More than just being an element of post-Cold War soft power or as part of a country’s diplomatic strategy, a closer study into the game of football throws up several important characteristics that could inform our understanding of the political paradigm of the ASEAN community and its relations with the rest of the world.

Mr. Marles, who was accompanied by the Australian High Commissioner to Seychelles, Ms. Sandra Vegting, also announced a donation of 20,000 Australian dollars to develop a multi-purpose indoor sports facility as part of the Australian Sports Diplomacy initiative.

Soccer players from England, Argentina or Brazil who went on tours in other countries were transformed into ambassadors while away. Sports and soccer, in Latin America especially, were effective ways for countries to get to know each other, he said.

From Nov. 8-16, Ripken will take participate in a diplomatic mission through Japan, where he will conduct baseball and softball clinics in Tokyo, Takarazuka and Kyoto. Officially, Ripken will be functioning as a U.S. Public Diplomacy Envoy, a State Department position that allows him to assume role of sports diplomat.

“We communicate through baseball,” Ripken said in an interview with The Associated Press. “Japan loves their baseball, maybe equally as much or more than we do..." This will be Ripken’s third trip as a Public Diplomacy Envoy. He traveled to China in 2007 and to Nicaragua in 2008.

The U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and Ripken Baseball Inc. announced today that Baseball Hall-of-Famer and Public Diplomacy Envoy Cal Ripken, Jr. and Major League Baseball standout Brady Anderson, a former center fielder with the Baltimore Orioles, will travel to Japan November 8-16, 2011 as sports diplomats.

And the Gulf state of Qatar — an obscure patch of sand in 1971 — is emerging as an international sports giant with a relentless appetite for headline-grabbing events, including hosting an updated edition of table tennis-as-political icebreaker.

Hosting the 2014 FIFA World Cup was supposed to provide an unalloyed boon to Brazil’s global image. Yet tournament preparations have highlighted many structural weaknesses in Latin America’s largest country, and predictions that the World Cup will deliver enormous economic benefits should be treated with skepticism.