How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization

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How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization

3.69 of 5 stars 3.69 · rating details · 5,005 ratings · 513 reviews

Soccer is much more than a game, or even a way of life. It is a perfect window into the cross-currents of today's world, with all its joys and its sorrows. In this remarkably insightful, wide-ranging work of reportage, Franklin Foer takes us on a surprising tour through the world of soccer, shining a spotlight on the clash of civilizations, the international economy, and j...more

Paperback, 272 pages

Published July 5th 2005 by Harper Perennial (first published July 1st 2004)

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Jun 04, 2010 miaaa rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to miaaa by: footy maniacs

Shelves: ophelia-s-library, non-fictions-others

Warning: next writing is written under the state of cracking emotion. Any confusions and flaws it affects should not be taken for granted.

And it's not a review!

What is so special about football, that it pains so much when you lost and taking you so high when matches are won. And it kills you to see your beloved club is brought down by ignorant fools who know nothing about the game of passion.

Right now, when I'm writing this, I was torn in two out of madness. The real me is always a Blue and that...more

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Apr 07, 2008 Jim rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: anyone who knows that it is really called football

Shelves: it-is-football-dammit, non-fiction

First of all, it's played with the feet, but I'll call it "soccer" even though it pains me to do so. Like the author, I too am a soccer geek and a mediocre player. (I was a much better coach.)

The title promises more than the book delivers, but titles are often the work of publishers' promotion departments. (It's a minor quibble.) The book does a good job of showing how soccer is intertwined with issues of ethnic and sectarian identity, class conflict, politics and culture. It does this in a ligh...more

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Mar 18, 2007 Lilly G rated it 4 of 5 stars

Foer (brother of Jonathan Safran Foer, for those of you keeping track at home) puts his pen to the paper to explain world affairs to his american audience through the one lens they might identify with -- sports.

Unfortunately, the sport he chooses is soccer. Which American's don't give a shit about. But guess what? They don't give a shit about world affairs either, so it's a brilliant marriage.

(For you curious folk out there, he takes on major questions- racism, gender discrimination, fundamental...more

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Dec 22, 2008 selena rated it 3 of 5 stars

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...more 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.(less)

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May 18, 2010 Idle Hippo rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: nonfiksi

It's ectasy, anguish, joy and despair.
It's part of our history.
It's part of our country.
And it will be part of our future.
It's theatre, art, war and love.
It should be predictable ... but NEVER is.
It's a feeling that can't be explained but we spend our lives explaining it.

It's OUR religion.
We DO NOT apologise for it.
We DO NOT deny it.
They're OUR team, OUR family and OUR life.

Football
................
We know how you feel about it.
Because we feel the same...

Well, few years ago, I caught myself lost...more

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May 13, 2010 Alex rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: economics, history, sport, sociology, travel

Alright, so anybody that knows me knows what a freak I am about the beautiful game. Having said that I have to admit that I was more than a bit disappointed by this book. Now, the reviews that it had received weren't entirely terrific, nonetheless, it was a quick and interesting read at work. I can't say I didn't learn anything, but the author's thesis was tenuous at best and he never really "proved" (for lack of a better term right now) how, exactly, soccer "explains the world."

There was a good...more Alright, so anybody that knows me knows what a freak I am about the beautiful game. Having said that I have to admit that I was more than a bit disappointed by this book. Now, the reviews that it had received weren't entirely terrific, nonetheless, it was a quick and interesting read at work. I can't say I didn't learn anything, but the author's thesis was tenuous at best and he never really "proved" (for lack of a better term right now) how, exactly, soccer "explains the world."

There was a good bit of history provided within and most of the stories were interesting, but it's quickly obvious to someone who rabidly follows the game and attendant cultures (as there is no monolithic football culture) that the author is only a marginal follower and reminds me of the come-lately Chelsea fair weather fans. I mean seriously, in his story on Barcelona he makes it clear where he's coming from and he fits the stereotype I already had in my head regarding self-professed Barca fans (at least amongst Americans): he's a liberal yuppie and comes off as a bit self-righteous and snobbishly "cosmopolitan." Now I'm more than a little cosmopolitan--the fact that I'm an American who follows soccer proves it a bit I think--but jesus, mate, could you be a bit more predictable? You're the footballing equivalent of an American in a Che t-shirt. I will admit that I'll always support Barca v Real Madrid (fucking fascist bumpkins), but let's not get carried away.

