Shut up and dribble? Not in basketball. Certainly not in soccer

Shut up and dribble.

That’s what a Fox News commentator said about LeBron James in February. He didn’t.

No one is shutting up when it comes to dribbling a basketball. And certainly not when it comes to dribbling a soccer ball.

Any fan of the World Cup knows that politics are inextricably linked to the world’s greatest sporting event. Any soccer fan would have to be amused by recent complaints from some American sports fans that politics and sports should be mutually exclusive entities.

International soccer is always a story of political factions, national rivalries, historic grudges, and of sport being a vehicle and platform for something bigger than just a game.