Six books that explain the frenzied interest in the World Cup
When Brazil and Croatia kick off the World Cup this Thursday, the English speaking literary giants will be absent. It isn’t until England plays Italy on Saturday that the writers Wayne Rooney, Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard will make their first appearance. Rooney, Gerrard and Lampard have each published autobiographies in recent years that, unfortunately, deserve to be tossed on the mountain of worthless books written about the game.
Luckily, there are several books about soccer that go against the grain and stand up to the ultimate test of any literary work: they are worth reading more than once. Unlike the books written by the lads which come out of the same food mixer (ingredients: hard-scrabble background; childhood spent gnawing on sparrows’ bones; declaration of lifelong affection for club; tales of practical jokes played on teammates; declaration of familial love; badinage about teammates' nicknames; declaration of lifelong loyalty to second club; declaration of love for first wife; bouts of food poisoning before vital games; declaration of lifelong dream to play for third club) – the best works place soccer in perspective.
Here are five, a selection hopelessly biased towards those written in English, that may be more interesting than many of the 64 games that will be played in Brazil. I was steered towards two of these by a pair of the world’s best soccer writers, Simon Kuper of theFinancial Times and Rob Hughes of the International Herald Tribune.
The Ball is Round. This is the first and last word for those interested in the history of football, sometimes called soccer. It’s a work of stupendous erudition composed in a manner that is captivating whether your homeland is in the Americas, Europe or Africa. Its author, David Goldblatt, explains how soccer has grown against the background tapestry of the political and economic circumstances of its principal homes. Goldblatt shows how soccer, at first merely a neighborhood attraction, is now followed from the mountains of Bhutan to the forests of Patagonia due to the growth of television and satellite coverage.
A century ago, players who turned out for a European club were probably born within hailing distance of the stadium. Today they come from all over the world – a tribute to the ease of air-travel, the greed and occasional venality (and corruption) of club owners and some of soccer’s main associations, the emergence of soccer-players as celebrities – and an ever-larger television audience. Recently in England, a commission was charged with protecting an endangered species: the indigenous British soccer player – threatened by the predator, the overseas player with infinite talent who might come from Ghana, the Ivory Coast, Brazil, South Korea, Uruguay and, in recent years, the U.S.
The Football Man. First published in 1968, the tail end of the period during which the English could still delude themselves that they were the world’s greatest soccer power (and just a few years after not just England but also Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland somehow qualified for the Word Cup), this work explains how the sport came to have a popular following.
Exquisitely written by Arthur Hopcraft, who later wrote screenplays such as Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, it includes as powerful an invocation of the grip of soccer as you will find anywhere:
What happens on the football field matters, not in the way that food matters but as poetry does to some people and alcohol does to others: it engages the personality. It has conflict and beauty, and when those two qualities are present together in something offered for public appraisal they represent much of what I understand to be art. The people own this art in the way they can never own any form of music, theatre, literature or religion."
Among the Thugs. Written by Bill Buford in 1990, after soccer mobs had spent 20 years perfecting the brutish violence that was the British equivalent of hurricanes swooping down on the Gulf Coast, this book offers a view of a particular time which, thanks to the aftermath of a series of terrible stadium disasters in which hundred perished; a long period during which British clubs were banned from Europe; and the installation of seats in every ground, is as much a period piece as Clockwork Orange.
Today women and children are safe inside British soccer grounds while, sadly, stadium violence now haunts Italy and thugs in Eastern European stadiums specialize in vicious taunting of black players.
The Football Men. I keep returning to Simon Kuper’s portraits of about seventy footballers, managers and other people associated with the modern game. These exquisite profiles are like a work of mixed media: the ink drawing of the player or manager under scrutiny; the pencil outline of the landscape from which the person has emerged and the gouache wash that blends the two – among them the Dutchman, Johann Cruyff, the Portugese, Jose Mourinho, the Frenchman, Arsene Wenger, the Spaniard Cesc Fabregas, the Argentinian Lionel Messi and the Englishman David Beckham.
Most of the men portrayed by Kuper, all of whose lives have been defined by a round ball, are more complicated than they first appear. Some prospered, others survived, and a few fell from grace. Kuper’s pot-pourri shows what’s possible when a fine writer, not obligated to follow the daily fortunes of any one team, turns an observant eye to sport.
The Damned Utd. Owners of soccer clubs hire and fire managers (coaches) with more rapidity than hedge fund managers buy and sell stocks. In 1974, Brian Clough, by then one of the best-known managers in Britain, was hired by Leeds United to assume the role held by Don Revie, who had left to manage the English national team.
Clough, one of the most quick-witted characters ever to manage a club, antagonized the Leeds’ players, disappointed the fans and within 44 days was out of a job. In later life, Clough descended into alcoholism and 15,000 people attended his memorial service. This mordant and absorbing novel by David Pearce was made into a movie with the same name in 2009.
Vertigo, One Football’s Fear of Success. Ever contemplated what it is like to devote an entire life to following an English Premier League club – particularly one that, in the past 40 years has never won a championship? Then John Crace is your man and, in Vertigo, he describes how his life revolves around the north London club, Tottenham Hotspur. His wife, his employer, and his credit card company tolerate his addiction.
Crace doesn’t miss a home game; he tramps to obscure corners of Europe to watch away games; he scours eBay for old tickets, match programs and trinkets and lives a life of perpetual – but not surprising – disappointment. Little wonder that he discloses a lifelong battle with anxiety and depression. No shrink would ever suggest someone’s spirits would rise by swearing allegiance to Tottenham Hotspur, the perpetual bridesmaid of London Soccer.
Top photo: The Corinthians Arena in Sao Paulo, which will host the opening match of the World Cup between Brazil and Croatia (Miguel Schincariol/AFP/Getty Images).
