Posts tagged as:

Tom Dunmore

Brazil 2014: Let Them Eat Bolo

If Brazil 2014 is already in trouble — and it’s already “amazingly” behind schedule — it’s because Brazil’s old “semi-feudal” cadre is in charge. Tim Vickery at The Independent adds that crumbling stadia, inadequate travel infrastructure, and wildly varying weather could spell catastrophe; Pitch Invasion’s Tom Dunmore casts a wary eye at Ricardo Teixeira, the new World Cup’s reflexively corrupt overlord.

{ 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.

Reads of the Day: Mythbusters

How many more historical narratives can this World Cup overturn? The Dutch and the Germans have switched shirts, says David Winner at Fair Play — “Germans are teaching the Dutch to win, the Dutch [like Van Gaal and van Marwijk] are teaching the Germans to play spatially-sophisticated attacking football.” Maybe the narratives of all four semifinalists were never true to being with, argues Tom Dunmore at Pitch Invasion. But beware the voodoo death, warns Minus the Shooting — the physiology of belief, “belief instantiated in the autonomic nervous system,” that underpins why opponents collapse when a German midfielder simply appears organized.

Read of the Day: England, Written on the Wind

Is “England” anything more than its football team? The question isn’t automatically a cynical one: The team’s symbol, the St. George’s Cross, a flag “long tied to nastier currents of racism, nationalism and violence” (especially the right-wing English Defense League), is being appropriated by both marketers and activists toward a new, multicultural English patriotism. “The vast whiteness present on the flag of St George now ever-present at England games is perhaps, then, a space in which English identity is being partially written: one anything but simply white, whatever it exactly is.” (Tom Dunmore/Pitch Invasion)

FIFA. Ethics. Matter. Antimatter.

Australia’s 2022 World Cup bid team gave tens of thousands of dollars worth of jewelry to wives of FIFA executives…along with boomerangs, Drizabone jackets, Australian wines, scarves, beanies, RMWilliams belts, wallets, Paspaley cufflinks and pendants to the executives themselves. It should surprise no one that such gifts — as expressions of the prospective host’s national culture — are OK within FIFA’s code of ethics. Wait — FIFA has a code of ethics? (Tom Dunmore/Pitch Invasion)

The Narcissism of Rivalrous Differences

Brighton/Crystal Palace. Bitterest of rivalries — makes Yankees/Red Sox or Packers/Bears look like a shared bottle of unoaked chard in the hot tub. So why would a Seagull fan want Crystal Palace to avoid liquidation? Because “[t]he survival of a football club is more important than petty squabbles. Especially if you value those squabbles.” (Richie Morris/FourFourTwo; HT Pitch Invasion)

Reads of the Day: 3 Out of 5 Pundits Recommend People

Supporters’ trusts: Will there be a right- and left-wing backlash? Tom Dunmore of Pitch Invasion says recent pieces in the British press show typical ideological caricaturing — trusts as dangerous populism vs. football as a pop culture distraction. Meanwhile, Rob Marrs at Left Back in the Changing Room says clubs are — despite the Disneyfication of the higher reaches of the sport — more important to communities than ever…and he’s not sure that’s a good thing.

Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out

Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out: Would making British TV show matches locally instead of nationally restore balance to British football? Gabrielle Marcotti of The Times makes the case; Tom Dunmore of Pitch Invasion has his doubts.