By IPS Correspondents
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 22 2011 (IPS)

This time last year the entire world gathered in front of TV screens to watch the World Cup. According to International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) estimates, 3,178,856 people made their way to South Africa, and around the globe 700 million viewers watched the Spanish victory in the final match.

Next Sunday another World Cup will take place. It will be held in Germany, but it will be a little different: women will play this time.

The Sixth FIFA Women’s World Cup, which will continue until Jul. 17, certainly is not as well known as its male counterpart. Will it ever be?

According to Petra Krimphove, journalist and author of the book ‘Mother-Daughter-Relationships in the U.S. American Literature’, the peak moment of women’s soccer happened on Jul. 10, 1999, at the Rose Bowl Field in Pasadena, California. Spectators numbering 90,185 went to the stadium that day, and 40 million people celebrated the victory of U.S women’s soccer team on TV screens.

However, for Krimphove, from that moment on no excitement for women’s soccer has been felt in U.S. media – even though the U.S. women’s national team went on to win two World Cups and three Olympic gold medals.

The Women’s Professional League, draws a number of viewers “too low to achieve any noteworthy income via television rights and sponsors,” Krimphove says.

Some attribute this lack of interest to scarce media coverage. If media do not focus attention on an event, the chances of it going unnoticed rise, they say.

Believing that the World Cup has never received the media coverage that it deserved, this time FIFA wants to make sure the event does not go unnoticed. “We have never seen coverage on a scale like this before in women’s football. It shows our commitment towards improving the media production of the world’s premier women’s soccer competition,” said Niclas Ericson, Director of FIFA TV.

Steffi Jones, president of the local organising committee (LOC) of the German Football Association, said Thursday that with 10 days still to go until the opening match, “We’re well on course to meet our target of filling the stadiums to 80 percent of capacity.”

Ticket orders have been received from 50 countries, according to Jones, who alluded to the “huge” international appeal that the tournament is developing.

However, even if women’s soccer is now gaining a media presence, there is still a long way to go. According to Daniela Schaaf, communications expert at the German Sports University in Cologne, people have not yet accepted the fact that women can play sports that have traditionally fallen within the men’s sphere. “People still don’t like to see women playing a men’s game,” Schaaf said.

Schaaf, who has studied the importance of women’s soccer in Germany for years, stated that women are still insulted, and victims of sexual discrimination and prejudice. If we look closely at the data, though, we see that there are more women’s teams and more women involved in sports than in the past. However, the numbers still lag way behind those of men.

Almost 40 years after Title IX – a law that applies to any educational programme to be fair and equitable to women – was passed in the U.S., it is estimated that 80 percent of colleges and universities are still not in compliance, Shawn Ladda, former president of the National Association for Girls and Women in Sports, told IPS.

A study carried out in 2010 by Vivian Acosta and Linda Carpenter, professors emeritus at Brooklyn College, however, indicates that despite the 20 percent non-compliance with Title IX, numbers have remarkably increased since 1972. In the last 12 years from 1998 to 2010, 2,741 new women’s teams have been created.

Ladda considers that one of the major reasons why girls do not get as much attention as deserved is poor media coverage. Apart from big events like the Women’s World Cup, the coverage of “daily” women’s sports is far from adequate.

“Women still do not receive the same sports coverage as men because our society or culture values men more as athletes than women. There are also more men who are in positions of power that make decisions on what is important in the media,” Ladda explained. That is, according to her, the burden women still carry.

For Matthew Johnson, director of education at the Media Awareness Network headquartered in Ottawa, the main reason why women’s sports are not at the forefront of media coverage is the presumption that men are more interested in sports than women, and that men are more unlikely to follow women’s sports.

This is a “circular argument,” Johnson told IPS. “It leads to less coverage of women’s sports and therefore less opportunity for women to become interested in sports, or for men to become interested in women’s sports.”

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
ABIDJAN, Nov 3 2010 (IPS)

When he was 15, Maurice Koné dreamed of becoming a great footballer. Adored for his technical skill and eye for goal by fans in Koumassi, a neighbourhood in the south of Abidjan, he dreamed of living the life of a professional overseas.

Young footballers in Koumassi: they hope to fulfill their dreams of becoming professional players in Europe or Asia. Credit: Fulgence Zamblé/IPS

For more than a decade, a host of young footballers, overwhelmingly under the age of 18 (more than 3,000 since 2000), have left the African continent to try their luck in Europe and Asia, according to the website of Association foot solidaire, a non-governmental organisation based in Paris, which fights against mistreatment of young African footballers.

The mafia-type characters who extract money from parents, most of them poor, take young Africans to Asia or Europe with the promise of a trial at a big club. In the end, many of them are abandoned in the street, with no means to support themselves.

Even with Koné’s parents’ help, he struggled to meet the demands of the agent.

“I had a monthly income of 135,000 CFA ($290),” Habib Koné, Maurice’s father, says bitterly. “I went into debt for Maurice, hoping that in the future, he could take charge of his seven brothers and sisters.”

To the surprise of Koné and his young fellow adventurers, when the day came to fly out of Abidjan, the seven boys boarded a plane bound not for Europe, but for Pattaya, Thailand.

“A month after our arrival and several inconclusive trials with clubs in Pattaya, our guide disappeared. We were left in limbo for four months, doing whatever we had to to survive, before being deported to Tunisia,” says Koné. “And after having let their parents know, two of us made it back to Abidjan.”

Koné says two others went to Spain, while three more found themselves an escape route by by training with Tunisian clubs. He has heard no news of these last three for two years. “I don’t know if they have accomplished their dream or not.”

The Fédération International de Football Association (FIFA, the governing body for soccer worldwide), has now implemented what it calls a Transfer Matching System. The TMS collects 30 pieces of information about a player, and for the transfer of a player to be recognised, the data held by both club must match perfectly.

“What this means since the procedure went into effect, for young footballers, that they cannot leave one club for another (in another country) without leaving a trace,” says Alain Malan, a sports consultant in Abidjan. “Where a player is transferred, he must be an adult, or have parental permission, as well as the approval of the national federation.”

“There’s no longer ‘over the counter’ sales of players. The clubs that recruit young players for a bargain price [with the view to] sell them for much more, those clubs will have to review their policy,” says Malan.

According to FIFA’s new guideline, TMS will no longer authorise the transfer of a youth who does not belong to a club registered with the national federation. And the federations are now involved in tracking transfers.

Emmanuel Koffi, an agent based in Abidjan told IPS, “We are at the end of the wheeling and dealing of African footballers, at the end of the savage exodus of young talent.”

“We have been waiting a long time for a measure like tihs,” says Eric Kacou, head of communications for the FIF, the Ivorien football federation. He estimates that between 10 and 15 young footballers leave Côte d’Ivoire every year. “We have trained the clubs on this and no longer will a footballer from our country leave bypassing the current system.”

“This system should have been in place long ago. It would have helped to avoid much sadness,” says Abib Koné. He accuses African government of failing to take a firm grip on this rampant phenomenon.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
CAPE TOWN, Aug 10 2010 (IPS)

Weak floodlights barely held back gathering darkness as Somalia met Serbia in the finals of the Poor People’s World Cup. A small band of supporters were on hand to see an African side lift the cup in Cape Town’s Vygieskraal Stadium.

Delft resident Trinian Davids prepares to represent "South Korea" on the final day of the Poor People's World Cup. Credit: Davison Mudzingwa/IPS

Two Worlds, Two Cups

Planners initially proposed Athlone, on the Cape Flats, as the site for Cape Town’s official World Cup venue, reasoning that the investment in infrastructure could breathe fresh life into this working class neighbourhood. The rows of council housing were too prosaic a backdrop for FIFA’s vision, and a picture-perfect location between mountain and sea was chosen instead.

It was left to the Poor People’s World Cup to host a tournament there, on the patchy grass of Avondale Athletics’ home ground. The teams, each adopting the name of a different country, played for a trophy and 5,000 rand (a bit less than $700) in prize money.



The tournament was originally planned to run concurrently with FIFA’s, to highlight the contrast between the daily lives of the majority of South Africans and the opulence of the World Cup proper. It began in June, but, fittingly, a struggle to find sponsors meant the finals were delayed by a full month, to Aug. 9.

The delay does not seem to have killed the excitement for the 16 teams taking part on the final day. Sunshine and rain alternated all day, passing showers and gusts of wind making ball control and fluent passing a challenge.

“We are used to these harsh conditions. We live in poor areas without basic necessities and fight off challenges each day,” said Artwell Koerberg, manager of “Switzerland”, a select team from Westlake, south of Cape Town. 
The point of the competition, said Pamela Beukes, was to show how the World Cup was a missed opportunity to promote development to the benefit of South Africa’s poor.

“We looked at it from the perspective that the tournament would bring better houses for us,” she told IPS. “We thought they would develop our areas to give a good image to foreigners, but we were relocated to tin houses hiding us away from foreigners.”

Beukes is chairperson of the Anti-Eviction Campaign, which fights to defend the rights of the hundreds of thousands of Cape Town residents who lack adequate housing.

“See, now they built these white elephants [the stadia]. They should have used the same resources to build houses for the poorest of the poor.”

“But there is no use crying over spilt milk,” I interjected.

“Then the government must show the same discipline shown during World Cup preparation,” responded Beukes. “They have shown that they can achieve anything, we demand they do it now for the poor.”

‘This time for Africa’

Clinton Peterson hails from Delft, a township some 25 kilometres from Cape Town’s city centre, home to one of the largest government housing developments in the country.

“Clintyano”, as his team-mates call him, is the most vocal of the “South Korea” squad.

“I stay in Delft. I don’t even have a big house. if I turn, my head knocks against the wall, you see, because I don’t have a house. I live in a small hokkie.”

Hokkie is the Afrikaans term for a shack like the one Peterson shares with three other family members. “It’s not nice. Now we come here in Athlone, we see these houses… I feel sad.”

Peterson’s team-mate, striker Trinian Davids has just come out of rehab for drugs – a widespread problem for youths in his community.

“I’m physically fit now, I no longer take tik [crystal methamphetamine]. This is because of soccer,” says Davids, who dreams that football will be an escape route not only from drugs and alcohol but also from poverty.

“Football is my life, if I go [into the professional leagues], my friend, I’ll be a great star and I’ll give to the people. People don’t have money, they don’t have houses, and if I have money I’ll develop [the area], my friend.”

No official recognition

Davids’s team-mates call him “Kaka”; he fancied the World Cup as an opportunity to be spotted by football agents who could link him to professional teams. His hopes grew even more when he heard of the Poor People’s tournament.

But no high-ranking officials from FIFA or the government deigned to visit the parallel tournament, despite invitations from organisers.

“We invited the mayor, he didn’t come,” said Beukes. “They are showing disregard for the poor. All that we wanted is for them to come and support it and especially to come and see the talent on the ground.”

Twenty-eight year old Bantu Dlincane, is among the handful of supporters encouraging his team to play on.

“What I want is just employment. For now I just think we voted for nothing. Our leaders are not working,” he said. Dlincane lives in a squatter camp ironically called Sweet Home Farm.

The self-trained electrician says his life didn’t change due to the FIFA World Cup. “I’m still waiting to see if the legacy the government was talking about is going provide me with a job.”

The South African government injected over $4 billion dollars to the World Cup preparation. Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan said the investment will see a one percent rise in GDP this year.

For Dlincane, any long term benefits of the infrastructure built for the World Cup means nothing. “I don’t have a job my brother.”

In light of the fresh threats and actual violence towards black African migrants immediately following FIFA’s World Cup – with Somali shopkeepers in particular targeted – it’s a bittersweet irony that when the final whistle blows, the team playing in the colours of Somalia’s Ocean Stars celebrates victory.

Excerpt:

By Mario de Queiroz
LISBON, Jul 28 2010 (IPS)

Football functions on so many levels. It can be big business, moving astronomical quantities of cash, with obscene salaries for owners, coaches and star players. And it can be a widely played sport, found in every park, street or vacant lot. And it can be the common ground for multicultural coexistence.

Immigrant football teams playing at the Primeiro de Dezembro Stadium, in Sintra, Portugal. Credit: Katalin Muharay/IPS

The relevance of this intercultural sporting event is reinforced by the personal commitment of Portuguese President Aníbal Cavaco Silva, who heads its Commission of Honour.

Hosting the matches of the “Mundialinho” are Lisbon and the neighbouring city of Sintra, just 30 kilometres away. The tournament was inaugurated Jul. 17; the championship match is slated for Aug. 1.

The tournament’s mission is to promote a sporting and social gathering of people of different national origins and professions, from humble workers who have come to Portugal to build a decent life, to university professors, doctors, economists and diplomats.

The most enthusiastic participants are the immigrant labourers, especially those coming from Portugal’s former colonies in Africa, as well as from Brazil, and from the countries of Central and Eastern Europe.

This year 16 teams are participating, hailing from Angola, Brazil, Britain, Cape Verde, China, Germany, Guinea-Bissau, Morocco, Moldavia, Mozambique, Nigeria, Romania, Senegal, São Tomé and Principe, Spain, and Ukraine.

Spain and Portugal are the only European Union countries that hold this type of competition, financed primarily by their national and municipal governments, with the aim of creating an environment of equality and integration amongst foreign residents and with the broader society.

“Because of its social component, one could say that the Little World Cup is the most democratic and egalitarian sporting event held in our country,” Nascimento, an advisor to the mayor of Sintra, told IPS.

However, the scores of the football matches held so far have not been at all “egalitarian.”

The teams from the African countries and from Brazil, made up of mostly of youths who generally have physically demanding jobs and play football in their free time, have truly thrashed their opponents.

Some of the match results have been particularly lopsided: 23-1 (Cape Verde v. Morocco), 11-1 (Cape Verde v. Britain), and 18-1 (Guinea-Bissau v. Germany).

Nevertheless, the matches were “not at all humiliating for the losers,” assured Nascimento, because the teams from Germany, Spain and Britain are made up of immigrant university-trained professionals “who play football only on weekends for fun.”

The immigrant labourers, meanwhile, especially the Portuguese-speaking Africans, “train every day, driven by the idea of becoming professional footballers, starting in the second or third division, which would increase their income, and allow them to provide a better life for their families,” he said.

Offering another explanation is Hungarian Szabolcs Sebestyén, economics professor at the Catholic University and member of the British team because there weren’t enough players from his country to form a team here.

“The true reason behind those thundering defeats of the Europeans is the fact that there are some professional footballers playing on the African teams,” Sebestyén told IPS.

Nascimento stressed that the rules prohibit professional players from participating in the Mundialinho, but admitted that there have been some cases in which Sebestyén was correct. But when that occurred, he said, the penalty was forfeiture of the match.

“The only verified case this year was not reported on an African team, but Brazil’s, which easily beat its opponent, but when it was discovered there was a professional player on the pitch, the maximum penalty was given, which was to invalidate Brazil’s victory and award the win to the opposing team,” he said.

However, the rules do not prohibit the participation of former professionals, “and that must be the case that the Hungarian professor is referring to,” said Nascimento, and cited Sebestyén’s own team, “which has a former English professional, who is about 50 years old, but on the pitch he looks 35.”

Nascimento noted that “what is really important is the coexistence of people of all origins and professions, without violence or misconduct, a way to get to know each other through a sport played in its purest state.”

The two-week tournament was organised by the municipal governments of Lisbon and Sintra and the national government, through the Interior Ministry, the Secretariats of Sports and of Social Integration and through the office of the High Commissioner for Migration.

Contributing to the financing were two companies: Ibérica Comunicação Empresarial, and Mota-Engil (which has major construction projects in Angola), as well as the Catholic institution Santa Casa da Misericórdia.

The Foreigners and Frontiers Service and the immigration police haven’t let the opportunity of the Mundialinho escape them — not to check the participants’ immigration papers, but rather to promote legalisation for those who might be undocumented.

Broader and more ambitious projects are planned for future tournaments.

For the Third Little World Cup of Integration, in 2011, initiatives include matches between immigrant children and exhibitions for artists from the participating countries.

Why do these integration football tournaments only take place in the Iberian Peninsula countries? Nobody wanted to give a definitive response, but Nascimento, who is also a historian, ventured a possibility for why his country stages the Mundialinho.

“Portugal started globalisation six centuries ago. Its former colonial empire was always marked by a strong mestizo (mixed race/ethnicity) component and our policy of integration, with its ups and downs, continues to have that hallmark.”

Excerpt:

By Fabiana Frayssinet
RIO DE JANEIRO, Jul 19 2010 (IPS)

It’s Friday night, and in a “favela” (shanty town) in this Brazilian city, a group of men relax with a beer after a hard week, while a song can be heard above the rowdy chatter.

'Men for an End to Violence against Women', a slogan on a T-shirt in Santa Marta. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

Many people are following the beat and singing along with the song, which speaks of a man who has a row with his wife because in her anxiety over paying the rent, she forgot to wash his football kit.

“Problems between a husband and wife are normal. But don’t cross the line into verbal or physical aggression,” repeats the catchy refrain.

The song is part of the strategy of Promundo, a non-governmental organisation, aiming to raise the consciousness of men in Santa Marta, using two of Brazil’s cultural icons, football and music, to address another of its leading concerns: women – but with a difference.

This samba is also the informal anthem of a football tournament which has been taking place for the last six months in this favela of 10,000 people atop a steep hill in Rio. Anyone who wants to can play, with only one condition: they must participate in a workshop about violence against women and about masculinity.

“The project broke all precedents by talking about these issues man to man,” said Gilson*, a 32-year-old rap singer, on the evening IPS joined with some of the 119 participants in the Santa Marta workshops.

“You get to do what you like most, which is playing football,” Gilson added, and proudly pointed out a photo of himself wearing the team jersey, with a slogan against violence against women on the back, which was published in a community newspaper by Promundo, an organisation with nationwide scope.

Leaning against the bar, Gilson chats with other players about the tournament final. “Let’s have an ‘asado’ here in the favela, for everyone,” proposes Samuel Marques, one of the community coordinators.

Marques, who is from Santa Marta, recalled that at the beginning no one wanted to put their names down for the group workshops, which dealt with issues like gender violence, sexuality, the division of labour in the home, men’s health and homophobia.

