How Soccer Explains the World (Four Hour Special)
Join Link TV for a celebration of the world’s greatest sporting event. Soccer has become part of everyday culture - spanning the globe and transcending barriers. Soccer speaks a language that everyone understands.

PART 1 (First Two Hours)
This special Link TV program brings us exciting footage from Shoot Goals! Shoot Movies! Through the eye of the camera, 40 international students bring perspective from their country with short films that answer one question - Why I Love Soccer! Soccer is art, culture and lifestyle. Same rules, same round ball, all eyes on one goal. But it's never exactly the same game. In all the diverse regions across the world, players interpret the game in their own way and it all comes together in the 2006 World Cup.

Mark Hertsgaard, political investigative reporter for Link TV, admits that he is a big soccer fan. In this Link TV special, Mark sits down with Max Bretos the lead play-by-play announcer for Fox Soccer Channel, who has covered matches from Argentina, Germany, Italy, France, England, Chile, the United States and several other international competitions. Bretos can also be seen on Fox Sports World Report hosting his own opinionated soccer segment, "Maximum Soccer."

PART 2 (Second Two Hours)
Watch the best of Shoot Goals! Shoot Movies!; short films, which explore how soccer is enjoyed and played around the world. Mark Hertsgaard interviews world-renown scholar of cultural, political and Germanic studies at the University of Michigan, Professor Andrei Markovits. Markovits is the author and editor of many books, including Offside: Soccer and American Exceptionalism. He has worked extensively on comparative sports culture and American sports. While Bretos talks style and form, the professor, also a great fan, talks about navigating through the nationalistic passion and violence known to accompany this world sport. Soccer is not to be taken lightly.

GET INFORMED! GET INVOLVED!
How Soccer Explains the World Related Websites:
US Soccer Foundation
US Youth Soccer
US Soccer Federation
Goethe-Institut