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Andrew Guest

Read of the Day: Studies on Hysteria

You could go to World Cup 2010 and write about xenophobia, corruption, poverty and theft…and still think the tournament was a triumph for South Africa, lose your mind when Landon Donovan scored. ”The beauty and torture of soccer fandom, I came to appreciate during South Africa 2010, is the way the game simultaneously titillates very different parts of the mind. [W]hile Freud was not right about many things, he was right that the human mind is fundamentally conflicted…while it may not have across in my posts, I loved every single day of my trip to South Africa. Loved it.” (Andrew Guest/Pitch Invasion)

(Image credit: Axel Bührmann/Flickr through a Creative Commons license.)

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South Africa: Where’s the Game?

Don’t hold your breath for the World Cup to hugely benefit South Africa’s soccer culture and infrastructure — in fact, it’s hard even now to find a game of ragball in greater Johannesburg. In Soweto, there are games, but also many broken promises of community football improvements from FIFA and the South African Football Federation. “The real choice seems to have involved shifting spending to the stadiums from spending on promised local initiatives (such as arts programs and community football).” (Andrew Guest/Pitch Invasion)

USMNT: It Tastes Like Fondue

The knock on U.S. soccer is by now beyond cliché: too white, too upper-middle-class, too burnished by minivan regimentation and helicopter parenting to draw on more than a fraction of the country’s potential talent. Look at the USMNT, though, and you see a group that includes all social classes. But does that mean progress — or is it just an index of soccer’s marginalization in U.S. culture and a “random pattern of access” fed by colleges and children of immigrants? In the end, “we still don’t have enough players like Clint Dempsey. Whatever that means.” (Andrew Guest/Pitch Invasion)

Read of the Day: The Invention of Love

What’s the metanarrative of a great player? A Beautiful Game, a new book interviewing 41 top players about their development, offers clues through oral history: More playing for fun than academies; more diversity of interests than grinding single-mindedness; as much luck and social capital as physical gifts. Oh, and being able to invent an adult version of love for the game after your childhood infatuation inevitably vanishes. (Andrew Guest/Pitch Invasion)

Reads of the Day: Happiness/Delusion in the Football Fan

What makes you happy, Football Fan? It’s not silverware, says Andrew Guest at Pitch Invasion — happiness studies argue it’s what our team gives us…”rare opportunities — real or perceived — to connect amidst the penetrating anomie of modern life.” But when Benoît Assou-Ekotto tells us he plays for the money, says The Times‘ Matthew Syed, he destroys the central delusion of modern sports fandom: that players identify as much with our cause as we do with theirs.

NASL, South African Division

NASL provided Euro-shunned South African stars such as Kaizer Motaung and Jomo Sono a chance to play; and they returned the compliment by becoming pioneering entrepreneurs of contemporary South African soccer…with some resultant bizarre hybridizations (like the Kaizer Chiefs team logo, which copies the old Atlanta Chiefs politically incorrect American symbol of a Native American in headdress) becoming “amongst the most visible images of African entrepreneurism.” (Andrew Guest/Pitch Invasion)

Why Women in Africa Do(n’t) Play Football

Norms of beauty. Malnutrition. A preference for basketball. A lack of tampons. The things that prevent women from playing football in Africa are so legion, it’s a wonder they ever play the game. And yet they do… (Andrew Guest/Pitch Invasion)

Beyond the Vuvuzela

Beyond the Vuvuzela: Two new academic books on Africa soccer make at least this clear: that World Cup 2010 is much more than either (a) FIFA’s Disneyfied dream of a smiling, frictionless continent, or (b) South Africa as mere set design for a multinational capitalist circle jerk. (Andrew Guest/Pitch Invasion)