70 year old Pak Doo-Ik will lead North Korea's prestigious Olympic torch bearers to Beijing this summer. In the 1966 World Cup at Middlesborough, Pak scored the goal that lead his team to a stunning 1-0 upset win over Italy (video). Pak Doo-Ik and the team returned home as heroes, but ultimately fell under the suspicion of North Korean leadership. The team underwent "mental re-education" and were exiled, Pak Doo-Ik spending ten years as a forest laborer. Dear Leader Kim Jong-il later allowed Pak to coach North Korea's national soccer team, and a fascinating 2002 BBC documentary brought Pak Doo Ik back to the international stage.
posted on Mar 27, 2008 - View this thread

Ready or Not. "South Africa is a great place to have a party, and people are incredibly generous of spirit. What we should be doing is trying to make the World Cup experience uniquely African: where the bus comes 10 minutes late but nobody gives a toss because they are having such a good time. Instead, the organisers seem to want to try to run the World Cup as efficiently as the Germans did. What a load of bull. The Germans could invade Poland in three days. We could not invade Swaziland in three months." Article in today's Observer about preparations in South Africa for the soccer World Cup in 2010.
posted on Jun 3, 2007 - View this thread

The Homeless World Cup: "Yes, there is a World Cup for homeless people, made possible with help from corporate sponsors such as Nike, Adidas, Coca-Cola and Bank of America."
posted on Aug 9, 2006 - View this thread

Jugadas Espectaculares WorldCupfilter: clipshow of some staggeringly fancy footwork. Even non-fans should love this. (youtube)
posted on Jun 8, 2006 - View this thread

Please, do mention the war. Really, it's hard not to. After all, in a sense football is war, as the General famously joked. Sometimes it's peace. Same goes for that other football, by the way.
posted on Jun 3, 2006 - View this thread

Screw Nike adverts. It's what they can do on the pitch that counts. Poetry without the bells and whistles. Some of the young names to look out for in this Summer's football World Cup in Germany: Manuel Fernandes (Portugal), Lionel Messi (Argentina), Sergio Ramos (Spain), Cristiano Ronaldo (Portugal), Wayne Rooney (England).
posted on Apr 16, 2006 - View this thread

And you thought football itself was the universal language. The London chapter of the Goethe Institute jumps on the opportunity and offers a £35 crash course in German for the World Cup. Start out with these handy play scenario charts (pdf). Or, take the easy route and turn to AskMen for guidance.
posted on Apr 12, 2006 - View this thread

Changes in Football (Soccer). Including a ball with microchip technology that will allow the ref to instantly know if the ball crosses the goal line. Avoiding all manner of problems, from the clear goal in the January Spurs vs. Man United game, to the situations of too bloody close to tell, such as Geoff Hurst's goal in the 1966 World Cup final. The under-17 world cup will test the ball in Sept.
Oh, and offside laws, carding dangerous tackles and substitutions in friendlies have been tweaked.
posted on Feb 26, 2005 - View this thread

2006 World Cup Tickets went on sale last night at midnight, and since then over 500,000 tickets have been ordered. Orders have come in from over 108 countries from people looking for their chance to see the premier competition of the most popular sport on the planet. Everyone will get a fair shot at the tickets with any orders between now and the end of March being put into a lottery to see who gets tickets.
posted on Feb 1, 2005 - View this thread

Sir Clive Woodward to switch from rugby to football? Sir Clive Woodward is the head coach of the England rugby union team. Appointed in 1997, he has had stunning success, including winning the 2003 Rugby World Cup. On Tuesday, the Daily Mail carried an incredible story: Woodward was planning to turn his back on rugby in favour of association football (soccer). Premiership club Southampton appear to be his next port of call with his ultimate aim, the England football team. Is it possible for a head coach to switch sports like this? Many experts think not. Is there any previous example of a coach switching sports like this?
posted on Sep 1, 2004 - View this thread

Brazil vs. Germany. The 2002 FIFA World Cup has come to an end. History was made today.
posted on Jun 30, 2002 - View this thread

Is Univision's coverage of the World Cup, like, way better than ESPN's or what?
posted on Jun 25, 2002 - View this thread

Ready To Rumba? Or Samba? Will England or Brazil go through in tomorrow's crucial World Cup game? Predict at your peril. I'd love Brazil to win but, no doubt influenced by the treacherous utterances of Pele and Jairzinho[see penultimate link], say England will tragically but deservedly win 2-1.
posted on Jun 20, 2002 - View this thread

World Cup Conspiracy. Here's one for the X-Files. The Azurri believe they were the victims of a conspiracy to oust them from World Cup 2002.

Alessandro Del Piero broke his usual cool exterior as anger seeped through. "In ten years of my career I have never complained," said the Juventus star, "but in four games too many strange things have happened."
posted on Jun 18, 2002 - View this thread

Korea 2-1 Italy. A classic World Cup in the making? First it was Senegal dumping out the French, and then the Argies and the Portuguese were left biting the dust. Spain and Ireland fought out a nail-biting penalty shoot-out, Saudi Arabia got hit for eight, and now South Korea continue their miraculous journey by sending Italy home. Next on the cards: let's hope for another classic when England take on Brazil!
posted on Jun 18, 2002 - View this thread

U.S. Soccer needs you now. The US soccer team has not been this far in the World Cup since 1930. Where is the sea of red, white and blue? Watching mundane sports...like baseball. (match results in link. from sts)
posted on Jun 17, 2002 - View this thread

