Me.

Eric Hobsbawm (1917 — 2012) was a supporter of the Austrian club Rapid Wein and a historian of capitalism and nationalism. He once remarked that, "The imagined community of millions seems more real as a team of eleven named people."

Eleven Named People explores professional football or soccer as a site of cultural struggle and economic exploration and as a means of revealing racial and class dynamics at national and global levels.

I was born and grew up in Cape Town, South Africa. I am on the international affairs faculty of The New School, where, for a while, I co-taught a course on “Global Soccer, Global Politics” with Tony Karon. I founded (2009) and edited (2009 — 2023) the site Africa Is a Country. I am currently its Publisher.

Some of my writing on sports culture have been published in The New York Times. Soccer & Society, Radical History Review, Al Jazeera English, Roads & Kingdoms, herri, The Nation, Jadaliyya, and Medium, among others.

A longer bio is here.