Soccer as Organizing Tool

Even I, as a passionate soccer fan, have gotten a little tired of the ESPN/U2 "soccer can change the world" ad campaign. But, sometimes, for a small group of people, it does. Witness this article in USA Today about the soccer league formed in South Africa's Robben Island Prison. That was where the apartheid government locked up political prisoners. The prisoners organized a soccer league, to try and show skeptics that they could, in fact, run something:

'The prisoners on the island believed they would be running their own country one day,' sports historian Charles Korr says. 'That was partly why they ran a soccer league organized along strict FIFA rules. They saw it as a chance to prove they could run anything.'

Neat story.