Earlier this month, the International Olympic Committee decided to ban Russian athletes from participating under their national flag at the 2018 Olympic Games and it banned for life Vitaly Mutko, the Russian deputy prime minister who oversaw the country’s massive, state-run Olympic doping program during the 2014 games in Sochi. Mutko also happens to be the head of Russia’s World Cup organizing committee and a FIFA vice president who sits on the FIFA Council and four other FIFA committees, but there is little chance he will lose any of those positions as a result of this scandal. Here to explain why, and give us more insight into the relationship between Russian sports, politics, and international institutions like FIFA and the IOC, is Manuel Veth, editor-in-chief of futbolgrad.com, who just so happens to have a PhD in the study of Soviet sports.
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Doping, Russia, and the FIFA World Cup

Howler editor George Quraishi interviews soccer journalists, managers, players, and activists. Dummy is about everything except what happened on the field last week: the business, politics, history, personalities, and social issues that touch the world’s favorite game.

Sports

New editor Dennie Wendt and founding editor George Quraishi discuss the contents, creative process and—incredibly, and at long last—the completion of Howler 15. 
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The Editors converse

Iceland has been one of the best stories in world soccer over the last few years—a tiny nation that is riding a golden generation to its first ever European Championship and then World Cup in the span of just two years. (We published a big feature on Icelandic soccer by Davis Harper that came out in the first half of 2016—so we were either ahead of the hipsters or super duper hipsters, depending on your point of view.)
For this episode, George traveled to Iceland to speak with the technical director and president of the Icelandic FA—plus the president and first lady of the country itself.
Next week, Andrew Downie will return to discuss his book Doctor Socrates. Pick up a copy here (Howler gets a small cut when you purchase with this link). And then drop any questions or comments you’d like Andrew to address into this form.
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How Iceland Does It

Amos Barshad last came on Dummy to discuss his story about a spate of soccer murders in Argentina. Now he's back to talk about his story in last week's New York Times Magazine about the Players' Tribune and where it lives in the modern sports journalism ecosystem.

What Happens When Athletes Do the Sports Writing? by Amos Barshad
Doctor Socrates is the latest Howler Book Club selection—pick up a copy here (Howler gets a small cut when you purchase with this link). Andrew will be back in about a month for a more expansive conversation about the life of Socrates.
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What to make of the Players' Tribune

George and Ryan (host of the Dirty Tackle podcast and an occasional writer for the mag) are in London at a big Nike marketing event, and of the many players present—including Alexis Sanchez, Neymar, Christian Pulisic, and Marcus Rashford—they got two very short interviews with Eden Hazard and Tobin Heath. In this episode, a discussion about how commercial events like this one have come to drive so much of the soccer media, a quick look at the very funny piece Ryan wrote for the latest issue of Howler, and, of course, three minutes each with Hazard and Heath.
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Eden Hazard, Tobin Heath, and Ryan Bailey

This week, George chats with Robert Andrew Powell, who has been writing about Beckham and Miami for Howler for several years. (Read his profile of Beckham’s business partner, the Bolivian billionaire Marcelo Claure, here.) They discuss the announcement, on Monday, that MLS had accepted the Beckham group’s bid to join the league—outside of the ongoing expansion process. The announcement closely mirrored a similar press conference four years ago: no team name, colors, or locked-down stadium location. What’s new? The addition to the ownership group of the Mas brothers, sons of an iconic Cuban exile who left behind a controversial legacy as one of Miami’s most prominent anti-Castro figures. Read Robert’s latest update for Howler here.
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Doping, Russia, and the FIFA World Cup

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