Foer's attempt to tackle what I'll dub the "Italian Conundrum" falls short a bit, though it is probably the most thorough chapter in the book. Unfortunately the book was written before the Calciopoli scandal that broke just after the 2006 World Cup and the continuing crises that Italian football (and the country in general) has been experiencing. Italy is fucked up and corrupt as any reader's of Roberto Gotta's columns on soccernet.com can attest.

I guess I have the benefit of a bit of hindsight on these matters allowing me to view the game and its progression in the years that have followed the book's publication. However, that does little to change the fact that although Foer attempted to support his theories of globalization with soccer-related anecdotes, he actually makes the case against himself by demonstrating that football remains quite culturally specific despite the influx of capital and the increase in non-european born players. Time will tell, of course whether the upper echelons of the game come to represent the ideals of globalized capital (which is certainly arguable), but in less grandiose terms, football remains beholden to more parochial attitudes for better or worse. If Foer wasn't so blinded by his yuppie-ism and was actually a fan of the game, I think he would have noticed this.(less)

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Jul 26, 2007 Caroline rated it 3 of 5 stars

As a recent college graduate, unemployed, and slightly depressed during the summer of 2006, the World Cup in Germany was my saving grace. Hours upon hours of soccer games helped pass the idle days spent in bed fretting about the future.

Thus, by no means am I an expert of soccer. I've come to really enjoy the build up and release of tension that punctuates the games course of action. Not any less important is my fervent appreciation of very fit foreign men in shorts.

When I picked up "How Soccer...more

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Jan 07, 2011 David rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, sports

The title is completely misleading. There is no theory about globalization and soccer is not explaining the world at all. That out of the way, what Foer does is provide a series of vignettes or showing examples of how globalization has impacted the game in a few specific examples (ranging from the Glasgow Rangers and FC Barcelona to the Iranian and American national teams) focusing on changes in the culture of those teams over that last 60ish years. He provides anecdotes in each chapter that sho...more

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Oct 14, 2009 William Johnson rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: worst-books-ever

Reprinted from my website Secure Immaturity:

Hello mates!

I gave this book a quick read. The cover’s title and the gravitas the book gives off makes you feel like you really are reading something amazing here. Think about the oppurtunities in a book that examines the world’s greatest game in such a massive way! But the dubious length (a paltry 250-ish pages) and the rather broad approach quickly shot down my joy. Foer’s greatest strength here will be an ignorant audience. Those who don’t know foot...more Reprinted from my website Secure Immaturity:

Hello mates!

I gave this book a quick read. The cover’s title and the gravitas the book gives off makes you feel like you really are reading something amazing here. Think about the oppurtunities in a book that examines the world’s greatest game in such a massive way! But the dubious length (a paltry 250-ish pages) and the rather broad approach quickly shot down my joy. Foer’s greatest strength here will be an ignorant audience. Those who don’t know football, and that is many in the United States, will be easily tricked by Foer’s words. Foer claims he is shooting for a happy ending since he warns his book starts bleakly. But the happy ending never comes nor does an indepth study of globalization or nationalism, Foer’s favorite words! He uses them quite constantly but never really hits on any points that rock your social, economic, or political core. He takes very tiny moments and expands them, or rather, explodes them to epic proportions to fit his thesis. Any football fan knows the Old Firm matches are quite amazing and full of history but Foer takes a bit of creative license.

Also, quite shockingly, Foer only focuses on three or four clubs in England for more then a few pages and all of them are given a negative vibe. Manchester United simply ‘buys’ championships. Tottenham and Chelsea are made up of zealous blue collar goons and racists. These are ‘elements’ of these teams but not their only qualities.

And Foer makes the mistake of thinking that soccer in regions where there is little knowledge can outweigh the fact that the stories aren’t too interesting. The Nigerian revolution in the Ukraine is indeed interesting but not 50-page interesting. The Jewish leagues in the 20s is quite interesting and begs you to go ‘what-if?’ but once again: 50 pages?

