"Football, it seemed to me, is not really played for the pleasure of kicking a ball about, but is a species of fighting."
- George Orwell
World Cup "closes the schools, closes the shops, closes a city and stops a war."
-Bono
Thanks Pablo for an excellent set of links on the coming World Cup. Just to add some more links.
The Economist has a article ($ required) on virtual stock markets betting on the World Cup teams; STOCCER, Ball Street, Cortal Consors, Postbank, Eurosport, Handelsblatt, Wmxchange,TradeSports, Bluevex, Prognosys Electronic Stock Markets.
Coverage from some blogs; Social Econ Blog, Eldis News Weblog, This Blog Sits Here on the Mystery of Soccer.
Going Global in a Frenzy of Football- a podcast coming up in next Friday.
Some country slogans- my favourites;
Brazil - "Vehicle monitored by 180 million Brazilian hearts"
Costa Rica- "Our army is the team, our weapon is the ball. Let's go to Germany and give it our all"
Japan - "Light up your Samurai spirit!"
Mexico - "Aztec passion across the world"
Saudi Arabia - "The Green Hawks cannot be stopped"
Trinidad and Tobago - "Here come the Soca Warriors – the fighting spirit of the Caribbean"
Tunisia – "The Carthage Eagles... higher and stronger than ever"
Iran - "Stars of Persia"
USA - "United we play, United we win"
Is Daniel Drezner right after all?
“Soccer will never bring about peace on its own. The flip side is also true -- by itself, soccer cannot start a war. The World Cup, like the Olympics, suffers from a case of overblown rhetoric. Bono's assurances to the contrary, the passions inspired by the World Cup embody both the best and worst forms of nationalism.”
I don’t know whether soccer or anything else will bring peace on earth. I think Bono is stating a fact and a possibility. The best part of a game is not the game itself, but at the end of the game when players hug, handshake and share their T-shirts – competition and cooperation are built into out genes.
I should have mentioned about the following presentation as well-
Globalization and Goals: Does Soccer Show the Way?
http://info.worldbank.org/etools/bspan/presentationView.asp?EID=530&PID=1022