Skip to footer

The World Cup runneth over

In material terms, such as trade, globalization may be faltering. But soccer’s soaring popularity hints at a better view of globalization, one that bends upward.

|
Reuters
Children and local soccer players in Santiago, Chile, prepare to play a friendly match Nov. 18 ahead of World Children's Day and the World Cup.
  • By the Monitor's Editorial Board

Starting Sunday, much of humanity will be watching the World Cup, cheering for victories, eying the players, and comparing statistics over the next month of televised soccer matches in Qatar. One statistic already stands out: The number of teams in the next World Cup, to be held four years hence in North America, will jump from 32 to 48.

For decades, soccer has helped shrink the world, bringing people and nations closer. Since the first World Cup in 1930, when only 13 teams participated, the number of teams has grown – to 24 in 1982, then 32 in 1998 – as “the beautiful game” has achieved global popularity, surpassing the Olympics on many measures.

What this trend indicates is that globalization, or the integration of humanity at many levels, is hardly ebbing, as many experts now claim. Yes, the material aspects of globalization, such as trade in goods, may not be rising as fast because of various crises, such as the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. Yet the flow of ideas, culture, and people continues apace.

A world survey last year by the Globalism Project at Cambridge University found surprising pushback against notions of trade protectionism or populist cries for putting one’s nation first. “There is no deep divide between the mindsets of ‘open versus closed’ societies,” the survey’s authors wrote in The Guardian. Most people “tend to favor varying degrees of continued integration with the wider world.”

Soccer, or football as it is more commonly known, illustrates the point. The sport has helped make the world a better place, wrote the world’s first black global sporting star, Pelé, in a 2014 autobiography. It brings communities together and gives disadvantaged children – like him – a sense of purpose, he stated.

At a deeper level, “the game can allow hope, inspiration and magic to triumph momentarily over material realities,” wrote one of soccer’s historians, David Goldblatt, in The Independent. It is why, he adds, more than half of the entire planet will be watching the World Cup in the coming weeks.

Such shared moments reshape the best meaning of globalization. “Looking back, we probably put too much emphasis on the power of material forces like economics and technology to drive human events and bring us all together,” wrote columnist David Brooks in The New York Times.

No wonder the game is called beautiful.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to The World Cup runneth over
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/the-monitors-view/2022/1118/The-World-Cup-runneth-over
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe