Watching last week’s fantastic 3-3 draw between Barcelona and Real Madrid, I was reminded of my favorite nickname today. Its not often that a player’s nickname fits as appropriately as Leonel Messi’s designation as “the atomic flea” (la pulga atómica). Anyone who has seen the Barca wonderkid play knows that his quick movements are as unstoppable (and annoying) to defenders as a flea is to a dog rolling on its back trying to rid itself of a pest.

La Pulga Atómica

Argentines might just be the modern masters of nicknames. Many Argentine players have creative and unique unofficial names. A few of my favorites:Sergio Aguero, Atletico Madrid’s young Argentine forward, has proven this year that he has the potential to be as good as Messi. His nickname rivals that of the atomic flea, too. Aguero is known as “El Kun” because of his apparent resemblance of a Japanese anime character (kun is a title often added to the names of boys in Japanese, e.g. Sergio-kun).

El Kun

Carlos Tevez could, quite possibly, be the ugliest soccer player ever. I always assumed his nickname “El Apache” was a derogatory reference to the native American group, but it turns out he is called this because he is from a barrio commonly known as Fuerte Apache.

El Apache

Tevez’s traveling partner in recent years has been Javier Mascherano. The defensive midfielder went with Tevez to Corinthians and later to West Ham (he’s since moved on to Liverpool). Though Hammers fans only briefly witnessed Mascherano’s talents, they led to him being dubbed el jefecito (the little chief) back home in Argentina. Liverpool fans will now be hoping that he bosses games at Anfield like he did for years in South America and lives up to his title.

Pablo Aimar has experienced a revival of sorts this year playing at Real Zaragoza after falling out of favor with Valencia. He has returned to the free-flowing style that led Argentines to nickname him el payaso (the clown). His wild hair (which he had cropped at the time of his appearance in the classic Adidas Footballitis commercials) does also make him resemble Crusty the Clown.

El Payaso

Javier Zanetti was controversially left off of Argentina’s 2006 World Cup team. Too bad because if he had played, we would have been able to hear his nickname: el Pupi. The blog Mexican Wave thinks this comes from the name of the foundation of the same name Zanetti runs (it helps impoverished youth in Argentina). I’m not sure if this is right (I suspect the nickname may have come before the foundation’s name), but it’s a sure bet that Zanetti’s nickname isn’t anything most English speakers wondered when they first read it.

El Pupi

The most unique origin for a nickname goes to Inter striker Julio Cruz. Wikipedia tells his story:

His nickname, “the gardener”, “El Jardinero” in Spanish, was given to him at a young in age in Argentina. He was working as a gardner [sic] for lowly local team Banfield, cutting the grass and looking after the pitch, and when coach Oscar López was missing a player one day for a practise match, he was called over to make up the numbers. After noticing his talent, Banfield signed him. Since then Julio has always been known as El Jardinero.

El Jardinero

And to finish off, a few Argentine blasts from the past with excellent nicknames:

• Marcelo Gallardo: el muñeco (the doll)
• Germán Burgos: el mono (the monkey)
• Ariel Ortega: el burrito (the little donkey)
• Claudio Lopez: el piojo (the louse)
• Juan Sebastian Verón: la brujita (the little witch)

Edoardo Isella has only ever played once for the Mexican national team. His 45 minutes in a friendly against Bolivia in 2000 were unremarkable. Isella told Guadalajara’s Mural newspaper after the game, “I didn’t play as well as I would have liked to.”

But Isella’s debut was remarkable in another way. The cap he earned in 2000 made him the first Afro-Mexican player (that I have found after extensive research) to represent El Tricolor.

The next year, another Afro-Mexican, Melvin Brown, nicknamed Melvin de los Choko Krispis or “Melvin of the Cocoa Crispies” would make his debut for Mexico. Brown’s national team career lasted longer than Isella’s, culminating in him making the 2002 World Cup team (though he never played).

Both Isella and Brown currently play for Jaguares, a Chiapas-based team in the Mexican Primera. They have fallen out of favor with regard to the national team and play their football in relative obscurity.

Isella (L) and Brown (R)

Their obscurity reflects the status of Afro-Mexicans in general. Though many have lived there for centuries, many Mexicans, not to mention outsiders, are unaware of this segment of their population.