In the end, the author sounds too pretentious to be taken serious. He is playing to the ignorant and ignoring the intelligent Americans who know what the hell is going on in the football world! After reading the dark, twisted first chapter about Serbia and Croatia I talked to a friend from that region about it. She was shocked at how biased the book was. Granted I have only one viewpoint per side but I have to take the former resident’s word over the authors who spent only as long as a few weeks there and visited at least a decade after the events described. Avoid this book but if you have to read it please keep other sources ready to check the facts!

(less)

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Oct 01, 2012 William Roper rated it 3 of 5 stars

I’m a huge soccer fan, that’s why this book caught my eye when I was looking at the list of books we could choose from. Franklin Foer does a great job connecting soccer to what happens I our world now, and also explains his adventures and interviews with people around the world very well. Foer picks the right topics for this book, and it was surprising how many problems that are in our society that can connect to soccer.

I had trouble connecting myself to a lot of the chapters. Soccer fans, don’...more

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Feb 13, 2011 Chris McClinch rated it 3 of 5 stars

I'm a sucker for books with this premise: using X as a lens, explain world history or sociology in a way I'd never really thought about it before. Some of these books leave indelible marks, and others overreach, never really living up to their premise. For the most part, I thought How Soccer Explains the World overreached. Franklin Foer is an engaging writer, but many chapters had difficulty moving beyond the pitch to truly address a society at large. Still, at its best--in exploring the role so...more

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Jan 23, 2011 Ian Mchugh rated it 2 of 5 stars

I read this book at the beginning of 2011. It's outdated beyond belief. Most of the references now seem so archaic that the whole tenuous premise of the book is utterly undermined.

The broad-stroke and simplistic portraits painted of English football would have had me annoyed in 2004 as they were outdated then, but now they really are things of the past.

I did learn things from the book, and in that respect it must be applauded - the chapter on anti-Semitism n football and on pre-WWII Jewish footb...more

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Oct 27, 2010 Philip Boling rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: soccer fan's

Recommended to Philip by: Vickie

I am really into soccer I still keep in my trunk a bag with ball, pads and shoes just in case. Now about the book: It could have been called "Soccer and Scandal" and although I really did enjoy reading the book, it was not censored at all. So I got more than my annual fill of uncouth language. Bottom line a lot of soccer fans have no class. Ethnic hatred, religious hatred...

If you have ever held: Real Madrid, Vasco de Gama, AC Milan or Juventus on a pedestal, well put away the pedestal.

I tend t...more

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Jun 18, 2010 Laylah rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'm not a football (soccer) fan. Or I should say, I really didn't know very much about it. My best friend played when we were kids. Another close friend played it for several years. As an adult it's something I was vaguely aware of and had many stereotypical images of rough crowds, fast complicated footwork, and movie characters in European films mad for the game. World Cup fever has hit my social network and I became curious. When I'm curious, I read up. I picked up "How Soccer Explains the Wor...more

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Feb 28, 2010 Ben rated it 3 of 5 stars

Recommended to Ben by: Nate

Shelves: sports, politics

As for an (unlikely) theory of globalization – I must have missed that part, but Franklin Foer does a decent job of helping explain the relationship between soccer and self & national identity. The style is light and readable; I finished this in an amazingly short period of time, and it is mostly full of interesting characters, histories and anecdotes. Occasionally Foer wanders off into some sociological analysis that seemed less plausible to the facts presented. And, like a true fan but not...more

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Nov 15, 2009 Rhys rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: grade-8-ir-books

In the book How How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization by Franklin Foer is an amazing book! Off the bat it shows how soccer effects a country and how it affects people and players. On on part of the book it describes why there is a rivalry between Celtic and Rangers, and it is really interesting to learn that they have a rivalry because celtic is a Catholic and plays in green and white and Rangers is protistan and play in Blue and white. Back in the day they would hav...more

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Jun 14, 2012 Bryan Isabal rated it 3 of 5 stars

I thought the book on, How Soccer Explains the World was very good and interesting to read because it shows you how back in the 1990s people were so desperate of winning that they would use violence to win a game.But it also shows how a sport brings the whole world together, to watch the World Cup.Franklin Foer was my favorite character because he describes how bad he was at soccer but he kept on watching and learning how the game was played, like the teams formation and how many good players t...more

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Nov 23, 2009 Bunga Mawar rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: how-to-and-philosophy, it-s-mine, stated-as-nonfiction, translated-into-indonesian

Saya ini orang awam dalam sepakbola, karena itu buku ini musti menarik.

