With my steadily increasingly obsession with the sport of football it was inevitable that this new (at that time) passion would cross paths with my constant love affair with words. Since then I’ve read a fair few books on and about football related topics and continue to though I haven’t gotten around to as many I would have liked. This is the first in a series of reviews about football-related books for a range of audiences and fans.
How Football Explains The World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalisation by Franklin Foer. (2004, HarperCollins)
Franklin Foer is an American journalist and his ‘outsider’ status is evident throughout a book that focuses on a sport that still hasn’t caught on much in the States. Even though his research is fairly deep and the writing style fluid and engaging, Foer does slip up at times with phrases that no football fan would use (the consistent use of ‘soccer’ being the worst offender; the book was originally titled How Soccer Explains the World). It also seems at times like he’s very gullible and susceptible to believing everything he hears. But if you look at it from his perspective of someone who wasn’t born into that culture, these errors are easier to overlook. And this is a good thing because many of the experiences written with such flair, insight and wit by Foer shouldn’t be missed or given less attention because we are so focused on the mistakes.
He writes about his travels and interviews with fans of diverse clubs beginning with Red Star Belgrade, the violence of one of the most notorious Serbian warlords and gangsters known popularly as Arkan who united fans for a serious form of battle when Yugoslavia collapsed into civil war, and an interview with a senior member of a Red Star fan club called Ultra Bad Boys who wonders whether he should kill Foer. We move on to the Roman Catholic (Celtic) vs Protestant (Rangers) rivalry of Glasgow’s Old Firm with the intense passion, ethnic hatred and hooliganism, then to the Semitism revolving around Tottenham Hotspurs and Ajax as well as the history of Vienna’s Hakoah – a predominantly Jewish club, followed by the politics of Latin America with the corruption and cartolas of Brazil and the consequent sad state of affairs of a sport that is religion for its masses.