The first Afro-Mexicans are believed to have been brought to the country in the 16th by the Spanish conquistadors. The black population in Mexico grew quickly as Spaniards continued to import slaves, going from 20,000 in 1570 to 35,000 by 1646, according to anthropologist Bobby Vaughan. In total, it is believed that 200,000 or more slaves may have been brought to Mexico before slavery was abolished in 1821.

The current Afro-Mexican population is made up of the descendants of former slaves, many of whom intermarried with native Mexicans. The Afro-Mexican population has also been augmented by several waves of migration.

A group of runaway slaves in the United States had married Seminole Indians and formed their own communities. In the middle of the 19th century, these so-called “maroons,” under threat from Native American groups and the American army, escaped to Mexico and became part of the Afro-Mexican population.

John Horse (aka Juan Caballo), leader of Black Seminole group that went to Mexico in 1849

Blacks continue to come to Mexico today. Many are economic migrants, members of black populations in countries, coming to relatively prosperous Mexico to improve their lives. Both Edoardo Isella and Melvin Brown fall into this category (Isella’s father is from Honduras while Brown’s grandparents are Jamaican).Most Afro-Mexicans today live in coastal states of Southern Mexico, largely isolated from the rest of the country. Many Mexicans are unaware of their existence simply because they have never met or seen an Afro-Mexican.

The status of Afro-Mexicans, therefore, is hard to define. Bobby Vaughan told the Guardian in 2005, “This is the one community that is not recognised nationally. Indigenous groups are worse off in many ways, but at least they are paid lip service. Mexicans of African descent have no voice and the government makes no attempt to assess their needs, no effort to even count them.”

Afro-Mexicans in the Costa Chica region

Soccer players like Edoardo Isella and Melvin Brown have made Mexicans more aware of the Afro-Mexican community. They have also forced Mexicans to confront their attitudes toward this minority group.

Isella rose to prominence while at Chivas, a team known for fielding only Mexican players. Writing in the newspaper Reforma on October 12, 2000, Sergio Patiño said Isella had received “constant criticism from Chivas purists, for being a foreigner and for having dark skin” (translation my own).

Controversy over Afro-Mexicans arose most prominently in 2005 when the Mexican Postal Service issued stamps commemorating the cartoon character Memí­n Pinguin. Memí­n, an Afro-Mexican comic book character around since the 1940s, was seen by some as racist. They cited a story line in which Memí­n was told that as a black he could not go to heaven. Jesse Jackson called for then-President Vicente Fox to take the stamp off the market.

Many in Mexico did not understand these criticisms. Some cited another issue in which Memí­n traveled to Texas and was refused service because of his race.

Covers of Memín Pinguín

Historian Enrique Krauze represented the Mexican perspective in his 2005 opinion piece in the Washington Post called “The Pride in Memin Pinguin.”

To Americans, the figure, with his exaggerated “African” features, appears to be a copy of racist American cartoons. To Mexicans, he is a thoroughly likable character, rich in sparkling wisecracks, and is felt to represent not any sense of racial discrimination but rather the egalitarian possibility that all groups can live together in peace. During the 1970s and ’80s, his historietas sold over a million and a half copies because they touched an authentic chord of sympathy and tenderness among poorer people, who identified with Memin Pinguin.

The nature of race relations may not be entirely clear right now, but the Afro-Mexican population is likely to be discussed more in the future. That is because the great hope of Mexican soccer is Giovanni Dos Santos, the son of a black Brazilian father and Mexican mother. Dos Santos is considered a phenomenal talent with the potential to become one of the best players in the world. He led Mexico to the U-17 World Championship in 2005 and was snapped up by Barcelona, where the 18 year-old is currently on the cusp of breaking into the first team.

Giovanni Dos Santos (top row, 6th from L) as a kid, along with his father (in yellow shirt)

If Dos Santos lives up to his potential, the country will have its most visible Afro-Mexican ever. It will be interesting to see how Dos Santos affects Mexican attitudes about their black population. If nothing else, having a prominent Afro-Mexican player will bring awareness to a community long ignored.

Giovanni Dos Santos, the Afro-Mexican future of El Tricolor

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A common theme in several news stories from Iraq this week was of soccer as a place of refuge from the violence wracking that country. National Public Radio (NPR) ran a report with the headline “Soccer Field a Rare Respite from Baghdad Violence” that covered a regular soccer game played in Sadr City with players from all ethnic groups. Many of the players see their game as an explicit rejection of the terrorists who have targeted soccer. One, Abbas Abdulkarim, is quoted saying, “What we are trying to do is strengthen peace to defy violence and defy the terrorists and others who don’t want good for our country.”