Membaca buku ini tentu dari depan, ya, bagian pengantar. Lanjut Bab 1, Bab2... mulai deg2an... Bab3... makin deg2an, tercengang, terperangah... baru tahu nih... ya ampun... ya ampuuun... ooh... gitu ya?... aaaah.... tidak... jangan sampai!!!... amit2... adduuuh, kalau ternyata juga.... kalau benar begitu, gimana nih...???? aaahh... takuuut!!!!

Ampoooooonnn!!!

Lalu saya tutup dulu waktu Angus sambil mabuk berbisik pada Frank t...more

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Jul 31, 2012 Jeroen rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Almost done with this one, but I can already conclude that this is a fine book on the subject, eloquently describing how football is much more than just a sport. Football is where sports, culture, society, business and politics come together and this book does a good job of explaining this phenomenon in several parts of the world. The chapters on the influence of oligarchs on football in the Ukraine and Italy are excellent, as are the chapters that explain how football played (and plays) a major...more Almost done with this one, but I can already conclude that this is a fine book on the subject, eloquently describing how football is much more than just a sport. Football is where sports, culture, society, business and politics come together and this book does a good job of explaining this phenomenon in several parts of the world. The chapters on the influence of oligarchs on football in the Ukraine and Italy are excellent, as are the chapters that explain how football played (and plays) a major role in defining 20th century conflicts like the war in Yugoslavia and the Troubles in Northern Ireland and Scotland.

Even better was the chapter on Jewism in football, which actually thought me a thing or two about the history of the sport. For instance, I never knew that the Austrian league in the early 20th century was dominated by an all-Jew superstar team named Hakoah, and the history of that team described here makes for awesome reading.

A few notes of criticism: I don't give a rat's ass about the fact that Americans call the sport 'soccer' because they can't make the simple distinction between American football (also known as Handegg) and football, like the rest of the world does. The sport Mr. Foer writes about is called football, period. So shame on you, Mr. Foer, for perpetuating the use of this artificial term 'soccer'.

Secondly, the chapter about FC Barcelona could be skipped, as it is overly influenced by Mr. Foer's (admittedly self-professed) fanship of the club. As many fans of Barcelona do, he perpetuates the myth that Barcelona would somehow stand above 'multinational conglomerates like Manchester United and Juventus who buy championships every year'. Not only is this characterization of United and Juve plain wrong, it also wrongly creates the impression that Barcelona would have a different approach from these and other teams in terms of applying the rules of capitalism and big money to football. Funnily enough, only a few sentences further Mr. Foer highlights how every Barca president promises (and subsequently proceeds) to 'buy a team of superstar players'. That's that debate settled then. (On second thought, don't skip the chapter, because the 'interview' with Hristo Stoichkov is downright hilarious).

Anyway, all in all this was an entertaining read and better than most football (that is football, Mr. Foer) books.(less)

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Apr 03, 2011 an rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: kritik-sosial

giring, giring, tendang. umpan, terobosan dan tendangan ke gawang. siapa sangka ternyata sepak bola tidak sekedar permainan di lapangan. banyak hal yang bermain di balik na.

seperti yang diungkap frank dalam buku ini. berbagai negara dia singgahi, beberapa klub dia datangi. beberapa sporter dia wawancara. dan hasil na... sungguh. saat banyak kepentingan mendompleng dan memanfaatkan sepak bola. perang antar negara, kejatuhan ras, agama bahkan juga harga diri. di atas logo tim dan konstum kesebelas...more

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Jun 15, 2010 Tyler rated it 3 of 5 stars

Getting ready for World Cup 2010 w/ this one.

