Failure or progress?
By Philip Hersh
The game is a touchstone for women soccer players, just as the moon walk — the giant step for mankind, not Michael Jackson’s dance move — was for the world 40 years ago, as Ray Meyer taking DePaul to the Final Four was to Chicagoans 30 years ago, as Greg LeMond’s back-from-near-death victory on the last stage of the Tour de France was for U.S. cycling fans 20 years ago.
The game took place 10 years ago last Friday. It redefined the lives of many young athletes and became one of those moments in which the memory of where they saw it became indelible.
Lindsay Tarpley was 15 years old when she watched the final of the 1999 Women’s World Cup with her parents and two brothers — neither a soccer player — in the family room of their home in Kalamazoo, Mich. Read more
Sony announced its plans to stage a world event called Twilight Football. As the hour of twilight moves across the world, a series of seven matches will begin.
All seven games will take place on 22nd September 2009, the Autumnal Equinox and Vernal Equinox. The matches will be taking place at stunning, specially chosen locations in: Italy, France, the UK, Spain, Argentina and Australia, with the Twilight Football grand final happening at Soccer City, Johannesburg, the venue for the final of 2010 FIFA World Cup.
Each match takes place in a location chosen to provide a spectacularly beautiful background for a truly unique activity.
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By Michael Lewis
Some American fans think New Jersey’s Giuseppe Rossi is soccer’s answer to Benedict Arnold.
Fans are upset that Rossi decided to go with his heritage instead of the country of his birth to play with the green, white and red of Italy rather than the red, white and blue of the USA.
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By Robyn Dixon
Reporting from Johannesburg, South Africa — When Emma Jordi’s mother suggested a Sunday afternoon at South Africa’s Confederations Cup watching the national soccer team play Iraq, the pretty blond 14-year-old had an excuse. Homework.
“I have to write a speech for English,” she said warily, more accustomed to riding her beautiful chestnut gelding, Spring Close Prince Dante, than spending rowdy afternoons at the soccer stadium, the air rent by the blasts of plastic trumpets called vuvuzelas that fans blow.
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