Pogbacité
Is France’s World Cup championship team a bellwether for France’s political future?
11 Articles by:
Laurent Dubois
Laurent Dubois, historian, is the author of 'Soccer Empire' and The Language of the Game.'
The Football Griot
For a long time most football fans experienced the game via the radio, making broadcasters cult figures. Like Allou Ndiaye in 1950s Senegal.
Senegal’s jersey
The Senegalese football jersey is a powerful symbol of nationhood and independence.
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.
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.
Jogo Bonito
Preparations for the 2014 World Cup have served as a trigger for what may become a major political and social movement in Brazil.
The Blood of the Impure
The French national anthem is a pretty nasty song. It dreams, in one of its more memorable verses, that the “blood of the impure” will “irrigate our fields.”
Who are you rooting for
The historian Laurent Dubois watches the African Cup of Nations in Senegal and can’t help mix it up with the history of colonialism and neo-colonialism in the region.
The Aura of Didier Drogba
Didier Drogba is the master of the unruly and the absurd: when he is in form, none of what the other team does matters.
The Whites-Only French
France today is struggling with race because — unlike its former colonies — it never actually went through its own process of decolonization.
Everyone Gets a Vuvuzela
This plastic instrument will generate controversy where it will sound, carrying along to the new continents the singular experience that was the World Cup in South Africa.