About Culture of Soccer

Culture of Soccer is a blog about the beautiful game and the people who play it. It looks at the way soccer intersects with economics, politics, religion, history, ethnicity, race, immigration, identity, psychology, sexuality, and other aspects of culture. Culture of Soccer does not cover breaking news. Instead, it looks to place aspects of the sport into broader cultural context. Culture of Soccer differs from many other blogs in that each post is a more in-depth discussion of a topic, rather than a quick snippet of what is happening that day.

Culture of Soccer is run by David Keyes. My experience in the world of soccer is perhaps more vast than I should admit. I have spent way too much of my life playing, coaching, refereeing, watching, reading about, and traveling to soccer games. I began playing soccer as a 6 year-old outside of Philadelphia.

Young David

I played through high school in Yellow Springs, Ohio and during two years at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana. I continue to play pick-up games around San Diego, where I currently live. In the past, I have also refereed up to the professional level and coached a youth team for two years.

Although I am first and foremost a fan of the game, this blog reflects my broader interests in the way soccer and culture intersect. I have read widely on soccer. Of the numerous books available on soccer, my favorites are Simon Kuper’s Football Against the Enemy, Brilliant Orange by David Winner, Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby, and one I am currently reading, David Goldblatt’s The Ball is Round.

Part of the embarrassingly large amount of time I have spent involved with soccer has been spent traveling to foreign countries to see games. In 2005 I traveled to Holland with the AjaxUSA fan club and in 2006 I spent a week on my own in Argentina watching games at the stadiums of Boca Juniors, River Plate, and Velez Sarsfield.

I generally don’t support teams, but I do feel affection towards those that play the attractive soccer I love to watch, including Ajax, Barcelona, and Arsenal. I have other motives for liking these teams as well: I like Ajax’s emphasis on youth development; I respect Barcelona’s work against the fascist dictator Franco; and I like the intellectualism that Arsene Wenger brings to Arsenal.

As for national teams, I support Costa Rica and Japan, having lived for a while in each country. And while I feel a certain ambivalence about us becoming as powerful in soccer as we are in economic and political affairs, I hope to one day see the US national team win the World Cup.

In my professional life, I am currently a student in the PhD program in anthropology at the University of California, San Diego. My work is on Spanish-speaking immigrant communities in rural parts of the United States. One part of my research will be to study the role of soccer among such immigrants.

Not quite so young David

Thank you for stopping by Culture of Soccer. I hope you enjoy what you read here. Please feel free to get in touch with me either by leaving a comment in response to a post or by sending an email to david [at] cultureofsoccer [dot] com.