Fabio Verani, a senior programme officer with Promundo, said “the idea is to involve men in discussion about gender equity,” and is part of the White Ribbon Campaign (WRC), a movement against sexist violence initiated in Canada in 1991 that has since spread to many other countries.

Eventually, the workshops attracted mass participation with only occasional absences from the sessions. It was “a huge achievement,” said Marques.

Leandro, a 29-year-old married man and father of four children, who is currently unemployed, said that at first he was extremely wary of telling others in the group about his personal life. “Talking about what happens at home, in your private realm, is difficult at first,” he said.

But with time “it became easy,” and he learned to see the relationships between couples and within families differently. “It’s not just women who have to learn how to look after the children, but men too. Just because the man puts the rice and beans on the table doesn’t mean he has no further responsibilities in the home,” he said.

Now he takes his children out to the playground so that his wife can study at home; he reads them stories, and plays with them. “My daughter makes pretend meals and says, ‘eat, Daddy’, and I eat,” he says. “The meetings opened my mind to new ideas.”

Marques described the process of attitude change in men, saying that first the socially imposed model of behaviour has to be taken apart. This model, reproduced by men, by women, the family and institutions like the church, teaches that the masculine role in the family is that of only “protector and breadwinner.”

Verónica Moura, another community coordinator, said violence against women is fuelled by what she called a “machista society.”

“It can arise from the domestic situation. The father may physically attack the mother, or the mother assaults the father, and the children go on to do the same to their sweetheart or spouse, because it is what they have seen since they were born,” Leandro said.

Verani says he is surprised by the number of men who are unaware that they themselves exercise violence, and see it as socially acceptable.

Promundo found that between 20 and 25 percent of men in the group meetings all over Brazil recounted their own acts of violence against the women they live with.

Marques stressed that many men think that hurling insults is not violence, and others justify their violence as a way of “disciplining women.”

In Brazil, since 2006 the “Maria da Penha Law” has condemned violence against women and the family, and includes prison terms of between three months and three years if someone is injured.

Gilson, the rap singer, admits the workshops “were my salvation, because I did not want to be violent, but I didn’t know how to change my ways.”

“I have met up again with ex-girlfriends who at one time used to drive me up the wall. But now I reflect and calm myself down,” he said with elation. Male aggressiveness, he said, is due to men being “closed-minded because of ideology.”

“People stop by the bar and talk about football and women, but no one ever talks about sexuality, or the children, or helping with the chores at home,” he said.

Gilson is aware that violence cannot be ended overnight. But he said “the issue can be worked on with the children who are tomorrow’s adults, by talking to them about sexuality, about violence against women, about raising the children together.”

Promundo plans to evaluate the workshops when the tournament ends in late July, but there are already visible results. “This football tournament is one of the most peaceful in the history of Santa Marta,” Verani said.

Ana Claudia Pereira, a consultant on gender violence at the Centro Feminista de Estudos e Assessoria, which works for gender equality, told IPS that projects like this one are important for “attracting men to the debate.”

However, she expressed criticism that “often in an emergency situation, when a woman’s life needs to be saved and when there are such limited resources for implementing public policies, the need to redouble help for the victim and the preservation of her physical integrity can be overlooked.”

* The surnames of the workshop participants have been withheld at their request.

Excerpt:

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Jul 12 2010 (IPS)

The FIFA Football World Cup is presented — and felt emotionally by millions — as a contest amongst countries in which national honour is at stake. But it is also a private business, controlled by a small group of people who exploit patriotism and foment rivalries in marketing the “product.”

The Spanish national team was the victor in the final match Sunday of this year’s World Cup, hosted by South Africa, defeating Netherlands 1-0. As Spain basks in the glow of its first-ever World Cup title, the rest of the world’s football fans are looking ahead to 2014, wondering if their national teams will make it to the next edition of the international tournament, hosted by Brazil.

Stadium construction and other preparations are already under way in the Brazilian host cities, and FIFA (International Federation of Association Football) has already taken some very important — and often lucrative — decisions.

A warning from Arlei Damo, professor at the Brazilian Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), identifies “mafia-like” characteristics in FIFA, the sole governing body which “monopolises” this professional sport in the world, overseeing groups of national and regional football federations.

It is a “closed body that is accountable to no-one,” and will not reveal how much it profits from the World Cup tournament, held every four years, or where those profits go, Damo told IPS. FIFA dictates the rules, has its own form of justice and does not put up with members that turn to the national courts.

With a degree in physical education and a doctorate in social anthropology, Damo has published three books about football, and is one of a growing number of academic researchers studying the broader scope of this globalised sport.

Football’s amazing motivational power does not lie in the sport itself, “a game without meaning, with a fragmented narrative,” as Damo described it, but lies in the fact that it is a powerful “symbolic good” and relies on individuals feeling part of something larger, whether nationalism or “clubism.”

The crowds that faithfully head to the stadiums or that get excited about the World Cup don’t do it for the sport, but to support their club or national team, he said. This “captured patriotism” means that people who don’t necessarily understand or appreciate the game will nevertheless turn into fervent fans.

The rivalries — domestic or international — are a key element. Support for a football club in Brazil is determined by a “male blood relative” in 80 percent of the cases, and is definitive for the family. Infidelity is punished through social stigma.

Brazil’s national team, like those of the rest of the world, is not a team belonging to the country itself, but to the Brazilian Confederation of Football, a private entity that does not answer to the government or the population, with decisions taken by a handful of powerful clubs, said Damo.

FIFA likewise exploits the ambiguity and the belief that it is a sort of multilateral, inter-governmental institution. It is proud to have more members than the United Nations (208 compared to the UN’s 192). It does not allow foreigners to play on a national team, only native born or naturalised citizens, in order to maintain the power of the national identity associated with the team, said Damo.

That institutional context, without governmental or societal control, favours the kind of corruption denounced by journalists like Scotland’s Andrew Jennings.

It’s no accident that FIFA headquarters are in Switzerland, where flexible laws allowed a bribery case to go unpunished. Jennings had reported the case of bonuses offered by International Sport and Leisure as it negotiated FIFA television and advertising rights.

In the organisations that govern football around the world, the leaders tend to remain in their posts for long periods, another fact that lends itself to corruption. The Brazilian João Havelange was at the helm of FIFA from 1974 to 1998, who previously had headed the Brazilian Confederation for 16 years.

But the “inexplicable” success of football around the globe, making it the favourite sport in most of the countries where it is played, has put it above the problems of corruption and impunity, says Simoni Lahud, an anthropologist at the Fluminense Federal University, in Niteroi, near Rio de Janeiro.

The global expansion of football, a triumph that legitimises FIFA’s power, generated a widespread “passion” that overshadows the repercussions of corruption or interference of football leadership in national decisions, such as the construction of stadiums in preparing to host the World Cup, she said.

In a “transnational world,” sports serve as “one of the few places for national representation,” especially in Brazil, where the nation has few ways to express itself, so it “places all its chips on football,” said Lahud.

Nationalism in Argentina, in contrast, is expressed in many areas, like politics and territorial conflicts, and as a result the passion for club football is as strong as it is for the national team, she added.

The differences were evident in the two countries’ reactions when their teams lost during the World Cup in South Africa, said the anthropologist. While the Argentines received their national team with celebrations after losing 4-0 to Germany, the Brazilians may as well have thrown stones at their players, beaten in the quarterfinals by Netherlands, 2-1.

Curiously, that nationalism linked to football in Brazil “emerged from a defeat,” when it lost the 1950 World Cup final match to Uruguay, 2-1, at Maracanã stadium in Rio de Janeiro, Lahud noted.

The national trauma, following the victory of the tiny neighbouring country that overcame widely favoured Brazil, scarred the South American giant — and could be why football triumph has turned into a national obsession.

Regardless, football has become an important aspect of life for millions, if not billions, of people around the globe, and is now such a gigantic business that its governance has attracted more and more scrutiny — and not just from academics and journalists.

Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, for example, has suggested limiting the term of the president of the Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF) to eight years, as the Brazilian labour unions under his direction did in the 1970s.

Ricardo Teixeira, former son-in-law of Havelange, has led the CBF for the past 21 years. And Joseph Blatter, of Switzerland, has been in command at FIFA since 1998.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
MONROVIA, Jul 11 2010 (IPS)

Vivian Howard is a single mother who cooks and cleans like just about any other woman in Liberia – but in her work life she’s in charge of 22 strong, athletic men. The first and only centre female referee in Liberia with a FIFA badge, Howard is standing shoulder to shoulder with the men of Liberia.

Vivian Howard and daughter Blessing. Credit: Tamasin Ford/IPS

It’s true there are more female ministers in Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf’s government than ever before, new legislation has been passed to protect and promote women’s rights and some women are being given chances in life that they had never experienced.

However, women still remain firmly on the bottom rung of society. They’re the most vulnerable members of the community in terms of access to education, access to health and access to justice.

Which makes the sight of Vivian Howard taking charge of a friendly match involving some of Liberia’s overseas-based stars in Monrovia’s Antoinette Tubman Stadium all the more impressive.

“I feel so happy when I’m in the centre,” Howard says. “I feel I’m a man even though I’m a woman. But there’s the challenge: what men can do, I can do it.  So I’m there to encourage other female referees to do what I can do.”

What men can do, women can do – this is something you hear in Liberia quite a lot. After 14 years of civil war, Liberians voted in Johnson-Sirleaf and women all over are finding the strength to push themselves forward too.

Howard lives a 40-minute drive from Monrovia’s Antoinette Tubman Stadium, down a long dusty track in a small concrete building shaded by a huge mango tree.

Life a a single mother is not easy for her. She gets no support from her daughter Blessing’s father, relying entirely on her income as a referee. The Liberian Football Association pays her around 90 U.S. dollars a month.

“In Liberia we call it hand to mouth,” she says, “because once you have it… you just go to the market and buy food to it and take care of your family.”

Howard lets none of this inhibit her as she controls a match featuring football players who star in various leagues. Many of the players taking part in the game are on a rare visit home, reacquainting themselves with a country working hard to complete the transition to peace after 14 years of civil war.

David Gbemie, who plays for Bolton Wanderers in the English Premier League, is home for only the second time since he signed for the English club eight years ago at the age of 13.

“It’s quite scary, I thought the war was still the same and it was quite crazy.  But it’s normal, it’s like living in Manchester!”

Liberians are delighted to see their best players with their own eyes. Gbemie is a major celebrity in Yekepa, his hometown in Nimba county.

“I can’t sleep because people sleep around my house waiting for me to come out.  It’s quite amazing like.  Things that don’t happen in England happen here, it’s quite crazy.”

Liberia’s best-known player, the now-retired George Weah, was arguably Africa’s most outstanding player in the early 1990s, winning the African Player of the Year three times and recognised as FIFA’s World Player of the Year in 1995.

The national team, known as the Lone Star, has never reached the same high levels, but many have high hopes following the appointment of former Hungary coach Bertalan Bicskei as national coach.

Anthony Laffor, a striker at South Africa’s Premier League champions Super Sport United, thinks it’s time for Liberia to establish itself on football’s world map.

“[The fans] really want something to happen in this country.  You know since George Weah and the other guys left, fans say we haven’t done anything.  I think it’s about time for us to give something back to them. They’re there cheering under the rain and the sun and I think this time around we can qualify for 2012 Africa Cup of Nations.”

For Vivian Howard, international recognition not only means more money for the men’s team, but more money for the referees and the women’s game too.

“I just want to urge the other female referees what I can do they can do also.  And some can even do better than what I can do so I urge them to come to the game because I’m not only here as Vivian, I’m here as Liberia.”

Excerpt:

By Patience Nyangove
WINDHOEK, Jul 11 2010 (IPS)

Throughout the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, organisers have insisted that the legacy of the event goes far beyond the sporting spectacle. In the dusty streets of a Windhoek township, Deon Namiseb believes this is true.

Katutura is one of 20 sites where a Football for Hope Centre is being constructed. The Fédération International de Football Association (FIFA), in conjunction with Special Olympics Namibia and the streetfootballworld network are establishing a facility where people with disabilities can play football alongside their non-disabled counterparts, helping to overcome widespread discrimination.

“My main aim is that the community be involved,” says Namiseb, standing proud and serious in his worn-out golf shirt, red shorts and tennis shoes. “They should come and enjoy themselves and be part of what we are doing here and we share knowledge in whatever aspect of life.”

Namiseb was born with an intellectual disability and an under-developed right hand. For all of his 32 years of life, he has been shunned by most in his community.

Despite this, he briefly coached a female football team in Okahandja, a small town some 70 kilometres outside Windhoek. He says the Centre will offer him the first opportunity to play football alongside able-bodied people, across lines of prejudice that have shaped his life.

“It’s difficult to grow up your whole life being made aware left, right and centre that you are different from the majority of people,” he says. “Some people don’t even want to come near you as if you have leprosy or  some other infectious disease.

“I might be disabled but I am not any different from anyone and I am hoping that through this initiative the able-bodied youth soccer players we will play alongside will be our ambassadors to society and tell them that disability does not make anyone lesser human,” Namiseb told IPS at the Centre’s bricklaying ceremony.

“We are the same and we are capable of doing what any other person can do.”

The Football for Hope Centre in Katutura will provide facilities to more than 1,000 athletes with intellectual disabilities as well as other members of the community. In addition to sport, the Centre will help athletes acquire basic computer literacy skills and provide education on reproductive and sexual health.

“Because we are disabled one way or the other does not mean our bodies behave differently from other human beings,” Namiseb says.

“We have the same needs. The fact that we will be taught more about our bodies is wonderful. I know for a fact that most disabled women are sexually abused and if they are made aware of what sexual  abuse is, it will help them to protect themselves against it.

“I will try to use my one strong hand for the computer lessons,” he says, a big smile on his face, “it does not matter that I might not get a job to use these skills but the knowledge is valuable.”

Able-bodied Joe Shipala also hopes to be part of the initiative. He says he only came to realise the unfair discrimination against people with disabilities when his mother was involved in a car accident and had to have her legs amputated.

“It was an eye-opener and seeing  my mother being discriminated hurts so much. Our father even divorced her after the accident because he did not want a wheelchair-bound wife. But I can’t disown my mother because of disability; she did not choose to be that way and I don’t see her any different.”

He says he wants to be part of this initiative to show society that disability does not mean inability.

Shipala also says if admitted to the programme, he will stand to benefit from the computer training which he will use when he finishes his diploma in commerce.

The national director of Special Olympics Namibia, Stay-C Namases, feels sport is very important for those with intellectual disabilities, because it can bring them together on an equal footing with people who usually shun them.

“Sport is very vital to those who are disabled because it helps to integrate them into mainstream society. People don’t want to interact with them, they discriminate [against] them. [Sport] is a tangible initiative that can bring the disabled and the non-disabled to one place were they come play, have fun and interact together,” Namases told IPS.

Namiseb, who lives with his mother says he is grateful to FIFA and the Special Olympics for making the resources for the Centre available.

“After all the discrimination we have gone through it’s touching to know that someone  remembers, someone cares about us. Although we can’t pay back with money I hope that our smiles are enough to show them how grateful we are.”

The Football for Hope initiative foresees the establishment of 20 centres across Africa. In addition to the Katutura Centre, facilities in South Africa, Ghana, Mali Rwanda and Kenya have already opened or are near completion.

Excerpt:

By Zofeen Ebrahim
KARACHI, Pakistan, Jun 30 2010 (IPS)

England coach Fabio Capello has bemoaned the unpredictable trajectory of the Jabulani World Cup ball, calling it “the worst ball”in the history of the tournament. But labour rights groups have a greater complaint.

Hand-stitched footballs being put together in Pakistan, which used to supply most of the world's supply of them. Credit: Irfan/IPS

Up till the late 1990s, Pakistan was commanding as much as 85 percent of the world’s market in football production, employing a workforce of 85,000 to produce 60 million balls per year worth 210 million U.S. dollars, said a report in English-language daily ‘Express Tribune’.

The South Asian country is now down to just getting between 30 to 40 percent of the world’s orders for footballs.

While Pakistan failed to qualify for the last FIFA World Cup in Germany, it still made its presence felt in every match. The footballs used in the 2006 FIFA World Cup were hand-stitched in Sialkot, a city in the north-east of the Punjab province famous for manufacture of sports goods and surgical instruments.

For the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, however, Adidas decided for the Jabulani footballs – the official match ball — to be machine-made in China.

Arshid Mehmood Mirza, executive director of Bedarie, a non-governmental organisation working for the protection of women’s rights, has been working for the rights of workers in the football trade for over 15 years. “It is unfortunate the Pakistani football industry has not keep pace with the technological advancements,” he lamented.

However, it is the use of child labour that has been cited as the major factor in bringing the football-production industry in Pakistan crumbling down.

In 1996, the world learnt through an exposé in ‘Life’ magazine that Pakistani children were stitching soccer balls for six cents an hour.

Assessments by the International Labour Organisation – International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (ILO-IPEC) and the Punjab Labour Department revealed that there were some 7,000 children engaged in soccer manufacturing processes, informed Mirza.

Mortified, the Pakistani government, along with sporting businesses, joined labour and other groups to try to put the house in order and eliminate child labour from the industry. In 1997, a agreement was signed between the ILO, the Sialkot Chamber of Commerce and Industry and United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) to centralise workers and eliminate children from the industry.

“Contracting work to home-based workers did not allow monitoring of child labour, so in 1998, the government in collaboration with the industrialists opened up stitching centres in a bid to phase out home-based work,” recalled Khwaja Zakauddin, former chairman of the Sialkot Chambers of Commerce and Industry and chief executive of Capital Goods Industry. To date, some 130 big industries have joined this programme.

While acknowledging a marked decrease in child labour in the football stitching, the Washington-based International Labour Rights Forum (ILRF) insists child labour still exists where stitching is outsourced to home-based work.

In a report published just before the FIFA World Cup this year, the ILRF unveiled new research that pointed disturbingly to workers being paid about one to two U.S. dollars per ball they stitch. Each ball retails for one hundred dollars or more.

In interviews with 218 workers in seven supply chains in Pakistan, the ILRF found that 70 percent of them were casual workers and “almost all of them were paid below the legally required minimum wage”. The study also pointed to gender-based discrimination, where female home-based workers were paid the least.

Forty-year-old Josephine Francis, a mother of five, is a home-based worker who has been stitching balls for more than 10 years, but has not signed any contract for her employment. She does not know who her employer is, where her wares are sold, and for how much.

