Word: soccering
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...good teams have good stories Take New Zealand, probably the worst team heading to the World Cup. While the country has excelled at cricket and rugby - its "All Blacks" team is a perennial powerhouse in the latter - it has had far less success in soccer. The New Zealand team traveling to South Africa may feel uncomfortable not just because they're known as the "All Whites." In a tournament filled with millionaire, jet-setting athletes, the bulk of the Kiwi squad is made up of journeymen who toil in obscurity in lower-tier leagues in Europe and others who until...
...strikes and questions over adequate transportation links and security for hundreds of thousands of fans. But the tournament's organizers are confident these problems will be resolved in time. Since the end of apartheid, the country has hosted successful cricket and rugby World Cups, and the country hopes the soccer tournament will mark a new moment of unity in its divided history. Adversity also plagued the build-up to the 1986 World Cup in Mexico. Eight months before the start of the tournament, a massive earthquake killed 10,000 people in Mexico City and caused the media to speculate about...
...matching the spirit of the World Cup. The Olympics may garner the attention of more global leaders and media outlets, but its myriad competitions and choreographed pageantry can never generate the unifying, almost cosmic passion that envelops the World Cup. As David Goldblatt asks in his definitive history of soccer, The Ball Is Round, "Is there any cultural practice more global than football?" It has more followers than any one religion and is more universal than any one language. Even Americans - some of whom still sniff at the sport's low-scoring games - are coming around: they are among...
...French soccer player Thierry Henry has always been known as a gentleman. His anti-racism work and sense of fair play have earned him accolades and awards for years, including an appearance in TIME's 2005 European Heroes list. As of Nov. 19, however, many in the soccer world are calling Henry a heel rather than a hero, after his illegal play - apparently deliberate - allowed France to claim one of the final spots in next year's World...
...Soccer's governing body, FIFA, is unlikely to rush into action over the incident. The game will surely not be replayed - to do so would be to invite replays of any number of controversy-marred matches from the past (though Ireland's football association has now asked FIFA for a replay). But because FIFA has spent the past few years promoting the idea of fair play above all, it will be hard to ignore this altogether. "Winning is without value if victory has been achieved unfairly or dishonestly," reads the body's Code of Conduct. "Cheating is easy but brings...