Hello, and happy December! If you read our previous correspondence, then you’ll know that last week’s scoreless draw in the USA-England World Cup match was an ideal outcome for me. Neither of my teams won—which means neither of them lost—and both are now headed for the Round of 16 knockout stage that kicks off this weekend.
These past couple of weeks have been pretty World Cup-heavy for me, as evidenced below. I promise the non-sports fans reading this that we will return to our regularly-scheduled programming soon.
What I’ve written
The 2022 World Cup has been something of a public-relations nightmare for its host, Qatar. Criticisms continue to abound over the country’s exploitation of migrant workers, its poor record on LGBTQ+ rights (and those expressing solidarity with LGBTQ+ people), and the purportedly corrupt manner in which it won its hosting bid in the first place. To make matters worse, the Qatari national team failed to win a single match in the Group stage, ensuring its early exit from the tournament.
Yet for much of the Arab world, this World Cup—the first to be held in the region—has been something of a triumph. I explain why here
I also wrote about the history of the USA-England rivalry and the stunning 1950 World Cup upset where it all began:
The first time the U.S. men’s national team faced England in a World Cup, in 1950, a miracle occurred. The hastily-assembled U.S. squad—which was partly made up of amateur players who held day jobs including as teachers, dishwashers, and mail carriers—knew that England had the stronger side. “We certainly didn’t entertain any ideas we were gonna beat ’em,” the former U.S. defender Harry Keough reflected decades later. “But we figured we could give them a battle for it.”
That battle came to a head at the 37th minute of the first half, when the Haitian-born U.S. forward Joe Gaetjens managed to graze the ball just enough to sink it into the English goal. England never recovered, and the match ended in a 1-0 U.S. victory. So unthinkable was the result that many news outlets, including the New York Times, presumed that the reported score was a typo. Keep reading here
What I’ve read
This story on the very, very important people at the World Cup (The New York Times)
Every sports venue has its tiered system of luxury — the owner’s box, the business lounges, the special-access elevators, the ridiculously expensive seats, the even more ridiculously expensive seats. But at this year’s World Cup, the convergence of two entities awash in luxury and entitlement — Qatar, where all power and privilege flow from the emir, and FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, with its vast wealth and patronage network — provides a bracing reminder that there is always a more rarefied degree of exclusive.
This essay on what it means to be a Black athlete representing the United States (The Atlantic)
There are 11 Black players on the U.S. roster for this World Cup (a number that would have seemed unfathomable to me as a Black kid growing up playing the game), and their backgrounds reflect the plurality (and growing internationalism) of Black American life. Still, the question the Iranian journalist asked of Adams could have been asked of many of his teammates. It is one that is not unfamiliar to Black Americans of all stripes, who have wrestled with what it means to represent a country that for so long has—explicitly and more subtly—treated Black Americans as second-class citizens.
This piece on what the FBI investigation into Shireen Abu Akleh’s killing won’t resolve (Jewish Currents)
But the opening of the FBI investigation won’t resolve a question that human rights advocates consider central to the case: Whether Abu Akleh’s killers used US-made weapons in violation of US law, a determination that can only be made by the State Department. Israel receives an annual installment of $3.8 billion in US military aid, most of which it spends on US-made weapons; Israeli units like the ground troops that raided Jenin on May 11th regularly carry such arms. But US law prohibits the sale of US-made weapons to foreign militaries that commit human rights violations. As such, critics of Israel’s occupation have long argued that the flow of arms to Israeli military units that perpetrate such abuses is illegal.
What I’m thinking about
The beautiful game 🥺
Until next time,
Yasmeen