Blog
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The World Cup has usually been regarded as a mere large soccer championship, but after reading Bowman and Jiménez, I have come to understand that it is more than that. The World Cup is an influential instrument that plays a role in creating the image of countries, affects world politics, and shapes nationalism. Bowman (2020) describes the way the World Cup is a form of cultural diplomacy. It enables countries to display their values and enhance their political influence at the international level. This concept made me understand that hosting the World Cup is a tactic…
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The 1994 World Cup was a massive success for FIFA. It broke records in attendance and viewership, and brought in a turnover of $4 billion according to the former (and disgraced) FIFA President Sepp Blatter. Despite this, soccer in the United States still struggled to replicate the results of the World Cup for a multitude of reasons. For starters, soccer still had an image problem in the US. Soccer was, and still is, mainly viewed as a youth sport. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it has contributed to the struggles that soccer has…
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Moments of national crisis often reveal whether public truly serves the people or mainly tries to protect the state’s image. In Mexico the 1986 World Cup took place shortly after a devastating earthquake, exposing the tension between political image making and real public responsibility. As Bowman and Ridge show, the tournament became a space where power was not only displayed but also questioned. After the earthquake, the government’s slow and bureaucratic response weakened public trust in the PRI. Ordinary citizens stepped in instead, organizing rescue teams, setting up shelters, and distributing aid with little help from…
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This weeks article was about the first World Cup ever hosted in North America. Which has a huge impact on the way the rest of the world in how Mexico represented a different model of nation-building and showing the modernity instead of the state-led project behind the 1968 Olympic Games. During 1940’s-1970’s known as the Mexican Miracle the Mexican Government used sports as part of their cultural diplomacy. It wasn’t until the 1970 World Cup where it wasn’t planned out by the state instead it was through private networks of the football and media elites. When…
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While it may not seem like it, the World Cup has historical relations to politics as well as culture. There is also a distinct connection to economic profits for the famous event as well. An interesting note about the 1986 World Cup in Colombia is that they had to back out of hosting the event and cited financial reasons for doing so which dealt a blow to the pride of many Colombians. Their football scene had already dealt with corruption and forms of match fixing. This establishes a connection between the economics and culture for the…
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“The 1986 World Cup finals will not be held in Colombia. The golden rule whereby the championship would serve Colombia and not a group of multi-national companies was not observed. Here we have many other things to do and there is no time to attend to the extravagances of FIFA” – Belisario Bentacur. Without getting too deep into the technicalities/reasons behind the 1986 Fifa World Cup Finals (WC) being hosted in Mexico instead of Colombia, I believe that this quote is a good analysis of the power, both politically and monetarily that the WC holds. This…
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Hello! My name is Kenneth Yunker and I was born and raised in Winston-Salem, NC. I am currently studying at Appalachian State university as a general History major with a minor in Psychology. I grew up playing soccer recreationally originally for a small league known as Optimist Soccer, on a team where my father coached my brothers prior to coaching me. Eventually I moved into NC Fusion towards the pandemic and played with them until I aged out and began attending Appalachian State. While I have played soccer for the majority of my life thus far,…
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Whats up everybody! My name is Judah and I am double majoring in History/Social Studies Education and Spanish & Hispanic Studies. My hometown is Alexandria, Virginia about 15 minutes away from DC. Ive been exposed/playing soccer for genuinely as long as I can remember. My whole extended family on my dads side all played (fun fact my dad scored on Tim Howard when they were playing youth ball). This is where my interest in Soccer stems from. I played competitively up until the end of my senior year of high school, and credit a lot of…
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This week’s readings were about the 1994 World Cup in the US. It focuses on the influence of soccer on the US, both expected and in reality. Before going into this reading, I knew there was a huge, but unsuccessful, push to turn the US into a soccer nation. These efforts were prominent in the 1950s to 90s, and would eventually stagnate for years. This nation has never been closer to fully embracing soccer. Major shifts in the American soccer world, including Messi moving to Miami and the World Cup being held here, have contributed to…
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This article directed its focus on soccer in the South. Reading this article brought some eye-opening points and things that I would never have thought about. In the introduction it starts off with how soccer started to expand in the United States. Typically, efforts for the sport to expand was focused on the Northeast and Midwest regions of the United States. Reasons behind why the sport was not taking off in South was because of how rural it was and segregation. Also, a lot of its major cities lacked European immigration where the sport could have taken off. The sport only started to take off through the seaports of the region. The…
