Author: Peter Alegi

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Fútbology

Fútbol in the Classroom

The Football Scholars Forum — an online community of scholars that discusses serious fútbol scholarship — convenes on Wednesday, November 9, at 2pm EST (-5 GMT) for a session on “Soccer in the Classroom.”

Several scholars will make short presentations about university football courses in various disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. Course syllabi have been pre-circulated on the website.

Among the questions to be discussed: How can teaching a course or unit on soccer expand or contribute to disciplinary knowledge? What are the challenges and opportunities of teaching a fútbol class filled with everyone from fantasy soccer geeks to soccer neophytes? How can students apply what they learn in a football course outside the classroom? Interested participants can join the conversation via Skype by contacting Alex Galarza.

In related news, FSF is to be featured in a poster session at HASTAC 2011, a conference on digital scholarly communication at the University of Michigan in December.

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Players Fútbology

Football in the Cameroonian Social Imagination: Review


The 1990 World Cup hosted by Italy is often remembered for the exploits of Cameroon’s Indomitable Lions. Led by 38-year-old striker Roger Milla, Cameroon legitimized African football on the global stage with their 1-0 victory over Maradona’s Argentina in the opening game and then becoming the first African team to reach the World Cup quarterfinals. In 1994, Bea Vidacs, a Hungarian anthropologist based in the United States, landed in Yaoundé to begin her research on football and identity in Cameroon. Visions of a Better World: Football in the Cameroonian Social Imagination is a revised version of a doctoral thesis completed in 2002, a study that over the years midwifed several very good journal articles and chapters in scholarly collections.

Read my full review at H-Soz-u-Kult.

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Fútbology

Making History: BBC on 1899 South African Tour to Britain

In Making History, a BBC Radio 4 series exploring ordinary people’s links with the past, we learn about the first African team to play in Europe. Making History listener Eryl Freestone has a memoir written by her grandfather which describes a tour of black South African footballers that he helped organize in 1899, just as the South African War was about to start. Eryl meets with Chris Bolsmann at Aston University who has been researching the tour and was desperate to find an ancestor of WM Williams’ – Ery’s grandfather.

Listen here (segment starts at 09:00).

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Video

Super-Mario and Friends Do Man U



Manchester United – Manchester City 1-6. Mario Balotelli and David Silva lead Roberto Mancini’s men to a historic victory at Old Trafford. Does this outrageously humiliating scoreline signal a changing of the guard in English football?

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Video

Fred’s Golazo



Fluminense’s Fred makes a diagonal run into the box, traps the high vertical cross with his chest, and executes a bicycle kick that sends the ball past the stunned Coritiba keeper and into the back of the net. Pure magic!

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Video

FIFA Bribes on Video: The Jack Warner Files



The Daily Telegraph web site posted video evidence of Jack Warner, former CONCACAF president and FIFA vice-president, explaining Mohammad Bin Hammam’s cash-for-votes scheme at a Caribbean Football Union meeting in March 2011. “If you are pious then go and build a church,” he tells the audience.

Short version of the video here, long version here

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Video

Bafana Buffoonery



South African players embarrass themselves and the nation by dancing in celebration after a 0-0 home draw with Sierra Leone on October 9, 2011 in Nelspruit. Niger had qualified instead! (For details see yesterday’s post here.)

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