• Ndeye Debo Seck

Football in Senegal is magic. That the team has qualified for their second World Cup, heightens the joy.

• Haythem Guesmi

Tunisia played England in France '98. English hooligans attacked Tunisians in the streets of Marseille. Algerians came to Tunisians' rescue.

• Kwesi Foli

One Ghanaian football fan wrestles with which teams to support in this year's World Cup after the Black Stars failed to qualify.

• Sarah El-Shaarawi

Reflections on World Cup fever from Cairo and my Canadian immigrant father's Egyptian football nationalism.

• Grégory Pierrot

Reliving the epic quarterfinal match between reigning European football champions, France, and 1983 Copa America runners-up, Brazil, at the 1986 World Cup in Mexico.

• Sean Henry Jacobs

We are exploring the culture and history of the World Cup for the next month while the tournament goes on.

• Chika Unigwe

For the Star Boys, a West-African performance collective based in Antwerp, Belgium, the dream of playing professional football in Europe found its revival in theatre.

• Uri Levy

The image of striker Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, descending alone from the field after Gabon was knocked out of AFCON 2017 game, tells the whole story of Gabon's malaise.

• Aubrey Bloomfield

An Australian sports apparel company makes shirts for low profile national soccer teams, including a number of African ones.

• Todd Cleveland

With the passing of the legendary Mozambican-born Eusébio in 2014, Ronaldo is now the undisputed face of Portuguese soccer.

• Todd Cleveland

Or how Africa won Euro 2016 for Portugal.

• Archie Birch

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 Is a Country

The story of Africa's long-distance love affair with English football, told by fans in Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya & DR Congo.

• Sean Henry Jacobs
• Aubrey Bloomfield

In South Africa activists and sports people campaigning to isolate apartheid, declared: “No normal sport in an abnormal society.” That idea has rattled Israeli diplomats.

• Federico Arango

Football in Colombia has been, especially since the introduction of pro soccer in 1948, an uncontested panic button for those in power.

• Matthew Joseph Greene

Moghreb Tetouan, now back in Morocco, remains the only African club ever to hold a spot in a top-flight European football league.

• Laurent Dubois

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.

• Olaojo Aiyegbayo

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.

• Akwaeke Emezi

The author writes about a fleeting encounter with the former captain of Nigeria's national football team, Sunday Oliseh.

• Pablo Medina Uribe

Chile's 2015 Copa America win won’t heal any of the political or social issues Chile is dealing with. But that's fine.