As Americans return to stadiums with hope and joy at baseball's Opening Day, it's worth remembering that stadiums have been the sites of absurd moments of political theater and dire human rights abuses.
The World Cup, more than any previous version, symbolizes the contradictions of the joy of play being entangled with nationalism, global capitalism, and repressive theocratic autocracy.
Lionel Messi's tenure at the top of the soccer world has coincided with an upsurge of feminism in Argentina and its sports culture, changes Messi has quietly supported.
A legacy of innovation spurred by Hungarian clubs in the 1930s and 1950s sustained high quality soccer in eastern Europe through the fall of communism, but changing economic and social currents have diminished the competitiveness of former eastern bloc countries in today's big-money game.
"The passionate relationship between a legendary soccer player and an Italian city lies at the heart of The Hand of God, the new movie from Paolo Sorrentino."
"On 5 December 1921 the English Football Association had declared the game to be 'quite unsuitable for females' before barring women from playing on grounds belonging to affiliated men’s clubs."
Sporting teams are one of the few officially English, as opposed to British, institutions. The national team's multiracial composition and embrace of social and political causes may be advancing a more inclusive form of Englishness.
Revisiting the negotiations that brought a 13 year-old Argentine soccer prodigy to Barcelona and launched the career of (arguably!) the greatest player of the world's game.
From the Hungary team that shattered England’s delusions to the club that came to define the sport, through Pelé and Johan Cruyff, here are six games that explain modern soccer.
As the coronavirus pandemic forces soccer clubs and sponsors to tighten their belts, a women’s game poised to break out hopes it doesn’t have to bear the cost.
The soccer federation made the claims in hopes of convincing a federal court in California to dismiss a discrimination lawsuit filed by members of the 2019 World Cup championship team.
