{"id":60118,"date":"2026-07-24T10:47:20","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T10:47:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/60118\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T10:47:20","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T10:47:20","slug":"behind-the-bylines-the-stories-beyond-the-game-lowell-sun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/60118\/","title":{"rendered":"Behind the Bylines: The stories beyond the game \u2013 Lowell Sun"},"content":{"rendered":"

I joined my family for a World Cup final watch party this past Sunday. Like millions around the world, we were transfixed. Every pass elicited a reaction. Shots were followed by bated breath. Most of my family had followed the tournament with great interest and anticipation, and those few hours were the culmination of months of emotional investment, accumulated history, and hope.<\/p>\n

I, however, had not been following, in part because I don\u2019t have a great affinity for watching sports despite having a deep appreciation for athleticism. But also because of my discomfort with FIFA, which has given viewers plenty of reasons to question the ethics behind the spectacle of the World Cup.<\/p>\n

During my usual perusal of the news the next morning, I encountered story after story documenting Argentina\u2019s tragedy and Spain\u2019s triumph.<\/p>\n

I found myself tumbling headfirst into a pile of analysis, profiles, and the stories that turned individual plays into a narrative woven through history, strategy, triumph, and tragedy.<\/p>\n

Sports journalism is sometimes treated as a lighter form of the work, perhaps because its most visible subject is a game. The stakes are not life and death \u2013 though certain fandoms certainly seem to feel otherwise. Yet the best sports writing does what all strong journalism should do. It uses what happened to help us understand why it happened. In some cases, it helps us see who has been metaphorically sidelined.<\/p>\n

As I went further down the rabbit hole, reading everything from critiques of key players to histories of the game, I stumbled upon award-winning author, Hanif Abdurraqib\u2019s 2018 New York Times opinion piece, \u201cThe Kind of Kid America Needs if We Want a World Cup.\u201d The piece describes Clint Dempsey, a player who overcame numerous challenges to reach the world stage. Dempsey grew up in a trailer behind his grandparents\u2019 house and drove a six-hour round trip, three days a week, to practice.<\/p>\n

But instead of just telling another story about an athlete who defied the odds, Abdurraqib, a cultural critic, used Dempsey\u2019s journey to examine the costly pay-to-play system that shapes American youth soccer.<\/p>\n

We are accustomed to turning an athlete\u2019s hardship into part of the hero\u2019s journey. Poverty, long drives, limited resources, and family sacrifice become evidence of exceptional perseverance. When an athlete overcomes these obstacles, we see their achievement as more impressive.<\/p>\n

This framing offers a tidy and motivating narrative, but it can also flatter an inequitable system. It rightfully directs our attention to the remarkable person who survived the barriers, but in the process lets fall by the wayside our consideration of the many people those barriers removed from contention.<\/p>\n

The inequity may appear less consequential because sports are, after all, games. No one is entitled to become a professional athlete. But systems of athletic development decide whose talent is identified and coached, and how access to facilities, programs, scholarships,, and professional opportunities are distributed. They also shape who eventually represents a city, a community, or a country.<\/p>\n

And of course, the stories of triumph are welcome, but many of the pieces demonstrated the power of sports journalism to move beyond the spectacle of achievement and expose the systems that shape who is given the chance to achieve in the first place, and ask why so much of it was required in the first place.<\/p>\n

I may not have been bitten by the World Cup bug this year, but I came away with a renewed appreciation for sports journalism and the revelatory power of stories that show us not only what happens in the game, but the systems that shape it.<\/p>\n

Wafa Unus is an associate professor of journalism at Fitchburg State University.<\/p>\n

\"AssociateAssociate Professor of Journalism at Fitchburg State University Wafa Unus, Ph.D. (Courtesy Wafa Unus)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I joined my family for a World Cup final watch party this past Sunday. Like millions around the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60119,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24355,24356,1747,1743,17,396,3003],"class_list":["post-60118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-spain","tag-advice","tag-columnists","tag-opinion","tag-soccer","tag-spain","tag-sports","tag-world-cup-2026"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60118\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}