Jack Maynes, a URI soccer player and student in Professor Chery Foster’s Twenty-first Century Political Theory class (PSC 443), published his final project for the class in the Boston Globe. The op-ed — When it comes to World Cup merchandise, I’m not buying what you’re selling — applies insights from French philosopher Jean Baudrillard to explain failure of World Cup advertising to match the reality of the tournament.

Maynes warns that the advertising and promotion of Italian soccer-themed merchandise, for a World Cup in which Italy failed to qualify, represents a harmful case of hyperreality: “when shirts and keychains no longer reflect the achievements of the teams and nations that fought to qualify, we cease to celebrate the tournament itself. Instead, we consume a commercialized image of it — one detached from the competition, sacrifice, and national pride that give the World Cup its meaning.”