For my weekly roundup, I generally try to choose stories that fly under the radar. Which is a good thing today because one of the stories that interested me most was about the Israel vs. England game, being played as I type. By the time this is up, you’ll probably know the result of the match, but did you know that some English Jews are not sure whether to support England or Israel? At least that’s what the headline of a Guardian article (Lion or Zion?) would suggest. In fact, though, the text of the article suggests that most English Jews have little trouble making their choice to go with England. Jamie Levy of London sums up the collective feeling:

“There’s definitely a conflict of interest, since I’ve got a tremendous affinity for Israel, but I’ve supported the England team all my life. There’s no question of switching sides – it’d be as heinous a sin as going from Spurs to Arsenal.”

Sticking with the Euro 2008 qualifiers, the Estonian blog Itching for Eestimaa covers that country’s game against Russia. The game itself is not likely to be a classic, but the political undertones are fascinating. The blogger Giustino describes the conflict that have emerged since the collapse of the Soviet Union, as Russia has struggled to come to terms with the newly independent republics who were once a part of it.

It’s not a qualifier, but Montenegro’s friendly with Hungary is worthy of attention because it’s the first game ever for the newly independent Balkan republic. Jonathan Wilson at the Guardian describes how the country is preparing for its first ever match. As the country that produced the former striker (and current Real Madrid sporting director) Pedrag Mijatovic, Montenegro has the pedigree to punch above its weight.

Mijatovic in his playing days for Real Madrid

Moving to Asia, the AP had a long piece on why (men’s) soccer hasn’t caught on in China. The current Olympic coach, Ratomir Dujkovic, suggests that soccer hasn’t made it because the Chinese need a winner to cheer for and the national team has only a single World Cup appearance (in which they failed to score) to its credit. Corruption and mismanagement in the domestic game have also caused a problem. Interestingly, however, Chinese fans can and do criticize those in charge of the game. As Chinese soccer expert Rowan Simons says, “Football is open to a level of criticism you won’t see elsewhere.”

Until things are cleaned up, the Chinese face the distasteful prospect of seeing their Korean and Japanese neighbors and rivals succeed. Perhaps it will be this desire to become a global competitor that will bring success to Chinese soccer, much as it has done for the economy there. Journalist Yan Qiang says, “If the Japanese and South Koreans can do a better job, it leads the Chinese fans to wonder why its team doesn’t perform better.”

Simon Kuper, author of the classic Football Against the Enemy, focuses his weekly Financial Times column on television viewing figures around the world. A few of the most interesting findings:

• Smaller and more homogenous countries have larger television audiences for their matches. In Holland, for example, “Dutch regional, linguistic and class divides are relatively small. The nation as family feels represented by its team.”
• The number of fans watching Spain’s national team is relatively low, which supports the idea that regionalism in that country leads to a lack of support for the team (and possibly its historical underachievement).
• Soccer fans in South America are some of the most dedicated TV viewers of their teams. Kuper doesn’t explain why this may be the case, but I would guess that, because their club teams are often seen as selling clubs to the wealthy teams in Europe, a country’s national team one place where South Americans can compete on equal footing with the rest of the world. Their players clearly have the talent (or else they wouldn’t be bought up by European club teams) and national teams give them a chance to show this off to their compatriots.

Part of the problem with the domestic game in South America is poor organization. In many countries, this lack of organization has led to extreme levels of violence by fans. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Argentina. The Washington Post ran an article in their World section this week on the problems that country is having cleaning up the violence waged by extreme elements of the barra brava fan groups which provide support for their teams. The teams are not without blame, though. The Post writes that :”such gangs are rumored to receive money, tickets and jobs from the clubs.” Most worryingly, these Argentine fan groups are sharing their “expertise” with like-minded folks around Latin America.

According to a report this week in Olé, an Argentine daily newspaper devoted to soccer, leaders of some of the country’s major barrabravas have shared their methods with fan groups in countries including Colombia and Mexico, charging money for courses in how to extort from team officials, use weapons and generally wreak havoc. The article quoted Rafael Di Zeo, considered a leader of a barrabrava of the Boca Juniors club, as saying that groups such as his are considered “the Harvard” of hooligans worldwide. “They come here to learn,” Di Zeo said, according to the article.

