{"id":1727,"date":"2010-06-25T13:01:54","date_gmt":"2010-06-25T17:01:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=1727"},"modified":"2010-06-25T13:01:54","modified_gmt":"2010-06-25T17:01:54","slug":"empire-of-sport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2010\/06\/25\/empire-of-sport\/","title":{"rendered":"Empire of Sport"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The group stage of the 2010 World Cup ends today\u2014the group stage of the first African World Cup, as we\u2019re reminded again and again by the soccer salesmanship masquerading as studio commentary before, during, and after each game. And of the six teams drawn from what is being called the \u201chome continent,\u201d only Ghana has managed to advance. (They\u2019ll play the U.S. on Saturday afternoon.) The <em>bafana bafana<\/em> of South Africa are the first host nation to get knocked out so early, despite delivering the tournament\u2019s spectacular opening goal. That goal, we were told, ignited the hearts of fans from Gibraltar to the Cape of Good Hope. And the failure of Algeria, Cameroon, the Ivory Coast, Nigeria, and South Africa to advance has been called an \u201cAfrican tragedy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>No one is talking about a \u201cEuropean tragedy,\u201d though six European sides are already heading home. (Tournament favorite Spain are in danger, too: they have to beat enterprising Chile this afternoon to advance.) And no commentators would think to describe the early exits of France and Italy as disappointments for, say, Merkel or Zapatero\u2014or to imagine the pubs of London in a state of mourning following a surprise loss by Germany. No one would believe it if they did, continents being things that are usually divided into, you know, <em>nations<\/em>\u2014nations often made hostile by proximity and divided by borders typically set by, you know, <em>wars<\/em>. And soccer being the way Europeans litigate hostilities in the age of the Euro.<\/p>\n<p>And yet the air is thick with something in Soccer City, the Johannesburg complex where (imported?) production teams have been preparing for us all those montages of cheetahs, primitivist graphics, and Jungle Book voice-overs we\u2019ve been eating up all tournament. We don\u2019t have a neat African equivalent for the term Orientalism, but how about <em>vuvuzelism<\/em>? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The group stage of the 2010 World Cup ends today\u2014the group stage of the first African World Cup, as we\u2019re reminded again and again by the soccer salesmanship masquerading as studio commentary before, during, and after each game. And of the six teams drawn from what is being called the \u201chome continent,\u201d only Ghana has [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[84],"tags":[304,212,303,86,87,174,302,89],"class_list":["post-1727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world-cup-2010","tag-bafana-bafana","tag-football","tag-ghana","tag-soccer","tag-south-africa","tag-vuvuzela","tag-vuvuzelism","tag-world-cup"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Empire of Sport by David Wallace-Wells<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"June 25, 2010 \u2013 The group stage of the 2010 World Cup ends today\u2014the group stage of the first African World Cup, as we\u2019re reminded again and again by the soccer\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2010\/06\/25\/empire-of-sport\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Empire of Sport by David Wallace-Wells\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"June 25, 2010 \u2013 The group stage of the 2010 World Cup ends today\u2014the group stage of the first African World Cup, as we\u2019re reminded again and again by the soccer\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2010\/06\/25\/empire-of-sport\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta 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