I’m trying to drum up a new section called “Soccer Books,” which is a collection of my personal reviews of footie-related literature. Franklin Foer’s How Soccer Explains The World has received wide praise from football fans of all stripes so this is the best book with which to start things out.
A bit about Foer. As of this writing, he’s the editor at The New Republic whose writing has appeared in Slate and New York magazine. In the interest of full disclosure, it seems that Foer went to my high school (go Hoppers), so I’m slightly biased going into this post. He played soccer as a kid, although not well by his own admittance. Along with a plethora of document research, Foer traveled to far reaching corners of the world to interview a wide array of subjects in order to tell this story: from soccer players to old-time footie hooligans to former henchmen of Slobodan Milosevic.
The subhead of the book is “an {unlikely} theory of globalization” and I agree that it is. Merriam Webster defines “globalize” as “to make worldwide in scope or application” and if you want to make a comparison centered around a worldwide application, soccer’s a really good a centerpiece. Foer describes the backdrop role that footie plays in ten social, political and economical instances. the Kosovo Conflict, the role of the church in Old Firm Derby, Islam’s archaic rules preventing women from participating in soccer, the strong Jewish football community in pre-Nazi Austria…to name just a few instances.
How Soccer also provides an excellent case study in the global gentrification of the game mostly due to the fourth and sixth chapters-respectively “How Soccer Explains the Sentimental Hooligan” and “How Soccer Explains the Black Carpathians.” The former takes an in-depth look of Chelsea’s role in moving football’s traditional hooligan and middle class fan base out of view in order to gain an upper class one. The latter observes football in the post-communist Ukraine, where the new club owners went on a buying spree for top Nigerian footie talent. The new talent didn’t fit into the country’s fabric too easily as the simultaneously enjoy praise and racism from the fans.
But Foer’s states in the prologue that the How Soccer story “begins bleakly and grows progressively optimistic” and the optimism is best expressed in the book’s eighth chapter, “How Soccer Explains the Discreet Charm of Bourgeois Nationalism,” the chapter that put a smile on my face six pages into it. Here, Foer recalls Franco-era Spain and how the forward thinking region of Catalonia held it’s own against the many backwards thinking ones. How the Catalonian capital’s team, FC Barcelona, fits into all this is a fascinating story. And Foer, and admitted die-hard Barca supporter, waxes poetically about all that’s good about not only the team but of Barcelona itself. So poetic that I told my wife, a lover of all thing’s Spain like me and herself a die-hard Barca supporter, not to read the book because of this chapter. If she did, I warned, then she would insist that we move to Barcelona ASAP.
Football’s long-standing xenophobic fabric isn’t How Soccer’s central theme, which is correct since there’s so much more to the game then that. Sadly, racism is part of the game and Foer didn’t try to hide or dress up this fact, also correct. Along with the “Black Carpathians” chapter, the racist past of many big name clubs is reviewed, including my that of my beloved Real Madrid whom Francisco Franco staunchly supported. Chelsea’s long past of hooligan-led antisemitism isn’t glossed over. And in the books final chapter, “How Soccer Explains the American Culture Wars,” America itself is held accountable it’s own long-standing soccer prejudice.
This post may seemingly suggest that the book is more down than it is up, but that’s incorrect. While there are sections where the content is tough to take in, the sum is greater than the parts. How Soccer’s simply describes how football is an integral part of the global stage (except for the states) and it’s effect on past, present, and future communities. The second-to-last a chapter may discuss why women can’t play soccer in Islamic communities, but that chapter is called “How Soccer Explains Islam’s Hope.” And hope is the operative word here as it tells of a people’s rebellion to get women involved in the game.
As an addendum, the book is filled with some fascinating trivia. I didn’t know that Pele was broke, got rich, went broke again and then got rich again. I learned the “hows” and “whys” of Celtic’s and Ranger’s seemingly infinite hatred of one another. And if your curious as to how Real Madrid aquired David Beckham, Ronaldo and Zinedine Zidane seemingly all at once, How Soccer explains why.
I highly, highly, HIGHLY, suggest the book to everyone. Die-hard football fans, those curious about soccer itself or people that simply just like to read! How Soccer Explains The World is a fascinating sociological study of the beautiful game. And while the story is a tough read sometimes, the story doesn’t make the game any less beautiful.
Buy it at either Amazon or Barnes and Noble.