Argentine police arrest fans tied to violence in that country

The Argentine official in charge of cleaning up the soccer-related violence in the country is none other than former referee Javier “The Sheriff” Castrilli. Castrilli was known as one of the most strict referees around during his time in black, but in his new role in the Interior Ministry he faces far larger problems.Eliminating entrenched problems that may stretch to the top of Argentine soccer is far more of a challenge than controlling twenty-two professional soccer players (and that’s no easy task).Big-ups to my friend Keddy who alerted me to the new movie The Offside about female Iranian fans who sneak into soccer stadiums (they’re officially barred). Both the New York Times and NPR review it (trailer available at Rotten Tomatoes). It’s only showing in New York and LA now. If it comes to Washington, I’ll definitely check it out and review it here.

An Iranian girl pretending to be a boy in order to watch the national team play

With March Madness in the air and college basketball mascots shaking their money-makers on the hardwood, the New York Times had a piece titled Fuzzy Madness: Mascots Gone Wild. There is a soccer mention in the article:

In British soccer, there were the infamous hooligan mascots of the 1990s. They include Cyril the Swan of Swansea City, who ripped the head off Zampa the Lion of Millwall and kicked it into the stands.

Cyril plays rope-a-dope with Zampa

I’ve played soccer in some amazing locales (the top of a 4000 foot mountain in Guatemala being my favorite), but never one like this. From an NPR story about a small community in Maine trying to reinvigorate itself by hosting a training center for winter athletes comes this picture. The original caption reads “Students on a field trip to The Nordic Heritage Center in Presque Isle, Maine, play a game of soccer in the snow.”

Finally, a mention of a great website I’ve come across. It’s called Albion Road and it is a soccer encyclopedia of sorts, with information on clubs, national teams, and leagues around the world. Definitely worth a visit.

The always excellent Global Game blog this week covered the topic of smoking in soccer. Apparently, the British government has passed a law to ban smoking in stadiums. Having attended games at Ajax’s Amsterdam Arena, I can say that the amount of smoke in the stadium was appalling (it didn’t help that the retractable roof was closed). Hopefully, other countries will follow Britain’s lead.

I recently finished reading the book A Long Way Gone by former child soldier Ishamel Beah. His story is tragic: Beah joined the government army in Sierra Leone after his parents were killed by rebels, yet inspiring in that it shows the amazing degree of resilience humans are blessed with. Like Beah himself, Sierra Leone has walked a slow path to recovery. A photo gallery this week on FIFA’s website showed that one of the most normal childhood activities, playing soccer, is alive and well in the west African country.

Soccer games in the Freetown townships of Kroobay and George Brook (Courtesy FIFA)

A couple of stories in which soccer shows up in seemingly unrelated contexts:

Javier Zanetti has done a fair amount of humanitarian work with his PUPI Foundation (see this International Herald Tribune article for more information). One area in which he has focused his work is on the rights of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. In 2004, he donated money to people fighting for the rights of people in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, which led their leader, Subcomandante Marcos, to hold up an Inter jersey at a press conference. The article in Spain’s El Mundo quotes Marcos saying, “Brothers and sisters of the Italian team, I wish you the greatest success in the season” (translation my own).

Subcomandante Marcos showing love for Javier Zanetti

From the blog Nerevta River comes the story of Croatian restaurants in Japan. I love random stories like this (Croatian restaurants in Japan? Really?), and I love it even more because it has a soccer angle. Apparently, these restaurants were begun during the 2002 World Cup in the city of Tokamachi, according to the LA Times. The restaurants begun in 2002 have survived until today, as has the connection between the city and Croatia.

Tokamachi also has a lovely glass trophy donated by the Croatian Football Federation for which local youth teams compete, and a soccer field named for a Balkan country. The field is maintained by 100 or so volunteers of the Crotia supporters club run by [local resident Yutaka] Wakayama. “The Croatian team is like a family to us,” he said. Such are the unexpected footprints a World Cup can leave behind.

Speaking of Japan (by way of Du Nord), an article in that country’s English-language newspaper, the Japan Times, quoted MLS officials saying they would like to bring in J-League players. Said MLS’s Takehito Nakamura, “I deal heavily with teams, agents and the Japan Football Association and, through conversations and being introduced to different players, cases of players coming over can happen.” Nakamura also talks about the mutual lack of respect the Japanese and American league have for each other as an impediment to bringing Japanese across the pond. He also suggests what I believe to be the most important reason: “If a player craves fame, then maybe it is not the place for them.”

Having lived in Japan for four months, I witnessed the adulation of fans in that country for their players. Leaving that atmosphere has been hard for many players and former national team coach Phillipe Troussier lamented this in 2001, saying “We only have two players based in Europe. Technically and tactically, the Japanese can’t get much better, but they won’t get experience playing in the J-League.”

