• Lucas Souza
• Matthew Kirwin

Joseph O’Neill’s new novel follows a Pittsburgh writer chasing a West African wonderkid. It’s also a story about who profits every time the world goes looking for the next Eusébio.

• Lee Nxumalo

From the Epstein files to a World Cup trailed by rape charges and a hush-money settlement, the public has gotten remarkably good at feeling outrage. What it hasn’t learned is what to do with it.

• Mery Vieira

Cabo Verde’s historic run and the breakthrough performances of fellow African and Caribbean nations changed the conversation about visibility, opportunity, and the future of African football.

• Gerard Akindes

Can a continent dominate global football while losing control of its own game?

• Olufemi Terry

Football’s three mixed Maghrebi and Black African stars are not emissaries of a new pan-Africanism. And the continent doesn’t need them to be.

• Giovanni Wanneh

Part performer, part cultural ambassador, and increasingly, a political flashpoint.

• Alex Hochuli

As club football becomes increasingly placeless and commercialized, international football begins to feel strangely real again.

• Maher Mezahi

In Algeria, football stadiums have long been sites of protest, expression, and resistance. As public space shrinks and surveillance rises, their political future hangs in the balance.

• 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.