The global power of soccer might be a little hard for Americans, living in a country that views the game with the same skepticism used for the metric system and the threat of killer bees, to grasp fully. But in Europe, South America, and elsewhere, soccer is not merely a pastime but often an expression of the social, economic, political, and racial composition of the communities that host both the teams and their throngs of enthusiastic fans. New Republic editor Franklin Foer, a lifelong devotee of soccer dating from his own inept youth playing days to an adulthood of obsessive fandom, examines soccer's role in various cultures as a means of examining the reach of globalization. Foer's approach is long on soccer reportage, providing extensive history and fascinating interviews on the Rangers-Celtic rivalry and the inner workings of AC Milan, and light on direct discussion of issues like world trade and the exportation of Western culture. But by creating such a compelling narrative of soccer around the planet, Foer draws the reader into these sport-mad societies, and subtly provides the explanations he promises in chapters with titles like "How Soccer Explains the New Oligarchs", "How Soccer Explains Islam's Hope", and "How Soccer Explains the Sentimental Hooligan." Foer's own passion for the game gives his book an infectious energy but still pales in comparison to the religious fervor of his subjects. His portraits of legendary hooligans in Serbia and Britain, in particular, make the most die-hard roughneck New York Yankees fan look like a choirboy in comparison. Beyond the thugs, Foer also profiles Nigerian players living in the Ukraine, Iranian women struggling against strict edicts to attend matches, and the parallel worlds of Brazilian soccer and politics from which Pele emerged and returned. Foer posits that globalization has eliminated neither local cultural identities nor violent hatred among fans of rival teams, and it has not washed out local businesses in a sea of corporate wealth nor has it quelled rampant local corruption. Readers with an interest in international economics are sure to like How Soccer Explains the World, but soccer fans will love it. --John Moe