I wonder whether any strategy to draw Japanese players to MLS can be successful. Europe has the draw of high salaries and the highest standard of play. What can MLS offer to draw players from their Japanese fans? The chance to share hairstyling tips with David Beckham, perhaps?

Yuji “Bomber Head” Nakazawa, owner of best hair on the Japanese national team

The Guardian had a piece by Steven Wells about soccer leagues made up of communists and anarchists in the US. Wells writes of the rise and recent decline of this particular brand of soccer:

American anarcho-commie soccer is alive and well. It’s just been hibernating. Now it’s spring they’ll start once again changing America – one democratically refereed game (with rolling substitutions) at a time.

I’m glad to see Wells (a Brit) writing about soccer in this country using more than the typical cliche that Americans don’t like the sport. It’s great that he’s highlighting a particular niche of American soccer culture, but I have to question the relevance of the anarchist and communist soccer leagues he discusses. I once knew someone who later showed up in a newspaper article as the founder of the Dayton (Ohio) Anarchist Soccer League. She never struck me as much of a soccer fan nor much of an anarchist. If she is representative of the anarcho-commies Wells writes about, I don’t think they are likely to impact American soccer or world politics.

A few quick hits to finish off:

• Courtesy of my brother, an amusing look at tactical plans from around the world.
• Tottenham’s brilliant Bulgarian Dimitar Berbatov eulogized in haiku at Who Ate All the Pies.
• Also from Who Ate All the Pies, Palermo president Maurizio Zamparini proves that bigotry is multifaceted. He said that Fiorentian’s “[Adrian] Mutu, like a good gypsy, has tried to be slick. Then again, all Romanians are slick, they have it on their DNA.”
• Barcelona owns a house called La Masia, where many of their youth prospects live. It was profiled at the blog La Galaxia de Estrellas.
• The New York Times did a piece on the top ten video games of all time. The list includes Sensible World of Soccer, a game which I have never played, but am now tempted to find.

Sensible World of Soccer

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

It was actually from last week and not even a soccer story, but I found the Christian Science Monitor’s article on the England’s rugby playing a match against their Irish counterparts. What makes this story interesting is its political undercurrents. The stadium was the site of what I believe is the first “Bloody Sunday” incident (one of the inspirations for the U2 song) in which occupying British soldiers opened fire during a Gaelic football game, killing 14 people. The article is headlined “Symbolic Step of Peace at Irish Stadium” and we can only hope that the rugby match will have been that. Another interesting factoid about the Croke Park stadium where the match was played is that it is being used as the home stadium for the Irish national soccer team while their normal stadium, Landsdowne Road, is being renovated. This is semi-controversial, at least among some who want the stadium only to be used for truly Irish sports like Gaelic football and hurling.

Hurling

The Christian Science Montior also showed its stuff as a newspaper covering a wide range of international stories not in the headlines with its report on flooding in Mozambique. Thanks to the African government’s higher levels of vigilance and preemptive action, the country is likely to avoid massive starvation due to the floods. What caught my eye was the article’s mention that relief agencies land their helicopters on soccer fields in order to deliver supplies. It is a nice contrast to my earlier post on violence on soccer fields.

But violence on soccer fields has not been eradicated. Far from it. A sad story this week came from Iraq, where 18 boys in Ramadi were killed by a suicide bomber as they played soccer. I plan to write more on this story and the sad way in which it showed how ignorant the US military is about violence in Iraq (they continue to deny that the incident even occurred).

Cubans athletes leaving their teams to defect while playing in the US is a fairly common phenomenon. Many baseball players have done it as have soccer players. Each time the Gold Cup is played in this country, it seems, a few more players decide to make the US their home. The most recent defector is named Maykel Galindo and he just signed for Chivas USA. The Miami Herald details his story, which included a year spent playing for the Seattle Sounders, far away from most Cubans. Galindo talks about an off-season trip he took to Miami:

Out West, there is not Cuban food like in Miami. La Carreta, Versailles, so many places. I ate like a king. Hearing the language, meeting so many Cubans, it felt like I was home. It was a beautiful experience. Someday, I’d like to live there. But I will always love Seattle for how they opened their arms to me. That will be my first American home. Thank God, everything worked out. It was a heavy price to pay, but it was worth it.

