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Palestinian soccer and lemonade

I love soccer enough to be watching my third live game today; to understand why Messi is considered, by some, to be the best; and, to recognize a few of the hunks featured in the June 2010 Vanity Fair. And being a 40-something American-born female, I ususally have no reason to root for any particular team besides loyalty to our U.S. teams, of men/boys and women/girls, when they compete internationally as I watch everything from local youth recreational soccer to televised matches from any corner or the world. I get why this football is huge everywhere else. So, it's not hard to imagine that the only soccer fate worse than being a rising world class U.S. player -- male or female -- is being Palestinian and wanting to represent your home country.

The nature of that predicament was brought home to me, a while back, when I saw the documentary Goal Dreams which details the logistical nightmare of fielding a diaspora team without a country, a field or sometimes permission to leave or enter a country.

Go read: a GlobalPost story that shares how Middle Eastern soccer enthusiasts are doing their best to make lemonade out of their lemon-y lot with the Gaza World Cup.