• Duncan Nortier

Bafana Bafana’s World Cup exploits has South Africans chanting “No DNA, just RSA!” But against a rising tide of xenophobia, what South Africa are we actually rooting for?

• Fiifi Anaman

In 1957, three months after Ghanaian independence, the world’s most celebrated footballer came to Accra to teach. What Stanley Matthews left behind changed Ghanaian football forever.

• Aomar Boum
• Brahim El Guabli

When Ayyoub Bouaddi chose Morocco over France, he wasn’t just making a football decision, he was enacting a theory of citizenship that has been in the making since 1880.

• Alasdair Howorth

Cabo Verde’s national team is at the World Cup for the first time in their history. To understand why they might surprise everyone, you need to understand morabeza.

• Alex Čizmić

Bosnia’s World Cup squad is built on the descendants of war and displacement, players raised across Europe and North America who are finding their way back through football.

• Buster Kirchner

Why are the religious practices of African footballers treated as strange when athletes around the world turn to faith and superstition to navigate the game’s uncertainty?

• Maher Mezahi

The exclusion of Somali referee Omar Artan hardens the contradiction at the heart of the 2026 World Cup: a global tournament increasingly shaped by the politics of exclusion.

• Boima Tucker

The World Cup was born from imperial rivalry and nationalist aspiration. Almost a century later, it still oscillates between mass hope and elite spectacle.

• Sean Henry Jacobs

Under Arsène Wenger, Arsenal FC transformed English football’s relationship to African players, becoming a symbol of diaspora identity, Black internationalism, and global modernity.

• Fiifi Anaman

Under the leadership of the president of the Ghana Football Association, the country’s football has become a study in contradiction, combining administrative modernization with competitive decline.

• Louis Mukoma Fargues

What’s in store for the Congolese national team, now that they’ve reached the World Cup?

• Ivan Pech

If the reception the Democratic Republic of the Congo received at the FIFA intercontinental playoffs is anything to go by, visiting African fans can expect a joyful camaraderie in Mexico.

• Kenyua Gachecheh

The football gambling industry across Africa preys on the risk factors built into the game. The only viable solution is investing in durable, developmental frameworks at the grassroots level.

• Romain Molina

Burundi’s football league rarely draws headlines — making it an easy target for match-fixing networks now entrenched in its top division.

• Michal Petros

Eritrea’s recent progress in AFCON qualifying offered a rare feel-good moment, but new player defections underline how fragile that progress remains amid the country’s political realities.

• David Goldblatt

Despite commercialization and elite capture, the world’s most popular sport still generates forms of collective life that resist the logic of capitalism.

• Florian Lefèvre

In Guadalajara, fans from three continents celebrated football together in what was a taste of a World Cup that most won't be able to afford or attend.

• Florian Lefèvre

A Guadalajara, des fans venus des trois continents ont célébrer le football ensemble dans un avant-goût de ce que sera, pour eux, la Coupe du monde : une fête à laquelle ils ne pourront pas assister

• Simon Adetona Akindes

Behind the refereeing drama and rising revenues, AFCON 2025 exposed a tournament increasingly shaped by global capital rather than the long-term health of African football.

• Gilson Lázaro

Angola’s golden jubilee culminated in a multimillion-dollar match against Argentina. The price tag — and the secrecy around it — divided a nation already grappling with inequality.