The excellent blog The Global Game has a post on head coverings in soccer. The story arose from the recent article in the Globe and Mail on an 11 year-old girl who was not allowed to wear a hijab while playing soccer in Quebec. I remember a similar incident when I was growing up in Ohio in which a Sikh player was not allowed to wear his turban while playing, leading to outrage.

11 year-old Asmahan (Azzy) Mansour with her controversial hijab

Another blog, Some People are on the Pitch, comes up with an interesting rubric to discuss nations’ success (or lack thereof) in soccer. They judge countries’ success not only based on wins and losses, but also compare those results to the nations’ populations. A large country with little success (they focus on India) ranks lower in their rankings than a smaller country with a similar record. Small countries who punch above their weight are ranked highly, with Uruguay, a country of around 3.5 million people that has won the World Cup twice (in 1930 and 1950), ranked at the top.

And finally, Adam Spangler at This is American Soccer tipped me off to what looks like a fascinating new blog. It is called If This is Football and is run by a British grad student at the University of Chicago named Thomas Dunmore. The blog covers politics, economics, and history as they relate to the beautiful game and is a great read.

My second grade students were surprised today when I showed them my blog. Mostly, they couldn’t believe that I knew Levar Burton and that he was around when I was a kid. I’m glad that he still is and that I can continue to promote him among the readers of this blog.

So, without further ado, Levar Burton and I present: What I’m Reading.

The Guardian’s Jonathan Wilson has been writing a series of fascinating stories on soccer in Eastern Europe. He has just published a book called Behind the Curtain: Travles in Eastern European Soccer. Wilson has uncovered a wealth of stories on socccer and culture in that part of the world and his articles definitely make me want to read the book. His latest piece is called The rags-to-riches tale of Banel Nicolita. The story profiles a young Romanian player who is one of the few Roma (aka “gypsy”) players to make it big in soccer. A poster named Liverpoolskyklokan writes in response that “Levski Sofia have a talented young Romany striker called Marian Ognyanov.”

Romany players are to be found not only in Eastern Europe. Southend United’s Freddy Eastwood, a striker whose knocked goal knocked Manchester United out of the FA Cup this season, recently won a court battle to be able to continue living in a mobile home community along with other members of his Romanty community. A Guardian profile of Eastwood also mentions other players with Gypsy backgrounds, a group which includes former Inter player Sinisa Mihajlovic and current Real Madrid winger Juan Antonio Reyes.

A follow-up on last week’s interesting story on Barcelona defender Presas Oleguer, who spoke out on the case of a jailed ETA member and lost his shoe sponsorship as a result. Sid Lowe, the Guardian’s Spain correspondent profiles the “right-back philosopher” and even offers a translation of the article which got Oleguer in trouble. Askedy by Lowe why he speaks out, Oleguer says, “[L]ife isn’t easy. If we want a better world, we all need to roll up our sleeves. It’s easy to moan to your friends and then do nothing.” And one of the few bearded players in soccer today also has a keen awareness of and passion for Barcelona’s status as the symbol of Catalan identity. Lowe writes,

And for Oleguer, nowhere is that more significant than at Barcelona, the club that presents itself as a Catalan flagship, an anti-Francoist resistance force. Oleguer writes in his book that: “When Barcelona win the league, we become the Army of joy finally able to face up to [Franco's troops]. We imagine ourselves halting that pack of tanks, responding to their bullets with song, laughing in the face of the fascist ire.”

It might sound far fetched, and Barca’s history is far less clear-cut than the official version would have it, but at least with Oleguer there’s no shallow lip service to the legend, no ‘Visca Barca, Visca Catalunya! Now, where’s my cheque?. “For me, Barcelona is genuinely special,” he says. “It is the invocation of a country, representing Catalan identity and culture. Barca was a conduit for a feeling when people could not express themselves and for me it’s a dream to be here at such a successful time.”

Can you imagine these words coming from the mouth of Wayne Rooney? Me neither.

The AP had a story on a Nigerian born to parents who had enetered Israel illegally. Toto Tamuz is an up-and-coming star for Beitar Jerusalem. He grew up in Israel and wants to play for that country. The only problem is that he does not have Israeli citizenship. Tamuz has already played for the Israeli national team (he received special dispensation from FIFA to do so, as he in fact possesses no nationality), but has said he will not do so anymore until he is given citizenship. His case is currently before the Israeli Supreme Court and many in the soccer community in that country are supporting him Israel’s identity as a Jewish homeland is being tested by the increasing number of non-Jews living in the country (I recommend the movie James’ Journey to Jerusalem, which deals with the subject), a phenomenon highlighted in the article.

