How Soccer Explains the World: Amazon.co.uk: Franklin Foer: Books

Amazon.co.uk Review

Although written with a notably American slant, How Soccer Explains the World has universal appeal--just like the beautiful game itself. The global power of "soccer" might be a little hard to comprehend for Americans, living in a country that views the game with the same scepticism used for the metric system and the threat of killer bees, to grasp fully. But in Europe, South America and elsewhere, football is acknowledged as not merely a pastime but often an expression of the social, economic, political and racial composition of the communities that host both the teams and their throngs of enthusiastic fans.

New Republic editor Franklin Foer, a lifelong football devotee dating from his own inept youth playing days to an adulthood of obsessive fandom, examines the game's role in various cultures as a means of examining the reach of globalisation. Foer's approach is long on football reportage, providing extensive history and fascinating interviews on the Rangers-Celtic rivalry and the inner workings of AC Milan, and light on direct discussion of issues such as world trade and the exportation of Western culture. But by creating such a compelling narrative of soccer around the planet, Foer draws the reader into these sport-mad societies, and subtly provides the explanations he promises in chapters with titles such as "How Soccer Explains the New Oligarchs", "How Soccer Explains Islam's Hope", and "How Soccer Explains the Sentimental Hooligan".

Foer's own passion for the game gives his book an infectious energy but still pales in comparison to the religious fervour of his subjects. His portraits of legendary hooligans in Serbia and Britain, in particular, make the most die-hard roughneck New York Yankees fan look like a choirboy in comparison. Beyond the thugs, Foer also profiles Nigerian players living in the Ukraine, Iranian women struggling against strict edicts to attend matches, and the parallel worlds of Brazilian soccer and politics from which Pele emerged and returned. Foer posits that globalisation has eliminated neither local cultural identities nor violent hatred among fans of rival teams, and it has not washed out local businesses in a sea of corporate wealth nor has it quelled rampant local corruption. Readers with an interest in international economics are sure to like How Soccer Explains the World, but football fans will love it. --John Moe, Amazon.com

Product Description

Soccer is much more than a game, or even a way of life. It is a perfect window into the crosscurrents of today's world, with all of its joys and sorrows. Soccer clubs don't represent geographic areas; they stand for social classes and political ideologies, and often command more faith than religion. Unlike baseball or tennis, soccer is freighted with the weight of ancient hatreds and history. It's a sport with real stakes -- one that is capable of ruining regimes and launching liberation movements. In this insightful, wide-ranging work of reportage, Franklin Foer takes us on a surprising tour through the world of soccer, shattering the myths of our new global age along the way. He finds that instead of destroying local cultures, as the Left predicted, globalization has revived tribalism. And far from the triumph of capitalism that the Right predicted, it has entrenched corruption. In his travels, Foer encounters a collection of fans that is stranger than fiction: an English hooligan with a Jewish mother, a Nazi father, and a career as a soldier of fortune; a soccer fan club in Serbia that turns into a brutal anti-Muslim paramilitary unit; and a raucous crowd of Scots who urge him to take sides in their age-old rivalry between Catholic and Protestant teams. Telling stories in turns wild, violent, funny, and tragic, the author is able to shine a spotlight on the clash of civilizations, the international economy, and just about everything in between. From Brazil to Bosnia and from Italy to Iran, How Soccer Explains the World is an eye-opening chronicle of how a beautiful sport and its fanatical followers can illuminate the fault lines of a society, whether poverty, anti-Semitism, or radical Islam. Filled with blazing intelligence, colorful characters, wry humor, and an equal passion for soccer and humanity, this is an utterly original book that makes sense of our troubled times.

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

Kuper-Lite 17 Mar 2006

By "hiua12"

Format:Hardcover

The first thing to be said is that the title is rather misleading. Foer doesn't really exlpain quite how "soccer explains the world" - which is understandable was such a grandiose claim seems a little overblown. The blurb of the book also refers to globalisation and its effects on football, an issue that Foer sometimes loses track of. The chapter titles are also rather tiring, each begins, 'How Soccer Explains...' (eg, "How Soccer Explains Islam's Hope"). However, that said the book is well worth reading. The chapter on Serbian fans is particularly informing, showing just how the conflicts in the region express themselves and even had their roots in football and the fans of teams such as Red Star. The Nigeria-Ukrainian connect is also good, showing how trends and fashions in football are quickly made and then jumped on by other clubs. The book is made up of such essays and they are well written. Foer does take a global view, he does not just write about the big European footballing nations, but also the backwaters of Eastern Europe, the Arab states and the US. He shows that those who dismiss football as merely just a game are missing its deep sociological impact and the way in which football represents a tribe, region, nation or people.

Foer's major argument - that globalisation has eliminated neither local cultural identities nor violent hatred among fans of rival teams - is clearly explained, though most football fans could have told you the same thing.

How Soccer Explains the World is very similar to (some might say derivitive of)Simon Kuper's superb 'Football Against the Enemy'. If you haven't read 'Football Against the Enemy' then read it before you buy this, it is the better book, and it did what Foer has done more than a decade before him. Still, Foer's book is worth picking up, sort of as a companion piece to Kuper's.

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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful

An American tries to understand football - and fails 28 Nov 2005

By Peter T. Dewey

Format:Paperback

I bought this book primarily because it was written by an American who claims to be a football fanatic. Silly me. I thought an outsider's eyes might add extra insight to the impact that the beautiful game has on cultural values around the world. Sadly, they don't.

This book is a series of essays on football culture around the world - from Serbia to Scotland, a quick flirt with Austria, thence to England, Brazil and other points of the compass.

Foer seems to take the people he meets at face value and therefore he completely misses the point that most of them work him out the moment they meet him. Other than that flaw his writing reveals that he is an A1 grade intellectual. He writes well and there is also no doubt that he cares about the game.

The trouble is that he gives the impression that he watches the game he loves from a cushioned seat, high up in the grandstand of his own living room, surrounded by coke and popcorn.

This book has been well received by American critics. Fair enough and it may sell quite well there. That was probably the point of the exercise.

But it is another thing altogether to sell Foer's views on football to the fans who have stood on the terraces at real football places such as Leyton Orient or Lecce, Troyes or Getafe. And not just for one game, for season after season as the tradition is handed down from father to son (or daughter), generation upon generation as part of a tribal rite of passage.

In that sense it fails miserably because Foer, in common with many Americans, reduces football to a commodity - something to be exploited for commercial, political or religious reasons. Any true football fan knows the religious history behind Rangers & Celtic. Foer brings nothing new to that particular religious debate though he uses football to fan other flames that suit his own religious persuasion.

The clue to avoiding this book is one word in the title - 'unlikely'.

How soccer explains the world... or how this book doesn't explain anything. 31 Aug 2006

By Xavier

As the title clearly announces this book is supposed to show 'how football explains the world'. Yet all it does -- if that even -- is show how recent or not-so-recent events have altered the world of football. From the Rangers/Celtic rivalry to the corrupt Italian clubs and from hooliganism to how football provides a bubble of freedom to those oppressed by a dictatorial government, all the clichés about the game are once again rehashed. Nothing thought-provoking is said, nothing really new is added to the topic. The whole book smacks of "I'm an American but see how much I know about football." Boring.

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