“All I know is that I get 35 rupees (40 cents) for stitching one ball. I am told these balls are sold in the market from between 300 to 600 rupees (3.5 to 7 dollars),” she said, speaking to IPS in a telephone interview from Sialkot. “Till a few months ago, I got 25 (29 cents) per ball and this rate persisted for years.”

Francis is able to stitch four in a day after she has done the housework.

Taslim Bibi’s predicament is no different.

Unlike Francis, she only gets 30 rupees (35 cents) per ball. “The rates vary,” said Bibi. She dares not say anything to the middleman who brings them the business. “He will go elsewhere if we complain too much. There are so many others who will work for less,” she explained.

But some have questioned the ILRF’s report. Ghazanfar Ali Awan, director of the Awan Sporting Goods Industry, claimed that his 450 or so workers are paid a minimum wage of 6,000 rupees (70 dollars) per month with all the benefits including overtime, social security, old age benefits, and health. The few cases of children working, said Awan, were found in un- regularised, small-scale industries that even the ILO would be unable to eliminate.

“A rigorous auditing and monitoring system should be in place for fair wages, rights and entitlements” for all workers, Mirza said.

Along with eliminating child labour and regularising the casual workforce, Pakistan’s football-making industry will have to keep pace with newer technology to make a dent at the next World Cup.

A government-funded Sports Industries Development Centre is soon to open up, says Khwaja. “Once in place (in 2011), we will be in a position to produce over 3,000 balls in eight hours including volleyballs and basketballs,” he said.

Excerpt:

By Ángel Páez
LIMA, Jun 24 2010 (IPS)

The Peruvian government is taking advantage of the broadcasts of the World Cup football games in South Africa to air an ad touting a reduction in the poverty rate from 48 to 34 percent between 2005 and 2009 as an achievement of the administration of President Alan García.

“Peru won the World Cup against poverty” says the voiceover in the spot financed by the Presidency of the Council of Ministers and aired on TV channel 9 and Radio Programas — the stations that have the exclusive broadcasting rights to the World Cup that kicked off on Jun. 11 in Johannesburg.

The ad celebrating Peru as world champion in the fight against poverty shows President García holding the FIFA (football’s world governing body) World Cup trophy on Feb. 16, when it was on tour ahead of the tournament.

The government ad cites the May report by the head of the National Institute of Statistics and Informatics (INEI), Renán Quispe, who announced a drop in the poverty rate from 48.7 to 34.8 percent between 2005 and 2009. (García took office in July 2006.)

But poverty statistics broken down by region, which IPS requested from the INEI, show that in 11 of the country’s 25 regions, the proportion of people living below the poverty line actually increased.

Between 2008 and 2009, poverty rose from 69 to 70.3 percent in Apurimac; from 61.5 to 64.5 percent in Huanuco; from 53.4 to 56 percent in Cajamarca, the leading gold mining region; from 48.8 to 56 percent in Loreto, home to most of the country’s Amazonian indigenous tribes; from 36.7 to 38.9 percent in La Libertad, a leading agro-export and mining region; and from 36.7 to 38.9 percent in San Martín, where the Alto Huallaga coca-producing valley is located.

Poverty dropped, on the other hand, in Pacific coastal regions like Ica (from 17.3 to 13.7 percent) and Piura (41.4 to 39.6), and in the capital (from 18.3 to 15.3 percent).

Economist Iván Hidalgo, director of the government’s main anti-poverty programme, “Juntos”, said the rise in poverty in some regions is a result of the impact of the global economic crisis.

“The economic crisis has hit the whole world, and Peru too,” he told IPS. “But we don’t do year-to-year comparisons; we look at longer periods. Our base line is 2005, and there was clearly a drop in poverty by 2009.

“If we only look at the 2008-2009 results, there was clearly a setback. But if we analyse the situation between 2005 and 2009, the proportion of people living in poverty has shrunk,” he said.

The economy has been hit harder in some regions than in others because they depend heavily on exports, like Cajamarca and La Libertad, which is why they have seen a rise in poverty, Hidalgo said.

The Juntos (Together) programme provides a monthly cash stipend of 100 soles (35.7 dollars) to families living in extreme poverty.

This year, the programme’s budget is 223 million dollars — funds that are channeled through the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, which is paying for the “world champion against poverty” ads.

But Farid Matuk, who was head of the INEI during the government of Alejandro Toledo (2002-2006), had a different explanation.

“The poverty figures published by the INEI and cited by the ‘spots’ during the World Cup broadcasts are not a product of scientific measurements but an artistic creation,” he told IPS. “There is no math on earth that backs up INEI’s statistics.”

Matuk, a statistical consultant who has advised the government of Iraq and is today working for Angola, says the official figures on the reduction in poverty are not accurate.

“What the INEI does is patch up the figures to please the president. Those statistics are simply not true,” he said.

More important than the data on poverty published by the government are the statistics on the calorie deficit or “food poverty,” which are also calculated by the INEI, Matuk said.

According to the INEI, from 2005 to the first quarter of this year, food poverty increased from 28.6 to 32.9 percent overall, and from 40.7 to 45.8 percent in rural areas — which means Peru is not a “world champion” in food poverty reduction either, Matuk said.

“The figures on ‘food poverty’ are closer to reality than the monetary poverty statistics,” he said. “But there is a problem with the INEI statistics: it is not logical to say that Peruvians have more money but are eating less.”

Peru is in no respect “the world champion in the fight against poverty,” Matuk said. “Inventing statistics is like inventing goals.”

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 23 2010 (IPS)

Delays in construction to prepare for the 2014 football World Cup, to be hosted by Brazil, bring to mind the budget overruns and the secretive bidding process ahead of the Pan-American Games held in Rio de Janeiro in 2007.

“The construction delays could lead to contract violations, as occurred in the 2007 Pan-Americans, which ended up costing 4 billion reais (2.1 billion dollars),” said opposition lawmaker Silvio Torres, of the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB) and president of a congressional regulatory subcommittee for the 2014 World Cup.

Those were the figures cited by the press and by an investigative commission of the Rio de Janeiro council, which was unable to reach a final conclusion on the matter.

The budget planned in 2003 for the Pan-American Games was 386 million reais (about 204 million dollars), but according to the authorities the expenditures reached one billion reais (529 million dollars).

“We are on the way to making the same mistakes” for the 2014 World Cup, Torres said, because in the rush to complete “construction of stadiums and infrastructure on time,” the government decided to “flexibilise” the bidding contract requirements.

The lawmaker believes the less rigorous controls will “make it difficult to know what the final cost of the World Cup is going to be.”

“The government only decided in January to get fully involved in the matter, injecting funds in order to meet the agreed deadlines,” Torres told IPS.

The administration of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva released 5 billion reais (2.65 billion dollars) in late May to Infroaero, the regulatory body for Brazil’s airports and air traffic, to update the terminals in the cities that will host the games of the 2014 FIFA (International Federation of Association Football) championship.

Meanwhile, the National Economic and Social Development Bank (BNDES) opened a line of credit worth 4.8 billion reais (2.54 billion dollars) for stadium reforms and construction.

The 2014 World Cup Organising Committee designated 12 cities as hosts for the matches: Belo Horizonte, Brasilia, Cuiabá, Curitiba, Fortaleza, Manaus, Natal, Porto Alegre, Recife, Rio de Janeiro, Salvador and São Paulo.

More than half of the work to remodel or build new stadiums, for example, in Manaus, Recife and Natal, has fallen behind schedule. There are also delays in modernising the airports and the infrastructure in the cities to host the World Cup matches.

Neither the Ministry of Sports nor the Organising Committee would respond to IPS’s repeated requests for comment — at least not until their top officials return from South Africa, where the World Cup is under way, with the final match to be played Jul. 11. The Brazilian national team remains a contender for the title.

It was on Oct. 30, 2007, that FIFA announced Brazil would host the 2014 World Cup. The South American giant hosted the tournament back in 1940, and holds the record for most World Cup titles, with five.

That day, Ricardo Teixeira, president of the Brazilian Football Confederation and of the Organising Committee, “said that the financing for the stadiums would come from private sources,” said Torres.

“That private capital never appeared because of the 2008 financial crisis, and because of the inability to sustain the stadiums after the Cup takes place,” added the lawmaker.

Marcelo Damato, chief editor of Brazil’s top sports magazine, Lance!, pointed out the contradiction that “the World Cup, a private enterprise of FIFA,” and Teixeira’s promise of “private investors,” has ended “in a request for public funds” to finance the infrastructure.

Torres also pointed out that as host of the event, “the organising country signs an onerous contract with FIFA in which it commits to tax exemptions for the sponsors, marketing companies, television broadcast rights,” just to name a few of the partners of the institution in charge of the global football championship.

To reach that point in an agreement, the host countries often modify their local tax laws — and Brazil is no exception.

“It is very unlikely that Congress will pass the Executive branch’s bill on the matter this year,” he said, “because of the presidential elections in October.”

The legislator explained that the Brazilian government would lose out on 900 million reais (473 million dollars) in tax revenues as a result of such an agreement.

“That is the figure we in the regulatory subcommittee were told by two technicians from the Receita Federal,” as the Brazilian tax service is known.

If Congress does not approve the legislative bill before Jan. 1, 2011, Brazil could lose its status as host, because that is FIFA’s deadline for committing to the tax exemptions for its partners.

“Teixeira himself confirmed this in a public hearing in the congressional subcommittee, when he appeared there to provide explanations for the work delays and high costs of the World Cup preparations,” said Torres.

In parallel, the government authorised the host cities not to collect taxes on services and on the circulation of merchandise, which could bring Brazil’s total losses in tax revenues to 1.2 billion reais (630 million dollars).

Damato said the public money earmarked for organising the tournament “should be between 10 and 25 billion reais (5.3 and 13 billion dollars).”

In his opinion, “3 or 4 billion reais should go to the stadiums” and the rest “should be invested in urban infrastructure.”

“The World Cup will bring economic benefits,” he said, but it is essential to establish “whether the price paid is fair, and whether the construction projects are in keeping with the country’s priorities.”

Legislator Torres said “the only thing that matters to FIFA is that its partners don’t lose money and that the Federation itself make money from the Cup at zero cost.”

The 2014 World Cup Organising Committee pledged to complete all of the stadiums by Dec. 31, 2012 — a year and a half ahead of the start of the tournament.

Excerpt:

Perhaps Africa’s World Cup began in earnest on Jun. 16, when a despondent green and gold-clad crowd began leaving the Loftus Versfeld stadium even before the end of South Africa’s heavy defeat to Uruguay. Migrant African fans felt the first touch of cold post-tournament reality.

Supporters at the African Corner Bar, Johannesburg. Credit: Nastasya Tay/IPS

In their final game on Jun. 22, Bafana Bafana, as the country’s national team is known, went on to shine brightly for an hour against a pathetic France, but despite taking a two-goal lead, faded at the finish to make an unwelcome mark in the record books as the first host in the World Cup’s 80-year history to fail to make through to the second round.

African fans have rallied to support their continent’s teams. Security guards outside the official FIFA Fan Fest in Soweto say supporters have gathered there in numbers to watch African teams play, rather than the traditional European soccer powers. Large crowds watched Ghana’s first match against Serbia, but went home when England played the United States afterwards.

In the stands at Soccer City to see Brazil play Côte d’Ivoire on Jun. 20 – who despite losing, perhaps have the best chance of surviving the group stages – Alfie Little was supporting the West African nation for the first time. Little said he had been disappointed by Bafana Bafana’s performance and will support any African team in the tournament.

“Africa has been disregarded for so long, as the underprivileged, poorer continent. Doing well would lift the spirits of the whole continent. Unity is lacking and this is the first time we’ve all pulled together,” Little says.

Beneath the roar that accompanied winger Siphiwe Tshabalala’s magnificent opening goal on Jun. 11, whispered rumours of the resurgence of xenophobic attacks post-tournament continue.

In May and June 2008, waves of violence fuelled by xenophobia left 62 dead across South Africa.

As the tournament began, the Consortium on Refugees and Migrants in South Africa issued a set of recommendations on preventing a recurrence, opening with the statement: “Widespread mass xenophobic violence in the aftermath of the FIFA World Cup appears a credible threat at present. Xenophobic violence has continued since May 2008 on a smaller scale in a number of locations around the country.”

Faith Ngwenya, a 26-year-old mother of one, works in a Ghanaian restaurant in Johannesburg. She came to South Africa to escape food shortages in her native Zimbabwe, and to earn money to send back across the border. She has struggled. “South Africans are treating us bad. They say we take jobs away from them,” Ngwenya says.   But she is enjoying the World Cup. She is supporting Bafana Bafana, and says things have changed for foreigners during the tournament.

“For now it’s changed because we want them [Bafana Bafana] to win. They are friendly because we are supporting them… but I don’t know what will happen afterwards,” says Ngwenya. “There are rumours we will be chased – I am afraid – but if they chase us, we will go, we don’t have a choice… Nothing has happened yet, but I don’t know what will happen if they lose.”   Dorothy Nairne, who runs a company which strives to create jobs for people who lack skills or education, spends much of her working week with migrants. She says in recent weeks she has had requests from frightened Zimbabwean employees to move into her house.

“They’re scared to death,” she says. “They say that people in their neighbourhood have been making threats. They’re not sure if the threats are serious, but people are saying they’re going to kill them.”

One of Nairne’s friends from Ghana isn’t flying his Ghanaian flag because he’s worried about being stopped by the police. “It’s okay to be foreign, as long as you’re European,” Nairne explains, “Fly your flag, just not an African one.”

But the notion of an African World Cup isn’t completely false. In the working class Cape Town neighbourhood of Salt River, home to a growing number of migrants, flags of all six African teams – and Free Palestine banners – can be seen. In the local pub, just as in the downtown fan park, people gather to cheer for the continent regardless of national origin.

Amid the tournament euphoria, the buzz of the vuvuzelas, the energy on the streets, and the shared penchant for green and gold, people are undoubtedly being brought closer together.

“But the minute it’s over, watch out,” warns Nairne, who spent years working in the development sector. “The disappointment will be very real. If people haven’t seen World Cup benefits, still don’t have jobs… When people are feeling the pinch, they lash out…”

And here lies one of the major challenges of hosting the World Cup: South Africa’s government did little to dampen high expectations of profiting from the tournament as it spent lavishly on preparations. So far, those profits have fallen to a few.

The construction jobs were temporary; many of the millions who have endured decades-long delays in upgrades to their woefully inadequate housing have looked on glumly as multi-billion rand stadia were completed on schedule; urban facelifts and sharply-enforced restrictions on unlicensed trade prevented many in the informal sector from making money from the legion of sports fans in the streets.

So the conditions for a bumpy landing are in place.

The Scalabrini Centre, which works with migrant and local communities in Cape Town, recently conducted a survey of people using its services; 75 percent of the 109 people they interviewed said they expected renewed violence after the tournament. More than two-thirds said they had been threatened or warned by South Africans.

Miranda Madikane, director of the Scalabrini Centre, believes the threats to migrants are real, but says if South Africans take a stand – “to stop the hate” – threats need not become reality. Nationalistic fervor raised by the World Cup should not be allowed to turn ugly.

“South Africans are not xenophobic by nature. They don’t agree with this violence. We need to rise up to prevent this violence from happening,” she says.

“Win or lose, we love you,” proclaimed one placard in Cape Town’s largest township, Khayelitsha. Amidst the sea of gold and green worn by supporters of South Africa’s football team watching Bafana’s final game on an outdoor screen, flapped a lone Nigerian flag, “United 4 Africa” painted across it in red.

*Terna Gyuse in Cape Town contributed to this report.

By Helda Martínez
BOGOTÁ, Jun 22 2010 (IPS)

Football, the most popular sport in Colombia, has been subject to heavy pressures from drug trafficking since the mid-1970s. A new study shows that the illicit trade continues to tarnish the upper echelons of this sport.

A big screen in a Bogotá plaza shows the 2010 football World Cup. Credit: Helda Martínez/IPS

Investigations in recent months led to the arrests of five people, in Buenos Aires, Bogotá, Miami and in the central Colombian town of Puerto Gaitán.

Notable among them are two former officials of the government’s Technical Investigation Corp (CTI), the entity that supports the national Attorney General’s Office.

Luis Caicedo and Claudio Silva were detained in April as part of “Operation Pacific Basin.” Caicedo lived in relatively humble circumstances in Buenos Aires, marking a sharp difference with the top Colombian drug cartel bosses.

From Argentina, he allegedly coordinated a network of illicit activities throughout the Americas, linked to the brothers Javier and Luis Calle, successors to drug boss Wilber Varela, who was killed in Venezuela and 2008.

Silva is believed to have served as a figurehead. The authorities have seized 118 properties whose titles were under his name.

Arrested in the United States for alleged obstruction of justice is Ricardo Villarraga, former official with the Colombian Administrative Department of Security (DAS), charged in 1994 for abetting the escape of Puerto Rican Fernando Montañez, arrested for drug trafficking.

The Attorney General’s Office links Villarraga, who has a son playing for Independiente Santa Fe, to the money laundering case, though his defence attorney denied that his arrest in the U.S. is related to drug trafficking.

Another arrestee also belonged to the DAS: Franklin Gaitán, who was in charge of the organisation’s security. The fifth to be arrested is Carlos Flórez, police captain, who is thought to have leaked information to the drug cartel.

The next target of justice authorities is Julio Alberto Lozano Piraquive, who is thought to be living in Mexico and was already sentenced in the United States to 20 years for “drug trafficking and money laundering,” which won him inclusion in the Red Notice of Interpol (International Criminal Police Organisation).

Lozano allegedly provided money to Independiente Santa Fe under the guise of investments. The investigation cites figures that surpass 25 million dollars between 2006 and 2008.

Involved in the plot are also former club presidents dating back to 1985, such as the assassinated César Villegas, sentenced for drug-related money laundering in the “Proceso 8,000”, which investigated the ties between the Cali drug cartel and the electoral campaign of former Colombian president Ernesto Samper (1994-1998).

Luis Eduardo Méndez, who headed the club from 2003 to 2007, was sentenced to 70 months in prison for helping Montañez escape. When Montañez was recaptured, he confirmed that Méndez had received money from drug traffickers.