ABC News also had a report on how soccer goes on in Iraq, despite the danger (as one Reuters report put it, “kicking a soccer ball around on the streets is like dicing with death”). They showed a 9 year-old boy saying, “I love the game more than my life.” It’s sad that any 9 year-old boy should even have to think about being injured while playing soccer.

Sometimes fascinating soccer stories are buried in sections of the newspaper where you don’t expect to find them. That was the case this week when the Washington Post ran a piece in its world section on Chinese women’s national team player Liu Huana. Liu’s story is fascinating because, unlike most elite Chinese female players, she comes from a rural area of the middle kingdom. “By the time she was 7, she could take care of 20 goats by herself, often stopping to sneak fresh watermelon from another farmer’s fields.” Her goat herding and watermelon theft have helped her soccer career, though, as Liu claims to be tougher than her urban peers. The biggest danger Liu faces is when she goes back home.

“Some villagers will come up and kick me,” she said. “They want to find out why I don’t hurt when I am kicked on the field, when they watch me on TV. I tell them, ‘Well, I wear shin pads on the field, so it doesn’t hurt. But now you really hurt me.’ “

I’ve always admired Tim Vickery’s work for the BBC covering South American soccer. He seems to have been snapped up by Sports Illustrated as well and his first column (to my knowledge, at least) covers the question of whether Brazilian players who go to Europe are improved by the experience. Vickery points out that as recently as 1986, only two of Brazil’s World Cup team played their club ball in Europe, a far cry from the present, when nearly all members of the selecao earn their living in the Old World. Aside from the few players who make it to the national team, there are Brazilian players in nearly every league in the world. As Vickery puts it, “Brazilian soccer has become an export industry, consistently sending more than 800 players a year abroad.”

One of the 800 per year: Brazilian goalkeeper Fabio Dos Santos of Vietnam’s Dongtam FC

The interview with Lillian Thuram published in last week’s Observer Sport Monthly is an excellent read. The Barcelona and France defender is a member of that nearly extinct species: intelligent and articulate professional athletes (along with Oleguer, Barca has half of a very erudite back four). In addition to being one of the best defenders in recent times, Thuram is politically aware, and has spoken out on matters of race, religion, and economics. He sits on a French government panel designed to study race relations in the country which experienced riots in its mostly Arab and black suburbs in 2005. Unlike most hedonistic soccer players, Thuram works to make a difference for others, something he plans to continue after his sporting career is over.

Perhaps I would like to do something else beyond the game – maybe I could do politics, maybe I could be a teacher. But I want to make an impact, and work with others on behalf of good causes.

A few quick hits:

• As the Cricket World Cup kicks off, Shourin Roy at Soccer Blog discusses how that sport has dropped in popularity in the West Indies while soccer has taken off.
• A story with an interesting soccer connection (though mostly not about the sport) was the Washington Post’s article on Salvadorans in the Washington DC area who have sent much money back to their home town of Intipucá. $400,000 of this money went to building a soccer stadium in the rural Salvadoran town.
• The blog Some People are on the Pitch has a “list of little consequence” on 16 interesting club team names. My favorite is Swaziland’s Eleven Men in Flight.

And finally, Argentina’s Ferrocarril Oeste will (the club where Roberto Ayala got his start) lend their stadium to a very different use tonight when Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez holds a rally there to counter President Bush’s visit to neighboring Uruguay.

Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez rallies against President Bush in the Ricardo Etcheverry Stadium

Soccer has often been called a religion. Both soccer and religion boast an incredibly high number of passionate devotees. But some extremists in the religious community see the game as a threat to their religion and their values. Religious proclamations intended to prohibit soccer have been surprisingly common in recent times. Yet despite these edicts, soccer remains the only thing capable of competing with religion for adherents.

A recent Adidas advertisement makes the link between soccer and religion

A USA Today headline on Iraqis watching the 2006 World Cup screamed out “When World Cup’s on, the only religion is soccer.” 1970 Brazilian national team captain Carlos Alberto Torres has said that “football in Brazil is like a religion.” Even Italy, home of the Catholic church, has seen its obsession with calcio compared to matters of faith, with the AP describing it as “a country where soccer is a religion for many.”

Some have wondered whether Europe’s rise in soccer attendance and the drop in church-going are related. In a 2002 opinion piece in Rutgers University’s student newspaper, the Daily Targum, Thomas Mitchell asked whether soccer had become “Europe’s substitute religion.”

