Trending Now
We have updated our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use for Eurasia Group and its affiliates, including GZERO Media, to clarify the types of data we collect, how we collect it, how we use data and with whom we share data. By using our website you consent to our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy, including the transfer of your personal data to the United States from your country of residence, and our use of cookies described in our Cookie Policy.
{{ subpage.title }}
Here’s why I can’t watch soccer like a normal person
Politics and history have a way of intruding on – even ruining – everything for me, and these days, it’s soccer’s turn.
Right now, most of the Western Hemisphere is engrossed in two major soccer tournaments. In Europe, it’s the Euros, where the Old Countries are battling it out. In the Americas, it’s the Copa América, where the New Ones are.
All told, the countries participating in the two tournaments are home to more than a billion people. So, it’s a big deal – basically two half-filled World Cups at once.
The on-field dramas are rich enough. Will this be the last time an aging Lionel Messi, perhaps the greatest player ever, puts on his country’s uniform? Is this unexpectedly strong Venezuela team for real? Across the ocean, how stacked is host country Germany still? Can England manage to not disappoint?
That’s all good, but when I watch the matches, look at the flags, and read the names on the jerseys, I can’t help but see or think about different things entirely – political things.
So when, for example, French striker Kylian Mbappé, whose parents are from Cameroon and Algeria, puts one in the back of the net, I don’t just wonder whether he really is the best player in the world now (is he?). I also immediately think of the backlash against immigration in France, which – as elsewhere in the EU – has boosted the far right. On Sunday in France, in fact, the overtly anti-immigrant party of Marine Le Pen topped the polls in the first round of the country's snap elections. This despite Mbappé's own direct appeals to young French votersnot to let Le Pen's party win.
On that score, when Austria plays Turkey in a few days, help me NOT flip back to the 1683 Siege of Vienna , when the Habsburgs stopped the Ottomans’ last, best attempt to push into the heart of Europe. Far-right politicians in Europe today, of course, have embraced the symbolism of that exact battle as part of their calls to limit immigration from the Islamic world. Keep an eye on ultra-nationalist Euro Twitter on Tuesday when the match is on.
Back on this side of the Atlantic, the Mexico vs. Ecuador game on Sunday was the most exciting faceoff between the two countries since April, when Ecuadorian police raided the Mexican Embassy in Quito, in order to arrest a former Ecuadorian vice president who had taken asylum there while fleeing a corruption conviction.
But I couldn't help thinking of the bigger Ecuador story: the country is in a state of emergency as murders skyrocket amid a war between Mexican (and Colombian) cartels trying to claim turf in the small Andean country. That violence has driven Ecuadoran asylum seekers as far away as New York City, where a growing migrant crisis is defining the city's politics. (See our special on that here.)
Speaking of migrant crises: Venezuela, -- where political repression, economic mismanagement, and the effects of US sanctions have caused more than 7 million people to flee over the past several years -- is somehow fielding one of the strongest teams at the Copa. Could success at the tournament give a boost to strongman Nicolas Maduro? He could use the help. He is so unpopular that he might actually lose a July 28th election that he has spent years carefully designing in his favor.
You get the point.
I understand this is a little nuts. A sports match is just a sports match. But for any politically minded person, it’s never just a sports matchup when it’s national teams.
Like it or not, the politics of how nation-states define themselves — that is, who gets to be in them, who gets what from them, where their borders really are — is at the heart of so many of the most electric political questions in the world today.
The immigration debates in Europe or the US are about who gets to come in. The socioeconomic, political, and racial fault lines and conflicts within countries of Latin America are, in many cases, what is driving people out.
In just about every country represented at the Copa and the Euros, these questions are shaping -- or reshaping -- politics. I can't help if if I'm seeing that in every match. All I'm doing is watching some soccer, right?
British PM Rishi Sunak and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen shake hands at Windsor Guildhall, Britain, February 27, 2023.
What We’re Watching: Post-Brexit trade, West Bank chaos, Nigeria’s vote count, Teddies for Turkey
A historic post-Brexit breakthrough
UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen unveiled a plan on Monday they say will finally resolve the complex problem of post-Brexit trade involving Northern Ireland. In the coming days, skeptics (and opponents) of the deal within Sunak’s Conservative Party and the Democratic Unionist Party in Northern Ireland will read the proposal closely to decide whether to approve it. The deal is intended to ease the flow of trade between Britain and Northern Ireland, some of which will flow across the UK’s border with the Republic of Ireland and into the EU. The deal creates two lanes for trade: a faster-flowing green lane for goods transiting only between Britain and Northern Ireland and a red lane with more rigorous customs checks for goods bound for the EU. The two biggest (of many) issues that will now be debated in Britain’s parliament: How to determine which lane each shipment of goods will travel through and what role the European Court of Justice will play in resolving trade disputes that involve Northern Ireland. Sunak appears to believe that his plan will pass parliament, but the scale of this important political victory for the embattled PM will depend on how much opposition from his own party and the DUP force him to rely on the opposition Labour Party for the votes needed to get it done. Sunak was in Belfast on Tuesday to sell the deal to the DUP.
