Foreign Affairs

Thirty-one years after the birth of its democracy, South Africa remains plagued by the ghosts of colonization and Apartheid and continues to reproduce the same violence it sought to overcome. 

Somewhere in the fifty-second minute, as the ball is passed calmly around Brazil’s back four, fireworks erupt down the street. In confusion, I look to my partner, who seems to have understood something that I have not—courtesy of Bahia’s inconsistent internet services, our broadcast is delayed. He’s on his feet, ecstatic: “It’s a goal for Brazil!”

The Dove Fresh Clubhouse offers a series of photo ops after which you can take a misty refreshing shower and treat yourself to a stick of deodorant; Home Depot presents “David Beckham’s Backyard” which does not look like what you might imagine David Beckham’s backyard would look like, or any backyard really, but you can get your face painted in Home Depot–swatched colors (one imagines a child sweatily choosing between eggshell and ecru).

On the field, every World Cup is a contest of idioms: between the Spanish-influenced juego de posición and post-German Gegenpressing, between philosophies that rely on holding the ball and those that assert themselves by working without it, between the set piece-heavy structuralism now fashionable in the English Premier League and the crashing unpredictability of the South American game. At an official level, however, the World Cup’s cacophony of on-field styles cedes to a party-pooper monolingualism.