The Geography of Soccer

Today marks the beginning of the World Cup and for the last few weeks while traveling across Costa Rica, I witnessed an incredible connection with soccer. Many of my conversations began with discussing the upcoming World Cup. Unfortunately, I often had to offer my condolences to Costa Ricans because their team was eliminated from the tournament in the qualifications rounds, but it has hardly tempered the excitement about the tournament. There are several South And Central American teams in the tournament including the powerhouse teams of Argentina and Brazil, among others. It is difficult to describe the importance of soccer unless you’ve walked the streets, sat in the café’s, and talked to the people.

Soccer has deep-rooted geographic qualities that I believe I can use to keep my English language learners, and all my students, engaged and focused on the big picture rather than succumbing to stress anxiety and discomfort that they may face on a daily basis. Geography has played a key role in the style in which soccer is played in different regions of the world.

Brazilians and many other South and Central American teams have played an entirely different style of soccer than Europeans over the years. In Brazil for example, often children grow up playing soccer on rocky fields. Therefore they tend to play a less physical and more finessed style of soccer to avoid falling down on the hard rocky surface. In contrast, in England, where the kids grow up playing soccer on deep rich and soft grass, as skilled as they might be, the English style has tended to be more physical for the simple fact falling down on soft grass does not hurt as much as a rocky surface.

How can this knowledge benefit a student in the 6^th grade? How is this relevant to a middle grades student in North Carolina? Well, in the North Carolina standard course of study students’ focus on Europe and South America and geography is a key component of their study, and they compare and contrast the two regions on many different levels. Soccer is not only a cultural centerpiece of these two continents; it can serve as a geographical window into the exploration of the study of these two regions of the world. How will this relate to my English Language learner? I can use soccer as a connective device to maintain interest as well as an actual cultural stethoscope to explore what lies beneath the surface of the people of these regions.

By using the geography of soccer, students can learn social studies on a more relevant manner than merely looking at longitude and latitude. Social studies are more than geography, but the soccer though geography template is flexible enough to be interchanged with many other concepts. For example, Samba music is another cultural centerpiece of South American culture. (Particularly in Brazil) Samba is often described as rhythmic and flowing. Does this describe the culture of South America? Perhaps. There certainly is a different rhythm and flow to the style of soccer, popular music, and the movement of people in a South American city, compared to European cities. Using connections that are deeply ingrained in the culture of English language learners can help to maintain focus and attention in the classroom to create richer and more meaningful learning moments.