West Bank on the brink
The West Bank experienced one of the largest single acts of settler violence on Sunday, when scores of Jewish settlers stormed the town of Hawara, near Nablus, torching vehicles and houses and leaving at least one Palestinian dead. The assailants said it was a “revenge” attack for the shooting of two Israeli brothers by a Palestinian gunman. (Another Israeli was killed in the West Bank on Monday.) This comes as the security situation in the occupied West Bank has been deteriorating for the better part of a year, with a spate of deadly Palestinian attacks in Israel leading to raids on Palestinian terror cells by the Israeli army. While the Israeli Defense Forces have been criticized for not acting fast enough to quell the violence in Hawara, recent events have revealed stark divisions within the far-right government of PM Benjamin Netanyahu. While some members of the government egged on the settlers – including the finance minister, who originally supported calls for burning down Hawara before walking it back – Netanyahu, for his part, gave a rare speech calling on Israelis not to take the law into their own hands and condemning "anarchy." Many analysts say this is a sign that the strong-minded leader fears he’s losing control of the security situation in the West Bank, a sensitive issue that will continue to deepen government fissures if it goes unchecked. Indeed, Bibi can’t afford cracks in his coalition after a new poll found that he would lose elections if they were held today.
Nigerian election count walk-out
Nigeria's two main opposition parties on Monday walked out of the site where results from Saturday's presidential election are being gradually announced after crying fraud over the slower-than-expected electronic transmission of results from polling stations. But according to Amaka Anku, Eurasia Group's top Africa analyst, there is a process for political parties to register complaints over election results related to the new system without having to abandon the premises. All political party agents, she explains, receive copies of the results sheets from each polling station and must sign off on the tallies at various stages of the counting process well before the national count begins. Those are the same sheets that are then uploaded onto a publicly available website. Nonetheless, the inability of the electoral commission to meet the high expectations it created — that those sheets would be immediately published — "casts a shadow over the whole process," says Anku. Final results are now expected on Tuesday, with ruling party candidate Bola Tinubu in the lead so far.
Teddy bears for quake survivor kids in Turkey
It's not all bad news out there. On Sunday, fans attending a Turkish league soccer game in Istanbul between local club Beşiktaş and Antalyaspor in Istanbul showered the field with teddy bears and other toys to be donated to child survivors of the recent earthquakes, the worst natural disaster in Turkey's history. The outpouring of support happened when the match was stopped for a moment of silence at 4 minutes and 17 seconds, marking the exact time — 4:17 am on Feb. 6 — when the first quake struck. But once the ceremony ended, it all got political, with thousands of members of the Çarşı, a hardcore Beşiktaş fan club, chanting to demand that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan step down over his handling of the catastrophe and lax building standards enforced prior to it. There's no love lost between him and the famously left-wing, working-class Çarşı, rabidly loyal Beşiktaş fans with an anti-authoritarian streak whom Erdoğan knows will definitely not vote for him in the May 14 election.
Can sports fans save America?
You already know that America is getting more polarized by the day. Democrats and Republicans hardly live together, work together, or hang out together the way they used to.
But a new book called Fans Have More Friends argues that highly-engaged sports fans are less politically polarized, have greater trust in institutions, and generally live happier lives.
To learn more, GZERO's Alex Kliment met up with one of the book's authors, Dave Sikorjak, a marketing consultant who studies the motivations of sports fans. Where'd Alex and Dave link up? Where else -- at a tailgate in Philadelphia ahead of a game between the Giants and the Eagles. It all went great until Alex got taped to the front of a bus, but you'll get to that...
Iran nuclear deal is dead
Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60.
Iran has announced it will enrich more uranium. Is the nuclear deal dead?
Yeah, it is pretty dead at this point. It is inconceivable to me that the Americans or allies would be prepared to cut a nuclear deal for an Iranian regime that is under this much domestic pressure and repressing its civilian population to this degree. Not to mention the fact that there's been attacks into Kurdish territories in Iraq over the last several days. There's been enormous amounts of state police repression with lots of instability. It's only growing, frankly. I can't imagine a nuclear deal getting cut here.
