The Kick Project

Pic: Ottawacitizen.com Recently, a game between North Korea and Finland became a political - yep - football. During the FIFA Women's Under-20 World Cup in Canada, fans of Korean unification turned out to support the DPRK, aka North Korea, and to show their unbiased approach to the coming together of the two Koreas,  separated after the Korean War 60 years ago. This was intended to make a non-violent statement, using the peaceful focal point of football as the vehicle. All well and good you might say. Not for FIFA. As you can read here in this eyewitness account, a FIFA official moved in and shut the support down.  The official cited FIFA regulations which require there to be no political statements in a FIFA sanctioned game. This looks to be a can of worms, allowing hypocritical applications of the rule to suit common or accepted prejudices. For instance, women are not permitted to attend many games in the Middle East (I recall a Socceroos World Cup qualifier ...

A Wall Street Journal article focusses on South Korea's unsuccessful pitch for peace as part of its World Cup bid. Being pipped by similar arguments for Qatar and Middle East peace is no cause for shame as Qatar had more money to throw at FIFA than anyone (Is it just me but doesnt moving stadiums to "third world" countries as Qatar is proposing seems a little redundant in the face of starving hordes? And isnt all that air-conditioning an environmental nightmare and how are poor countries going to afford it when the stadiums are plonked in their backyard?) Meanwhile, the Koreas face off on other sporting fronts . Such a shame, as this article I wrote for Australia's National Times just prior to South Africa (it also popped up in the Jakarta Post and a few other pages), that the Koreas didnt meet in South Africa. Given they could only meet in the late knock-out rounds the chances were always slim, but I for one would have backed a bit of draw-rigging to get them t...