan converted the subsequent penalty to restore parity. Ten-man Australia stayed strong, and the game became a goaltending duel, with Luke Wilkshire stopped by Richard Kingson after 72 minutes, and keeper Mark Schwarzer denying Quincy Owusu Abeyie a Ghanain winner in the closing minutes.

Denmark 2-1 Cameroon

With a loss each in their opening matches, both Denmark and Cameroon had something to prove in this contest. And Cameroon looked like they had the better of the argument early on, as some thoughtless defending gifted Cameroon the ball in a dangerous area, and Samuel Eto’o gratefully slammed it home. Denmark fought  back, however, in the 33^rd minute when a lightning-quick counterattack ended with a sliding Nicklas Bendtner poking the ball in. The Danes nearly spoiled their progress—another goalmouth giveaway gave Eto’o a chance that slammed into the post—but they eventually sealed their comeback when Dennis Rommdahl streaked through the defence and curled a lovely left-footer around Hamidou Souleymanou.

Denmark left the game with hope that they can still qualify, but Coach Morten Olsen will be furious at the generous defending.

Next: Day 10

World Cup: When giants stumble

By Stephen Marche - Monday, June 28, 2010 at 11:16 AM - 4 Comments

Dylan Martinez/Reuters

Note: this article was published in Maclean’s magazine before Sunday’s game, in which England was eliminated after being defeated by Germany.

The old cliché of soccer as “the world’s game” is only half-right. Everybody plays soccer, that much is true.

The business of the game, however, belongs to a handful of elite European sides who own and control most of the world’s best players and provide the majority of the world’s most exciting games. Even during the World Cup and the Euro Cup, when soccer as business appears to be replaced, momentarily, with furies of unbridled patriotism, the influence of club football is never far away, continually affecting the action of the national teams. The two may seem like separate but not necessarily opposed loyalties. You cheer for your club during the regular season and then you cheer for your country during the tournaments. But the antagonism of the two modes of football is actually quite ferocious. Club football brings down international football and international football makes a mockery of club football.

Continue…

Soccer like art? Sure, with more fighting

By Andrew Potter - Wednesday, June 23, 2010 at 8:40 AM - 1 Comment

Darren Staples/Reuters

The World Cup had an early case of life imitating advertising on Saturday, when England goalkeeper Robert Green let a slow shot from American striker Clint Dempsey skip off his hands and into the net. The goal salvaged a tie for the U.S.A., and the deep meaning of it all could be discerned from the comparative reaction of the two countries’ tabloids.

“Hand of Clod!” screamed at least two London dailies, a reference to Diego Maradona’s infamous handball goal that put England out of the 1986 finals. Across the pond, the New York Post captured the spirit of things with its gloating front page: “USA Wins 1-1”.

Continue…

Week one at World Cup: an emotional affair

By macleans.ca - Monday, June 21, 2010 at 5:00 PM - 3 Comments

Next photo

World Cup 2010: Week in review

By Daniel Squizzato - Friday, June 18, 2010 at 5:50 PM - 0 Comments

South Africa vs. Mexico

South Africa 1 – Mexico 1

The tournament couldn’t have started better for South Africa, as a stunning, top-corner strike from Siphiwe Tshabalala put the home side ahead early in the second half. With over 80,000 fans and the blaring vuvuzelas urging them onward, the Bafana Bafana played an exciting, uptempo game—but a defensive lapse inside their own penalty area allowed Mexican captain Rafael Marquez to score an equalizing goal in the 79^th minute. Though Mexico controlled most of the possession, it was South Africa that nearly grabbe

France 0 – Uruguay 0

Fans still buzzing from the scintillating back-and-forth action of the tournament’s opener quickly had the mojo sapped from them by this dreary affair. The highest drama may have been the tournament’s first red card—Uruguay’s Nicolas Lodeiro was sent off following a second yellow card in the 81^st minute. With only six shots on goal between them throughout this match, neither side did much to endear themselves to fans—except, perhaps, those of South Africa and Mexico, who saw that Group A was still completely wide open after the World Cup’s opening day.

Next: Day 2

When ancient grievances are played out on the soccer pitch

By Stephen Marche - Friday, June 18, 2010 at 10:27 AM - 0 Comments

When the U.S. tied England, it was as good as a victory HOANG DINH NAM/AFP/Getty Images

There is a very small chance that North Korea and South Korea will meet each other at this year’s World Cup. Just thinking about that possibility, however distant, offers a peculiar and dangerous thrill. A game played with a bouncy ball on a field of grass would undoubtedly affect the military situation of East Asia. Politics and football have always tended to mix explosively.