In the middle of the scandal, the football club’s current president, César Pastrana, issued a statement assuring that none of the people mentioned has ties to Independiente Santa Fe, and reiterated willingness to provide all information necessary.

“The relationship between the ‘narcos’ and football has left innumerable inconclusive legal investigations” in Colombia, designer and football fan Camilo Alejandro González, told IPS.

Investigative journalist Fabio Castillo published a report in 1987 entitled “The Horsemen of Cocaine,” which laid out the ties that existed at the time.

“Atlético Nacional (football club) had as its principal shareholder Hernán Botero, seen in a large photo in which he held up a fistful of dollars during a football match that his team lost,” wrote Castillo.

“Remember that in the 1980s and 90s, most people wavered between desire and ethics. They wanted the team managers to create winning teams by hiring famous footballers, at the same time they ignored or hid the disappointment they may have felt about the participation of narco- trafficking money,” sociologist Fernando Morales told IPS.

“It was an era when many idolised Pablo Escobar (notorious Colombian drug lord, killed by police in 1993) because he built houses for the poor and supported neighbourhood football teams,” Morales said.

The 1980s and 90s were also an era of great football triumphs. In 1989, the Atlético Nacional club won the Liberators Cup (the prestigious South American club tournament) and in 1993 the Colombian national team beat powerhouse Argentina 5-0 in qualifying for the 1994 FIFA World Cup — a victory that fans continue to boast about.

The Colombian squad played in the FIFA (International Federation of Association Football) World Cups of 1990, 1994 and 1998.

In 1991, while serving time in La Catedral prison in Medellín, Pablo Escobar received a visit from the national team’s goalie at the time, René Higuita, famous for ability and his agility in the goal.

In 1994, footballer Andrés Escobar (no relation to Pablo) was assassinated in his home city of Medellín after scoring a goal against his own team, which meant Colombia’s elimination from the World Cup in the United States. “That loss sparked fury among those betting on the match, and surely some were linked to narco-trafficking,” said football fan González.

Other teams have experienced similar situations. Los Millionarios club belonged to drug trafficker Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha, who was killed in a military operation in 1989. The clan of the Rodríguez Orejuela brothers, extradited to the U.S. in 2004, owned shares in the América de Cali football club.

González, who supports Los Millionarios, is confident that the club’s new president, José Roberto Arango “will renovate it, selling some shares and the trademark, as well as bringing in new investors — this time legal ones.”

“A similar process can be seen at the América de Cali club,” he said.

Excerpt:

By Fabiana Frayssinet
RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 16 2010 (IPS)

Long known as “the football nation,” Brazil today is seeking a new title: recognition as a global economic and political power — though without denying the sport that made it famous.

Rio's Maracaná Stadium, inaugurated for the 1950 World Cup, which Uruguay won. Credit: Wikipedia

More than a century after the first match played on Brazilian soil between the employees of English companies, Apr. 15, 1895, and from those times in which football was a game of the elite and excluded people of African descent, the “verde amarela” (green yellow) shirt has proved capable of transcending the divisions outside the stadiums.

In the words of Sports Minister Orlando Silva, Brazil “today is known as democratic, a producer of clean energy, with a diversified economy and as a major tourist destination” — but the nation’s international visibility is due to football.

“Fifty years ago, this country was little known in the world, and those big names of Brazilian football and their great conquests were essential” for our introduction abroad, Silva told IPS.

Some see the minister’s explanation as campaign demagoguery for the Oct. 3 elections to coincide with the FIFA Football World Cup under way in South Africa (Jun. 11-Jul. 11). Others see as an act of justice, referring to a government-proposed legislative bill to economically compensate those responsible for past football victories.

The initiative, currently being debated in Congress, would provide a pension for the players of the World Cup championship teams of 1958, 1962 and 1970, when football — though a professional sport at the time in Brazil — did not pay anywhere near what today’s players earn.

“What those men did for our country is impossible to repay,” said Silva.

“It is more than a recognition for those who earned recognition for Brazil,” said Jair Ventura Filho, known as Jairzinho, one of the stars of the champion team of the 1970 FIFA (International Federation of Association Football) World Cup played in Mexico.

“Brazil was considered a nothing, and thanks to football it is now seen as one of the greatest powers in all areas,” Jairzinho, also known as “Hurricane,” told IPS.

The government’s initiative is based on the analysis that football is “one of the main components of national identity,” and a “way of life” for Brazilians, according to the minister, who referred to this popular sport as an element of “social integration.”

“There is no place in our country — whether in the country or in the city or in the suburbs — where there aren’t children playing football, having fun and feeling they are part of something” because of the sport, he said.

Political analyst Fernando Lattman-Weltman agreed that those factors are important for Brazilians because “they were able to create an identity and establish a ‘brand’.”

“Football is a part of our culture’s heritage, it characterises us as a people and is admired by the whole world,” said Lattman-Weltman, professor at the Getulio Vargas Foundation’s Centre for Research and Documentation of Brazilian Contemporary History.

To illustrate this idea, the analyst mentioned a unique perspective in this “homeland of football boots.”

When it is a matter of a football championship within Brazil, the important thing is to win — no matter how. In contrast, when it is a global tournament, it is not enough that the Brazilian team wins, but rather that it play “our ‘beautiful game’,” Brazil’s famous “art of football,” he said.

Lattman-Weltman takes the analysis further, and gives another reason for the dominance of this imported pastime that became deeply rooted in Brazil over the years.

Football has clear rules that everyone understands and it has a notion of merit. The best team wins, he said. “In football, everyone knows when it is a clean win and when it isn’t.”

Those “meritocratic” values of football, according to Lattman-Weltman, on the playing field turn a certain Brazilian demand for justice and respect into reality.

It is a model that is easy for the Brazilian people to identify with, he said. Brazil is an ethnic mix of European and African descendents and indigenous peoples that also has “democratic merit.”

“To play football, it isn’t necessary to be tall or short or black or white or mulatto. Anyone can play,” he said.

On the other hand, it is also a team sport that maintains a place for the individual. “A player who loses or makes a goal or defends against a penalty kick is as important as team play,” said Lattman-Weltman.

“Football is important for the self-esteem of Brazilians because at least in this we are the best,” he summarised.

These descriptions of country and culture haven’t escaped the notice of politicians.

As Lattman-Weltman points out, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known for his strong ability to communicate with the people, often uses football metaphors — even for the most complex economic issues.

“It is a popular language that everyone understands. And politics has a lot in common with football,” he said.

“Each player has to be a patriot to play for our country,” said the head coach of the Brazilian national team, Carlos Caetano Bledorn Verri, known as Dunga. He was defining the spirit of the World Cup, in which Brazil won its first match 2-1 against North Korea, on Tuesday in South Africa.

And in explaining why he did not include internationally known stars like Ronaldinho and Adriano on this year’s national team, the coach simply stated: “in every war there are casualties.”

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
MOGADISHU, Jun 15 2010 (IPS)

“Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I assure you, it’s much more serious than that,” former Liverpool manager Bill Shankly once said. Uncomfortably close to a bald statement of fact for fans of the beautiful game in Somalia, who risk their lives to watch the World Cup unfolding in South Africa.

Threats from Islamist groups have not quenched the passion for football in Somalia. Credit: Abdurrahman Warsameh/IPS

“We are warning all the youth of Somalia not to dare watch these World Cup matches. It is a waste of money and time and they will not benefit anything or get any experience by watching mad men jumping up and down,” Sheikh Mohamed Abdi Aros, a spokesperson for Hizbul-Islam, told the BBC.

Fans lucky enough to live in territory controlled by the Transitional Federal Government are able to watch in relative security – the Dhamuke Cinema is a popular public viewing place.

But two people watching the game in a private home in another part of the capital Mogadishu were reported to have been killed by militants Jun. 12. Other reports from north-east of Mogadishu say Hizbul-Islam arrested 10 people who were watching Nigeria play Argentina.

But Somalia is a football-mad nation. Despite almost twenty years of civil strife in Somalia, football continues to be not only watched, but played and enjoyed in the east African country.

Daily clashes between the warring sides are the norm for Mogadishu, but it is not unusual to find young footballers playing in deserted neighborhoods while fighting is goes on in other parts of the city.

Games organised by the Somali Football Federation (SSF) between local football clubs are watched by fanatic supporters in spite of the prevailing insecurity in the capital.

“Nothing will stop us from playing football which is loved by many people in this country,” Shafii Mohyadeen, SFF spokesman told IPS.

The city’s stadia are either too dilapidated to play in, or occupied by forces from the feuding sides. Tournaments are held in temporary playing grounds in relatively safe areas in Mogadishu.

“I believe the game has a future in Somalia just as in any other country,” Mohyadeen said.”Every time we have a game, thousands of fans pack the playing grounds to watch.”

Somalia’s national football team, the Ocean Stars, continues to represent the country in international competition.

The country’s U-17 squad qualified for the next round of the African youth championships after beating the Kenyan team in mid-April. Somalia secured a 0-0 draw in a hotly-contested match at the Oserian stadium outside Nairobi, after humiliating their Kenyan counterparts 3-1 in the first leg earlier in the month.

“That victory was a boost to our national morale, and as supporters we see what our team can do if they play to the best of their ability,” said an ecstatic Mohamed Yare, a fan from Mogadishu. “We hope in time Somalia could qualify for a continental or regional championships or even the World Cup.”

Somalis in the diaspora have preserved this passion for the game. Dozens of Somali football clubs in Western Europe and North America play in tournaments both within the Somali exile community and in their host countries.

Players like Cisse Aadan Abshir, the Ocean Stars’ all-time leading scorer who plays for Norwegian side Eidsvold Turn, Ayub Daud, on loan at Italian third division club Lumezzane but registered to Italian giants Juventus, and Liban Abdi, of Hungarian club Ferencváros, are among the Somali exiles who are playing in professional leagues.

Many of the players in the national team are drawn from overseas, others come from prominent Mogadishu clubs like Banaadir and the reigning league champions, FC Elman.

Football is one of the fragile instruments used to promote peace in Somalia. A number of former child soldiers have been persuaded to swap their guns for football.

“However difficult our situation is, we believe football can play a major role in helping peace and stability prevail in our country,” insistes the SSF’s Mohyadeen, “and that is what our federation has long been striving to attain. Football is here to stay, not only as game to be played but as a catalyst for peace and harmony among society.”

Excerpt:

By Marcela Valente
BUENOS AIRES, Jun 10 2010 (IPS)

No one admits to providing them with support, but hundreds of Argentine football hooligans known as “barras bravas” flew to South Africa for the World Cup and are threatening to cause disturbances if the football clubs do not get them tickets to the games.

Argentina’s barras bravas are powerful enough to pressure political leaders, the heads of football clubs and players in exchange for cheers and support during matches or political rallies.

More than 300 barras bravas are in South Africa for the opening of the World Cup Friday, although 12 were deported. In a statement, the police said “Intelligence indicated that these persons would commit acts of public disorder, engage in acts of violence and provoke conflict with certain fans of opponent teams”.

One of the deported men, who is on parole after a conviction for attempted murder, was able to leave Argentina without difficulties, apparently because the border agents had not received the notification from the judge, although other reports mention the possibility of corruption.

Many of the barras bravas who are in South Africa do not have tickets, and are threatening to cause trouble if they don’t get in to the matches. One leader of a football club told the Clarín newspaper in Argentina that they should be given tickets, in order to avoid “serious problems.”

Sergio Danishewsky, a sociologist and sports journalist, told IPS from South Africa that the phenomenon of the barras bravas “is very complex” and has gradually “taken root,” with no one daring to tackle it.

“First they grow as shock forces, they make deals with the heads of the football clubs to back or get rid of coaches or players and to provide support in election processes,” he said. “In exchange, they manage activities that bring in funds and give them economic power, such as ticket sales, parking around stadiums or plane tickets.

“After that, political links emerge, their influence grows, they gain power as pressure groups, and it becomes more and more difficult to dismantle them,” Danishewsky said.

Today, the leaders of the barras bravas have comfortable lifestyles and expensive lawyers.

The government denies that it provides them with support, while the leaders of the clubs and the national team’s technical staff, headed by legendary footballer Diego Maradona, flatly deny any links to the groups.

Sociologist Diego Murzi of the public University of Buenos Aires said organised groups of football fans have been active since the 1960s, but that back then, “it was an honour to defend the team from the rivals. Now they have become clans that jockey for power and are motivated by economic considerations.”

As football grew as a business, “the barras demanded a larger share of the pie,” he said. “The barra brava is an actor in the world of football with enormous non-institutional power, on the fringes of the system.”

What is surprising today, he said, is the number of barras bravas who managed to travel to the World Cup.

Like in the past, they are said to have links to government officials and party leaders, especially of the governing Justicialista (Peronist) Party.

“There has always been a handful of barras bravas who have made it to global football championships by pulling strings in the clubs, but this time a whole contingent flew over,” Murzi stated.

He said another novel aspect was that now they have such “obvious” ties to the state.

Murzi was referring to a “non-governmental organisation” created in November, Hinchadas Unidas Argentinas (Argentine Fans United), which promised to take 500 fans to the World Cup and turn them into “community leaders” who will help build housing for the poor and get involved in other social efforts.

The group, led by Marcelo Mallo, began unfurling banners with political messages at matches, one of which was ‘Kirchner Vuelve’ — a call for the reelection of President Cristina Fernández’s husband and predecessor, former president Nestor Kirchner (2003-2007), in the 2011 elections.

But cabinet chief Aníbal Fernández denied any links between the government and the group, and called the creation of Hinchadas Unidas Argentinas “a catastrophe”, while describing the organisation as “a monstrosity”.

He has also repeatedly denied assertions that the government has financed fans’ trips to South Africa.

Mallo, a leader of Compromiso K — a group of Kirchner’s political supporters — who has admitted that he goes way back with the cabinet chief, took more than 240 fans to South Africa, where they are staying in a school.

In South Africa, he once again stated that Hinchadas Unidas Argentinas received no government support or public funds in exchange for the political publicity in the stadiums. However, he has not explained how the group is financed.

Salvemos al Fútbol (Let’s Save Football), a non-governmental organisation that campaigns against violence in stadiums in Argentina, reports 249 violent football-related deaths since 1924, and maintains that the barras bravas enjoy the support of the police and the complicity of political and sports leaders at the highest levels.

The group has asked the justice system to investigate how fans facing charges in court or on parole were able to travel to South Africa.

It has also called for investigations into possible links between Hinchadas Unidas Argentinas and the governing faction of the Peronist Party, and of the source of the funds for the group’s trip to the World Cup, which Salvemos al Fútbol estimates at 2.7 million dollars.

The non-governmental organisation asserts that Julio Grondona, the president of the Argentine Football Association and first vice president of the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA), is one of the powerful figures who have supported the barras bravas for decades.

Grondona staunchly denied the allegation, pointing instead earlier this month to Maradona and the Argentine team’s manager, Carlos Bilardo, saying their ties with the barras “emerged in 1986.”

He was alluding to arrangements made by the two for 60 fans to travel to the World Cup in Mexico, which Argentina won. Since then, the barras bravas have travelled to the championships. But this year, so many of them have gone that they have drawn attention away from the team itself.

Maradona absolutely denied any links, while Bilardo admitted that he had ties to some fans, but told them he would not be able to get them tickets to the matches.

He did so after the vice president of the Boca Juniors club and the head of the Argentine delegation, Juan Crespi, told Clarín that the barras “come every day, asking for Bilardo and saying he had promised them tickets, and Bilardo tells us we have to get them, but I don’t know how.”

Psycholologist Marcelo Roffé and journalist José Jozami launched a book this month in Buenos Aires, “Fútbol y Violencia: Miradas y propuestas” on violence in football, which reveals the complexity of the social relations in the sport.

“The ultimate aim of the book is to reduce the number of deaths within and outside of the stadiums,” Roffé told IPS.

The psychologist said the violence “isn’t going to be curbed as long as there is collusion between the barras bravas, the police, and the football club leaders.”

He also said the barras bravas are “just the tip of an iceberg” — referring to a “much more complex social” phenomenon tainted by corruption.

Excerpt:

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Jun 10 2010 (IPS)

The Mexican government and capital city authorities are making the most of the national football team’s participation in the FIFA World Cup beginning Friday in South Africa, by using the sport’s power to distract public attention away from the economic crisis and the violent battle against drug trafficking.

The intertwining of football and politics is indicated by conservative Mexican President Felipe Calderón’s plans to attend the opening match of the FIFA (International Federation of Association Football) championship, between Mexico and South Africa. The Foreign Ministry described the president’s visit as a working trip.

“Football is a sport with mass appeal, that allows people to vent their frustrations and let off steam about their day to day reality. Now it has political overtones, because it attracts large gatherings that can be used to get campaign messages across,” analyst Juan Ibarrola told IPS.

In May, the government organised a poll to sound out public opinion about Calderón’s possible visit to South Africa. Between 59 and 63 percent of respondents were in favour of the trip, and so for the first time in Mexican history the president will attend a World Cup match to watch the national team play.

Calderón, who has been invited to the World Cup inaugural ceremony by South African President Jacob Zuma, has met with the Mexican squad at least four times since June 2009.

“Football is all the rage right now. The government is aware of this, and is taking the opportunity to raise people’s morale, or to avoid doing certain things,” Erasmo Zarazúa, of the Department of International Relations at the private Iberoamerican University, told IPS.

The Calderón administration has taken advantage of football fever to make certain announcements.

For instance, when the Mexican team played El Salvador on Oct. 10 last year in a qualifying round for the 2010 World Cup finals, the Calderón administration seized the opportunity to decree the liquidation of the state electricity company Luz y Fuerza del Centro, sparking a conflict that has still not been settled.

The Supreme Court is examining whether or not the closure of the company was unconstitutional, and a group of dismissed workers have held continuous protests, and are now on hunger strike.

According to a nationwide poll by Mitofsky Consultants, results of which were released on Tuesday, half the Mexican population is interested, to varying degrees, in the world football championship.

Javier Aguirre, the Mexican team’s Spanish coach, whose photograph is splashed across the front pages of national newspapers and magazines, has not escaped the political power plays.

