Shawn Levy, the Oregonian’s film critic, film blogger, and author of several books, is also a huge fan of soccer. Unfortunately Chelsea is one of the teams he supports. Nevertheless, his new blog is worth checking out.
It’s called The World is Round. Here’s Shawn explaining what it’s about:
While at home, I follow the Portland Timbers Football Club of the United Soccer Leagues First Division and the men’s and women’s teams of the University of Portland (Go Pilots!).
But I first fell in love with the global game of soccer, and my real interest is in the European and South American games and in the way that football is a universal language (like cinema, cuisine, fashion or music) that expresses local sensibilities, aesthetics and historical/economic/social/cultural conditions. (This blog takes its name, kind of, from David Goldblatt’s remakable global history, “The Ball Is Round,” one of the few sports books that can wear the name ‘encyclopedia’ with honor and the definitive global history of the game.)
This blog is designed to reflect that interest: I won’t be writing a word about the Timbers, the Pilots, the USL or MLS. Rather, I’ll chronicle and rant about goings on in England, Italy, Argentina, Japan and Africa. I’ll bear my prejudices (I LOVE Chelsea, Napoli, L’Olympique Marseille, Boca Juniors — the blue teams with criminal ties, in effect), but I won’t insist on them. And I’ll be especially keen on talking about the way the global game reaches us here in America: books, movies, web sites, cable/satellite/streaming matches, and so on.
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