Most people tell you what happened in football. Here you understand why.
I'm Tales: an International Relations student at FGV and a lifelong football fan. I read the game through the lenses my degree gave me: soft power, sanctions, diaspora, and the state money behind the ball.
Three ways to follow
The email column
Weekly columns using football as a window into international politics, economics and culture. You just saw the what; the why lands in your inbox, free.
Soft Power Observatory
Can you measure the effect of a state buying a club or hosting a World Cup? You can. Measured cases with open methodology, downloadable data and declared limitations.
The Radar
Daily intelligence on football and power: the briefing that finds tomorrow's story before it becomes a headline. Being built as a product, limited spots.
How it works, in three steps
The radar scans
Hundreds of sources a day, hunting stories where football and power share a sentence.
I read through IR lenses
Soft power, sanctions, diaspora, rivalry: classroom theory applied to today's case.
You get the why
In the newsletter, on social and in the Observatory: you saw the goal, here's what was at stake.
Data you get at a glance
Soft power can be measured. Nobody was measuring it through football.
Existing rankings come out once a year, as PDFs, with closed methodology. The Observatory measures attention and coverage tone, continuously and case by case: the Qatar World Cup, the sanctions on Chelsea's owner, the Saudi fund at Newcastle. All with declared sources and openly downloadable data.
Get the why every week
The column lands in your inbox, free. The game behind the game, no algorithm required.