“South Africa identifies strongly with its president, as shown in the film ‘Invictus’. We too are well served on this front. Imagine what it’s like for the lads to spend time with the president’s family,” said Aguirre on May 7, after a friendly match between Mexico and Ecuador, played in the U.S. state of New Jersey.

“Invictus” (2009), directed by Clint Eastwood, portrays the way former South African president Nelson Mandela (1994-1999) used the 1995 Rugby World Cup — hosted and won by South Africa — to unite society after the demise of the apartheid regime.

On May 30, Aguirre appeared in a spot broadcast by the private networks Televisa and TV Azteca, calling for the country to change “from the Mexico of ‘yes, we can’ to the Mexico of ‘yes, we could and did!’

“It is 2010, and it seems impossible for us to become the great, safe, just and prosperous country that we all want. But once again, it is time to act,” said the coach, referring to the 200th anniversary of independence from Spain (1810) and the 100th anniversary of the Mexican Revolution (1910).

Afterwards Aguirre, who also coached the national team in the 2002 World Cup hosted by Japan and South Korea, took part in the television programme “Discutamos Mexico” (Let’s Talk About Mexico) aired Jun. 8 by state channels 11 and 22.

“If I tell the players, ‘Look, the country is desperate for good news, the economy is on a drip feed, the violence is appalling, society isn’t working, so let’s do our part, let’s win the World Cup!’ — can you imagine the pressure I’d be putting on them?” he said.

The Public Education Ministry has given permission for Mexico’s first round matches — with France and Uruguay, as well as with South Africa — to be watched in every school. Companies are also expected to be flexible in order to allow their workers to see the games.

“It will be a good thing if the team wins, because it will instantly cheer people up, but on the other hand the politicians could exploit the moment to take actions that no one will notice in all the euphoria of Mexico winning a match,” Ibarrola said.

The leftwing government of the capital city also sees the championship as an opportunity to make political hay. In the Zócalo, the main square in the historic centre of Mexico City, several giant screens will be set up for live broadcasts of the matches, as part of the FIFA Fan Fest.

The FIFA Fan Fest was organised for the first time during the 2006 World Cup in Germany. Mexico City joins five other world cities and nine sites in South Africa that are to provide these displays throughout the 2010 championship.

But while cutting edge technology broadcasts the World Cup games, in a corner of the Zócalo a group of members of the Mexican Electricians Union (SME), which represents former workers of Luz y Fuerza del Centro, will be continuing their protest and hunger strike against the government’s decision to shut down the company.

Excerpt:

By Marcela Valente
BUENOS AIRES, Jun 9 2010 (IPS)

A new school to train football referees to work amateur-level tournaments in Argentina aims at providing skills and a legitimate source of income for young people from poor homes.

“The idea is to start with 90 students, and 20 percent should be female,” Joaquín Ignacio Tomé, executive director of the association “Para que no te quedes afuera” (Don’t Be Left Out), which will begin student registration in July, amidst football World Cup fever.

Argentina is considered a top contender at the FIFA international football championship, Jun. 11-Jul. 11 in South Africa.

The referee training programme will operate in the low-income neighbourhood of La Boca, in southern Buenos Aires, near the home stadium of the popular Boca Juniors football club, and some of the city’s tourist sites, like the colourful Caminito street and the old port.

Although thousands of tourists from around the world visit the neighbourhood, La Boca remains one of the city’s poorest areas. More than half its 10,000 youths ages 14 to 29 are unemployed, according to government figures.

That is much higher than the national unemployment rate. With a population of 40.2 million, Argentina has 6.4 million in the 15-24 age group. Of those young people, 2.7 million come from low-income households, and 756,000 neither work nor study.

Meanwhile, in La Boca, “43 percent of unemployed young people neither study nor have income; that is, they are young men and women who lack any means or incentives for their labour development,” project coordinator Roberto Pazo told IPS.

According to Pazo, the job of referee is in high demand because of the thousands of amateur tournaments held in Buenos Aires and surrounding areas. They pay for referees is about 25 dollars per match. Working tournaments like these is how the professional football referees get their start.

Women have begun to join the ranks of referees in recent years — and not without controversy. Currently there are just three women who are professional referees for men’s first division football.

Referees are also needed for the thousands of women’s football tournaments.

“Young football referees. An attractive option for social inclusion and the promotion of ’employability’ among youths in at-risk situations” was one of the 530 Latin American projects selected this year for financing under a Latin American initiative.

The selection was made at the 2010 Latin American and Caribbean Development Marketplace, held in Bogotá in April. The annual event is organised by the World Bank in association with the Inter-American Development Bank, Organisation of American States and other entities.

At the fair in the Colombian capital, the focus was on projects that involve young adults in opportunities for jobs and income. The winning proposals will receive funding to get their projects up and running.

“Initially we’ll receive 15,000 dollars, and that will allow us to operate for one year. After that, we’ll apply for more funds, and if we don’t win again we’ll look for private financing in order to continue,” said Tomé.

“Para que no te quedes afuera” has existed since 1997 as an entity dedicated to defending young people’s rights and promoting youth development through a variety activities aimed at job training and employment.

The association’s idea to create the football referee school includes bringing in instructors from Argentina’s National School of Referees to ensure that the youths receive a proper education in sports theory and ethics, as well as physical training. All free of cost.

To register for the course requires prior completion of secondary school, but the school’s promoters say that if someone is interested and hasn’t done so, support will be provided to help that student complete that degree.

He remarked that the lack of jobs and opportunities in La Boca neighbourhood often generates “a vicious circle of drugs, violence and crime,” from which it can be difficult to escape. That is why all the projects focus on job training and generating sources of income.

“The school will train professional referees for the numerous amateur football matches in the region, attracting at-risk youths and providing them with the chance to develop a skill,” Pazo said.

Classes include football regulations, physical training, sportsmanship, as well as sociology and sports psychology.

Once the course is completed, the school hopes to arrange paid professional practice for the new referees and to create a professional referee agency that serves as a nexus between the institution and the football tournaments.

“In Argentina, football is a passion among all social classes, and with so many tournaments the supply of referees does not meet the demand,” said Pazo, adding that this plan can be adapted for other sports.

Excerpt:

By Fabiana Frayssinet
RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 5 2010 (IPS)

In a country where many poor children dream of “making it big” through football or modeling, retired Brazilian football stars Leonardo and Raí could have simply basked in their fame. But they decided instead to combine sport with education, art and skills training.

Raí and Leonardo Credit: Fundação Gol de Letra

They have seen success in the world’s most popular sport, heard applause and insults from the crowds, withstood harassment from journalists and fans, and shared the champagne and caviar of the elite.

But like his friend Leonardo, Raí said he felt “a moral obligation” to do something for his country.

Brazil is as famous for its record of winning five football World Cups as it is for its deep social inequalities, as reflected by the poverty and violence of its favelas or shanty-towns.

It was a concern that both players shared and what brought them together as friends. Leonardo was bothered by the favela next to the field where his team trained, the popular São Paulo club, because he knew that he held one possible solution in his hands.

“Because of the passion in our country for football, we can’t be content with the playing field and with success,” Raí, whose full name is Raí Souza Vieira de Oliveira, told IPS.

“We have to be aware of the influence on people’s lives that we have as players,” he said, “the motivational power that football can have, as rugby did in South Africa against apartheid (the former official policy of racial segregation).”

That gave rise to the idea of creating the Gol de Letra Foundation with Leonardo Nascimento de Araújo, known simply as Leonardo.

“Letra” is used in Brazil to describe a football play in which one lets the ball pass between the legs and then uses the calf of one leg to move it — a touch, pass or goal “de letra”.

“Letra” also means “letters” in the academic sense.

“It’s a play on words,” said Raí. “The true goal is the greater objective of providing people their right to an opportunity, so that they can independently go on to have a decent, dignified life.”

The road chosen by Gol de Letra was education, according to co-founder and director-treasurer Beatriz Pantaleão.

After considering several methodologies, and after years of practice, Gol de Letra created its own strategy, with support from Brazil’s Abrinq Foundation and the U.S.-based W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

Both in São Paulo, where Gol de Letra was born, and Rio de Janeiro, where it operates in the Cajú neighbourhood, children ages seven to 15 receive instruction in reading, writing, computers and sports.

There is also a collection of educational toys, including some traditional Brazilian games, as well as classes in music and theatre, and presentations on environmental awareness. The older students can take part in training to prepare for the job market.

“Gol de Letra is a sort of second shift for school. In the morning they go to their regular classes, and in the afternoon they come here. We use creative techniques that feel like a game, but actually have a lot of content,” said Pantaleão.

(In Brazil, schoolchildren attend either the morning or the afternoon shift.)

The context is part of the learning process. There is deep involvement by the parents, who sometimes come from communities divided by drug-trafficking factions outside the school. But the parents are united in the education of their children. It is against this backdrop that Gol de Letra has chosen to work in communities like Cajú, which have some of the country’s lowest human development indicators.

Pantaleão gets upset when anyone confuses the foundation with an “escolhina” (little school) for football.

Just because the founders are footballers who have chosen to use the power of this sport as a catalyst for a development project does not mean it is a “nursery” or talent pool for future football stars, like so many other projects in Brazil, she said.

In its 12 years of operation, more than 6,000 children and adolescents have passed through Gol de Letra’s doors, thanks in large part to contributions from corporations and government educational incentive programmes.

Gol de Letra associations emerged in France and Italy in 2002, spreading the word about the social benefits achieved in Brazil and raising funds to be invested in the programmes.

The foundation currently provides classes and training for 2,000 children at its two centres, and is working to disseminate its method to other similar initiatives, whether in Brazil or other countries. Gol de Letra is preparing to open doors at a new centre in Guinea Bissau, a former Portuguese colony in West Africa, for example.

Of the students who have received job training, according to Pantaleão, more than half have formal employment, while others have dedicated themselves to the arts.

A book titled “Gol de Letras,” already in its third edition, illustrates some of the foundation’s activities, and includes a poem written by 10-year-old student Lucas dos Santos that summarises the spirit of the initiative:

“Futebol e arte/Futebol faz parte/Futebol e emoção/De ser Campeão” (Football is art, football forms part, football is emotion, of being the champion).

Excerpt:

By Daniela Estrada
PUNTA DEL ESTE, Uruguay, Jun 2 2010 (IPS)

South Africa, where the FIFA Football World Cup is to kick off Jun. 11, has introduced cleaner transportation, while Brazil is planning ecological stadiums for the championship it will host in 2014. But these and other initiatives clash with the countries’ overall environmental performance.

Cape Town's Green Point Stadium, one of the venues for the 2010 football championship. Credit: Public domain

Local transportation, the construction of stadiums and the energy use associated with the football matches and accommodations for thousands of fans are predicted to emit nearly 900,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide. Another 1.9 million tonnes of this greenhouse-effect gas, the main cause of climate change, will be emitted in the international travel to and from the World Cup.

To reduce these emissions and raise awareness among South Africans and visitors about energy efficiency, Pretoria has implemented two projects with the support of the Global Environment Facility (GEF).

In 2008, South Africa began work to improve public transportation systems in seven of the nine cities where football matches will take place as a means attract use by middle and upper income passengers who would otherwise drive individual cars.

GEF’s contribution to this initiative, which is implemented by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), is about 11 million dollars, while the national investment is more than 328 million dollars.

Among the biggest changes are the creation of a rapid transit system of buses in some cities and the improvement of infrastructure for pedestrian walkways and bicycle circulation. But the latter are very limited and it remains unclear whether the wealthier residents, who normally drive their cars, will accept the cultural changes implied in sharing buses, seats and routes with poorer passengers.

Making the most of this major sporting event to mobilise international investment, the idea is to leave a legacy for a definitive improvement of the public transportation system in South Africa’s cities, the UNDP’s lead technical adviser for climate change mitigation, Marcel Alers, told Tierramérica.

Alers was at the Fourth Assembly of the GEF, May 24-28, in the Uruguayan resort city of Punta del Este, where his account of the South African experience was heard with interest.

Another environmental project related to the World Cup, and with a budget of 10 million dollars, aims to reduce fossil fuel consumption in the six host cities through the installation of solar panels and efficient lights on the streets, stoplights and billboards, as well as actions to raise public awareness.

But the environmental will of South Africa and international organisations was called into question in April with the World Bank’s approval of a 3-billion- dollar credit for that country to build one of the world’s largest coal-fired thermoelectric power plants.

The World Bank’s decision to support the Medupi project of the South African government corporation Eskom prompted criticisms from the United States and some European countries — which abstained from the Bank vote — due to the power plant’s contribution to climate change. Activists charge that it will emit 25 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year.

Achim Steiner, head of the United Nations Environment Programme, tried to soften the criticism, saying the country should not be judged for its decisions based on the urgent energy needs of the South African people.

South Africa is not the only one facing major environmental challenges.

Brazil, host of the 2014 World Cup, wants to organise the “most ecological” global football tournament in history. The nation’s environmental authorities will require environmental certification before granting financing to stadium renovation and construction projects.

There are also plans for cleaner transportation and promoting organic products, say officials. But Fernando Alvez, retired goalkeeper of the Uruguayan national team, and special guest of the GEF Assembly, told Tierramérica that Brazil needs to halt deforestation of the Amazon if it wants to send a real environmental signal before the next World Cup.

Former diplomat and president of the Argentine Academy of Environmental Sciences, Raúl Estrada Oyuela, said “an infrastructure to emit less greenhouse gas and educate the population during the South Africa World Cup are two positive things.”

“But to go from there to truly resolving the environmental problem is a long stretch,” said the Argentine expert, who said he had turned down a 2007 invitation to advise South Africa on its transportation reforms due to the lack of basic data.

“South Africa, Brazil, China and India (who united as a bloc in international climate change negotiations) have a rhetorical attitude that has yet to be demonstrated in environmental management data,” said Estrada Oyuela, who headed the committee that drew up the Kyoto Protocol on climate change.

Meanwhile, the “green” initiatives associated with football seem never- ending. The transnational sports clothing company Nike announced that the nine teams wearing its uniforms — including Brazil, Portugal and Netherlands — will use jerseys made from recycled plastic bottles.

At the end of the year, an analysis will be conducted of the ecological projects in South Africa that were part of the FIFA World Cup to identify what worked and what didn’t, according to GEF officials.

(*This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank.)

Excerpt:

By Miriam Mannak
CAPE TOWN, May 27 2010 (IPS)

A fierce debate has erupted over claims that the 2010 Soccer World Cup will fuel the trafficking of women from African and other countries to South Africa for sexual exploitation during the cup, which starts on Jun 11.

Marlise Richter: Many sex workers "come from Zimbabwe or the Democratic Republic of the Congo as economic migrants and out of their own free will." Credit: Miriam Mannak/IPS

Dr Chandré Gould, senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) and author of ‘‘Selling Sex in Cape Town: Sex Work and Human Trafficking in a South African City”, dismisses the campaign’s message. According to her, the figures are severely inflated.

“Prior to the previous World Cup in 2006, 40,000 women were expected to be trafficked to Germany for sexual purposes,” she said at an ISS public seminar in Cape Town, South Africa, on May 24. ISS is a pan-African policy research think tank concerned with human security.

“The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) later found no increase of human trafficking during the event and that the number of 40,000 victims was unfounded. Neither is there proof to link big sporting events and human trafficking.

“We don’t know what is going to happen in South Africa but there is no reason to believe that the situation will differ from Germany. There will be six times less visitors in South Africa compared to the 2006 World Cup but some people still put the predicted number of trafficked persons at double the prediction for the 2006 cup.”

Gould noted that the problem of human trafficking generally is being overestimated. “Many media reports are based on improbable numbers that are built on insufficient data which are repeated in reports.

“For instance, UNICEF (the United Nations Children’s Fund) in 2005 repeated a claim that human trafficking was beginning to rival the drugs and arms trade as it was generating more than 10 billion dollars in revenue.

“If you look at where this number comes from, you realise that it was a mistake made by someone sitting at a desk at the U.S. department of state. This mistake is being repeated over and over again because it looks like a credible number and the media love numbers.”

But investigative journalist Mark Thomas questioned Gould’s statements at the seminar, based on his research into human trafficking and the South African sex industry.

“I would agree that nobody truly knows how much is generated by the trade but it is wrong to dismiss any suggested figure out of hand,” he told IPS. Thomas is news editor at the South African investigative news magazine Noseweek.

“There is not a single source that has stated with certainty that the annual revenue is 10 billion dollars. The UN, the Council of the European Union, the IOM, and several anti-human trafficking organisations all use the term ‘estimated to generate revenue of between five and nine billion dollars per year’.”

The gap between the two figures can be explained by the concealed nature of human trafficking, Thomas explained.

“Payments for services associated with illicit activities remain hidden. No single trafficker, some of whom have seemingly legitimate businesses, would ever declare amounts received as a result of illicit activities in their financial records,” he added.

Gould stated that none of the research of the past decade showed an increase in trafficking of women to South Africa. “The IOM over the past six years has found and assisted 315 victims of human trafficking. That is all. That is the extent of the problem as we know it.

“One needs to keep in mind that the IOM has trained over 10,000 law enforcement officials in Southern Africa to deal with human trafficking and there is a 24-hour hotline.”

Gould’s own research, published in 2008, found 1,209 sex workers in Cape Town, of whom 964 worked in brothels and 245 on the streets.

Out of 164 people interviewed, “we discovered eight cases of women that might have been trafficked. The brothel owners we interviewed said they and their clientele had no interest in foreign women. This could be related to the fear of being raided by the department of home affairs,” Gould explained.

Thomas questioned these claims. “In my research in Cape Town in 2009, I spoke to many women who were trafficked. For one story I spoke to 24 who were from Nigeria, Cameroon, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya and Zambia. A few were reluctant to disclose their nationalities.

“This was accomplished within the first two weeks of research,” he added.

But “not all foreign women that are working in the South African sex industry have been trafficked”, Marlise Richter, associate researcher at the forced migration studies programme at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, said at the seminar.

“Many of them come from Zimbabwe or the Democratic Republic of the Congo as economic migrants and out of their own free will. They do not see it as a life-long career but as a way to make some money before returning home,” she said.

Thomas also disagreed with Richter’s statements. “You don’t need a gun pointing at your head to be forced to do what you don’t like. The women she mentioned might not have been trafficked but they have been forced into this industry, as is shown by the fact that they see it as the only way to earn income. Most of them don’t do this work voluntary.”

