Simon Kuper traveled across the world and explored the impact of politics on football for this book. We tell you Football Against The Enemy is a must buy.
“They say in Brazil, even the smallest village has a church and a football field – well, not always a church, but certainly a football field.”
It’s hard to argue with this quote, in so much that football is, at its essence, a simple game. Nothing can be easier to grasp than people chasing a ball and shooting it into the net to win; or to provide such a space, even if there aren’t actual nets at both ends and only goalposts or even two sticks to mark the territory enclosing the goal. What isn’t simple are the people. And not just on the field, which is inhabited by just 22, but the millions across the globe who are affected by it every day. Simon Kuper, self-declared footballing anthropologist and the author of the road trip that is Football Against the Enemy, is living proof. His life spans multiple countries, not least having been born in Africa and sent off to live with the ‘cultured’ Europeans. And that’s why his journey to discover the heart beating inside every follower of the beautiful game is so revealing. It’s as much a study of man as it is of the sport.
Simon starts off with his beloved Europe, heading deep into central Europe’s tense climate just years after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and USSR, where political turmoil is sweeping the nations and the people in them.
