Okay, let’s get one thing clear: no one likes horrible totalitarian dictatorial regimes that brutalize their populations, starve their people through incompetent and willfully destructive leadership, and spent most of their time threatening war on the outside world while trying to develop nuclear arms to use should those conflicts …
World Cup
What the World Cup Means to the Burmese
Live Blog: Ivory Coast vs. Portugal
The hopes of a nation can now rest on a protective cast. The Ivory Coast’s — and TIME 100 cover star – Didier Drogba has been given special clearance by FIFA to wear it on his broken right arm for his side’s group game against Portugal. Reason enough to live blog this massive match!
Assessing Asia’s World Cup Performances
The Chinese may have racked up the most gold medals at the last summer Olympics, but Asians haven’t had anywhere near the same impact at the World Cup.
Taking On Vuvuzela Inc.
One thing seems certain as the great global debate continues to rage over whether the South African vuvuzela should be banned from World Cup stadiums or not: someone is going to find a way to make a truckload of money out of the rumpus. And a couple of companies are already seeking to do just that by moving fast on what’s become the …
Away from the Hermit Kingdom, North Korea Faces the World
Every World Cup needs its mystery team, usually a side of minnows few know very much about — in 2006, the “Soca Warriors” of Trinidad & Tobago played that role with cuddly, heart-warming gusto. It’s a bit harder to attach that sort of sentiment to North Korea, whose dictatorial regime is one of the most alienated and vilified in the …
90 Seconds With … Socrates
He was the thinking man’s player on the field and he certainly had the thoughtful name off it. Brazil’s 1982 World Cup captain Socrates (or Socrates Brasileiro Sampaio de Souza Vieira de Oliveira, MD, Ph.D to give the man his full due) was a wonderful midfield dynamo, who played for his country 60 times, scoring an impressive 22 goals …
Cue The Benny Hill Theme
An own goal that even cracked the guilty Danish defender up, and a pounced-on shot off the post that by all rights should have been cleared to the other end. That was the extent of offensive brilliance in the Netherlands’ 2-0 win over Denmark–a match in which a 0-0 (read “nothing nothing”) would have been a truer reflection of the …
Vuvuzela: Call It This Cup’s Atmospherics
Efficient
Lukas Podolski and Miroslav Klose only managed three goals apiece during the entire Bundesliga campaign last season. Within 30 minutes of Germany’s opening fixture against Australia, they’ve both scored. Just what is it about the World Cup and the Germans coming good?
England Hands the U.S. a Tie
The scoreboard at the Royal Bafokeng Stadium in Rustenburg was inoperative tonight. So was England’s goalkeeping.
World Cup: US vs England – The Martians Have Landed
One of the lasting images of the first World Cup in Africa has to be the sight of 500 England fans turning a tin-roof township shack into a pub outside the stadium in Phokeng where their team plays the US in exactly an hour.
