How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization has been on my shelf for years and it was the mention of soccer that kept me from reading it. Despite being from Eastern Europe, I am completely ambivalent toward soccer.
And yet Franklin Foer uses soccer as a brilliant example to discuss hooliganism within soccer, nationalism and corruption. He writes about specific soccer teams (mostly in Europe but also Brazil) and how team rivalries show themselves to be much more complex than what they seem.
As soon as I started reading the first story, I was taken aback with how wonderful Foer is. It probably helps that I lived through the Yugoslavian war and know that soccer rivalries were used for nationalistic purposes – and in fact – the die-hard fans were organized under the Serbian party and are responsible for two thousand known deaths. Foer perfectly captured the obsession and quite frankly, the hatred that existed during those years.
Each chapter is set up to explain a certain aspect of globalization and uses two teams (usually rivals) to explain it. What made this book particularly interesting is that he went to these countries and talked to the hooligans that lived it, getting their accounts of things. It wasn’t a dry history, instead, it provided an insider’s view. Aside from the incidents with Red Star Belgrade in former Yugoslavia, it was interesting to see how soccer is tied in to so many corruption schemes, money-laundering operations and nationalist groups. It even mentioned this through soccer groups that I’ve heard of like Manchester, Chelsea, Barcelona, Real Madrid, Red Star Belgrade and players like Ronaldo.
You do not need to be a soccer buff to enjoy this book nor to understand it (though maybe the significance of the Ronaldo reference will be beyond you). Foer adequately explains any funny soccer terms that he uses (which isn’t many). I was worried, getting into this book, that it would focus on the technical aspects of soccer would overwhelm me, but I was wrong.
Franklin Foer, brother to Jonathan Safran Foer, is known for sports coverage and his work as the editor of the New Republic (a prominent politics and culture magazine). It only makes sense for him to use his knowledge of sports to help explain certain aspects of the world.
‘Franco, Mussolini, and a high percentage of all modern dictators have made the link between sport and populist politics countless times. To Berlusconi’s left-wing ctitics, the resemblance to these tyrants is not coincidental (page 186).’
Completely unrelated, but apparently everyone in the Foer family is a successful writer. Bastards.
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Filed under: Franklin Foer, Literature Reviews , Eastern Europe, Franklin Foer, Globalization, How Soccer Explains the World, Literature, Nationalism, Soccer
