soccer

Pelé, 82, died last week in a hospital in Sao Paulo, the country’s largest city and commercial capital, of complications from colorectal cancer. He had been in ill health the better part of the last couple of years.

Qatar’s World Cup awarding 12 years ago might have caused controversy, but the actual tournament has brought immense pride to the Muslim and Arabic-speaking world. And the soccer has been stellar.

The Qatar 2022 World Cup has been a cozy logistical affair, enabling fans to easily crisscross the Connecticut-sized country and intersect with fans and other teams. But small and tidy is set to give way to large and unruly, as World Cup 2026 will be jointly hosted by the United States, Mexico and Canada. Minutes-long ground travel now will be replaced by hours-long air travel.

South American-born soccer players Tab Ramos, Claudio Reyna, Marcelo Balboa and Fernando Clavijo played key roles for the United States in the 1990s and early 2000s World Cups. A wave of German-born players — Thomas Dooley, Jermaine Jones, Fabian Johnson, John Brooks — progeny of American military fathers and German moms, also opted to play for Uncle Sam.

Soccer great Pelé is largely credited with calling his sport “The Beautiful Game,” an affectionate phrase its media and admirers still like to turn to when other adjectives escape them. But a closer look into soccer’s inner workings occasionally takes a bit of shine off the world’s biggest professional sport.

Colombian soccer player Freddy Rincon is forever linked with one of the most rapturous moments in the history of his resource-abundant but historically-turbulent country.

English soccer for generations has leveled the playing field for impoverished youth who have gone on to earn multimillion-pound salaries, while enhancing both the Premier League and English National Team. Some of those players — Manchester United’s Marcus Rashford and Liverpool’s Raheem Sterling — have intrepidly used their platform to wade into the polarizing waters of social justice and political causes.

Boston’s Irish and Cabo Verdeans share a history of Catholicism, three-decker living and colonizing Uphams Corner. Most significant to the menfolk might be the celebratory pints at nearby Dublin House. You can now add soccer star Roberto “Pico” Lopes to that affinity.