Games have stopped wars, as in the 1967 exhibition game in Lagos, starring Pele, for whom the warring factions in the Nigerian civil war called a 48-hour truce. And football has started wars too, like the 1969 “Soccer War” between El Salvador and Honduras, begun over a qualification game. The World Cup contains many rivalries whose origin, whether on or off the pitch, can be difficult to distinguish. (England and Argentina in 1986 being a prime example.) If war is politics by other means, then football is war by means of a game. The world-historical background to many of the contests on the pitch is one of the most subtle and enduring pleasures of the tournament.

Continue…

North Korean love affair

By Michael Barclay - Thursday, June 17, 2010 at 9:40 AM - 3 Comments

KELD NAVNTOFT/EPA/KEYSTONE PRESS

It was a friendly invitation from one paranoid dictatorship to another. In the lead-up to the World Cup in South Africa this month, Robert Mugabe’s government invited the North Korean soccer team to come to Zimbabwe to acclimatize and train before their big games. The North Koreans accepted the gracious offer in April, until they found out where exactly they would be training.

Continue…

Tattoos on the soccer pitch

By macleans.ca - Friday, June 11, 2010 at 12:29 PM - 1 Comment

CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE

Newsmakers

By macleans.ca - Friday, June 11, 2010 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

Tiny showstopper
It was Warrant Officer Russell Arsenault’s day to be honoured for service in Afghanistan, but it was his two-year-old daughter’s moment in the sun when she decided to stroll the aisle at a presentation ceremony at Rideau Hall and talk loudly to some of the assembled troops. Even the Governor General realized that young Rose Arsenault was stealing the show. So Michaëlle Jean stopped her speech, approached the little girl and asked, “Who’s your daddy?” After Rose was back in her seat, her proud papa received the Meritorious Service Medal.

And because he can see Canada from his house . . .
When Prime Minister Vladimir Putin banned the seal hunt in his native Russia, he won the heart of PETA spokesperson Pamela Anderson. After learning about his “fondness for animals,” she sent Putin an affectionate letter asking him to refuse seal-pelt imports from Canada. Meanwhile, Brooke Shields got no love from PETA after having a Danish mink coat made especially for her. A PETA blogger called her a “fur pimp,” but Shields was unapologetic: “I will wear the fur garment when I follow my children to school, when I drink coffee and when I sleep.”

Continue…

Aiming high

By Philippe Gohier - Thursday, June 10, 2010 at 11:40 AM - 0 Comments

Nike

Nike’s latest ad campaign ranks among the most ambitious in the company’s history. The centrepiece is an epic three-minute commercial directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu (Babel, Amores Perros, 21 Grams) that features some of the biggest names in international soccer—England’s Wayne Rooney, Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo, and the Ivory Coast’s Didier Drogba—plus cameos by Kobe Bryant and Homer Simpson. The ad, titled “Write the Future,” purports to show how a single play in a World Cup match can be the difference between a lifetime of adulation and one of despair, though Nike wasn’t allowed to name the tournament because it’s not a sponsor. What it also shows is just how far Nike is willing to go to seize ground from the actual sponsor, Adidas.

Continue…

It’s time to get loud and proud

By macleans.ca - Thursday, June 10, 2010 at 11:40 AM - 0 Comments

SHAUN CURRY / AFP / GETTY IMAGES

In warm-up matches for the World Cup last year, players complained about the deafening roar of the plastic trumpets, known as vuvuzelas, blown by rowdy South African fans. FIFA officials considered handing out earplugs.

During the World Cup, that kind of exuberant cheering will be on display in virtually every corner of the globe. In a sport where face painting and costumes are standard fan attire, everyone is a superfan.

MORE WORLD CUP
Ladies on the sidelines (photos) | Top 5 World Cup commercials | Soccer’s biggest fakers (video) | When to watch |+ more

Where to watch

By macleans.ca - Thursday, June 10, 2010 at 11:40 AM - 0 Comments

BRYNJAR GAUTI / AP

Halifax
Maxwell’s Plum, 1600 Grafton St.
Gatsby’s Pub and Eatery, 5675 Spring
Garden Rd.

Montreal
Café Olimpico, 124 rue St-Viateur Ouest
Café Frappe, 3900 boul. St-Laurent

Ottawa
The Georgetown Sports Pub,
1159 Bank St.

Winnipeg
The Brit Cafe, 2615 Portage Ave.
Bar Italia, 737 Corydon Avenue

Regina
The Press Box, 909 Albert St.

