Africa’s World Cup: Critical Reflections on Play, Patriotism, Spectatorship, and Space focuses on a remarkable month in the modern history of Africa and in the global history of football. Peter Alegi and Chris Bolsmann are well-known experts on South African football, and they have assembled an impressive team of local and international journalists, academics, and football experts to reflect on the 2010 World Cup and its broader significance, its meanings, complexities, and contradictions. The World Cup’s sounds, sights, and aesthetics are explored, along with questions of patriotism, nationalism, and spectatorship in Africa and around the world. Experts on urban design and communities write on how the presence of the World Cup worked to refashion urban spaces and negotiate the local struggles in the hosting cities. The volume is richly illustrated by authors’ photographs, and the essays in this volume feature chronicles of match day experiences; travelogues; ethnographies of fan cultures; analyses of print, broadcast, and electronic media coverage of the tournament; reflections on the World Cup’s private and public spaces; football exhibits in South African museums; and critiques of the World Cup’s processes of inclusion and exclusion, as well as its political and economic legacies. The volume concludes with a forum on the World Cup, including Thabo Dladla, Director of Soccer at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Mohlomi Kekeletso Maubane, a well-known Soweto-based writer and a soccer researcher, and Rodney Reiners, former professional footballer and current chief soccer writer for the Cape Argus newspaper in Cape Town. This collection will appeal to students, scholars, journalists, and fans. Cover illustration: South African fan blowing his vuvuzela at South Africa vs. France, Free State Stadium, Bloemfontein, June 22, 2010. Photo by Chris Bolsmann.

This groundbreaking book provides a critically informed analysis of the impact and legacy of mega-sporting events through the lens of South Africa's 2010 FIFA Soccer World Cup and its associated developmental paradigm. It challenges mainstream thinking and mega-event praise singers by providing concrete evidence to show that this sporting spectacular was little more than a front for massive accumulation and extraction of wealth, alongside increased sporting and socio-economic inequality. Contributors to this volume examine the sports accumulation-complex, economic promises, construction companies, trade unions, strikes, international solidarity, the struggle to trade, sex work, climate change, as well as case studies on the building of individual soccer stadiums. Eddie Cottle is the regional policy and campaign officer of the Building and Wood Workers' international (BWI) for Africa and the Middle East. This is a timely reminder that the 2010 World Cup nation-building illusion in fact disguised a reality of greed, elite enrichment and nepotism - and left us with a terrible financial hangover.' Terry Bell, columnist at Independent Newspapers, Business Report, and independent economic/labour analyst Book jacket.

Written in an informative yet accessible style to appeal to young readers, this fun-packed guide is bursting with features on the tournament's teams, star players, stadiums and cities, and contains all that young fans need to know about the World Cup. Bursting with 100 amazing action-packed photos, this fantastic book includes a preview of the 2010 FIFA World Cup as well as profiles of all of the tournament's star players. Fill-in the progress chart and solve the many fun puzzles and quizzes all based around the World Cup.

This text presents a comprehensive preview of football's greatest tournament. It is packed with photographs and expert analysis of each team, its star players and its prospects in the finals. It also features a guide to each of the stadiums and host cities.

Nothing beats the sporting spectacle of the FIFA World Cup and this official junior guide contains everything young readers need to become true 2010 FIFA World Cup experts. They can study the easy-to-follow World Cup team analysis and star player profiles, and absorb the brilliant big match photographs in what is the only official FIFA endorsed 2010 World Cup junior companion. Illustrated with 100 amazing images and appealing to all ages, this fantastic book includes analysis of each of the qualified teams as well as profiles of all of the tournament's star players including Kaka, Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney, Lionel Messi and Fernando Torres. Meet Zakumi the leopard, the official FIFA World Cup 2010 mascot, read the special features on the tournament's stadiums and fans, fill-in the progress chart and solve the many fun puzzles and quizzes all based around the World Cup. The official 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa Fact File is guaranteed to keep any junior fan entertained throughout the entire World Cup tournament.

Firmly situating South African teams, players, and associations in the international framework in which they have to compete, South Africa and the Global Game: Football, Apartheid, and Beyond presents an interdisciplinary analysis of how and why South Africa underwent a remarkable transformation from a pariah in world sport to the first African host of a World Cup in 2010. Written by an eminent team of scholars, this special issue and book aims to examine the importance of football in South African society, revealing how the black oppression transformed a colonial game into a force for political, cultural and social liberation. It explores how the hosting of the 2010 World Cup aims to enhance the prestige of the post-apartheid nation, to generate economic growth and stimulate Pan-African pride. Among the themes dealt with are race and racism, class and gender dynamics, social identities, mass media and culture, and globalization. This collection of original and insightful essays will appeal to specialists in African Studies, Cultural Studies, and Sport Studies, as well as to non-specialist readers seeking to inform themselves ahead of the 2010 World Cup. This book was published as a special issue of Soccer and Society.