Kuper is also the author of the highly regarded Soccernomics reviewed earlier. While that book is an economist's view of the game, this earlier book (1994) is about the intertwining of soccer and politics. Kuper traveled across Europe to Eastern Europe, Russia, and a number of former Soviet republics. Then back to the UK, Spain, the Netherlands, and Italy where a former club director eventually became the Prime Minister. Some of the longest and most details chapters are devoted to Africa. Kuper then jumps to Argentina, where the military dictatorship used the 1978 World Cup to their advantage, to Brazil, where soccer is played to music, to the US for the 1994 World Cup. Overall, this is a fascinating look at how a game can have such impact on the psyche and soul of nations and why the game has failed to capture the imagination of the US. For the most part, up until this book, most titles on the game were either coaching books or books about personalities, clubs, or the World Cup. This seems to be one of the very first academic, if you will, treatments of a game that has spawned other books like Soccernomics, Inverting the Pyramid, Brilliant Orange, How Soccer Explains the World, et al.
Fascinating . . . simply fascinating, for more than soccer enthusiasts, but also for people interested in the interworkings of culture, politics, and the soul of nations.
East Coast Don
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