Soccer

A neighborhood-based soccer league in Detroit is becoming a new community building effort in the city.

As Brazil prepares to host the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics, renovations to the Maracana, an infamous soccer stadium in Rio de Janeiro, are pricing out the city's poor. Some say the work is killing one of the city's few egalitarian public places.

The unveiling of a statue of musician Michael Jackson outside a soccer stadium in England has confused and angered some fans.

A neighborhood-based soccer league has just wrapped its first season in Detroit, where communities and neighborhoods are developing closer bonds through the beautiful game.

One of London's major soccer teams is floating plans to rebuild its stadium. But with its location in one of the city's most impoverished sections, many say the new plan doesn't do enough for its neighborhood.

Increasing amounts of Americans are soccer players, and the parks and park planners in American cities are beginning to reflect the sport's growing popularity, according to this piece from the Regional Plan Association.

Growth in Portland's professional sports due to the expansion of Major League Soccer is threatening the life of the city's iconic Memorial Coliseum. Historians and preservationists are teaming up to save it.

"Football Carnivals" are on the rise in Germany, where the community viewing buzz from the 2006 World Cup has hung around and revived itself for the current European Championship.

With the first game of the 2010 World Cup exactly two years away, many in host country South Africa are concerned about rising inflation, increased violence, and skyrocketing costs of stadium construction.