The Spanish Federation’s announcement last week that Africans would no longer count as non-EU players passed with little notice (but I thank Joseph for bringing it to my attention). The decision was made to keep La Liga in line with the Cotonou agreement, ratified last year by the Spanish parliament, which treats workers from 77 African, Caribbean, and Pacific nations as EU workers. Thus, players already playing in Spain from such countries – the most notable being Barcelona’s Samuel Eto’o and Real Madrid’s Mahmadou Diarra – will no longer take up one of the three non-EU roster spots per match that teams are permitted, nor will future signings.

This agreement is the latest example of labor policies having a particularly marked effect in the world of soccer. Soccer often seems disconnected from the real world; the effect of labor policies on the sport is one of the ways in which we are reminded that soccer is very much a part of the world we have created.

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People of Croatian ancestry make up less than one-half of one percent of the population. But the influence of this small Balkan country on soccer in the land of Oz has far exceeded their numbers. Of the 23 players on Australia’s 2006 World Cup squad, 7 had Croatian heritage. Croatia’s team had 3 Australian-born players.

Croatian-Australian Mark Viduka (photo: Getty Images/ABC)

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A relatively small, but growing trend in Europe involves Christian converting to Islam. Despite the heated “clash of civilizations” rhetoric that 9/11 has provoked, many people are stepping across the Christian-Muslim divide. Peter Ford wrote in the Christian Science Monitor that “[a]lthough there are no precise figures, observers who monitor Europe’s Muslim population estimate that several thousand men and women convert each year.”

In recent years, several I the ranks of these converts to Islam have come from the world of soccer. Most have come from France, the country with the largest Muslim population in Europe.

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The United States men’s and women’s national teams both took on their respective Swedish counterparts recently. The men lost 1-0 in a friendly while the women won 2-0 in the first round of the Women’s World Cup (if a tie-breaker were needed, perhaps we could use the Davis Cup, where the American tennis team beat Sweden in the semifinals).

I, sadly, was unable to watch any of these matches (tennis included), but my parents did and pointed out an interesting contrast between the makeup of Swedish men’s and women’s teams. While the women are almost exclusively “typical” Swedes with names like Johansson, Forsberg, and Lundgren, the men have much wider variety of names that hint at their more diverse backgrounds.

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Note: This is the seventh part of my American Soccer Road Trip, which will involve me traveling across the country, finding stories that exemplify the diversity that exists in American soccer. Check back soon for further updates.

In 1977, when Peter Vermes was 11 years old, his father took him to see a World Cup qualifier in his homeland between the Hungarian national team and the USSR. The young boy was in awe of the stadium and the players out on the field. He told his father, “One day I’m going to play in this stadium. I’m going to play for the United States and we’re going to play against Hungary.”

Vermes’s desire to play for the US against Hungary reflected his family’s background. He was born in Delran, New Jersey in 1966 to Hungarian parents. His father, Michael, had been a professional player, a member of the great Budapest Honved FC team in the 1950s. Things were on course for the elder Vermes to play in the 1958 World Cup, but the Soviet invasion of 1956 forced him to flee his homeland. He eventually settled in the United States, although he would later return most summers to Hungary with Peter, seeking to instill a connection to his homeland in his young son.

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When I found out that I’d be taking the train next week from New York to the New Jersey shore (maybe an hour ride), where my friend has a house, I was inordinately excited. My friend didn’t get it. “It’s only a commuter train,” he said. But that doesn’t matter to me. My fascination with trains comes from having grown up taking the commuter train from suburban Philadelphia into day care in the city, where my mom worked. Every day, I’d come home and report dutifully to my dad which train we had taken: “The 614 in the morning and the 829 in afternoon.”

My childhood crush: the SEPTA train (photo: Wikipedia)

Even now, nearly 25 years later, I retain my fascination with trains. On a trip to Argentina, I took the grungiest, dirtiest train I’ve ever seen from Buenos Aires to La Plata – and loved it (the owner of the bed and breakfast where I was staying couldn’t understand that I wasn’t being sarcastic in saying so).Perhaps you’re wondering why I’m discussing my fascination with trains on a blog called Culture of Soccer. Well, it’s an extremely roundabout way of introducing a topic I’ve been thinking about recently: the connections between of trains and soccer. Yes, really, I have been thinking about it.

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