Posts tagged as:

Nutmeg Radio

Reads of the Day: Captain, Bye Captain

In cricket or death-spiraling planes, captains are critical — but not so with football, where the captain is as atavistic as an appendix, more a national worry towel than Henry V. Twofootedtackle and Nutmeg Radio trace the history of the term’s irrelevance, while Jonathan Wilson says Capello’s handling of Terry/Ferdinand shows his own increasing disconnection from England.

(Image credit: Diego Lorenzo F. Jose/Flickr through a Creative Commons license.)

{ 0 comments }

Well Struck: Deceptive Correlations, Card Waving and a Ball Tom Friedman Would Love

Did England’s early World Cup exit boost English tourism? Did the Jabulani make shots less accurate? Can a soccer ball boost business productivity? Click the headline for some great…click-throughs.

African Footballers: Set Them Free

Why do African teams often fail in internationals? “We talk about their football in Africa in an almost infantile way. The need for discipline is always the answer and is a characterization that extends beyond the pitch into African governance, development, and almost every other African industry.” But the issue might be less one of regimentation and more one of finding an authentic style. As with Total Football and Brazilian samba, “a footballing philosophy originating in a particular country succeeds when the philosophy has a relationship to that country’s way of life.” (Clive Longbottom-Fellow/Nutmeg Radio)

Bad Beats: Developing a U.S. Soccer Culture

Yes, skills and access are important, U.S. soccer fans – but where’s your appreciation, asks Jason Davis at Match Fit USA, for “the most important factor in the country’s ability to produce world class talent — time”? Meanwhile, there’s “awkwardness to spare in U.S. soccer culture,” says Clive Longbottom-Fellow from Nutmeg Radio, and we need to move beyond this second-hand situation — starting with our supporters’ music.

Read of the Weekend: Beyond Seats on a Plane

The coverage of U.S. soccer writing is shockingly narrow — obsessed with breaking news, team minutiae and who’s going to make the USMNT plane to South Africa, neglectful of access and diversity issues. “Rarely do our writers focus on why the game is played or how our society can transform the game and vice versa, both issues that, coming back to the plane game, are just as relevant to our national success.” (Miriti Murungi/Nutmeg Radio)

Read of the Day: Mining Africa’s Soccer Youth

Africa’s countless youth academies and clubs are too often like the continent’s resource mining practices — “rampantly shady” and ruthlessly rapacious, looking for the Hope Diamond of a Drogba or an Eto’o and tossing the rest (and the community) away. One Ghanaian club is instead trying a model of responsibility — 1/5th of its proceeds go to sustainable development projects. They’re Division 2…but moving up. (Miriti Murungi/Nutmeg Radio)

Read of the Day: Imagine That

The United States thinks developing top soccer pros takes money, training, equipment, access, more money…OK, but why do thousands of kids who lack those things in other places develop into amazing professionals? Because they have something just as important as tactics — they dream the game. Maybe MLS needs an Imagination Project… (Miriti Murungi/Nutmeg Radio)

There’ll Never Be Enough Sandra Bullocks

Is American soccer’s unspoken problem that the system is leaving too many potentially talented players in the starting blocks? An African-American tells his story of club and ODP soccer coming too late at age 16–and wonders how many kids never even hear about these opportunities. (Miriti Murungi/Nutmeg Radio)

Why Don’t Africans Coach African National Teams?

Why Don’t Africans Coach African National Teams? There’s only one African manager left for the African teams in Africa’s first World Cup. It’s the “follow-the-omniscent-foreigner game” Africans have been playing for years, says Clive Longbottom-Fellow — and will work about as well as caving into the World Bank’s 1980s demands for economic “structural adjustment.” (Nutmeg Radio)