One of the teams in the Mexico vs. USA World Cup game made history. As of before the game, the USA has never won a knockout game of the World Cup - Mexico had never won a knockout game of the World Cup when not in Mexico. Click the article to see which team made history - or if you don't want it spoiled, don't click at all!
posted on Jun 17, 2002 - View this thread

Yet another African dream. After Cameroon's heroics of Italia '90, Senegal follow up with a quarter-final achievement themselves.
posted on Jun 16, 2002 - View this thread

Bon voyage, mes amis... France now holds the dubious honor of being the first World Cup champs to drop out in the first round of the subsequent Cup tournament (i.e. Champs in '98/Goats in '02) since Brazil '66. Somebody, strike up Sergio Mendez for me...
posted on Jun 11, 2002 - View this thread

The ugly side of football: man dies in Moscow riots. The World Cup has been great so far, but it was only a matter of time before things got out of control.
posted on Jun 9, 2002 - View this thread

How two perfect moments in time brought such tremendous joy and pride to a nation. To me, this truly is the world's most beautiful game, if just for moments like these. I wish everyone could feel this kind of passion for something, whether it be football or not. Sadly, we may never experience this kind of a reaction to anything here in the US.
posted on Jun 4, 2002 - View this thread

Check out this soccer/baseball stadium. You can fold the baseball field and roll in the soccer one. Animation here. Amazing.
posted on Jun 1, 2002 - View this thread

so which site has the best soccer live coverage? is it yahoo!'s fifaworldcup.com? is it the bbc? is it someone else? right now from here (germany) it looks like none of the big sites is holding up to the traffic. is any site as well prepared as msnbc was for the olympics? oh, and it looks like senegal is winning the opening match.
posted on May 31, 2002 - View this thread

World-wide obsession I am told these sports betting sites are readying themselves for an onslaught of World Cup Soccer traffic never seen in history. Will you play? Does it make the sport uplifting or uncouth?
posted on May 29, 2002 - View this thread

All worldwide conflicts to take a break until after June 30 [NYT reg req] "If the U.S. forward Clint Mathis scores a beautiful goal, Iranians, Iraqis and Libyans will rave about it. Soccer has many uses, and one of them, fleeting as it may be, is universal love." But perhaps more interestingly : " For foreigners, meanwhile, the World Cup is the one time that they get to treat the U.S. like a lightweight. " Indeed.
posted on May 25, 2002 - View this thread

Captain of Irish World Cup squad Keane sent home
This is big news here in Ireland. He's our best player - he keeps the team together on the pitch. But after some incidents in the past couple of days, and some prima donna style behaviour (something he's always been known for), he's been told to feck off. I think the manager did the right thing, but I can't help thinking that our chances of getting out of our group have been diminished...
posted on May 23, 2002 - View this thread

The world cup (of football) is very nearly upon us. You can win tickets to it by playing a free kick game. I am not sure if it applies to those outside the U.K but it doesn't matter because you would have no chance of winning at all. It is devilishly difficult but quite addictive and tremendous fun. You can also find a prediction league type thing and other bits and pieces here. If anyone has the motivation it is possible to set up a private league within the wider thing.
posted on May 21, 2002 - View this thread

England squad Goalkeepers: David Seaman, David James, Nigel Martyn, Defenders: Rio Ferdinand, Sol Campbell, Gareth Southgate, Wes Brown, Danny Mills, Ashley Cole, Wayne Bridge, Martin Keown, Midfielders: David Beckham, Steven Gerrard, Paul Scholes, Kieron Dyer, Nicky Butt, Owen Hargreaves, Joe Cole, Strikers: Michael Owen, Emile Heskey, Teddy Sheringham, Robbie Fowler, Darius Vassell Well?
posted on May 9, 2002 - View this thread

I have a bad feeling about this. The UK government has urged employers to be leniant to staff who want to watch the World Cup when they should be working. Isn't this instantly discriminating against people who happen to like football (Soccer) all that much? For example, I'm sure I know what would happen if I broached the idea of turning up for work late on May 16th after I've been to the first showing of this thing.
posted on Apr 29, 2002 - View this thread

It's the Shperiks! Those wacky mascots for the upcoming FIFA World Cup Korea-Japan! I can't tell what the heck is going on here, and if it weren't for the upbeat BGM, I'd probably be scared to visit this site again. But it was an interesting little adventure...
posted on Mar 26, 2002 - View this thread

Preparing Asia for the World Cup.
posted on Mar 15, 2002 - View this thread

Welcome to the 2002 FIFA Worldcup, er, make that WorldCup, um... "The efforts being made by organizations of all kinds to ensure that a positive image of [Korea] is projected this summer deserve the highest praise. It is a crying shame, however, that so many of these efforts will be undermined by the comedic quality of much of the English being used." Not intended as a poke at Korea, but an interesting example of how hard it is for people (or a people) to change their mindset (more inside).
posted on Feb 24, 2002 - View this thread

As Seoul Prepares for Soccer World Cup, a Debate Is Unleashed Over Dog Meat. Cultures collide as FIFA warns and Brigitte Bardot threatens to organize boycotts of Korea over their Canine Cuisine. Koreans are offended. (more)...
posted on Dec 11, 2001 - View this thread

World Cup Fever! The draw for the group stages of the FIFA World Cup Korea/Japan was made on 1st December. England got an awful draw: Argentina, Sweden and Nigeria. The USA look like they did much better: Portugal, Poland and one of the hosts, South Korea. As an Englishman, I'm pretty down about it at the moment.
posted on Dec 3, 2001 - View this thread

The World Cup draw is Saturday, though I am a bit confused about the process. Why on earth is England ranked behind Germany?
posted on Nov 28, 2001 - View this thread