Excerpt:

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, May 17 2010 (IPS)

Horacio Ramos is not bothered about paying an extra 50 dollars on his television subscription so that he can watch the entire FIFA World Cup, which kicks off Jun. 11 in South Africa.

“I want to watch most of the matches. I’m going to ask for holiday leave for those days,” the 30-year-old Mexican office worker told IPS.

The fees charged by television companies create unequal access to this Latin American country’s most popular sport, as the private networks Televisa and TV Azteca will only be broadcasting some of the football games on their free-to-air channels.

This has been the pattern for some years now for local tournaments and matches involving Mexican teams in regional competitions, like the Copa Santander Libertadores championship of Latin American club teams.

“People aren’t sure which matches will be on the free-to-air channels, and at what times,” Aldo Zavalza, a consultant with the De la Riva Group that has produced reports about the football business in the Mexican market since 2002, told IPS. “They want to see most of the games, but on the other hand they have to go to work,”

Televisa and TV Azteca could make profits of 800 million dollars from advertising during the World Cup, according to forecasts by several financial analysis firms. The global tournament will also be excellent business for beverage and snack producers, although their projected earnings have not yet been estimated.

In projections of advertising revenue for the World Cup, published in March, TV Azteca announced sales worth 370 million dollars, and Televisa for 1.4 billion dollars.

Football in Mexico generates over seven billion dollars a year, or 0.7 percent of GDP, according to a study titled “Tendencias del futbol, su afición y consumo en México” (Trends in Football, Fans and Consumption in Mexico) by the De la Riva Group.

In Latin America, only Brazil, five times the FIFA (International Federation of Association Football) World Cup champions, caps Mexico’s football earnings.

For the 2010 World Cup tournament between 32 national football teams, Televisa has the advantage of operating the Sky satellite television channel and the subscription channel Televisa Deportes Network, which has exclusive broadcasting rights for 10 out of the 64 matches.

The inaugural match will be played by Mexico and the South African team in Johannesburg.

The mere presence at the tournament of “El Tri”, as the Mexican team is familiarly known because of the green, white and red colours of the national flag, ensures a surge in the number of viewers and in revenues for the two private networks that have a virtual monopoly on the Mexican television market.

In Televisa’s case, Mexico’s participation in the World Cup will mean a 30 percent increase in the number of viewers and an additional 16 million dollars in advertising sales, according to 2009 estimates by Spanish bank BBVA Bancomer.

Meanwhile TV Azteca, owned by the Salinas Group, expects a 15 percent increase in viewers and an extra 12 million dollars in advertising because of the presence of the Mexican team.

During the 2002 FIFA championship, held in South Korea and Japan, Televisa sales were worth 437 million dollars, which fell to 400 million dollars for the 2006 World Cup in Germany, according to statistics from Spanish bank Santander.

TV Azteca earned 25 million dollars for broadcasting the 2002 Asian-based football championship. Precise figures are not available for the Germany 2006 World Cup.

In Mexico, Televisa owns three football teams, América — which rivals Chivas, in the northwestern city of Guadalajara, as the most popular team in the country — , San Luis and Nexaca. The Salinas Group, owners of TV Azteca, also owns Monarcas Morelia, in central Mexico.

Both companies negotiate with other teams for exclusive coverage of the matches played on their own teams’ fields, earning millions of dollars from the sport.

Subscription channel TVC Deportes, owned by the PCTV company, will broadcast 30 matches from the South Africa championship, up to Jul. 11.

Mexico, with a population of 107 million, has more than seven million subscribers to private cable and satellite television services, according to the governmental Federal Telecommunications Commission (COFETEL).

The football championship also brings political benefits.

A government poll found that between 59 and 63 percent of respondents were in favour of conservative President Felipe Calderón attending the opening match of the World Cup, between Mexico and South Africa, to which he has been invited by South African President Jacob Zuma.

Regarding Mexico’s chances, television creates “unrealistic expectations, exploiting society’s need for escape valves and moments of happiness in the midst of their daily problems” and for “incentives and stimulation to make up for adversity,” according to commentator Carlos Treviño.

A recent poll by Mitofsky Consultants concluded that 84.7 percent of respondents believe that the Mexico team will perform at a level between “fair” and “good”.

“Mexicans are passionate about their country’s team, just like Argentines. It’s a reaffirmation of being Mexican, a form of national identity that is rooted in history and ritual,” Zavalza said.

Mexico has taken part in 13 World Cup championships and has never got beyond the round-of-16, one stage before the quarter-finals, although it has twice hosted the tournament: in 1970, when Brazil won the cup, and in 1986 when the champion was Argentina.

So far, its greatest football success has been winning the under-17 world football championship in Peru in 2005.

Excerpt:

By Natalia Ruiz Diaz
ASUNCION, May 6 2010 (IPS)

From passion for football, to football as a profession: many parents in Paraguay are hoping this sport will provide a career for their sons, who flood into football schools with the burden of their dreams — and their parents’ demands — to become sports idols.

Youngsters training at the SC10 football school. Credit: Natalia Ruiz Díaz/IPS

In the adjacent field, where the over-13s are training, technical demands, skills and expectations begin to take over from simply having fun.

From the stands, a father acting as an impromptu coach is constantly giving his son directions: “Oh, no, you lost it again! That’s no good! You’ve got to stick to the ball!”

This school is a training ground for 180 boys between the ages of seven and 13. Older boys who have what it takes go on to play professionally, with the hope of being selected by a first division Paraguayan club.

“We promote football as a sport, from the perspective that it is healthy fun,” Luis Romero, the head of SC10, told IPS.

Football schools have mushroomed all over Paraguay since 1986, when the national team took part in the Mexico World Cup after a gap of 24 years of failing to qualify for the championship.

One year later, the Paraguayan Association of Children’s Football Schools (APEFI) was created. Dedicated to organising tournaments, it was the first organisation to bring together children’s football centres, Rubén Maldonado, president of the Confederation of Football Schools (COFEFU), told IPS.

The success of the tournaments and the proliferation of football schools led to the creation of the Paraguayan Federation of Football Schools (FEPEFU) in 1991, whose coverage spread from Asunción to the rest of the country. COFEFU, founded in 2002, now has under its umbrella five federations in the metropolitan area of Asunción, including 15,000 children enrolled in 92 football schools.

Maldonado said the phenomenal growth in the number of football schools was boosted by the gradual disappearance of neighbourhood football grounds — improvised pitches on empty plots of land where local youngsters used to play.

These free spaces have almost all disappeared and have been replaced by artificial turf pitches in private establishments.

Another very important positive influence was that Paraguayan players became international football stars and local idols. In 1998, Paraguay classified again for the World Cup held in France, after not making it to the two previous four-yearly Cup tournaments. This time the team was captained by José Luis Chilavert, later named the best goalkeeper in the world.

The 1999 Copa América tournament dazzled young Roque Santacruz, trained in the football school run by Olimpia, one of the foremost Paraguayan clubs. Santacruz went on to make local history when he was transferred to the German team Bayern, in Munich, for seven million dollars.

“Having a son play professionally is every father’s dream, but here in this school we keep our feet on the ground. Our role is to teach the boys and train them,” said Romero.

In Maldonado’s view, “some parents have their eye on becoming millionaires through their children’s success” when they take them to a football school.

The idea of football as a means to fame and fortune caught on rapidly in a country where 36.6 percent of the population of 6.2 million live in poverty.

In fact, except for those run by the professional clubs, most football schools are set up on the initiative of parents’ groups.

SC10 is an exception, as it belongs to Salvador Cabañas, the Paraguayan striker at the 2006 world championship in Germany. His jersey number at the time was 10.

“Salvador is his idol, and that encourages him to train hard,” said Gómez about his son as he watched him dribble up the side of the field.

Whether or not Cabañas will be playing in the World Championship that opens on Jun. 11 in South Africa is still uncertain, following his injury from a gunshot wound to the head in January in Mexico City, where he plays for the América team. The incident caused a huge commotion and a wave of expressions of support from his fans in both countries.

Sports analyst Benicio Martínez told IPS that it was unprecedented for an incident involving a sports star to have such a wide and deep impact throughout society in Paraguay. “Never before has such a mass interest in football been so clearly demonstrated,” he said.

Maldonado highlighted the fact that 90 percent of the Paraguayan national team has come up through the football schools, showing that they work well as a seedbed of future football stars, although “their primary goal is entertainment and discipline for the boys,” he stressed.

Cabañas is an example of the process. He trained at a football school in Itauguá, a small town 30 kilometres south of Asunción.

Now he is recovering in Argentina, and there is no official word yet whether he is to be excluded from the Paraguayan team that will go to South Africa.

Meanwhile Iván and Pablo, aged 13 and 14 respectively, are training vigorously. They are the most outstanding in a group of promising youngsters at the SC10 school, whose dream is to represent their country in a future world championship, like the founder of their school.

Excerpt:

For the nearly 50 million people of South Africa, the 2010 World Cup represents an opportunity to show the world its progress through sports. But for a new nonprofit organisation, soccer’s biggest stage also offers an opportunity to publicise young women who tend to go unheard.

Global Girl Media, an educational nonprofit founded in January 2009, aims to use the games to empower young women by teaching them about digital media.

Its first project, called “Kick It Up!”, will teach about 20 disadvantaged South African teenagers to report on the Cup, and will also encourage them to tell stories about their lives.

The girls will be trained by South African journalists, sportscasters, and established personalities in women’s sports in all aspects of reporting, including blogging and video editing. The intent is to give the girls a new outlet, and a way to interact with their communities

Global Girl Media executive director Amie Williams, a film director/producer, said she decided to start the group after a teen she mentored from Kenya was gang-raped, one week after the country’s December 2007 presidential elections. Many international groups considered the election corrupt, and the girl got caught in the outbreak of violent tribal protests in Nairobi.

Because Williams had been a mentor and friend of the girl for three years, she was asked to return to Kenya to lend her support. Surprisingly, the one thing the teenager wanted from Williams was a chance to tell her story on camera.

“Out of that came this idea of, ‘what if we could put cameras in the hands of women all over the world?”‘ said Williams, who is based in Los Angeles. “They could speak not just about rape but about sports, motherhood, or just being a teenager.”

“Kick It Up!” plans to develop a model that could be replicated in other countries, by fostering a community of media bureaus for girls to connect via multimedia platforms on the Web. Funding will be sought via grants, and donations via its website, www.globalgirlmedia.org. The Nike Foundation recently provided a seed grant of 10,000 dollars.

Kgomotso Matsunyane, one of the few cinematographers based in South Africa, will be a mentor in Soweto. Matsunyane said it is very possible for girls to grow by working with a camera. According to the Human Resource Science Council, South Africa’s university graduation rate of 15 percent is one of the lowest in the world. Programs like Global Girl could help girls into the male-dominated field of multimedia production.

While most girls she’s met want to work on camera, Matsunyane said Global Girl allows young women to choose how their images are portrayed.

“I’m trying to tell them being a presenter is not what you want to do; you want to write a script and decide what’s going to be in your film,” Matsunyane said. “That’s where the real power is. And you can’t get that message across until you give somebody the camera.”

Julie Foudy, a two-time Olympic gold medalist and former captain of U.S. women’s soccer team, will serve as a spokesperson for the Global Girl pilot project. Foudy will be in South Africa as the only female analyst for ESPN coverage of the World Cup. Foudy said at a kickoff event in New York City that Global Girl’s grassroots beginning is similar to the growth of U.S. women soccer in the late 1990s.

“I want to go around and tell young girls there is an avenue for them to have a voice,” Foudy said. “And not just tell them they have a voice, but to teach them how to actually find their voice.”

The content produced by the girls in South Africa will be distributed to various media outlets, such as ESPN, which is partnering with Global Girl. Other online entities like YouTube, and free daily blogs, will also be used.

“They’re starting something that can be incredibly powerful. And not just in South Africa,” Foudy said. “The idea is to spread globally, and that’s a powerful message to send to other girls around the world. That you, too, can have a voice.”

*Special to IPS from NYU Livewire

By Zukiswa Zimela
JOHANNESBURG, Mar 29 2010 (IPS)

Sixteen-year-old Neo Malema and his brothers and sister live with his grandmother in the impoverished Alexandra Township in Johannesburg. Despite his poor background, Malema dreams of one day playing football for the country’s national squad, Bafana Bafana.

Neo Malema has a passion for soccer and helping other disadvantaged youths. He hopes to one day manage an organisation like Football for Hope. Credit: Zukiswa Zimela/IPS

“Football for Hope has changed my life, I used to be so naughty, I would wander around playing football in the streets. One day a coach found me and put me in his team, I have been playing for four years. Now I know that if you work hard you can achieve your dreams,” Malema said.

Malema and eight other young football players are part of Team Alexandra, which will represent South Africa at the FIFA Football for Hope festival in Alexandra in July 2010.

The Football for Hope initiative was established in 2007 by FIFA and Streetfootballworld to use football as a tool for enhancing global peace and social development. The movement relies on the universal appeal of football to achieve its mission, and so far 1.5 million youngsters have benefited from the programme.

Speaking at the official opening launch of the event in Alexandra on Mar. 25, managing director of Streetfootballworld Jurgun Griesbeck said that the aim of the event was to encourage young people to take responsibility for their own lives.

“The participants were chosen to show the world that they are young leaders so that when they are talking about themselves and where they are going, you yourself become inspired,” he said.

Thirty-two teams from disadvantaged communities from all over the world will participate in the exciting event taking place from Jul. 4 to 10. The delegates come from over 40 countries and some teams comprise of players from more than one country.

The tournament will have mixed teams of girls and boys from countries such as Kenya, Cambodia, Israel and Palestine.

But each of the 12-minute games will be played without official referees.

So all disagreements will be resolved through dialogue, a method which organisers hope will enhance mutual understanding and personal development in the young players.

The players will also participate in activities which promote the exchange of ideas and life experiences, including talks on issues like HIV/AIDS and football coaching workshops.

Also speaking at the launch, the chief executive of the local organising committee for the FIFA 2010 World Cup, Danny Jordaan said that the upcoming world cup was not only about the famous football stars that are coming to South Africa for the event but also about the youngsters participating in the Football for Hope Festival.

“It is a World Cup of hope, a World Cup of change, a World Cup of opportunity, a World Cup that focuses on the young people and their ambitions and their dreams,” Jordaan said.

Sibongile Mazibuko, the executive director of the 2010 World Cup for the City of Johannesburg, said it was important to use football as a tool for social development and change.

Malema has a passion for soccer and helping other disadvantaged youths, he hopes to one day manage an organisation like Football for Hope.

“Football has brought me back to the right path, it taught me that when you work hard you will definitely achieve your dreams,” said Malema.

Excerpt:

By Marcela Valente
BUENOS AIRES, Mar 26 2010 (IPS)

“Your president is willing to confront the wildest hordes of opponents, but not a football fan, ever,” Argentine President Cristina Fernández once joked.

Groups working to curb violence in stadiums in this football-crazed country say the causes of the phenomenon include the lack of real will to confront the “barras bravas” – Argentina’s hooligans – or the close ties between them and leaders of some political factions, especially in poor neighbourhoods.

Argentina’s barras bravas are often more powerful than the heads of the football clubs, and sometimes extort players, for example, in exchange for cheers and support during matches.

The leaders of the groups are involved in drug dealing or have side businesses like selling t-shirts, photos or parking spaces outside stadiums. They organise dinners with players in exchange for tickets to matches, and charge foreign tourists to watch games in the stands next to the team’s fans.

Five people have been killed in clashes between the barras bravas in the last few weeks. Police suspect that some of the murders had to do with the pressure to obtain support to fly to South Africa for the World Cup in June.

“There is no strong political determination to put an end to the violence and corruption in football,” Mónica Nizzardo, president of Salvemos al Fútbol (Let’s Save Football), a non-governmental organisation that is trying to eradicate the violence, told IPS.

Salvemos al Fútbol, which reports 249 violent football-related deaths since 1924, says the barras bravas have the support of the security forces and the complicity of political and sports leaders at the highest levels.

Although the phenomenon has been getting worse in recent years, the last few weeks have been especially violent. Observers believe the catalyst was an initiative launched in November by political supporters of Fernández, like Marcelo Mallo, who created the group “Hinchadas Unidas Argentinas” (Argentine Fans United).

His idea, he said, is to turn the fans into “non-violent social leaders” who will help build housing for the poor and get involved in other community efforts.

Mallo pledged to take 500 members of the barras bravas to South Africa. Hinchadas Unidas Argentinas has been unfurling banners with political messages at matches, one of which was ‘Kirchner Vuelve’ – a call for the reelection of Fernández’s husband and predecessor, former president Nestor Kirchner (2003-2007), in the 2011 elections.

Mallo said it was not true that deals had been struck with the barras bravas to reward them for their political support and publicity. He also denied that public funds were being used to finance fans’ tickets to South Africa, or that the government is behind his movement.

He admitted, however, that his aim is for the heads of the barras bravas, most of whom have criminal records, to become community leaders who can recruit voters for elections or act as election observers.

The dozens of barras bravas who have come together in Hinchadas Unidas Argentinas do not include “La 12”, the violent fans of Boca Juniors, or “Los Borrachos del Tablón”, supporters of River Plate – the most popular clubs – because they already have support for travelling to South Africa, said Mallo.

Since the launch of the movement, the number of violent incidents has increased – not between rival barras bravas but within the groups themselves, over the management of parallel businesses and the distribution of perks.

Gustavo Grabia, a journalist and author of the book “La 12: The True History of Boca’s Barra Brava”, says the groups are “the armed faction” of the clubs’ fans, and have ties with the police, as revealed in different court cases.

“Violent incidents have been on the rise, and the creation of Hinchadas may have heated things up, because it promised to take 500 fans to South Africa and now it turns out it won’t be able to take even half that many,” Grabia told IPS.

The reporter added, however, that the latest murders went beyond the realm of football and could be linked to internal turf wars for control of the drug business and other murky dealings.

On Mar. 19, Roberto Caminos, former head of the barra brava of the Newell’s Old Boys club, from the central Argentine city of Rosario, was shot and killed in the doorway of a bar. People close to him said he had commented that he was being trailed by the police.