In pure numbers of adherents to their faith, soccer may actually be more popular than religion. Writing during the 2006 World Cup, Chicago Tribune writer Tom Hundley quantified the comparison:

Christianity, with more than 2 billion believers, ranks second among the major religions of the world. Soccer is first.

Devotees of soccer don’t necessarily see it as competing with religion for their faith. But some religious authorities do.

Some Islamists see the game as a direct threat to their values and have gone to great lengths to restrict it. In 2005, Saudi Arabian newspaper Al Watan published an anti-soccer fatwa. The fatwa went to great lengths to condemn the world’s most popular sport (including great popularity within the Kingdom of Saud itself). The fatwa is below followed by a few choice morsels of its condemnation.

You should spit in the face of whoever puts the ball between the posts.

Play in your regular clothes or your pyjamas or something like that, but not coloured shorts and numbered T-shirts, because shorts and T-shirts are not Muslim clothing.

Do not play in two halves. Rather, play in one half or three halves in order to completely differentiate yourselves from the heretics, the corrupted and the disobedient.

Do not call “foul” and stop the game if someone falls and sprains a hand or foot or the ball touches his hand, and do not give a yellow or red card to whoever was responsible for the injury or tackle. Instead, it should be adjudicated according to Sharia rulings concerning broken bones and injuries.

Do not follow the heretics, the Jews, the Christians and especially evil America regarding the number of players. Do not play with 11 people. Add to this number or decrease it.

Though the fatwa had little impact overall (other religious authorities condemned it roundly), it did seem to play a part in influencing some Saudis to travel to Iraq to wage jihad. These players were influenced most by the part of the fatwa which claimed that soccer should only be used as training for jihad:

If you have fulfilled these conditions and intend to play soccer, play to strengthen the body in order better to struggle in the way of God on high and to prepare the body for when it is called to jihad.

According to a translation from the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI),

On August 22, 2005, Al-Watan reported that the soccer players involved in this affair were from the Al-Taif region, and that some of them belonged to the region’s well-known Al-Rashid team.” In another article, Al-Rashid captain Ja’far ‘Attas said that three of his players had left the team. A few days later, team members confirmed that the three had become devout and, under the influence of various fatwas, had begun to believe that soccer was forbidden by religious law.

In the summer of 2006, the World Cup coincided with the rise to power of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) in Somalia. The Islamist group took control of the lawless country and immediately imposed its views on the population. Like the Taliban had done during its rule, the ICU barred its people from watching soccer. According to Newsweek, “open-air video parlors showing World Cup matches were shut down,” making Somalis among the few people around the world not watching the tournament that summer.

Hassan Dahir Aweys, one of the leaders of the soccer-banning Islamic Courts Union

Not wanting to be outdone by Sunni extremists, Iraq’s radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr issued his own anti-soccer fatwa. Citing the views of his father, Mohammed Sadiq al-Sar, and Islamic law (sharia), the young cleric said:

Not only my father but Sharia also prohibits such activities which keep the followers too occupied for worshiping, keep people from remembering [to worship]. Habeebi, the West created things that keep us from completing ourselves (perfection). What did they make us do? Run after a ball, habeebi What does that mean? A man, this large and this tall, Muslim- running after a ball? Habeebi, this ‘goal’ as it is called; if you want to run, run for a noble goal. Follow the noble goals which complete you and not the ones that demean you.

Before returning to Iraq after the US invasion in 2003, Sadr lived in Iran, a country known for barring women from its stadiums. CNN detailed the Iranian policy:

One religious leader, Fazel Lankarani, went further and issued a fatwa against the presence of women in stadiums. Aliabadi, who announced that women would be permitted to attend live games from the start of next season, seemed to backtrack when he told reporters: “The ban on single women still exists and we won’t allow single women to attend any games. Only women who come with their families will be allowed in.” On March 1, Iran’s security forcibly stopped 50 female football fans from attempting to enter Tehran’s Azadi or “freedom” stadium to watch a match between Iran and Costa Rica.

But, as Franklin Foer documents in his book How Soccer Explains the World, passionate fans in Iran have fought against the restrictive rules. Foer tells how the Azadi stadium had, upon Iran’s qualification for the 1998 World Cup, seen thousands of women allowed in to celebrate the achievement (221). The Iranian regime, Foer writes, has a “Roman nose for self-preservation” (219) and going against their own fatwa was not a radical shift in policy, but a temporary move aimed at avoiding confrontation with jubilant fans.