Calgary
The Ship & Anchor, 534 17th Ave. SW

Edmonton
Crown and Anchor Pub,
15277 Castle Downs Road NW

Vancouver
The Three Lions Pub, 1-1 Broadway E
Abruzzo Cappuccino Bar,
1321 Commercial Dr.

All games also on CBC television and Rogers On Demand

MORE WORLD CUP
Ladies on the sidelines (photos) | Top 5 World Cup commercials | Soccer’s biggest fakers (video) | When to watch |+ more

A sport for athletes and actors, too

By Martin Patriquin - Thursday, June 10, 2010 at 11:40 AM - 0 Comments

Brian Bahr / Getty Images

For those who believe soccer is more about acting than athleticism, few moments rival the “confrontation” (if you can call it that) between Brazilian star Rivaldo and Turkey’s Hakan Unsal during a World Cup match in 2002. With his team leading 2-1, Rivaldo appeared to be taking his time for a corner kick—all the better to eat time off the clock. Unsal thought so, anyway, and lightly kicked the ball at Rivaldo in protest. The ball bounced off of the Brazilian’s right thigh.

Rivaldo buckled at the knees, fell to the ground and covered his face in agony, as though a sniper had shot him between the eyes. As a result, the referee issued a red card and Unsal was sent off, stymieing Turkey’s comeback effort. Rivaldo was as indifferent to the incident as he was about the ensuing fine—which amounted to less than half a day’s pay for the Brazilian. “[Soccer] is a game and people have to be cunning,” he shrugged.

Continue…

Soccer scandals: the not-so-beautiful shame

By Susan Mohammad - Thursday, June 10, 2010 at 11:40 AM - 0 Comments

REUTERS / Shaun Best

When the first ball is kicked at the opening match of the 2010 FIFA World Cup on June 11, billions of viewers will witness a source of pride for the continent of Africa. The momentous occasion will open with the usual pomp and circumstance (R & B superstar R. Kelly will perform, U.S. President Barack Obama may be in attendance, and couturier Louis Vuitton is designing a custom travel case for the trophy), and will feature the teams and athletic heroes of 32 nations. Yet, for all the hoopla, the “beautiful game” has, in recent times, been tainted by unprecedented shame and scandal.

News last month that Lord Triesman resigned as head of England’s 2018 World Cup bid team, after suggesting Spain and Russia are planning to bribe referees at the upcoming event, shocked fans and may have fatally threatened England’s bid to host the next World Cup. The comments were secretly taped by a woman who claims she had an affair with the married former Labour Party minister, and came only two days after he launched his country’s bid alongside David Beckham. During the ill-fated conversation, Triesman, who was also forced to give up his role as chairman of the English Football Association, said Spain was looking for Russia’s help in bribing referees to favour its team, in exchange for supporting Russia’s venture to host the 2018 tournament.

Continue…

The Messi-ah

By Stephen Marche - Thursday, June 10, 2010 at 11:40 AM - 0 Comments

ALBERTO ESTEVEZ / EPA / KEYSTONE

To people who do not love sports, the whole business may seem slightly ridiculous. Grown men punching each other. Girls twirling on figure skates. Men kicking balls around. To those who do understand sports, however, mainly children and obsessives, the games themselves are merely formalities for the main attraction, the real reason we watch sports: to witness the emergence of heroes. Everything else—the rules, the skills, the structure of the agon—is just an excuse. The current World Cup is the ultimate proof of this truth. The whole tournament is an elaborate mechanism, involving teams from every corner of the globe, to focus the eyes of the world on a single man, the Argentinian forward Lionel Messi. South Africa 2010 is about him.

Continue…

A game like no other

By Jonathon Gatehouse and Nancy Macdonald - Tuesday, June 8, 2010 at 11:32 AM - 0 Comments

Jorge Silva / Reuters

Like an apparition in red, South Africa’s Soccer City Stadium rises from the spare, bone-dry grasslands on the western fringe of Soweto, the Johannesburg township that Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu and soccer star Steve Pienaar once called home. The curvy, 95,000-seat venue, clad in a mosaic of earthy reds and browns, looks like a calabash, a traditional pot used to cook and brew beer. At night, a row of lights along the bottom simulates a fire, completing the illusion.

Last month, the striking soccer pitch overlooking the downtown skyline still seemed ominously like a construction zone—piles of gravel, pallets and concrete tubing scattered outside—although it had officially been declared “finished” 18 months earlier. Just final prettying, it turned out, of the stadium’s spectacular $461-million makeover; part of an ambitious program that has seen South Africa, host of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, construct two brand-new pitches, and rebuild or renovate seven others almost from the grounds up for the competition that begins June 11.

Continue…