All posts tagged: football culture

Forwards encouraged to have ‘ego’, like anime hero

Forwards encouraged to have ‘ego’, like anime hero

Even as the Cristiano Ronaldo opinion-tsunami rages over this World Cup, Japanese football is excited about the dawn of what they call the ‘Egoists’. A 4-0 win over Tunisia, was evidence of what had shifted. Creator of the hit anime series Blue Lock, Muneyuki Kaneshiro, said last month, “We are waiting for serious egoists who aim to win the World Cup.” His illustrating artist Yusuke Nomura went a step further, saying, “We look forward to applications from all ego-driven people who believe, “I am the world’s best striker!” For surely anybody that watches football understands that a striker needs to be obsessed with scoring goals. What else is there – new Japan’s neo-egoists from the world of anime and manga, ask. ALSO READ | Curacao’s Eloy Room, goalkeeper without a club, just broke a World Cup record Playing Tunisia late on Saturday, Japan made history as the first Asian country to score 4 goals. And these came from confident, unapologetic strides in the box. While Daichi Kamada needed simply to divert Keito Nakamura’s delivery goal-wards …

Where futbol meets soccer at the end of the world

Where futbol meets soccer at the end of the world

6 min readMexicoJun 11, 2026 07:36 AM IST A remixed version of the centuries-old folk song Cielito Lindo whistles out from car stereos and restaurant radios. “Ay, ay, ay, ay…Canta y no llores…” Sing and don’t cry, the lines roll on, in soulful voices, from Trini Lopez to Luciano Pavarotti. The national football team’s feverish fans have long embraced it as their patron song, rendered passionately in the stands, whether lose, draw or win. It is a song of both joy and lament — best accompanied, the locals insist, by pulque, not its more commercialised variant tequila — and it is how Mexicans perceive the World Cup. The fans are sad that ticket prices are unbearably expensive; proud that the mundial is kicking off in Mexico City. They grouse that they are hosting only nine games of 104, with the US apportioning 78; yet take comfort that El Tri could play all their group games on home soil. There is unalloyed optimism that they will go beyond the cursed quinto partido — the fifth game, …