Susana Ferreira, Football Case Study’s newest member, steps into her first FCS interview reflecting on football as both an emotional language and a documentary space, tracing how the game has shaped her creative path and the way she connects with people across cultures. In conversation, she explores the responsibility of storytelling, the power of observation, and how football can reveal identities that often live just outside the frame of mainstream narratives.

As she begins her journey within FCS, Susana’s perspective moves fluidly between personal experience and professional practice — documenting the game not just as sport, but as a living social landscape. The interview introduces a storyteller grounded in people-first narratives, using football as a gateway into community, memory, and shared human experience.

ACROSS THE US-MEXICO BORDER, FOOTBALL CONTINUES SHOUTING THE SAME MESSAGE.

Crossing the U.S.– Mexico border to photograph San Diego FC’s debut against Pumas UNAM, Tijuana-based photographer Alejandro Gutiérrez Mora finds football unfolding against a backdrop of heightened immigration tension and political unease. Inside and outside Snapdragon Stadium, chants, protest banners, and shared emotion blur lines of nationality, revealing how football culture, activism, and identity collide in San Diego. The match becomes secondary to what truly matters: a reminder that even in moments of division, football still creates space for collective voice and belonging.

NO ROOM FOR RACISM: PREMIER LEAGUE X FCS

AFCON UNLOADED

SCOTT GROULT’S SENEGAL

The Premier League and Football Case Study have come together to tell global fan stories as part of the League’s No Room for Racism campaign: a shared effort to celebrate diversity, identity, and the unifying power of football. Through intimate portraits and firsthand narratives from cities such as Mexico City, Brooklyn, Tokyo, and Freetown, this collaboration captures how the game transcends geography and background, connecting people through empathy, pride, and purpose.

When the dust of AFCON settled in Morocco, it wasn’t just the final score that stayed with you, it was the sound, texture, and feeling of the tournament itself. Member photographers descended on cities like Rabat and Casablanca, not to capture trophies, but to witness the scenes that make this competition singular: the rain-soaked streets before kickoff, fans packed together in prayer and song, Senegalese supporters dancing in the rain after a dramatic victory, and those rare moments when rivalries dissolve into shared celebration.

Senegal’s rise on the world stage is more than a story of results—it’s a journey woven through community, culture, and collective belief. Photographer Scott Groult traveled across the country to document the Indomitable Lions and their supporters, capturing moments that reveal how football reflects national pride, history, and aspiration. From everyday streets to the roar of matchday, this piece shows a team and a nation moving forward together, energized by possibility and rooted in deep connection to the game.

GLOBAL STORIES

FROM WORLD’S FAIR TO WORLD’S GAME

THE MAYOR AND THE MANAGER

A BALANCE BUILT TO LAST

Every weekend in Flushing Meadows–Corona Park, the fields beneath the Unisphere erupt into one of Queens’ most vibrant football worlds — a living mosaic of Latin American communities where teams from Ecuador, Mexico, Colombia, Honduras, and beyond compete with intensity, pride, and decades-deep tradition. Families, food vendors, children, and elders turn the park into a cultural home away from home, where soccer becomes the thread binding migration, memory, and belonging.

The Manager and the Mayor draws a sharp parallel between Arsenal’s Mikel Arteta and mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani—two builders translating belief into structure. Marvin Heilbronn traces how marginal gains (from set-piece supremacy to tax-code tweaks), clear communication, and a relentless culture of standards can move a team—or a city—from drift to direction.

Writer and photographer Marvin Heilbronn explores how MLS has finally struck a balance between global star power and genuine player development, pairing figures like Lionel Messi and Thomas Müller with academy graduates and emerging young talent. What emerges is the clearest evidence yet of a league evolving beyond spectacle into a sustainable football culture—one capable of generating real stakes, belief, and lasting emotional investment.

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34 YEARS LATER, PISA SC RETURN TO THE TUSCANY DERBY

FOR GIRLS IN CASABLANCA, DREAMS OF FOOTBALL GO BEYOND THE PAVEMENT

After more than three decades away from Italy’s top flight, Pisa Sporting Club has finally returned to Serie A — and with it, one of Tuscany’s most storied rivalries. In this exploring photographer Lorenzo Gargiulo trace the club’s turbulent journey from its golden era under fiery president Romeo Anconetani, through bankruptcy, obscurity, and rebirth, to the long-awaited renewal of the Derby Toscana against Fiorentina.

