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"Football, it seemed to me, is not really played for the pleasure of kicking a ball about, but is a species of fighting."
—George Orwell

Much is made every four years about the deeper significance of the World Cup as soccer's international tournament, which begins in venues across Germany a week from Friday. America has its World Series, fought primarily by U.S. and Dominican players, with some highly-paid mercenaries from Japan, South Korea, Venezuela, and Panama, plus a handful of Cuban defectors (Baseball Almanac). But the "world's game" is soccer, or "football" as it is known in most places outside the United States. In many ways, over the next month, attention around the globe will focus on little else.

It may be inevitable, then, that politics has sullied the run up to the event. In Germany, the host nation, this year's tournament and the legion of foreign spectators expected to arrive for the matches provide the latest excuse for self-examination (some say self-flagellation) on the question of the nation's racist past. German papers were filled with recriminations after a former government spokesman warned publicly that some areas of the country—mostly in the depressed East, where neo-Nazi skinheads are active—might turn out to be lethal for dark-skinned visitors (WashPost). 'So is Germany Racist or Not?' asks Spiegel Online, the website of the nation's authoritative weekly. Britain's Football Association, meanwhile, launched an ad campaign urging fans of England's squad who cross the channel to attend Cup matches "not to mention the war." (NYT).

The debate made news around the world, including in Iran (IRNA), which has seen its own World Cup bid turn into an, uh, political football. Some politicians in Britain and the United States wanted Iran banned as a way of pressuring it to cooperate on nuclear matters. Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel opposed the idea and it made no headway at soccer's world governing body, FIFA. But in the United States in particular, the idea of an Iran ban sparked a spirited debate between those opposed on the left (Nation) and those on the right (Weekly Standard) who believe it would be a uniquely effective means of making Iranians realize how serious Washington is about preventing nuclear proliferation.

For most of the world, though, politics is just so much crowd noise. In FIFA's Asia region, where the game is growing most quickly, Japan, Korea, Saudi Arabia, and Iran vie for regional sympathy. Several small nations, meanwhile, hope the World Cup will allow them to make the kind of global impression that would be impossible in, say, the UN General Assembly. Ghana is one of these potential "Cinderella" nations, according to the BBC. So, too, is Trindad and Tobago, the smallest of the finalist nations. "All the Caribbean islands are supporting us," said Harvey Borras, Trinidad's consul in Miami. "I'm hoping people worldwide will get to know more about our country" (Miami Herald).

Daniel Drezner, a well-known blogger and University of Chicago political scientist, says all of this loses sight of the fact that soccer is just a game. He sees little substance behind the stories linking soccer to, for instance, the salvation of strife-torn Ivory Coast (National Geographic). Then again, the world might respond, 'What do you expect from an American?' As Sports Illustrated columnist Adam Hofstetter complains,"Americans as a whole just don't care about the World Cup."