A few days earlier, Juan Bustos, a former leader of the barra brava of Rosario Central – the other popular club from that city – had been killed outside of his home. And Marcos Galarza, a member of the barra brava of the small second division club Defensa y Justicia, was also stabbed to death.

There were other cases as well.

“This picked up steam with the creation of ‘Hinchadas’,” said Nizzardo. “The law punishes anyone who creates or supports violent groups with one to six years in prison, and here you clearly see who are the people inciting the violence,” she added.

In November, Salvemos al Fútbol filed a legal complaint to get the courts to investigate alleged ties between Hinchadas Unidas Argentinas and members of the government, including cabinet chief Aníbal Fernández, a former political ally of Mallo. But the lawsuit is making no progress in the courts.

Nizzardo pointed out that many of the members of the barras bravas involved in the Hinchadas movement have criminal records. “One has been in prison since December for extortion and other crimes, and another is facing charges for illegal possession of weapons and involvement in a murder,” she said.

“How can people with these records be recruited to go to South Africa?” she asked.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
JERUSALEM, Mar 17 2010 (IPS)

Less than a hundred days to go, and the world looks on, often more with scepticism than anticipation.

For five weeks from Jun. 11 to Jul. 11 threats of war will be relegated beyond the global touchlines – the world will be tuned into the battles within ten stadiums at the southern tip of Africa.

The first ever football World Cup will be taking place on African soil. Billboards around South Africa trumpet the World Cup as “Ayoba!” – ‘Cool’. But will South Africa be ready? That’s the question on the lips of the world – of the First World, that is.

No one seriously believed that a sporting event, even one as mighty as the World Cup, could instantly transform a society riven with inequalities, crime and HIV.

But the granting by football’s world governing authority, FIFA, of the Cup to post-apartheid South Africa provided the country with the opportunity to project a powerfully positive image.

So much captial – political, emotional and financial – has been invested in the tournament that if it fails it would be a crushing blow to South Africa’s national psyche.

Many seem to be hoping for precisely that. Embittered white South Africans who hanker after their inglorious past; Europeans irritated at seeing their favourite sport in the hands of the Third World; First World neo-colonialists who thrive on the misery of ‘the other’ and whose Schadenfreude leads them to argue that surely Africans can’t pull off the elaborate job of organising one of the world’s great sporting jamborees.

Those bemoaning the failings of the Rainbow Nation ignore the changes that have occured since the racist society was consigned to the scrapheap of history have been joined by Doom-Mongers United from the world of sport. Together, they are predicting that SA2010 will be “a colossal failure”. Or, as Dan Nichol writes in the Iafrica.com website, “All the naysayers who insist that an African world cup simply can’t work.”

Ranged against the Afro-pessimists are South Africa’s football officials and the FIFA bosses who insist that the doubters will be vanquished.

“Everything is on track and ready,” Sepp Blatter, the FIFA chief, said recently. “The African continent is going to host the World Cup. Why don’t certain groups want to believe it? It’s so easy to just trust and have confidence.”

During an inspection tour of the nine host cities earlier this month, Jérôme Valcke, the FIFA secretary-general, accused the European media of “alarmist reporting”, saying, “Don’t kill the World Cup before it starts. It’s unfair and it’s really sad.”

The doomsayers had repeatedly insisted that the ten stadiums would never be ready. While the grass is still a problem in one stadium, FIFA experts say several venues rival anything in the U.S., Asia or Europe. They also praise the country’s string of new airports that “ought to bury notions of post-colonial inferiority.”

“Where can you see a stadium like this anywhere in the world?” said Vlacke of ‘Football City’ where the final will played. There, 20 years ago Nelson Mandela held a mass rally after his release from prison.

The organisers are hoping that the frail 91-year-old world icon of freedom and tolerance will be fit enough to attend the opening ceremony and put a personal seal on South Africa’s transformation from international pariah nation to host of a united world.

The doomsters also question how foreign fans will reach the stadiums. Indeed, in the decade and a half since democracy was ushered in, the South African government has struggled to catch up. Public transport remains erratic, often chaotic, with most blacks having to rely on dangerous private minibus services.

That ignores the fact that under apartheid little was done to meet the transportation needs of the black majority. Alternative services especially for the World Cup have been resisted by the private operators and met objections from residents of wealthy, mostly white neighborhoods through which proposed bus routes were drawn.

Then there’s accomodation bugbears. Fears about a shortage of hotel rooms have been subsiding as the estimated number of foreign visitors is revised down from 450,000 to 350,000 due to the global economic crisis and price gouging by airlines.

Still, some overseas fans may have to make do with half-finished hotels or to being put up in college dorms or even tented campgrounds.

Those who are not fans of an Africa world cup switch from whether South Africa is equipped to host the tournament to what kind of host it will be. Especially, whether the foreign fans who do make the trip will be safe.

South Africa has spent more than 300 million dollars on security, recruiting 55,000 additional police and buying hi-tech surveillance and crowd-control equipment especially for the competition.

More pertinently, Nobel peace laureate Desmond Tutu argues that ordinary South Africans so want the Cup to succeed that they’ll make sure any would- be miscreants will not do anything untoward to diminish the happy experience of the world’s football community.

World Cup 2010 will definitely not be the same as the model tournament staged in Germany four years ago. But, it can be just as engaging.

There are complaints about the high-priced tickets and that many will not be bought up by droves of fans from outside Africa.

Should that happen, a European model could be emulated. With local fans mostly unable to afford the tickets, FIFA and the SA organisers could follow the French rugby authorities in their World Cup three years ago – fill the stadia with young and old fans, school and club players.

These are people who’ve never had, and for the most part probably will never again have, the opportunity to be part of the pinnacle of the ‘People’s Game’, which shouldn’t be the preserve of those with influence or money.

That would transform the dominant mood of the tournament into being genuinely African, an opportunity for Africa to prove just how much it is part of the world – in positive terms.

The Oscar-nominated movie Invictus explored how Nelson Mandela used another global sporting event, the 1995 rugby World Cup, to help heal the divisions and the wounds of the past within South Africa between Afrikaners and Africans.

Similarly, many South Africans are hoping their football World Cup will deconstruct the negative image of Africa. That it will make headway in helping heal the First World-Third World divisions and the wounds of the past which Europe (after all, the birthplace of the world game) wrought on Africa.

“With 100 days to go, we can already hear the roar of our vuvuzelas (the peculiar, and supremely noisy bugles so beloved of SA football fans) that will soon herald the start of a full month of football majesty,” writes Nichol. “Then, the world will know 2010 couldn’t have found a better home.”

Excerpt:

While South African parliamentarians attended a swanky pre-International Women’s Day celebration at Cape Town’s International Convention Centre, a group of destitute women in decaying Kewtown, just seven miles away, worried about looming homelessness.

Charlene Paul and her baby stand in front of her house, next to Athlone Training Stadium, which is to be demolished. Credit: Ann Hellman/IPS

The women were notified by the municipality that their homes will be bulldozed to make way for an extended parking lot for Cape Town’s Athlone Training Stadium, while others were asked to vacate their flats for renovations. But residents fear their flats, situated in a prime location for the Soccer World Cup in June, will be rented out to soccer fans.

At parliament’s official International Women’s Day conference on Mar. 5, themed ‘2010 FIFA World Cup Legacy for Women’, South Africa’s minister of Home Affairs, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, told the assembled Members of Parliament, cabinet ministers and representatives of local non-governmental organisations that several projects had been established to benefit women long after the World Cup has ended.

“There is a project of reducing carbon emissions. FIFA has called for people to be involved. Women should seize that opportunity. The country will be spending a lot on infrastructure. Women must also look at how to use those possibilities to increase their economic opportunities,” suggested Dlamini-Zuma.

The country’s deputy minister of economic development, Gwendoline Mahlangu-Nkabinde, was even more upbeat. She promised to send ten corporations working in the field of renewable energy and development finance institutions to women to help them to find jobs.

“Those of you who are into renewable energy, those who want skills and want to get started in renewable energy, come and see me,” she said. International football association FIFA has indeed set up several ‘legacy projects’ across the country that are supposed to generate economic benefits for South Africans.

But these projects are a smokescreen to hide the suffering of poor communities displaced by the World Cup, claim four women from Kewtown, who feel abandoned in poor living conditions, while government funds get spent on making the soccer world cup a “world class event”.

Pamela Beukes, Rachel August, Charlene Paul and Mariam Michaels have lived in the run-down community of Kewtown, which was formerly classified by the country’s apartheid government as a “Coloured” area, for their whole lives.

Paul is set to find out on Mar. 12 from Cape Town’s Wynberg Magistrates Court if she and her three children will continue to have a roof over their heads. They received notice that their home, situated next to Cape Town’s Athlone Training Stadium, will be bulldozed to make way for an extended stadium parking lot.

“I don’t see the benefit of the World Cup [for us], because we are losing this property,” Paul told IPS.

Paul shares a row of five, one-roomed ‘houses’ with 18 other adults and children. Most of them were born and bred in Kewtown. Because they were never allocated council housing and had nowhere else to go, they occupied the structures illegally many years ago, after seeing them standing empty for years.

“We don’t see the need for this structure to be bulldozed when there is a housing shortage,” said Paul.

On the other side of the training stadium, Mariam Michaels also says she fears the World Cup will force her into homelessness. After city officials asked her to vacate her council flat for renovations two weeks ago, she has been living with her two daughters and four grandchildren in a converted shipping container.

The Cape Town city council has embarked on major upgrades of council flats near the stadium for the first time in 30 years, painting their derelict exteriors and fixing broken plumbing and roofs.

“They said they would give our place a makeover. It’s for the World Cup. I have lived here 27 years and my windows have been broken for the past five, but the city never showed any interest in fixing them before,” Michaels told IPS.

“The council officials promised us the renovations would only take six weeks and then we would be moved back. But I don’t know yet if that will happen,” she added.

There are fears among community members that they will not be able to return to the council flats and instead be abandoned by the city. They are also concerned about their safety. Rachel August, one of Michael’s neighbours, told IPS about people running through the shipping container area at night, throwing stones on the metal roofs.

“The council told us it was not true that we were being moved to make way for the World Cup, but we have no guarantee. All we can do is wait and see. If they leave me here, I will cause chaos. That flat has been mine for 35 years, and I want to go back” said August angrily.

Local community organiser Pamela Beukes says the women became apprehensive about the city’s true intentions when local councillor Charlotte Tablisher first told community members that the renovated flats would be rented out to World Cup visitors, but later renounced the idea, after vociferous protests.

“What made us suspicious was that people could have remained in their flats while these renovations were done, but the city insisted they move out,” Beukes explained. “Because people are sitting in shipping containers and in not their homes, right now we can’t say that we have had any benefit from the World Cup.”

The Kewtown community will live in anxiety until the renovations, which the city council said will take six weeks, will be finalised at the end of March. If they are not moved back into their flats by then, they say they will hold a protest march to demand their rights.

By Julio Godoy
PARIS, Jul 17 2006 (IPS)

French football star Zinedine Zidane could have become a bigger hero among immigrant groups after he brought down Italian player Marco Materazzi with a head butt during the World Cup final in Berlin Jul. 9.

That is despite the possibility that Zidane’s action, for which he was asked to leave the field, might have cost France the World Cup.

Zidane, who became an immigrant hero for leading France to World Cup victory in 1998, is now hero – particularly among people of immigrant origin – for having perhaps lost the World Cup for France..

“Zizou is my hero,” says 18-year-old Jimmy from Saint Denis, a suburb of mostly immigrant families north of Paris. “To punish the mediocre’s offences has always been the task of honourable men.” (Zizou is the affectionate nickname French media and the public have given Zidane).

Fred, another boy from the same area said, “Zizou’s header puts him ahead of other football stars.”

Both boys, of Arab origin, insisted that insults must be punished with violence. “It is a question of honour,” Jimmy said. “The more so if the Italian guy insulted him with racist remarks.”

Zidane is the son of a Berber couple who migrated to France from Algeria in the mid-1960s. He was born in 1972 in La Castellane, a poor district in the city of Marseille on the Mediterranean coast. The district is mostly inhabited by immigrant families, and has an unemployment rate of more than 50 percent.

The expulsion of Zidane, who had announced that the match against Italy would be the last of his career, brought what many saw as an inglorious end to the career of a player considered the world’s greatest footballer of the last 15 years.

The most controversial moment for Zidane came in the 109th minute of the final, after the Italian player said something rude to him. Materazzi said Zidane had been “extremely arrogant” towards him. He said he had only spoken words to Zidane of a kind “that are repeated many times during a football match.”

In an interview with a French television station, Zidane did not specify what Materazzi had said. He only said the Italian player had spoken “very insulting words, which offended the most intimate part of myself.” He would not say if the Italian had made racist remarks.

“I would have preferred that he hit me directly in the face,” Zidane said.

French media and some football players have been critical of Zidane. The sports daily L’Equipe wrote an open letter to Zidane asking, “How are we going to explain your action to our children, who admire you so much?”

Yaia, a player for the first division club Nice, said Zidane’s reaction was unprofessional. “Insults there are hundreds per match, and your duty as professional is to remain cool, not to react to them. Otherwise, you lose, and your team with you.”

But it is not only immigrants who have defended Zidane.

In a letter to the daily newspaper Libération, Marie Umurerwa, who identified herself as “a mother”, described Zidane’s gesture as “a human reaction, which leads me to admire him more than ever.”

Francis Marmande, university professor and jazz musician, said “Zidane’s brutality makes him the more touching.”

Claire Lasne, theatre director, said Zidane’s action “has placed our people’s dignity and his own higher than a prize given…to those who remain quiet. Long live for you, Zidane!”, she wrote in Libération.

The French player’s foul is being celebrated in a new song by three Paris-based musicians. “Zidane has hit, Zidane has stroked, and we had great fun”, the song goes.

The song has been played on radio stations all over the country. The musicians are now negotiating release of the song commercially.

“When we wrote ‘Zidane has stroked’, we only wanted to console ourselves and our friends for the French defeat against Italy, and to move people to dance,” Sébastien Lipszyc, one of the authors of the song told IPS. “Now if we earn money from the song, so much the better.”

Others are recalling that violent attacks against opponents have marked Zidane’s career.

A recent documentary ‘Zidane, a portrait of the 21st Century’ ends with his expulsion during a match in the Spanish first division, where he played until this year for the club Real Madrid.

Guy Lacombe, coach at the football boarding school where Zidane studied during the mid-1980s, pointed out that he often ordered Zidane to clean the school’s bathrooms as punishment for his outbursts of violence.

“Zidane spent many weeks cleaning the bathrooms,” Lacombe said.

The World Cup burst of anger showed more of the young Zidane to Ayoub Argoubi, a 17-year-old from La Castellane, Zidane’s home town in Marseille. “His header against Materazzi shows that despite everything he has gone through since his youth, he still remains one of us.”

Excerpt:

By Julio Godoy
PARIS, Jul 12 2006 (IPS)

Anyone unfamiliar with football could be excused for asking whether Italy was playing the World Cup final with France or with a team from Africa.

All the Italian players were white, their challengers almost all black. But it was of course the French team.

Of the 22 players French coach Raymond Domenech picked for the World Cup in Germany, 14 were either born in Africa or came from families of African origin. Another, Vikash Dhorasoo, is of Indian origin but calls himself black. Yet another, David Trezeguet, has Argentinean parents.

Zinedine Zidane, the French captain and star, was born in Marseille, but his parents migrated to France from Algeria in the 1950s. Only six French World Cup players – three of them the goalkeepers – were white.

The contrasting faces of the French and Italian squads spoke of different immigration experiences, but the presence of black players in European football teams is now common. Black football players have been representing England, Portugal, Holland and even Switzerland, for some time now.

Even Germany which used to have an all-white football face now lines up players of African origin – David Odonkor and Gerald Asamoah are both of Ghanaian origin. Patrick Owomoyela, who was not picked for the World Cup, and whose father is Nigerian, is another German national player of African origin.

Two other German national players were born in Poland – Miroslav Klose and Lucas Podolsky.

Polish immigrants have played for Germany since the fifties, and Argentinean players have defended Italian and Spanish colours, but African migrants have marked an increasing presence in the wake of an upsurge of migration and radical changes in football legislation.

The black dominance of French football arises from its colonial past in Africa and the continuing French jurisdiction over some Caribbean and South Pacific territories. But that only explains a presence, not the dominance.

Paradoxically, black football players in the French team have risen because of discrimination, not despite it.

Job discrimination against blacks leaves only sport, especially football boarding schools managed by professional clubs, as the sole chance for young immigrants to get out of the dim housing projects they inhabit. Nine members of the French team grew up in Paris immigrant suburbs.

New legislation on equal opportunities has opened a gateway for footballers of African origin in Europe. And football is about all that immigrants are expected to excel at.

“In the eyes of most of the French, we immigrants are only welcome if the national team wins the World Cup,” Badir, a 22-year-old of Algerian origin from Aulnay sous Bois, a poor district some 20km northeast of Paris told IPS.

“But even if we win, after a couple of days we are back to position zero – no jobs, no housing, no chances.”

After France beat Portugal in the semi-final in Munich Jul. 5, two young immigrants ran across the most famous avenue in France, the Champs Elysees, carrying a placard that read: ‘The scum is going to bring the Cup to France! – Is it not wonderful?’

During the rioting in November 2005 involving youth of immigrant origin, minister for the interior Nicolas Sarkozy had called the rioting youth “scum”.

But France did not win the cup.

The French of foreign origin have seen that return to position zero before, when France won the World Cup in 1998. Most French players in that team came from families that had migrated from Armenia, Senegal, Ghana, Guyana, Argentina, Algeria and Portugal. The team was dubbed “blanc, black, beur”, (“white, black, Arab”).

After that multicultural team won the World Cup, it became the symbol of allegedly successful French immigration policy – for a while. “The France that wins” became the slogan of the time. It was supposed that society had come to terms with immigration.

But apart from all else, the 17 percent vote to far-right French candidate Jean Marie Le Pen in 2002 confirmed that racism remains deeply rooted in French society.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
BERLIN, Jul 10 2006 (IPS)

For Germany, it was a World Cup full of surprises.

Black, red and gold flags, long considered taboo because of the Nazi years, fluttered in the hot breeze. German footballers proudly belted out a national anthem that had previously been mumbled, if sung at all. Even a football sceptical Chancellor Angela Merkel sprung to her feet, grinning widely when Germany scored.