Iranian fans in a special “female-only” section attend a game in 2005

Lest one think that Islam is the only religion to harbor animosity toward soccer, Christianity has its own extremists who critique the sport on religious grounds. Echoing the radical Islamists’ view that sport takes people’s focus away from “higher goals,” the Rev. Metropolitan of Nafpaktos and St. Vlassios Hierotheos of the Greek Hierotheos Vlachos of the Greek Orthodox Church issued this proclamation in 2002:

For many people, soccer is a religion, a worship. Several expressions used are taken from religion. Spectators sit in the stands and their “gods”, the soccer players, contest as another twelve/eleven gods in the field for Victory. Since soccer is considered by many as a new worship, there is certainly their own god, the god of soccer. They pray to this non-existing god.

As anyone who has seen the movie The Cup knows, not all Buddhists love the beautiful game. In the film, based on a true story, boys at a Tibetian Buddhist monestary in the Himalayas work to convince their teachers to allow them to watch the 2002 World Cup final. The outcome of the movie (I don’t want to spoil it but if you can’t figure out what happens at the end of this “feel good” flick something’s wrong with you) gives hope that the religious around the world might see the error in their ways.

From the Korean-language version poster of The Cup

Religious authorities need not see soccer as a threat to their faiths. The young monks who watched Ronaldo toe poke his way to victory have not lost their faith. Soccer is a powerful force loved billions around the world, but it is not powerful enough to challenge true religions.

Soccer is played all around the world, but the world’s people have many ways of referring to the game. Soccer is played by the same rules throughout the world, but is referred to as football, fútbol, futebol, calcio, fussball, voetbal, sakka, among other names.

The original name given to the sport is the most logical: football. Though the term has a Neanderthalish tinge to it (“Me Tarzan. My foot kick ball.”), football has been used to refer to the game for centuries. In his book The Ball is Round, David Goldblatt quotes an edict issued in 1477 by British king Edward IV:

No person shall practise any unlawful games such as dice, quoits, football, and such games. (17)

Edward IV, football hater

By the time formal rules were established for the game in the 19th century, the term football had a long history in Britain. Its application to the newly formalized sport was natural. The split with the sport which would become rugby in the middle of the 19th century saw the sport of the oval ball game take a name from the town in which its rules were formed. The town of Rugby is now known more for the sport invented within it than its status as the birthplace of Norman Lockyer, who would go on to discover the element helium.

Football’s rise in popularity came at a time when the British Empire was at its peak. The sun never set on the British Empire and neither did its football-playing subjects. As Brits moved around the world, they were the greatest advocates of the new game, spreading the word more effectively than any religious evangelicals.

In many countries, the term “football” was taken directly from the English and used as a loanword in the native language. Thus, the French, Italians, Germans, Argentines, and Brazilians all initially awkwardly used the term football to refer to this new British sporting import. Many have concocted new names but ironically the French, notoriously prickly on matters of language, still refer to the sport as “football.”

The French Football Federation logo

Many countries would transliterate the name football into their own languages. Football became fútbol in Spanish and futebol in Portuguese. Though these terms have essentially become part of those two languages, they still strike me as a bit odd at times. Some in these countries also saw these transliterations as odd and attempted to use native words to refer to football. The full name of Spain’s Real Betis, for example, is Real Betis Balompie, Balompie is the literal translation (balón being ball and pie being foot) of football, but rarely used today.

Other countries were more successful in having native words stick to refer to football. Both German (fussball or fußball) and Dutch (voetbal) use the literal translation approach that proved unsuccessful in Spain.

The Italian term for football, however, is calcio, which bears no resemblance to the English word. Calcio literally means kick in Italian, but the name comes originally from an ancient game played in Italy during medieval times. The game, called Calcio Fiorentino as it was played in Florence, involved 27 players per team using hands, feet and utter brutality (click here for a video) to propel a ball into the opposing team’s goal.

Calcio Fiorentino is reenacted annually, as in this picture

Calcio’s application to modern football was an intentionally ideological decision. When football was brought into Italy by the British, it was met with some resistance. As David Goldblatt points out,

The earnest cadres of the Socialist Party’s youth wing spent their 1910 congress decrying modern competitive sport as a degrading and exploitative spectacles that was contributing to the degeneration of people. (151)

If football was degrading and exploitative, the many Italians who took it didn’t seem to mind. Football’s growing popularity meant that opposing it on ideological grounds was no longer feasible. So, in what Goldblatt describes as a “symbolic victory based on an invented history,” (154) the Italians renamed football calcio, implying a (nonexistent) link between their ancient sport and the new game.