And that leads to the question of what the Israelis are going to do in response? What the Americans are going to do? What the Gulf States going to do in response? Because of course, none of these countries want the Iranians to go nuclear. There're nuclear breakout capabilities if they want to go that direction is a matter of weeks. So it's something we're going to watch carefully.
India now takes over as G-20 chair. What are the risks and opportunities for Modi?
Well, I mean, kind of like the Indonesians, it is an opportunity to showcase a country that's doing fairly well. And both Indonesia and India are. India in particular, investing an enormous amount of money in digital infrastructure after having not invested for decades in conventional infrastructure. I think showing off India's growth, India's demographics, India's technology, and India's willingness to play a greater leadership role on the global stage, all something Modi wants to do, and also from the perspective of a pretty strong and politically stable government with about 70% approval ratings across the country right now. There are very few leaders and governments in the position that Modi and India are in right now. That makes it a great time for them to be hosting the G-20.
Will MBS pump more oil after the Saudis shocked Argentina in the World Cup?
No. If anything, they're probably going to reduce because prices have been still on the downside over the course of the last several weeks, even though OPEC took a million barrels off their total production. And that is because of concerns of global recession, Chinese economy under producing, not as much demand. That's still where we are as we look into 2023. The bigger question is whether the Argentines or the Iranians have a tougher reception at home. The Iranians, of course, very, very brave, courageous in refusing to sing the national anthem given what's happening on the ground in Iran. The Argentines had no problem singing the national anthem. They just had a problem performing against the Saudis. And I mean, this is a country that really... they don't do many things well on the global stage, but football is right up there, and they just got crushed by the Saudis two to one. Oof. Not fun if you're in Buenos Aires right now.
What We’re Watching: Brazilian women footballers get equal pay, WHO probes itself, US cuts Ethiopia aid
Equal pay for Brazilian women footballers: In a major step towards greater gender equality in sport, Brazil's football association announced that women playing for the national football team will get paid the same as the members of the men's squad. Brazil — where football is a national religion and whose male team has won the World Cup five times, more than any other nation — follows women's national football team players winning the right to equal pay with their male counterparts in Australia, Norway, New Zealand and the UK. Last May, a federal judge in the US dismissed a lawsuit brought by the women's national soccer team demanding equal pay for their squad, but its members — led by star player and Donald Trump nemesis Megan Rapinoe — have vowed to go all the way to the Supreme Court. The fight continues despite the fact that the US women's team is way more successful than the men's squad, and won the 2019 World Cup.
Probing WHO's COVID response: After months of finger-pointing, an independent panel has finally been put into motion to investigate the World Health Organization's response to the coronavirus pandemic. The panel will be led by former Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark. The two women tapped the other members of the 11-person panel, which includes Britain's former foreign secretary David Miliband and Zhong Nanshan, a Chinese doctor who was the first to publicly confirm human-to-human transmission of COVID-19. The panel, financed by the WHO, will reportedly have access to all of its internal communications, and will seek to unpack how the WHO went about coordinating a global response to COVID-19. Many heads of state — chief among them US President Donald Trump — have strongly criticized the WHO for its crisis response, particularly being too deferential to China when the virus first emerged late last year (the WHO chief praised Beijing in public even when proof of a Chinese government cover-up was fast emerging). The panel will present its findings to the WHO's executive board in October 2021.
Trump cuts off Ethiopia over dam: The US has suspended millions of dollars in financial aid to Ethiopia after Addis Ababa decided to start filling the controversial Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Upper Nile river without first reaching an agreement with Egypt and Sudan. The US State Department said the decision was based on "guidance" from President Donald Trump, who may have been inclined to place punitive measures on Addis Ababa because of his close ties to Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Egypt's strongman leader. Talks between the three countries over the dam have stalled because of enduring disagreements: Ethiopia says it needs the dam to generate electricity, but Egypt and Sudan claim it is illegal under colonial-era water sharing agreements and warn it will dry up the Nile for Egyptian and Sudanese farmers. Earlier US mediation efforts failed after Addis Ababa blasted the Trump administration for siding with its ally in Cairo.
Child's play: the kindergartens that drive China's football dream
SHANGHAI (AFP) - Their heads soaked in sweat, a class of little boys practises Lionel Messi-esque stepovers at a kindergarten tucked between residential tower blocks in Shanghai.