As Spain prepares to take on Switzerland on Wednesday, the world is abuzz with anticipation.

Not only are Spain joint favorites with Brazil, but the tournament needs the Spanish team like a fish needs water. After one of the drabbest opening rounds in memory, fans everywhere are looking for reasons as to why things are so awful this time round. The long European season, the austral winter, the security concerns and the stress it creates, the ultra-defensive attitudes, and the worst ball in history that was still round: the Jabulani. Thanks, adidas, for a World Cup with no shots on goal.

The prospect of the Spanish team being true to its image, thus, serves as a necessary riposte from the otherwise disappointing level of play seen so far. The Spaniards seem to be on the rise, even considering their incredible record winning and unbeaten streaks, as well as their scintillating win at Euro 2008.

Having seen the Brazilians struggle to beat North Korea 2-1, the Spanish side brings a promise of a real jogo bonito. The coach, Vicente del Bosque, seems more than likely to be faithful to their image of artful prodigies of world football. Despite coming off the success of 2008, the 2010 squad is one that is still tremendously youthful and not bound to the stereotypical cynicism associated with defending champs who refuse to sacrifice anything in their bid to retain. With enough talent to build two squads, it is easy to forget that Spanish football itself is defined by its strict divisions, often with its bitter political roots.

In the case of this current squad, there is a strong base along the Real Madrid-Barcelona line, with as many as 9 starters featuring from these two banner teams. At the same time, there is also a significant infusion from other Spanish teams such as Athletic Bilbao and Sevilla, not to mention the small but brilliant British contingent in Torres and Fabregas. It is a team filled with Catalans and madrileños, with Basques from Guipúzcoa and Vizcaya, with stars from La Mancha and the Canary Islands.

This diversity of linguistic-ethnic groups has long been associated with an underperformance of the Spanish national team at big tournaments. However, Euro 2008 showcased a side that seemed to be driven much more by professional, global ambition, than by regional differentiation. The team was able to assembe around a single footballing language that made sense not only to them, but to the world.

Laurent Dubois, an avid football fan and historian at Duke University, speaks about the idea of football and the French empire in the 20th century, his study Soccer Empire: The World Cup and the Future of France culminating with a discussion of the impact of the World Cup triumph of 1998 on society and politics. Among other things, the triumph (and the run) of the epic ‘98 French team generated a maelstrom of political and social debate that went down to the bone of French identity.

The fact that the team was composed of an unprecedented mix of ethnic backgrounds, mostly descending from the French colonies, was a source of contention during their famous run. At the same time, the French victory created a platform for unification, in which the idea of France gloriously embraced post-colonial realities. A once homogeneous identity became multicolored, and under its figurehead Zinedine Zidane, son of Algerian immigrants, realized the possibilities of a truly race-less society.

And yet, Soccer Empire also brings up the question of how long such a feelgood moment lasts before society reverts to its previous patterns, moving on to other, perhaps more immediate concerns.

In the Spanish case, it would be fascinating to see how the politics of autonomous communites play out alongside the progress of the national team. What would happen to the vociferously separatist contingents from the Basque Country and Catalonia? More importantly, what would happen in terms of the public opinion of the masses who follow football, whose opinions are not always represented by their most vocal politicians even in areas with anti-Spanish nationalist ambitions?

Unification seems like a naïve ideal, especially in the context of what many will consider merely a sport, a diversion. Nonetheless, one cannot negate the reality that this sport is a phenomenon resulting from innumberable cultural conditions, and is an important part of the social fabric, occupying not just stadiums, but imaginations and everything that derives from that. Ideas about masculinty, sex, discipline, beauty, violence, and so forth, pass through and are perpetuated by the global game.

For the Spanish team, while we cannot predict the impact they will have on politics and society in general in Spain should they do well, we can certainly know for sure that a deep Spanish run will certainly bring the footballing public a great deal of joy.

As the world prepares for what may be considered the most cosmopolitan World Cup in the tournament’s 80-year history, to be hosted by South Africa from mid-June to mid-July, no shortage of praise has been heaped upon the international game as a bellwether for better times.

The game’s political supporters are not without their strong points, and the fact that Africa will host its first ever tournament as a hopeful sign of the continent’s development may have some validity.  Many of the Premiership’s stars from the league’s strongest teams, themselves powerful international brands, are African.  With the Premiership providing a tight race atop the tables in the midseason, everyone is scratching their heads, wondering what will happen to the league’s most successful teams as they attempt to make do without stars such as Didier Drogba, Kolo Toure, Salomon Kalou, Emmanuel Adebayor and Alex Song as they return to Africa to represent their countries in the African Cup of Nations.  Fans wait with bated breath to see if Chelsea will maintain its narrow lead in the tables without Drogba, arguably the league’s most virtuosic scorer, and how Arsenal will cope without its key African players on the back line.  Indeed, with the departure of African players from the Premiership in the middle of the season, there is a departure, in part, of the Premiership itself.

Bono was quick to pick up on Africa’s growing influence in both the game and the global psyche in a recent NY Times op-ed piece, where he noted that the tournament would usher in a decade of Africa, in a symbolic gesture that, in a similar way in which with the opening of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, the United States passed the torch of history to China, the opening of the Cup in Cape Town would cover over hundreds of years of colonial wounds as we all stare bravely into the global future.

And yet, these arguments overwrite the real political problems that surround the global game.  Football is, no doubt, positive as a referent that allows cultures around the world to dialogue but not if it gives way to the misrepresentation of the reality of global politics.

Friday morning, 8 January, 2010, Togo’s national team was ambushed by the separatist group, Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda, while traveling by bus through Angola, the Cup of Nations host country.  Two team officials and the team’s bus driver were killed in the attack.

Pessimists will argue that the incident preemptively mars Africa’s first World Cup.  Optimists will note that Angola and South Africa do not even share a border and have very different political infrastructures.  Realists, however, will surmise that the game, even if it is the world’s best symbolic hope, does not provide enough substance to overwrite the geopolitical trauma experienced in many post-colonial spaces.  While football may cause ebbs in national and regional histories, moments of unprecedented tans-cultural camaraderie and  ebullience amongst its followers, it does not lead to political stability in itself.

Some argue that the investment that hosting the tournament brings is a success story before the tournament even begins.  Yet, R.W. Johnson, in a piece on the politics surrounding the developmental side of the World Cup in South Africa published in the London Review of Books last month, points to the underbelly of investment: “The city had also wanted originally to locate the stadium in a black or Coloured area, both in order to encourage investment and jobs and to make it easier for the poor to attend matches. This immediately went out the window when the Fifa inspection team, headed by Franz Beckenbauer, visited Cape Town. One of the criteria they laid down was that the stadium should have ‘fine mountain views’. The team toured the poor areas, assumed the city had to be joking about choosing anywhere so obviously ugly and unsafe, and plumped for Green Point, an affluent white area with fine sea and mountain views and many good restaurants.”

Arguments can be made that in plucking a handful of players from the soccer farms in African and Latin American countries, just as Fifa plucks idyllic spaces to frame the game in its host countries, football is ascribing to a politics of underdevelopment.  And apologists such as Bono grease the wheels of the symbolic machine.

I am looking forward to both the African Cup of Nations and the World Cup as much as anyone and also believe that an international game, especially one with the intricate poetics and beauty of football, is still great for the world.  But let’s approach it with sobriety.  Cosmopolitan entertainment should not be confused with global panacea.  And theorists should be critical of arguments that say otherwise.

As Togo’s national team traveled through Angola this weekend, they took with them the borders of the global game.  In no way can the interaction at that border be interpreted as an embracing inclusivity.