And Americans think they are crazy about football! This book goes into some wild (and honestly quite pathetic at times) stories about futbol enthusiasts, fanatics, and hooligans the world over. The author covered a variety of soccer-saturated cultures and made the connection between the sport and the culture itself. They are very interrelated almost everywhere besides the USA (although the last chapter the author did follow suit for Uncle Sam), and s...more

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Jan 27, 2010 Chris rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: sports, reporting-interviews-trials, history-italy, history-central-south-america, history-russia-and-eastern-europe

Warning: Depsite the fact that I am a Yank, I might refer to soccer as football in this review. The term football makes more sense.

In 2000, I was making my way back from Copenhagen (Ah Wonderful Copenhagen, Beautiful Copenhagen, where I lived down the street from a waffle factory. I would get hungery just stepping outside the building), I had a lay over in Paris. The only time I have ever been to Paris. (Do you have any idea how long it took to me find something affordable to eat? And this was b...more

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Apr 15, 2011 Scott Miles rated it 4 of 5 stars

I'm not sure that I can see where this book "explains the world", but it was definitely a lively and entertaining read. I felt it read more as an extended series of investigative magazine articles that were stitched together in a book, but don't take that as a negatative!

The book dives into unique circumstances at football clubs from around the world. I don't have it with me to double-check, but from memory a couple weeks after finishing the book, I recall Scotland, the former Yugoslavia, Ukrain...more

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Apr 01, 2012 Jeremy rated it 2 of 5 stars

This is an occasionally interesting book that oversold itself. It is not an "explanation"; it is a collection of opinion pieces. It reminds me of the baseball commentaries that talk about the deep-seated psychological roots of passion for the game. A few chapters are compelling (the chapter about the Rangers-Celtic rivalry comes to mind, if it is a bit one-sided). But in the end, the book is more a collection of half-researched anecdotes about soccer fandom overseas, than any kind of (quasi-)ser...more

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Apr 03, 2013 Paul rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: reviewed

As someone with a dedicated interest in sports history, I had heard a lot about this book and knew that it would be essential reading in the field, which has often lacked intellectual depth and scholarly inquiry. It was obvious that, at less than 300 pages, this book was not going to live up to the title, but I was not too concerned. After all, a title is meant to hook you into reading and this one does a great job. The first few chapters draw you in as well, their style, tone, insight, and over...more As someone with a dedicated interest in sports history, I had heard a lot about this book and knew that it would be essential reading in the field, which has often lacked intellectual depth and scholarly inquiry. It was obvious that, at less than 300 pages, this book was not going to live up to the title, but I was not too concerned. After all, a title is meant to hook you into reading and this one does a great job. The first few chapters draw you in as well, their style, tone, insight, and overall content urging one to keep reading at every page. The writing is impeccable and the interviews are fantastic; Foer has clearly done his home – and leg – work here, securing exclusive discussions with some of the key actors in, and witnesses of, his narratives.

This positive feeling, however, does not last. The book loses steam in the middle and, in my opinion, never recovers. Foer attempts to ride the line between scholarly merit and popular accessibility but his work will likely fail to satisfy either audience. From the mid-point on it feels like Foer, a journalist, is trying to overcompensate for not being an academic. In doing so he makes the subject matter unapproachable for the casual reader, and the fact that his vocabulary list reads like my old GRE study sheet is but one symptom of this. There are only so many times that one can use a difficult word when a simpler one would do before the study becomes needlessly obtuse, not to mention pretentious. This shift ends up taking the punch out of any revelation or message it might otherwise have had.

Other reviewers have gone into detail about specific chapters and have done a great job, so there is no need to rehash what has already been said. The chapter I want to focus on is the one on Iran, which is the main one that interested me in this work. I already had low expectations from the title, “Islam’s Hope”, (is the entire religion, and all its many branches, in need of a savior?) and his analysis is, at best, the most obviously biased of the book and, at worst, borderline Islamophobic. His case study for “Islam” is Iran, a dictatorship, which seems about as fair as discussing “Christianity” exclusively through the lens of the Spanish Inquisition. Of course, by choosing a walled nation like Iran, he has precluded the opportunity to study the subject matter first-hand; there are no interviews, illuminating or otherwise, with figures involved in the actual events, another notable departure from his other chapters. This leads to a lot of information that is, if not entirely erroneous, then noticeably skewed and a more academic, point-by-point review of this chapter would have a lot of questionable details to cover. Moreover, he has chosen the country with the greatest amount, and proportion of, Shia Muslims without so much as mentioning that Shia religious tradition, history, and experiences are markedly different from those of the majority Sunni (and thus, as a minority, their reaction to globalizing influences may be very different as well). This is not to defend the Iranian regime, for certainly Foer did not need to invent its repressive elements, but merely to point out that using the Iranian regime as a proxy for “Islam” is not only an egregious misrepresentation, but undermines the complexity of both branches of Islam and the religion as a whole. It also got me wondering how much of the other chapters, about which I am much less familiar, have oversimplified their key concepts as well. For Foer, because Iran has done it wrong, anything is preferable to Islam being in charge. Soccer’s globalizing influence, he posits, might just save the day. I’m not going to go into too much more detail than that, as this is supposed to be a general review, but the Islam chapter is problematic enough to warrant bypassing and, like most chapters, can be skipped without affecting the flow of the book.

