Harnessing young people's enthusiasm for football and sports in general is a useful and interesting way to offer opportunities for personal and professional growth, said Rubem Cesar Fernandes, executive director of Viva Rio, a Brazilian NGO focusing on development through innovative projects. [...] Viva Rio has established the Black Pearls Academy, a high-performance football training centre for young athletes from refugee and underprivileged communities in Brazil and Haiti.

Hours following Trump’s restrictive immigration policy was announced, various sports entities, including the NBA, MLS, and the UFC, had contacted State Department to determine how this would impact their respective businesses. The EO also threatened U.S. bids for the Olympic Games and World Cup. However, it was the policy’s impact on amateur wrestling that resulted in retaliatory action from Iran.

Sport can play a major role in boosting Scotland’s influence abroad, and help cement international relations, while influencing diplomacy and foreign policy. The potential is there to use sport to improve international relations and development, and what the Scottish Government needs to do is to elevate sport’s role on the global stage.

During the visit, the players will hold an exhibition game together with players from the Israeli Football Association on February 18 in Jerusalem. Strategic Affairs and Public Diplomacy Minister Gilad Erdan expressed hope the visit would offer the players “a balanced picture of Israel, the opposite from the false incitement campaign that is being waged against Israel around the world.”

A delegation of NFL players will arrive in Israel next week as part of a campaign to showcase the country's "true face" to the world, Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan announced on Sunday. The delegation will arrive next Monday as part of a joint initiative between the Ministry of Strategic Affairs and Public Diplomacy, also headed by Erdan, and the Tourism Ministry.

The event opened the door for other U.S. sports and cultural exchanges, too. “In the past, wrestling has played an important role in diplomacy,” Bender said. “This looks like a setback for sure. But it doesn’t necessarily impact our relationship with the Iranian wrestling federation.”

The match also represented something else: a case study in the globalization of European soccer, with a decidedly Chinese flavor. Both teams were acquired in 2016 by Chinese investors for a total exceeding $1 billion, a capstone to a flurry of Chinese purchases of European soccer clubs over the past two years. [...] China’s big soccer play is of a piece with Chinese President Xi Jinping’s “Chinese Dream” idea of attaining national greatness