It is when I read soccer used as a point of comparison that I feel good about the sport’s place in this country. Two articles I read this past week did just this, including a New York Times article on rebuilding in New Orleans after hurricane Katrina.”Zwolle [High School] basketball fans are like Brazilian soccer fans” everyone considers himself a coach.”

An article in the Christian Science Monitor on robo-jockeys used in camel races in Qatar is fascinating in itself (robo-jockeys were brought when the young boys previously used in camel races were banned from participating after protests from human rights groups). It brought this fantastic quote from a camel owner in describing his animals: “We had some real Ronaldinhos on the camel circuit.”

Camels aren’t the only animals being compared to Ronaldinho. Deadspin posted a story on an eBay auction for a full-sized sculpture of the buck-toothed Brazilian as a regal white horse. Opening bid is $25,000.

And finally, the AP ran a story this past week which portrays presidential candidates searching for the buzzword of the 2008 campaign. The early successor to 1996′s soccer mom may be “transformational.”

In addition to my regular writing, I will be writing about the most interesting stories I find in my research on the culture of soccer. I hope they are of interest to you as well. And what better way to get a picture of Levar Burton (anybody else grow up with Reading Rainbow?) onto the blog?

Probably the most interesting story I came across this week was from Frank Dell’Appa at Soccernet. Dell’Appa tells the story of Giles Heron, an African-American who played for Celtic (yes, that Celtic) in the 1950s. I had no idea.

From some fellow bloggers, came across two stories that fascinted me. Shourin Roy at SoccerBlog discusses why soccer has not found a place in India. Over at This is American Soccer, Adam Spangler wrote (in 2005 but I just found it) a three part series about the team at Martin Luther King High School in New York City. It is an incredibly successful soccer program made up of students from around the world. Along with more recent writing on the topic of soccer being played by immigrants (see Paul Cuadros’s book A Home on the Field) and refugees (see Warren St. John’s New York Times story about a team made up of refugees in Georgia called The Fugees), Spangler’s work puts paid to the notion of a single, homogenous soccer culture in this country.

The Guardian does the best soccer coverage in the world, in my opinion. They provide the goods again this week. Their Spain corrspondent writes about the fight in Spain between chairmen of Seville rivals Sevilla and Betis. I always thought it was funny that chairmen of opposing teams in Spain sit together at games; now we find out it’s just asking for trouble. Eastern European correspondent Jonathan Wilson writes about why, despite the infusion of rubles from the oil and gas industry in the country, Russian soccer still hasn’t quite made it. And Irish coverage is provided by Barry O’Donovan, who writes about Shelbourne, last year’s Irish League champion who have since gone bankrupt and had to sell off all of their players.

Reuters has a piece about Barcelona’s defender Oleguer, who recently lost his sponsorship deal with Kelme for his controversial comments about a member of ETA, the Basque nationalist organization, who is currently on a hunger strike. Oleguer is known for being a strong suppoter of regional autonomy (he is Catalan) and he told a press conference that, “I wanted to use the De Juana case as an example to question the independence of the judiciary from political power.” When he came on as a sub last weekend, the cameras did a close up on his cleats, which were made by Kelme (perhaps he bought them himself).

Closer to home, the Steven Goff of the Washington Post writes about the fascinating story of Guy Roland-Kpene, an immigrant from Ivory Coast who is currently trying to earn a roster spot for DC United. And the Idaho Statesman of all places, has an article about how soldiers from that state are helping Kurds, displaced by Saddam Hussein’s “Arabization” policy, who are resettling in Kirkuk. Many of them are living, at least temporarily, in and around the soccer stadium in that northern Iraqi city.

And a few snippets to finish off. These are shorter things I came across and which I might look into more in the future and write about more completely. If you’ve got any information on them, please leave a comment.

• There is a team in Pakistan’s Premier League called Afghan FC. I wonder if they are made up of Afghan refugees to that country.
• The US Soccer Foundation lists members of the Congressional Soccer Caucus from the 109th Congress. I’m still waiting to see who joins in the recently begun 110th Congress. Perhaps they’re too busy discussing trivial matters like Iraq (I joke, I joke).
• Emelec, a team based in Guayacil, Ecuador, was founded by an American businessman named George Capwell. Many South American teams were founded by the British, but this is the only one I know of founded by an American. Their stadium is called Estadio George Capwell. Wikipedia says that one of the players on their 1957 “dream team” was named Yu Lee. Where was he from?

Estadio George Capwell