Football's energy finaly harnassed

What a great example of what happens when simple ideas are applied to sports! Check out this story

http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/26/using-soccer-to-supplant-kerosene-use/#more-38859

A group of Harvard students come up with a way to gather energy from the kicking and playing around with a football and use it to light rooms, charge cell phones at night. Free energy combined with one of the greatest, most played and most accessible sports in the word plus a positive impact on the environment because it could (theoretically) reduce kerosene lamp use, and you have an extraordinary product. Their distribution method is interesting too although I am not so sure how much of their US/high income bracket sales will be made because of this ball's attractiveness as a new tech gizmo compared to the attractiveness of "must help out developing countries, particularly through football as the World Cup approaches", but in the end, whatever gets the job done.

How great would it be if they could get the ball to be used in the kickoff of the first world cup game! Hmmm...

Journeys to South Africa, 2010

I was recently visited by a group of Portuguese journalists last week working for one of the biggest papers in Portugal. They are making their way down to South Africa in this pretty intense looking 4x4, reporting on stories about football in each country they pass through from now until the World Cup in June in South Africa. They ended up doing stories on the Sidi Moumen football team as well as the girls down in Amzmiz! Check out their blog (its in Portuguese but still pretty exciting).

http://worldcup.record.xl.pt/

Latin America, Middle East...same uniforms and smiles

Great piece on women's football in Peru and how it is linked to land reform and women's struggle for a place in society on the Global Game blog.

http://www.theglobalgame.com/blog/2010/01/peruvian-women-in-fulbito-andino-find-light-in-the-darkness/

What stuck me most about this story is one of the pictures, of the Peruvian girls juggling a ball in her skirt and pink uniform top and the other girls watching. Their uniforms, even the smiles on their face as they watch this girl juggle, reminded me of a picture I took in a locker room in Rabat. The girl was juggling and another watching her. The picture has such a feeling of similarity, parallel worlds on the same track. The quote to from one of the women in the article too reminded me of so many things I have often heard here..."The football world beyond our mountains we do not know. We do not know who plays there, who are the best players, what they wear and the rules that everyone follows. We only play in order to have some happy moments, to have fun. Of technique and tactics we do not understand much. But we play with our hearts, with all our will. And that brings us together into a single force. That is football for us."

What else do we need football to be. Something so universal yet for these women, something so isolated, their football, in their mountains, with their rules, their happy moments.