While driving to a match between Nigeria and Tunisia, the Football Case Study team, based in Casablanca for the CAF Women’s Africa Cup of Nations, stumbled upon a youth girls club that is redefining the ways young women approach football in the region. By finding inspiration through the Moroccan women’s national team and receiving support from their families, the young footballers see no limit in their future.

EDITOR’S CHOICE

COMMUNAL OVENS AND SHARED SPACES: THE POWER OF ACCESSIBILITY AT WAFCON

AT MONTJUÏC, PALESTINE FOUND HOME FOR AN EVENING

A FOOTBALL JOURNALIST TRAVELED TO ALGERIA TO UNCOVER THE TRUTH.
NOW HE FACES SEVEN YEARS IN PRISON.

AS A NEW CLUB CLOSES IN,
SAN FRANCISCO CITY FC FIGHTS FOR PLACE IN THE COMMUNITY

From low-cost tickets and free transportation, to women attending their first-ever matches, WAFCON embraced inclusion across generations, mimicking the inclusive natures of Moroccan furans. Whether in a Casablanca bakery or Rabat stadium, these public spaces demonstrated how openness, generosity, and cultural values can elevate women’s football and strengthen community ties through shared experience.

More than 30,000 people gathered on a Tuesday night in Montjuïc, Barcelona, for a match between Catalonia and Palestine at Estadi Olímpic Lluís Companys. It wasn’t a final, nor an official fixture, yet nothing about the atmosphere felt routine. In this dispatch from Sports Journalist Leyla Hamed, we’re brought into the stands that transformed into a space where football shared its spotlight with grief, solidarity and a sense of collective presence.

On a rain-soaked night in Nantes, a mother’s voice breaks into a Coupe de France broadcast, revealing the imprisonment of sports journalist Christophe Gleizes in Algeria. This piece follows a football journey into Kabylie that becomes inseparable from questions of power, identity, and repression, tracing how reporting on a historic club led Gleizes from the stands to a seven-year sentence. Moving between matchday atmospheres and political reality, it asks what it truly means to understand the world through football—and what it costs those who try.

Kezar Stadium in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park has recently been made the grounds for a dispute between USL League Two team San Francisco City FC and Golden City FC, an in-development MLS NEXT Pro team being backed by the Mayor, the city and tech investors. As the new club makes its way into town and treads on SF City’s home stadium, Fay Harvey shines a light on how the community feels and what can be learned from clubs of the past.

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PHOTO ESSAYS

WHAT WE’RE LISTENING TO

2025 MLS CUP

Football Case Study takes us inside Chase Stadium in Fort Lauderdale for the MLS Cup Final between Inter Miami CF and Vancouver Whitecaps FC on December 6, 2025. Matthew David Stith captures the raw atmosphere—from chants and drums to the moment Inter Miami, led by Lionel Messi, lifted the MLS Cup on home soil.

FCS AT THE CWC

Shooting for Football Case Study and select clients, our members have been in the field this summer documenting the patrons and fans of clubs from around the globe at the FIFA Club World Cup.

MEDINA FM

Born in the winding alleys and open squares, Medina FM is a collection of songs that followed us through Morocco. Some we found in the hum of cafés, others drifted from passing cars, and a few came from our own late-night conversations.

FCS 2025 NEWSLETTER PLAYLIST

This playlist gathers every track featured across our 2025 newsletters—an evolving soundtrack that moves between rhythm and restraint, context and pause. It’s less about mood-setting and more about memory: the sounds that accompanied the ideas, stories, and moments we shared along the way.

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football case study is an editorial and research platform dedicated to showcasing the diverse cultures that make our game beautiful.
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INTRODUCING: SUSANA FERREIRA

ACROSS THE US-MEXICO BORDER, FOOTBALL CONTINUES SHOUTING THE SAME MESSAGE.