From Publishers Weekly
Foer, a New Republic editor, scores a game-winning goal with this analysis of the interchange between soccer and the new global economy. The subtitle is a bit misleading, though: he doesn't really use soccer to develop a theory; instead, he focuses on how examining soccer in different countries allows us to understand how international forces affect politics and life around the globe. The book is full of colorful reporting, strong characters and insightful analysis: In one of the most compelling chapters, Foer shows how a soccer thug in Serbia helped to organize troops who committed atrocities in the Balkan War—by the end of the war, the thug's men, with the acquiescence of Serbian leaders, had killed at least 2,000 Croats and Bosnians. Then he bought his own soccer club and, before he was gunned down in 2000, intimidated other teams into losing. Most of the stories aren't as gruesome, but they're equally fascinating. The crude hatred, racism and anti-Semitism on display in many soccer stadiums is simply amazing, and Foer offers context for them, including how current economic conditions are affecting these manifestations. In Scotland, the management of some teams have kept religious hatreds alive in order to sell tickets and team merchandise. But Foer, a diehard soccer enthusiast, is no anti-globalist. In Iran, for example, he depicts how soccer works as a modernizing force: thousands of women forced police to allow them into a men's-only stadium to celebrate the national team's triumph in an international match. One doesn't have to be a soccer fan to truly appreciate this absorbing book. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
Franklin Foer, armed with a terrific idea, took six months off from his job as a staff writer at the New Republic to tour the soccer capitals of the world. He set out to observe soccer as a way to understand the consequences of globalization -- the increasing interdependence of the world's nations -- by studying a sport in which "national borders and national identities had been swept into the dustbin of soccer history." The result is a travelogue full of important insights into both cultural change and persistence. Foer returned from this global tour convinced that globalization has not and will not soon wipe away local institutions and cultures. On the contrary, he suspects that the opposite has happened: In response to the threat of global integration, local entities have launched counterattacks that are successful but "not always in such a good way." Local blood feuds and corruption have proved to be remarkably persistent. So persistent, in fact, that Foer believes that globalization is not likely to deliver on the promise of a more humane world order that some of its proponents anticipate. That would require a liberal nationalism, a development necessary "to blunt the return of tribalism." Soccer, at its best, shows how this might work. For Foer, the sport demonstrates that "you could love your country -- even consider it a superior group -- without desiring to dominate other groups or closing yourself off to foreign impulses." Regarding the "not so good ways" that locals respond to globalism, Foer found much to worry about. The world of soccer can be quite ugly. In Serbia, fans of Red Star Belgrade became, as he puts it, "Milosevic's shock troops, the most active agents of ethnic cleansing, highly efficient practitioners of genocide." The "unfinished fight over the Protestant Reformation" is kept alive in the stands in Glasgow. And, at least as he reports it, Margaret Thatcher was not far off the mark when she said that the hooliganism that emerged in soccer during the 1980s was "a disgrace to civilized society." Foer argues that the gruesome antisocial fan behavior that occurs when soccer is at its worst is counterbalanced in other places where the sport plays a role in creating a more humane order. The most interesting and unlikely of these is Iran. During the Islamic Revolution of 1979, women were prohibited from attending soccer games at Tehran's 120,000-seat stadium. But, as Foer tells it, this banning never fully took effect, with some women sneaking into the facility dressed in men's clothes. Pressed by female soccer fans, the ruling Iranian clergy issued a new fatwa in 1987 that allowed women to watch games on television, though the ban on attendance remained in place.This compromise could not survive the jubilation that followed the Iranian national team's successful capture of a World Cup berth in 1997. The team itself was at least to some extent a participant in the liberal global order: Its coach was a Brazilian who wore a necktie, an accessory that the ruling clergy considered a European imposition. But the victory celebration and its aftermath were even more important. Foer reports that many of the younger celebrants were women, some of whom danced with uncovered heads. Further, at the official celebration at the stadium, when women were denied entrance they mounted a demonstration. They shouted, "Aren't we part of this nation? We want to celebrate too. We aren't ants." Ultimately they broke through the police barriers and joined the mass victory party. Foer compares this "football revolution" to the Boston Tea Party. He notes that the event will "go down as the moment when the people first realized that they could challenge their tyrannical rulers." As the United States looks for ways to encourage liberalism within Islam, an event such as this deserves attention. Its impact suggests that Paul Wolfowitz, if no one else, should read this account.U.S. exceptionalism is nowhere more evident than in soccer. Millions of kids have played it, and "soccer mom" has become part of our political vocabulary. Yet as a commercial enterprise, soccer largely has failed here. There is no mass market for the sport. Foer does not really offer an explanation of this failure. Rather, he contents himself with a different argument: a class analysis of the attractiveness of the sport to yuppie parents. He argues that middle-class and professional parents reject American football as too violent, baseball as too stressful (because its pitcher/batter encounter is potentially ego-deflating) and basketball as ghetto-tainted. They choose soccer because it can "minimize the pain of competition while still teaching life lessons." Maybe, but Foer does not provide enough evidence on this to be convincing.The vein of optimism that flows through the book is made explicit in his chapter on the FC Barcelona club -- his favorite team. This club, he writes, possesses a modernist aesthetic, rooted in its worker-cooperative origins and reinforced by its symbolic role in Catalan opposition to Franco. The sophistication of the team -- it possesses its own art museum, season ticket holders vote for the team's administration, and its followers are knowledgeable about both sport and politics -- redeems the game "by showing that fans can love a club and a country with passion and without turning into a thug or terrorist." Foer believes that nationalism need not be xenophobic and that patriotism and cosmopolitanism are compatible. His reading of soccer does not ignore the ugliness that can be associated with sport and therefore society. But it does hold out hope that sport can be a vehicle for liberalism (as it has been in Iran) and encourage a benign form of group identification (as it has done in Spain). Notwithstanding contemporary claims of civilizations in conflict, Foer's soccer odyssey lends weight to the argument that a humane world order is possible. But globalization alone cannot be relied upon to accomplish that goal. A world order of tolerance and respect also requires the institutions of a vibrant domestic liberalism. Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.


From Booklist
Americans are fond of jokes that play on our incomprehension of soccer, and, at times, this ignorance seems an apt metaphor for our intellectual disengagement from the world. But we ignore the world-- and its favorite sport--at our peril. In his wonderfully conceived treatise, journalist Foer uses soccer as an arena in which to examine world events, such as Balkan genocide (Serbian gangster Arkan helped form Milosevic's paramilitary troops from among Red Star supporters), and worldviews, such as U.S. culture wars (he uses the game as a metaphor for our divided attitudes about globalization, an issue that underlies our cultural split). Evenhanded and well reported, it's written in a crisp and engaging style that will hook even readers who have no idea how the "beautiful game" is played. Perfectly timed to coincide with soccer's growing coolness (team jerseys are a hipster's must-have), this excellent book belongs with two other great soccer-outsider inquiries, Bill Buford's Among the Thugs (1992) and Joe McGinniss' The Miracle of Castel di Sangro (1999). Keir Graff
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Book Description

Soccer is much more than a game, or even a way of life. It is a perfect window into the crosscurrents of today's world, with all of its joys and sorrows. Soccer clubs don't represent geographic areas; they stand for social classes and political ideologies, and often command more faith than religion. Unlike baseball or tennis, soccer is freighted with the weight of ancient hatreds and history. It's a sport with real stakes -- one that is capable of ruining regimes and launching liberation movements.