The Islam section, and the somewhat weak American one that follows, lowered my opinion of a work about which I had initially been very enthused. I still believe that this book is essential reading for the serious sports historian, but only because of the paucity of other sources. It is, undoubtedly, a great idea, but it suffers from poor execution. As another reviewer wrote, it is a great introduction to soccer (or football as most of the world calls it) and approachable for someone who knows little to nothing about the game. A more coherent and thoroughly examined thesis might have saved this work in the academic realm, while a little less pedantry might have made it a better tome for the more casual reader. In either case, its unique premise and approach might have made it a classic. As it stands, however, this will only be essential reading so long as no one writes anything better.(less)

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Jun 25, 2010 Curtis Winkle rated it 5 of 5 stars

(My review for Variance Magazine)

In light of the World Cup season, I recently picked up Franklin Foer’s How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization. While sport-themed tomes often fail in their tendency toward clichéd “go-get-um” mantras or tell-all personal indulgences, this book is a stirring success. Foer, a journalist by trade, travels to ten different “soccer-rich” nations and interviews locals about the sport and its cultural nuances in their region. The discussions...more

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Jan 15, 2012 Jamie VW rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is a travelogue more than an actual comprehensive theory of globalization as the cover suggests, but it is just so much fun that its tenuous hold on a thesis hardly matters. I can imagine that those who care little about soccer will not garner nearly as much enjoyment, but with Ajax pride pulsing in my blood, it kept me fascinated and smiling throughout.

Without going into each chapter, Foer leaves two of his best for near the end - humorously fusing his passion for FC Barcelona with an intr...more

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Apr 12, 2010 Mark Picketts rated it 3 of 5 stars

I thought it fitting to take this book on in preparation for this summer's world cup and in appreciation for returning to a futbol crazed nation. I really thought the book would be better than it was and shine this wonderful light on how the world's game really is so much more than simply a game. I thought it delivered a lot of really interesting parallels and examples the world over but i found that it lacked a strong conclusions to really tie together what was being said in the book. Individua...more

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Feb 11, 2010 Adam rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: current-events, sports, soccer

An enticing title that I've noticed for a while but passed over as my interest in soccer really extends no further than the field itself. Despite my love for playing the game, I've never been a big 'fan' as it is, well, difficult to care when you live in a place that broadcasts probably a dozen games a year. . . and that's if there are World Cup qualifiers on!

Despite my lack of knowledge about the sport on a world stage, I greatly enjoyed Foer's account of futbol as a means for explaining a vari...more

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Apr 21, 2013 Lyman Maddox rated it 3 of 5 stars

I enjoyed this book, and recommend it as an interesting read.

The book was published in 2004. In it, Franklin Foer (bad soccer player, big soccer fan, political journalist) says about globalization and soccer:

"The world's brief experiment in interdependence didn't come close to delivering the advertised result of prosperity. This book tries to address some of the nagging questions about this failure: Why have some nations remained poor, even though the had so much foreign investment coursing thro...more

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“Soccer isn't the same as Bach or Buddhism. But it is often more deeply felt than religion, and just as much a part of the community's fabric, a repository of traditions.” — 10 people liked it

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title link	preview: How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization
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BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10395.How_Soccer_Explains_the_World?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1347554505l/10395.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10395.How_Soccer_Explains_the_World?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization by Franklin Foer[/url]

How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization

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