As a young child, I remember asking my parents why we called a sport involving catching and throwing a ball football when surely soccer deserved the name. In the United States, football refers to American football, a spinoff of rugby, a sport which grew widely in this country before soccer did. Thus, with the term football already in use, organizers used a shortened version of Association Football (the full name of the sport) to refer to soccer.

Soccer, American style

There are a few countries that also use the term soccer, including Australia (in order to avoid conflict with its own Australian Rules football) and New Zealand (I assume the Kiwis simply use the same term as their larger island neighbors).

Surprisingly, Japan also uses the term soccer, or more precisely sakka (???? in Japanese). Like Spanish and Portuguese speakers who had earlier made football a part of their own languages, the Japanese also transliterated a foreign word into their own language.

Sakka a la J League

The name the Japanese use to refer to the sport has to due with historical circumstance. Though soccer had been played for decades in Japan, it only became prominent on the sports scene in the country in the second half of the 20th century. At this time, the sun had long set on the British Empire, but a new American Empire has risen to replace it. Thus, although the national organization is called the Japanese Football Association, the Japanese people have chosen an American term to refer to the sport.

Since writing about the long and shameful history of political violence on the soccer field, I’ve been keeping an eye out for current instances of this phenomenon. Sadly, such an incident took only a couple of weeks to occur. Not surprisingly, it took place in Iraq.

The suicide bombing that killed 18 boys as they played soccer in the Sunni insurgent stronghold of Ramadi last Monday was sad enough on its own. At the same time, it illustrates how badly the American military is struggling to contain the violence in Iraq as the country spirals downward towards all-out civil war.

Children play soccer on a Fallujah field after a suicide bombing

On hearing reports of the suicide bombing, the US military went into news-spinning mode. Spokesmen said that there were two incidents that day in Ramadi and that one had been a controlled explosion near a soccer field in which there had been injuries but no deaths.

Only later in the week, with some reporting from the Washington Post, did it become clear that the soccer field attack had indeed occurred. The Post quoted local sheikh Raad Sabah al-Mukeilef, who was likely the intended target of the attack. Mukeilef said of the suicide bomber, “He came in a pickup. Instead of coming in my street, he did it in a small park for children.”

The sheikh also claimed that no members of the US military had responded to the incident. Despite this account, US military spokesman Mark Fox continued to contradict reality. “We ran this down,” said Rear Admiral Fox. “There was no second blast and there were not 18 children killed. The soccer field that was touted in the erroneous report was across the street from the structure that was in the controlled detonation.”

It is sad enough that the US military has so little awareness of, let alone control over, the violence in Iraq. It is even sadder that 18 children had to die playing soccer to make this clear.

Days after the suicide bombing that killed these young boys Ramadi was again the site of violence toward soccer players. The Guardian reports that Mohhamed Hamid and Mohammed Mishaan, both members of the local Ramadi Football Club, were killed on March 2. According to the website Iraq Slogger, both players were killed in the middle of a team practice.

Masked gunmen in Ramadi, west of Iraq, killed football players Mohammed Hamid, 27, and Mohammed Mish’an, 23, from the Ramadi Football Team in front of spectators and teammates while they were in a training session Friday. Three vehicles carrying a dozen gunmen entered the stadium and dragged the two players toward the cars, while people watched in fear. When the two players resisted, they were both shot execution-style, according to eyewitnesses and Ramadi police spokesman Major Tariq Yousif. The two players were accused of being supporters of the Anbar Salvation Council, a tribal group led by Sheikh Abdul Sattar Al-Rishawi, which is opposed to Al-Qaeda militants in the Anbar Governorate.

No word yet on whether the US military plans to deny this latest violence on Iraq’s soccer fields.

Update

NPR ran a great story which is an antidote the theme of violence being perpetrated on the soccer field. The story talks about a mixed Sunni / Shiite league in Baghdad that attempts to bring players from all backgrounds together. Many of the players specifically talked about the league being non-sectarian as a reason why they played in it. Unfortunately, it’s probably only a matter of time before those in Iraq who don’t want to see such unity attack the players in this league.