Germans play football like Germans: organized, precise, technical, structured, hard-working, _________ (fill in the blanks - I'm not German after all!).  The USA is a melting pot of cultures and people, and so is our soccer.  And our Peace FC book will start with the observation:  "You should take it personally when your national team loses to your rival - everything that you are, your people, your society, your culture, your systems and style - all of it - just got beat."  

The Peace Football Club (Peace FC) Survey has several goals:

1) Explore the thesis that football is a reflection of it’s people, culture, and society  - and eventually be a comprehensive overview of how football is deeply personal by exploring dozens of countries and their football (if not every country in FIFA!!) - as well as exploring football rivalries - a tangible manifestation of rivalries among people, cultures and societies.

2) Make the world a better place through peace activism and football - leverage the world’s passion for football and the game’s ability to expose the good and bad in people, culture and society - and make improvements.  In other words, if football is personal, if football is indeed a reflection of people/culture/society, if Peace FC can raise awareness of this, then what can we do - or better yet, what are people already doing that works! - to make the world a better place?

3) Make world peace and win World Cups - Ok, these are crazy goals right?  But football is global, it can change the world, and further, if you embrace how personal football is, it may be possible that in making your people and society better, you make your football team better (more on this later).

The Peace FC Survey first explores how football reflects people, societies and culture.  Global football is about sharing these attributes - in fact, for many nations, their football is a primary ambassador for the country.  

We ask for a description of a country’s football - the style of play and what makes it recognizable as that country’s way of playing.  What are a few adjectives you would use to describe how your national team plays?  Then we ask a similar question about the adjectives used to describe your people and the country, society and culture.  We then compare these descriptions.  Are the adjectives we use to describe the football of your national team similar or different to the adjectives used to describe your, people and culture?  What does this mean?

Then we ask about your rival - how does your rival’s natural team play, vs. what are their people/culture/society like?  A potential hornet’s nest?  That’s the point!  Dig into rivalries - the nature of them - what makes football so deeply person is exemplified by the wounds of losing to those rivals.  We have to confront this if we are to make rivalries more respectful and sportsperson-like.  

How is our football like us, or not?  How is their football like them, or not?  How does this inform the nature of our rivalry and what can we (should we) do about it?   Are there particular trouble spots that football exposes that we could al work on - in ourselves, in others, in our rivalries? Who is doing this and what works?

Goals of the Peace FC Survey

The Peace FC Survey will help build out a comprehensive overview of how football reflects its people, cultures and society - why football is so personal - by country and in some cases by club - so one goal is to explore the nature of football and people for every FIFA country. 

In many cases, the Peace FC Survey exposes negative stereotypes, bigotry, or worse.  Just thinking about the nature of a rivalry - especially the personal aspects - can be enlightening - and this elevated awareness can help start to make the rivalry more rational and respectful.  These changes ripple out into society.

Peace FC Survey results - in the aggregate - can be used for a number of purposes:

• As an educational tool for young fans
• By community outreach organizations that are looking for programs and ideas that actually make a difference in their communities 

The Peace FC Survey is the start to something much bigger: a platform for social change through football, and the ongoing programs that will support it.  We have ideas for more content and events:

• As the background for live events - e.g. getting a couple players, managers and/or pundits from either side of a rivalry up on stage to do a live version of the Peace FC Survey and explore their rivalry - and see if this can help improve the sportspersonship of a rivalry 
• As the kick-off to web content from around the world of interviews, write-ups, events and more (like TED Talks) expanding on this content - adding to the insights on particular rivalries