Status Updates From The Thinking Fan's Guide to...

In contrast to the oppressive feel of Japanese baseball, Japanese soccer is freewheeling, unburdened, even joyous. The play is loose, expressionistic, wide open. ~~Jim Frederick

On the pitch, they are said to speak in Guarani, rather than Paraguay's official language, Spanish, to confuse their opposition. Like Paraguay itself, the identity of the national team is not what it seems on the surface. ~~Isabel Hilton

[Fritz] Walter was responsible for Germany's reputation as a tournament team, a team that was never beautiful, but always the best and most determined when the game depended on it. ~~Alexander Osang

The trend of continually exporting home-grown African talent to countries that not only welcome them into their richly funded and well rewarded league systems but...even absorb them into their national sides may well destroy the chances of any African country actually ever winning the World Cup. ~~Caryl Phillips

United as a nation usually only by their indignant reaction to foreign criticism, Italians enjoy the World Cup as a rare moment of positive collective pride, but to be rehearsed, replayed and gloated over in the safety of their exclusive regional groups. ~~Tim Parks

In the mind's eye now, England games during that decade were frequently only just visible through a cloud of tear gas, used by European police to disperse our rioting hooligans. England fans were fast becoming a pretty sinister bunch; and though our club games were frequently plagued by riots, it never felt as though the yobs were setting the tone. ~~Nick Hornby

At least one young Madeiran, a poor kid from Funchal named Cristiano Ronaldo, had made it big playing for Manchester United. Ronaldo -- he was named for Ronald Reagan, of all people -- is on the Portuguese national team. He drives a silver Porsche. Every boy in Madeira, according to my sources, wants to be him. ~~William Finnegan

For better or worse this is Naipaul's Africa: a place of magic and the mysteries of the village, now also on display at the many roadblocks in the north and west of Cote d'Ivoire, where soldiers are convinced that the amulets they wear around their necks will ward off bullets. War, too, encourages superstition.

[It] is not so much whether the world is ready for the Netherlands to win the World Cup this year, as whether the Dutch are.

Germans are efficient, Italians operatic, the French cultured, Spaniards temperamental, Brazilians flamboyant, and the English...(bull)dogged. ~~Peter Ho Davies

Every time you kick the ball, it's more likely not to go where you aim it than it is to go there; or to go at the wrong speed, or to bounce too much; or it does go where you aimed it but an opponent was standing there, or the teammate you were aiming it at wasn't looking, or moved away, or failed to control it, or was tackled, or fell over, or immediately gave it away to an opponent. ~~John Lanchester

But racist or quasi-racist slander of ['wogball'/]football was not uncommon in Australia, even in the cities, where the football-eggball rivalary could serve as a cover for deeper biases. ~~Ben Rice

Here, though, it was difficult to resist the conclusion that something in the Serb soul craves gridlock. (How does this translate into football? Packing the midfield? Playing for a draw and hoping to sneak through in injury time -- as the amber turns to red, so to speak -- or on penalties?) ~~Geoff Dyer

Then again, do we really want -- or can we even conceive of -- an America where soccer wide popularity or even respect? If you were soccer, the sport of kings, would you want the adulation of a people who elected Bush and Cheney, not once but twice? You would not. You would rather return to your roots, communist or otherwise, and fight fascism with your feet. ~~Dave Eggers

Sex and [football] do not mix well. ~~Aleksandar Hemon

Our teams reflect our soul, as with so many other countries: somehow we never quite make it to the top, and we are never quite up to our potential. ~~Jorge Castaneda

"Now I feel I am able to say what I couldn't then...Bollocks was it the Hand of God, it was the Hand of Diego! And it felt a little bit like pickpocketing the English." ~~Diego Maradona

Switzerland!

South Korea!