“Knowing Christ is the best thing that has ever happened to me, although winning the US Open was a pretty good second.”
How Football Explains the World
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Franklin Foer, Arrow Books 2004. ISBN 0 09 949226
The book has ten chapters and takes a topic in each chapter to develop an argument. Examples:Chapter 1 The relationship between violence and football in Yugoslavia. Chapter 2 Rangers and Celtic; Chapter 3 How Hakoah in Viennia helped Jews establish their identity. Other examples are the hooliganism associated with Chelsea, corruption in Brazil, Nigerians in Ukraine, Italian moguls.
The opening chapter summarizes itself like this: “This book has three parts. The first tries to explain the failure of globalization to erode ancient hatreds in the game’s great rivalries. It is the hooligan-heavy section of the book. The second part uses soccer to address economics: the consequences of migration, the persistence of corruption, and the rise of powerful new oligarchs like Silvio Berlusconi, the president of Italy and the AC Milan club. Finally, the book uses soccer to defend the virtues of old-fashioned nationalism—a way to blunt the return of tribalism”.
Originally an American book, published as “How soccer explains the world”. The UK edition has changed “soccer” to “football” in the title but not in the text.
The book is called Football Explains the World – I did not feel that it did.