Ecuador

Source, all photos: AP and Reuters, via FIFA World Cup Yahoo!

You see a lot of World Cup soccer photos here on this site, some of you must wonder if the football tournament is part of a democratic revolution.

But of course it is! It’s the only true world sports event that everyone watches. Wars stop and politics stops and peace reigns for at least one month in June. Everyone is in on this. And small countries, as well as big countries, rich as well as poor, depending on how hard they work and how much they shine, can win just as surely as big ones.

Everyone is delighted at little Trinidad and Tobago’s good show in this football match. And little Croatia and little Ghana – they are all soccer giants!

And World Cup futbol demands players putting out their all, there is no room for any coasting in this one, it’s probably the most physically and mentally demanding sport on earth. And its players and fans are all the best looking! In certain ways, of course it is revolutionary!

Alvaro Vargas-Llosa at El Independent has a slam-dunk essay out about why the World Cup is truly revolutionary, and it’s passionately good, totally original, and just a pleasure to read.

He writes:

MADRID ???????? The World Cup is the best sports event on the planet: it disrespects traditional hierarchies and is a potent dissolvent of national barriers.

Even in its early stages, the current World Cup confirms that countries with tiny economies and scant geopolitical influence can match the big powers. Trinidad & Tobago, a country of just over 1 million people and a GDP of only $13 billion, managed an upset draw against Sweden, which is nearly 30 times richer and has a long soccer history. Ecuador, which has taken part in a World Cup once before, beat Poland, a team with a mighty history that was a top scorer during the qualifiers in Europe. Not to mention Ivory Coast, now a World Cup star.

The World Cup is all about ???????social??????? mobility: success comes from initiative and creativity, not from political planning or economic power. The United States or China can dominate international events in which a concentration of resources on the development of physical capabilities enhances competitiveness (such as the Olympics). But in soccer, the world’s best team????????Brazil????????owes little to athletic power and much to individual flair and spontaneous collective coordination (facilitated by certain cultural traits).

And it gets even better after this. Read the whole thing here.

Meanwhile, Andres Oppenheimer has a fine essay in the Miami Herald on the globalization of the subject, and how that very globalization is bringing out the bright talent in the smaller countries like Trinidad and Tobago and Ghana, which is good reading here or here.

UPDATE: Boli-Nica has some additional valuable and informed thoughts, here.

Brasil

Germany
Trinidad

USA

Korea

Mexico

Ghana

Sweden

Iran