We take playing international football in England for granted but as Steve Menary explains it can be a long fight to be gifted that right
When West Ham signed Valon Behrami from Lazio this summer, he became the club’s first ever Swiss international. His status may change on December 19, when FIFA meet for a second time to consider a membership application from Kosovo, where Behrami was born in 1985.
A Refugee Team, An American Town
by Warren St John
Fourth Estate, £14.99
Reviewed by David Wangerin
From WSC 270 August 2009
In Atlanta to promote his first book, Warren St John came across someone who worked in a nearby refugee settlement and suggested the author “check out the soccer team” there. He did – and discovered that the town of Clarkston, a few miles north-east of the city, had developed into a sort of international refugee centre, teeming with dislocated families from Iraq, Kosovo, Liberia and other trouble spots.
The Lands that FIFA Forgot
by Steve Menary
Know the Score, £16.99
Reviewed by Jonathan Wilson
From WSC 253 March 2008
Every country, Henry Kissinger once said, needs an army, a bank and a football team. Many of the countries discussed in Outcasts don’t have an army or a bank. Many aren’t even countries, at least not in the traditional sense. And yet all are desperate for a football team that would somehow give them legitimacy. When Tibet played Greenland in a friendly in Copenhagen, who did not see it as a strike against the Chinese authorities who would deny them statehood? And yet there is a sense in which Greenland are rather more wronged than Tibet, at least in terms of FIFA’s refusal to acknowledge them as a member.
There is a world outside of FIFA. Steve Menary reports on plans for a world cup of "non-countries"
The breakaway republic of Northern Cyprus is set to host the first ever world cup for nations that don’t exist. Recognised only by Turkey, which invaded the Mediterranean island in 1974, Northern Cyprus will host the 16-team Viva World Cup in November 2006.
Organised football in deprived parts of London and other cities is giving refugees and recent immigrants a chance to build a sense of community, explains Steve Wilson
Skipping past a second challenge just inside the opposition’s half, Gazza looks up and sees the keeper marginally off his line. He lets fly from all of 35 yards and peels off in wild celebration. After shipping three cheap goals, this effort, added to his free-kick from a similar range, has pulled his team back into the game and the final ten minutes now promise to be tense.