Every nation needs a team kit
An Australian sports apparel company makes shirts for low profile national soccer teams, including a number of African ones.
SPORTS
The Match for Occupation
Diego Maradona makes excuses for Morocco's occupation of Western Sahara.
Who is Didier Drogba?
Drogba became one of the most famous footballers of his generation thanks to his time at Chelsea, but he never won a major tournament for his national team.
What’s a national anthem got to do with anything?
Next time 'Die Stem' part of the South African anthem plays, the appropriate reaction is to sit down or take a knee.
What do the Portuguese make of Cristiano Ronaldo?
With the passing of the legendary Mozambican-born Eusébio in 2014, Ronaldo is now the undisputed face of Portuguese soccer.
The African Summer Olympics
The highlights of the 2016 Rio Olympics, including why Kenyan athletes were not wearing matching outfits at the opening ceremony.
The Empire Strikes Back
Or how Africa won Euro 2016 for Portugal.
What Muhammad Ali Believed
Muhammad Ali's political life was like his boxing career: as frustrating and contradictory as it was principled and selfless.
The legacy of Albert Johanneson
Imagine the exposed position black players were in English football in the 1960s: the only black man in the stadium, never mind on the field.
Africa’s Premier League
The story of Africa's long-distance love affair with English football, told by fans in Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya & DR Congo.
No normal sport in an abnormal society
Recently, Aubrey Bloomfield, a graduate student at The New School, and I wrote a piece for The Nation about a sports boycott as a strategy against the occupation of Palestinian land by Israel. Here’s an excerpt: There appears to be support among Palestinians generally for sporting sanctions against Israel. However, to date BDS has largely been focused […]
Football and power in Colombia
Football in Colombia has been, especially since the introduction of pro soccer in 1948, an uncontested panic button for those in power.
In Rum We Trust
The filmmaker, Akin Omotoso, traveled to the 2016 NBA All Star Weekend in Toronto, Canada. This is his diary.
The African Team that Played in Spain’s La Liga
Moghreb Tetouan, now back in Morocco, remains the only African club ever to hold a spot in a top-flight European football league.
A History in Fragments
The recent explosions in the Stade de France was one of the most surreal things to ever take place in a stadium built nearly two decades ago specifically to house history.
What do they know of cricket
White South African cricket writers should stop commenting on cricket as if the game is apolitical or the national team is still as all-white as when the country was first allowed back into international cricket.
When Pelé ended a war
From July 1967 to January 1970, Nigeria was engaged in civil war. Apparently, one person could make the war pause: The G.O.A.T., Pelé.
What Serena Williams communicates on the tennis court
One key to black style is the fact that, relative to white Americans, black people don’t have much room “for make believe.”
Arthur Ashe and the Military Coup
In 1976, the American tennis star, Arthur Ashe, went to play in a tennis tournament in Lagos and promptly found himself in the middle of a coup by Nigeria's military.
Flying to Frankfurt with a Super Eagle
The author writes about a fleeting encounter with the former captain of Nigeria's national football team, Sunday Oliseh.