SPORTS

The Ugly American

Sonja Sugira

US writers about soccer beginning to display the same kinds of sports-commenter crypto racism that has been pretty standard issue in Europe for quite a while.

Pitch Perfect Friday

Sonja Sugira

Africa is not just represented by five nations in the World Cup. Its diaspora is also here courtesy of Euro-American and South American squads.

Out of Here

Sean Henry Jacobs

I am spending the opening weeks of the 2010 World Cup in Cape Town, South Africa. I have tickets to a few games. The main aim is to be among football people.

The Nandos Plot

Herman Wasserman

The chicken fast-food chain’s latest television commercial, riffing on the World Cup, satirizes stereotypical Africa yet risks reproducing the very tropes it mocks instead.

Coca Cola Boy

Sean Henry Jacobs

Commercials tied to the 2010 World Cup sell brands through a tired global template of African-ness: poverty as texture, hardship as atmosphere, resilience as spectacle.