But what has most surprised local commentators at this World Cup is how the tendency towards glass-half-empty-ism vanished overnight. Usually terse Berlin shopkeepers suddenly bantered; strangers on the street managed a smile.

“It is nothing new that Germany can provide solid organisation. But what one hadn’t expected was the great atmosphere,” Leonard Novy, political analyst at the Bertelsmann Foundation, a German think tank, told IPS.

“The show wasn’t dominated by Fifa or the sponsors as some had predicted. It was the man on the street who was celebrating.”

Politicians and analysts welcomed the fact that Germans, for the first time, joined in the festivities with flag waving and patriotic chants – activities which had long triggered guilt and soul-searching.

Some 60 years since the end of World War II, the new generation now feels less morally responsible for what happened, sparking what commentators dubbed a more “normal” approach to patriotism. And the World Cup was a perfect outlet for the new pride.

The public festivities have done wonders for Germany’s image abroad. In Britain, Nazi stereotypes and World War II have long clouded the popular perception of Germany but people now have a “new and positive image” of their European neighbour, British Prime Minister Tony Blair commented in the best-selling tabloid Bild am Sonntag.

Meanwhile, German President Horst Koehler said the event did much for the country both at home and abroad.

“We did not win the World Cup, but it gave us so much. Foreign visitors and television audiences saw a cheerful, confident and hospitable country,” he told world leaders attending the World Cup final in Berlin on Sunday.

“I believe that this soccer festival also gave us as Germans a new window onto ourselves and our country.”

And fortunately there was no sign of extreme-right-wing violence, a problem much discussed in the months before the tournament. During the competition, a neo-Nazi demonstration due to be held in Munich was cancelled.

Instead, the streets were a paragon of multiculturalism. Turkish and Arabic families draped their windows with the German flag and joined in the post-match parades of honking cars, shouting “Deutschland” from open windows.

And despite millions of international fans arriving in Germany, the event was largely peaceful.

A lasting image of the competition, and one which has been beamed around the world, was the hordes of euphoric fans of all stripes under the Brandenburg Gate, once a symbol of the Cold War and the division of Germany.

“It has been an exceptional atmosphere in Berlin,” football fan Heike told IPS, wheeling a pram still adorned with a black, red and gold flag a day after Germany’s semi-final match.

“There’s been such a feeling of unity and happiness on the streets.”

She added that the party after Germany’s 3-1 victory against Portugal, which gave them third place in the competition, had been as good as if they had won the Cup.

Germany’s long-ridiculed team ranked among the competition’s big surprises. Defying expectations they would be knocked out in the first round, they put up a zesty battle throughout.

Novelist Guenter Grass, himself an avid soccer fan, said the players’ enthusiasm had infected the nation.

“The public inside and outside the stadiums reacted to a young team who, by German standards, played an amazing new game – ready to go on the offensive,” the Nobel-prize winning author told the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper in an interview.

“Their unity was passed on to the public.”

Much of the team’s success was attributed to their proactive coach Juergen Klinsmann. His irrepressible energy and his refusal to succumb to media pressure won him many fans, despite calls for his resignation in the run-up to the competition.

Such is his newfound hero status, that Die Welt daily newspaper wrote that Chancellor Angela Merkel should learn a lesson or two from him.

But it will take more than soccer success to boost Merkel’s fortunes at the moment. With Germany suffering high unemployment, sluggish economic growth and unsustainable debts, the honeymoon period of Merkel’s tenure is over.

While the World Cup stole the limelight, she faced some of the most taxing weeks yet. Rifts emerged in her so-called “grand coalition”, the biggest tax hike in German history was pushed through, and politicians were at loggerheads about how to make Germany’s sprawling health system more affordable.

“Internationally, both with the EU and America, Merkel is very well viewed. The problem is that she now has to try and gain similar success with national politics,” Novy from the Bertelsmann Foundation said.

And for many Germans, the World Cup has been a timely distraction. While newspaper editorials have fretted over the need for further belt tightening and reforms, people could home in on front-page soccer banter and place their bets on the next game.

“Thanks to the German boys for a great time,” read one hand-painted banner waved at Germany’s semi-final on Saturday. “Shame it’s all come to an end.”

Excerpt:

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Jul 4 2006 (IPS)

“Shameful”, “a team with no soul”, “at least the Argentines landed on their feet,” said indignant fans and perplexed sports commentators here in reaction to Brazil’s defeat Saturday, which sealed the loss of the Mercosur countries’ longstanding hegemony in the final stages of football World Cups.

With the championship match Sunday, the 25-member European Union will equal the nine Cups won by Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, members of Mercosur (Southern Common Market) along with Paraguay, since the global tournament of national teams began in 1930 in Montevideo. Played every four years, no countries outside these two economic blocs have ever taken home the FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association) World Cup title.

With its 2-0 victory over World Cup host Germany on Tuesday with last-minute goals, Italy awaits the Wednesday semifinal match between France and Portugal to determine its rival in the final to be played Sunday in Berlin.

The Brazilian team, with five World Cups and many players considered among the world’s best, was a great disappointment to the country and to football lovers all over the world. Its players, recently ever-present in the media, are now hiding, avoiding any public exposure by leaving hotels and airport terminals through back doors.

More than being defeated by France in Saturday’s match, the fans will not forgive the Brazilian footballers’ “falta de garra” (lack of conviction) shown by stars who earn millions of dollars playing for internationally famous football clubs, and from product endorsements for beverages, sports shoes, banks, and mobile phones.

The Brazilian team on the pitch, despite the eye-catching yellow and green uniforms, seemed to reflect the always discouraged and bored appearance of their leader on the sidelines, coach Carlos Alberto Parreira.

“A Picture of Apathy” was the headline in the Rio de Janeiro daily O Globo of a report from Frankfurt illustrated with a large photograph of Parreira looking at his watch while his team “dragged themselves around the pitch.”

Defeat is acceptable in a sport where the favourites often do lose, but it is not acceptable when the national team shows no effort or dedication, agreed many Brazilian commentators. “They lacked soul,” summarised Armando Nogueira, the honourary “deacon” of Brazilian sports journalism, who has covered a dozen World Cups.

And that is how the Brazilian fans see it too, evident in the contrast with the reception that Argentine fans gave their national team, despite its defeat in a penalty shoot-out against Germany Friday, after a 1-1 tie in regulation time and extra periods.

Applause and headlines about honour and pride, “and leaving with the best image”, greeted the Argentine footballers when they arrived home. “There are defeats that have more dignity than victory itself,” reads an advert of the state-run bank, Banco de la Nación.

Argentina gradually rose in the ranks to be included as one of the favourites, after the early matches of the Cup. Brazil, meanwhile, saw its role as a favourite begin to lose shine after the team’s poor showings on the pitch, and its ultimate defeat by France.

The Argentine players were overwhelmed by the fact that so many people made the trip to the airport to receive them in Buenos Aires, despite having been eliminated from the Cup in quarterfinals.

With the two South American giants out of the running, just the four European countries remained. Germany and Italy have each won three times, France once, and Portugal has made it as far as the semifinal round for the first time ever. Germany is out, but Italy could add yet another Cup championship to its tally.

In Brazil and Argentina, fans and sports commentators will analyse their losses for years, but the results also reflect the tendency of World Cup hosts to win, in a broader, continental sense. The Europeans have won the Cups played on European soil, with the exception of Sweden in 1958, when Brazil won. But Europe has never won when the World Cup was played elsewhere.

>From the Mercosur bloc, Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay have won nine Cups, mostly when the tournament was played in Latin America. Brazil is the only one to be victorious outside the region: in the United States in 1994 and Korea-Japan in 2002, as well as in Sweden.

For its part, Argentina was champion in 1978 when it hosted the World Cup, and again in 1986, in Mexico. Uruguay won the first-ever World Cup on its home pitch in 1930, and in Brazil in 1950 – the so-called “Maracanazo”, beating Brazil in Rio’s Maracaná stadium.

Paraguay, the fourth full member of Mercosur, qualified for the 2006 World Cup, but didn’t make it past stage one. Venezuela officially became Mercosur’s fifth full member Tuesday, Jul. 4.

Deep-seated football rivalry led many Brazilians to celebrate Argentina’s elimination, and vice versa, but there were also plenty of fans who were hoping for a final World Cup match between the two giants, which would have consolidated South America’s hegemony for a long time to come.

“I don’t share the vengeful spirit of celebrating a victory when things go poorly for Brazil,” but Brazil deserved to lose the match, because the team “was surpassed by France, which played exquisite football,” Pablo Moseinco, an Argentine fan of well-played football, beyond his support for his favourite football club and his national team, told IPS.

Football, despite the globalisation of the sport, continues to be dominated by a growing number of European countries and by South America’s Southern Cone, specifically Argentina and Brazil, since the decline of Uruguay in the last few decades.

The 2006 World Cup in Germany has not altered this “geopolitics” of football, nor has it brought anything new, such as innovative strategies, a brilliant team or noteworthy rallies through the various stages of the tournament by African, Asian or Eastern European countries, as occurred in previous Cups.

But of note is the fact that goal keepers have stood out at the 2006 World Cup – explaining in part the low goal average, but which is also the result of poorer player skills, say observers. The new football “heroes” are Germany’s Jens Lehman and Portugal’s Ricardo, for their ability to defend their goals against penalty shots.

WORLD CUP WINNERS
Brazil 5
Italy 3
Germany 3
Uruguay 2
Argentina 2
England 1
France 1

(*With reporting by Marcela Valente in Argentina.)

Excerpt:

By Constanza Vieira
BOGOTA, Jul 3 2006 (IPS)

They have won three amateur football championships in the Colombian capital, came second in another, and are so far undefeated in a tournament now being played. But the Afro-Colombians of Los Corintios football club have never been included in the Soacha municipal championship.

“They just ignore us,” Ramón Mosquera, co-founder of the club with his brother Roberto Camacho, told IPS. The team belongs to La Isla district in Altos de Cazucá (Cazucá Heights), an informal settlement that is home mostly to people displaced by Colombia’s decades-old civil war, in the hills south of Bogotá – located in the Soacha municipality.

Mosquera is convinced that in football, in applying for university entrance and other facets of everyday life, they suffer discrimination because they are people who have been “displaced” from their homes in the rural areas of the country.

In the context of this struggle for social inclusion, the Colombian office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) had a hand in organising a match between Los Corintios and the Estrellas Football Club last weekend in the main Soacha stadium. The pitch is fully illuminated because professional league matches are played there, and it was one of the venues for the National Games in 2004.

The Estrellas (Stars) team, as it name indicates, has television actors for players, including Lucas Jaramillo, a former professional football player, who after participating in a reality show took up a career in television. Their coach is well-known singer and actor Marcelo Cezán.

For this match, Jaramillo chose to play mid-field for Los Corintios for the first half of the match, and Los Corintios were winning by three goals to two at halftime.

Camacho, 56, and Mosquera, 44, had to flee from Tadó, a town of 20,000 people in the tropical rainforest department of Chocó, in the Colombian northwest, in 1996. They started the football club four years ago, when Altos de Cazucá was still a battleground between urban leftist guerrillas and ultra-right paramilitary groups.

At that time, “things were very difficult. Young people took drugs, joined gangs, and worse,” Camacho, now vice president of the Community Action Council of La Isla, told IPS.

“We have a group of 120 youngsters, age eight and older, for male football alone. But we want to expand the club to include other disciplines,” said Mosquera, who had to resign from his job as a police inspector in Tadó “because of the violence.”

Some of the youngsters are in school, while some of the older ones are no longer studying and are unemployed.

The club operates on a shoestring budget. The brothers eke out their own family budgets in order to pay for transportation and team dues. Their bright white kit with red socks, which made their debut in the match against Estrellas, was donated by shopkeepers in Soacha.

Now the UN wants to help the club start a football training school. “The state hasn’t helped us at all,” said Mosquera.

Diakonie Emergency Aid, the humanitarian organisation of the German Protestant Church, persuaded UNHCR to set up a permanent office in Altos de Cazucá.

In September 2004, UNHCR opened its doors in La Isla: a two-storey house painted brilliant white, visible from all over the neighbourhood of houses springing up from the slopes of two dusty hills.

The following January, the rest of the UN agencies operating in Colombia followed UNHCR’s example, and soon after, the government made its first appearance in Cazucá, setting up a House of Rights.

After experiencing some difficulties attending people at their local office, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights finally decided that people would have to take their complaints to its office in the north of Bogotá.

In La Isla district, “things have changed since the UNHCR came here. Just as well, because life was absolutely impossible before that,” Camacho told IPS. His brother says Camacho “dedicates his whole life to the community.”

There were few people in the stands on the day of the match between Los Corintios and Estrellas Football Club, because it was the day the national government had called on displaced people living in Soacha to register in order to receive a 460-dollar aid stipend.

“How could people come, when this was a one-time-only offer of assistance for setting up some small business?” said Rosa Zambrano, a displaced person from the department of Caquetá, in the south of the country.

Zambrano coordinates the Foundation for the Redemption of Life, an association of 98 displaced families whose main aim is to return to the lands they left behind, and which helped UNHCR in organising the football match.

In any case, although the mayor’s office and several local businesses, including the eye-catching Palace of Panties, supported the game, other Soacha residents stayed home. Their excuse? That same morning Ecuador’s national team was playing England for survival in the FIFA World Cup in Germany.

“We all play for the same team,” says the slogan coined by UNHCR in Colombia, printed on T-shirts that Roberto Meier, the Argentine director of the office, had for sale at 3.85 dollars apiece.

“It means that we are all on the side of whoever is in need,” said former singer Daniel Abadía, the manager of Artistas Football Club, about the UNHCR motto.

“There’s a part of Colombian society that doesn’t know what’s going on, but there’s another part that does. Artistas FC helped Los Corintios with their uniforms and footballs, and that’s very important,” the UNHCR Colombia director said.

“And may the best team win, just like yesterday!” Meier exclaimed, as he performed the honorary kick-off. The previous day, Colombia’s national team had defeated Mexico by two goals to one, earning a place in the quarter-finals of the World Cup.

All the fans at the Soacha stadium were unanimously Los Corintios supporters. When their team finally beat Estrellas 5-3, the elated crowd poured on to the pitch to ask the opposing players for autographs.

And after the game, Alonso Ospina, administrator at the Soacha Municipal Sports and Recreation Institute, announced that in future, the municipality would invite Los Corintios to participate in the Soacha neighbourhoods championship.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
BEIJING, Jun 28 2006 (IPS)

China failed to qualify for the World Cup but the country is, nevertheless, in the grip of genuine football fever which has had the effect of reversing long-standing government restrictions on unbridled public revelry and large gatherings.

Haunted by memories of youthful crowds during the 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations on Tiananmen Square, Chinese communist leaders banned ‘illegal’ rallies and frowned on spontaneous festivities. But this year, Beijing seems to have given in to the intoxicating thrill of the world’s most watched sports event and relaxed its strict rules.

The place to be in Beijing on summer nights, when the games are beamed in from Germany, is the Summer Temple in Ritan Park where centuries ago Chinese emperors held ceremonies and made sacrifices to the sun god. These days, the imperial altar for sacrifice is occupied by a giant screen and the circular space around it is taken by a beer garden.

Thousands of football fans – old and young, men and women, gather here to share tables, applaud, jeer and laugh. They take in every toss, header, goal kick and red flag. The crowds multiply whenever the game is played by a team the Chinese have adopted as their own.

“It is amazing – I so love the feeling of sharing the excitement with other people,” says Li Junxia, a 26-year-old Beijing girl who learned about the Sun Temple football gathering from a cellphone text message (SMS) she received.

“It said – ‘don’t be lonely at home watching the games, come and join us to cheer together’,” Li recalls. She heeded the call and loved the screening at the Sun Temple. “I was awed to watch the games inside an imperial temple”.

With football being the country’s biggest spectator sport, sports events companies have seized the opportunity to convert every natural venue into outdoor broadcast locations.

Restaurants and bars in Beijing have jumped at the opportunity to lure more customers by putting up a TV and staying open late. The six-hour time difference means that the games are viewed late into the night, transforming the experience of shared football watching into a midnight party.

“The World Cup means enjoyment and this is something Chinese people have lacked for long periods of their history,” says social commentator He Jiahong. “For years, Chinese people lived very austerely and with a sense of grave historical burden. The World Cup is a chance of pure enjoyment, of release and Chinese people are taken with it.”

The fact that China is not participating is disappointing but has set law enforcement officials at ease. Traditionally, football matches where a Chinese team is involved can be rowdy affairs. During the Asian Cup final between China and Japan two years ago, crowd behaviour slipped out of control after Japan won 3-1. Chinese fans threw bottles, shouted obscenities and burned Japanese flags. Police and security officials had to respond violently.

Although anti-Japanese feelings run strong in China, the real reason is the fans’ frustration that football in China, unlike in Japan or South Korea, has failed to develop. Despite spending billions on becoming a mighty football power, having world-class players and ardent fans, the world’s largest nation has failed to achieve its burning dream of World Cup glory.

“There is less tension this time”, says bar owner Gao Ran of watching the 2006 World Cup. “We watch the games because we love the sport and like to lay bets on which team will come through, but we never get so upset or angry as we did when China lost in 2002”.

China’s debut at the World Cup that year came after five consecutive failures to qualify and was seen as a rightful emergence of the nation on the podium of sport’s glory. Thousands of people travelled to South Korea where the 2002 World Cup was held to see the matches live. Millions more back home stayed glued to their TVs to watch China’s matches with a surging feeling of national pride, which later turned to anguish.

The Chinese team was eliminated after losing all three of its games in a group that also had Brazil, Turkey and Costa Rica. Since then, China has struggled to achieve any significant football victory.

A series of match-fixing scandals have eroded confidence in the Chinese Super League. The Chinese football-viewing public has been angered with inept government management and the dodgy referees and has turned its attention towards European and South American teams whose games they view as more professional.

“Many in China still haven’t woken up from their dream of becoming the new world power with the best football team,” lamented commentator Xu Tao in the China Economic Times. “But we should be glad that for many others the World Cup is becoming what it is supposed to be – a competition bringing fun, leisure and respect for each other.”

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