World Cup History

By ⋅ June 9, 2010 ⋅ Post a comment
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How We Got Here takes on soccer this week. We speak with Duke history professor Laurent Dubois, author of Soccer Empire: The World Cup and the Future of France.

Soccer spread so quickly. A lot of sports spread along the sinews of empire, you can think of cricket or rugby or even baseball in the U.S. case. What happened with soccer is it did spread via English–it was created and codifed in England and it spread with English people who crossed into other countries but very quickly it took root in those other countries. France is one case among many where in the early 20th-century English communities brought it there and then very quickly it became just part of the social fabric of every day life and very quickly it became an extremely important pastime for many many people.  – Laurent Dubois

Dubois explores the roots — in Empire — of the diversity of the French national team, long celebrated but also maligned for its preponderance of players of African and Caribbean descent.  And he profiles two players in particular, Lilian Thuram and Zinedine Zidane, in his tale of how soccer and French identity are intertwined. Download MP3

Other links:

Laurent Dubois’s Soccer Politics blog

The World’s 2010 World Cup page

NPR Interview on the history of soccer in Africa

TNR’s soccer blog GoalPost

Discussion

3 comments for “World Cup History”

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  • Amel

    It is quite interesting to know that someone is writing a book and is actually seeing football as I do. I always have that conscious about the crucial cultural implication and the political rule football plays in the history. I was only five years old when Argentina wins the world cup in Mexico 1986, I cannot remember seeing any game; however, that world cup has a big influence on my life, and many fans all over the world. Of course I am referring to Argentina- England game when Maradona score his controversial goal by his hand what later known as “El mano del dios” and later second goal “the best in the history of football”. Of course I see all that parallel with the fact that Argentina at that moment was in a war with UK over the Falkland Islands. Probably the legendary Maradona “best football player in history” is the ultimate representation for how football is tightly connected to politics, culture and even religion or let me say the ideology of religion.
    I am from north Africa, I grew up watching Calcio every Sunday, it is fun to watch but the situation gets more intense when you know that Milan is going to play Napoli for example, it’s not only a game, but it also represents the cultural clash between north and south of Italy. The stadium is the best place for fans to express themselves, their culture and political opinions. In Spain for example, the stadium is one of the rare places if not the only one when you can see the Basque flags, and hear the songs for several years in Spain. In Algeria, during the political conflicts of the 80’s, the stadium was the only place where the fans can song the Rai songs, the genre that was under fire from the both sides, the government and the Islamic radicals because of its political and liberal message.
    I would like to write more about that, but time restriction plays its rule.