In this remarkably insightful, wide-ranging work of reportage, Franklin Foer takes us on a surprising tour through the world of soccer, shattering the myths of our new global age along the way. He finds that instead of destroying local cultures, as the Left predicted, globalization has revived tribalism. And far from the triumph of capitalism that the Right predicted, it has entrenched corruption. In his travels, Foer encounters a collection of fans that is stranger than fiction: an English hooligan with a Jewish mother, a Nazi father, and a career as a soldier of fortune; a soccer fan club in Serbia that turns into a brutal anti-Muslim paramilitary unit; and a raucous crowd of Scots who urge him to take sides in their age-old rivalry between Catholic and Protestant teams. Telling stories in turns wild, violent, funny, and tragic, the author is able to shine a spotlight on the clash of civilizations, the international economy, and just about everything in between.

From Brazil to Bosnia and from Italy to Iran, How Soccer Explains the World is an eye-opening chronicle of how a beautiful sport and its fanatical followers can illuminate the fault lines of a society, whether poverty, anti-Semitism, or radical Islam. Filled with blazing intelligence, colorful characters, wry humor, and an equal passion for soccer and humanity, this is an utterly original book that makes sense of our troubled times.


About the Author
Franklin Foer is a staff writer at the New Republic and a frequent contributor to Slate. His writing has also appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic Monthly, Foreign Policy, and Spin. He lives in Washington, D.C.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Soccer is much more than a game, or even a way of life. It is a perfect window into the crosscurrents of today's world, with all of its joys and sorrows. Soccer clubs don't represent geographic areas; they stand for social classes and political ideologies, and often command more faith than religion. Unlike baseball or tennis, soccer is freighted with the weight of ancient hatreds and history. It's a sport with real stakes -- one that is capable of ruining regimes and launching liberation movements. In this remarkably insightful, wide-ranging work of reportage, Franklin Foer takes us on a surprising tour through the world of soccer, shattering the myths of our new global age along the way. He finds that instead of destroying local cultures, as the Left predicted, globalization has revived tribalism. And far from the triumph of capitalism that the Right predicted, it has entrenched corruption. In his travels, Foer encounters a collection of fans that is stranger than fiction: an English hooligan with a Jewish mother, a Nazi father, and a career as a soldier of fortune; a soccer fan club in Serbia that turns into a brutal anti-Muslim paramilitary unit; and a raucous crowd of Scots who urge him to take sides in their age-old rivalry between Catholic and Protestant teams. Telling stories in turns wild, violent, funny, and tragic, the author is able to shine a spotlight on the clash of civilizations, the international economy, and just about everything in between. From Brazil to Bosnia and from Italy to Iran, How Soccer Explains the World is an eye-opening chronicle of how a beautiful sport and its fanatical followers can illuminate the fault lines of a society, whether poverty, anti-Semitism, or radical Islam. Filled with blazing intelligence, colorful characters, wry humor, and an equal passion for soccer and humanity, this is an utterly original book that makes sense of our troubled times.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Foer, a New Republic editor, scores a game-winning goal with this analysis of the interchange between soccer and the new global economy. The subtitle is a bit misleading, though: he doesn't really use soccer to develop a theory; instead, he focuses on how examining soccer in different countries allows us to understand how international forces affect politics and life around the globe. The book is full of colorful reporting, strong characters and insightful analysis: In one of the most compelling chapters, Foer shows how a soccer thug in Serbia helped to organize troops who committed atrocities in the Balkan War-by the end of the war, the thug's men, with the acquiescence of Serbian leaders, had killed at least 2,000 Croats and Bosnians. Then he bought his own soccer club and, before he was gunned down in 2000, intimidated other teams into losing. Most of the stories aren't as gruesome, but they're equally fascinating. The crude hatred, racism and anti-Semitism on display in many soccer stadiums is simply amazing, and Foer offers context for them, including how current economic conditions are affecting these manifestations. In Scotland, the management of some teams have kept religious hatreds alive in order to sell tickets and team merchandise. But Foer, a diehard soccer enthusiast, is no anti-globalist. In Iran, for example, he depicts how soccer works as a modernizing force: thousands of women forced police to allow them into a men's-only stadium to celebrate the national team's triumph in an international match. One doesn't have to be a soccer fan to truly appreciate this absorbing book. (July) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

The ironic title is certainly audacious, but this book does not disappoint even though it fails to deliver on the full potential of what it promises. Interestingly, the truth freelancer Foer most helpfully finds in soccer is not globalization but its older and sometimes murderously persistent converse, nationalism, as engrossing chapters on professional teams in Serbia, Italy, and Spain and the commercialization of English hooliganism show in complex detail. Foer's look at the religious and ethnic sectarianism behind rival Glasgow football clubs should be required reading for stateside Irvine Welsh devotees. Indeed, except for a history of an interwar Jewish team based in Vienna, which saps some of the book's narrative energy, each chapter is a small journalistic masterpiece. That each can stand on its own is partly a drawback, for the book lacks the sustained, treatise-like argument that such a title would need were it more manifestly earnest. Written for open-minded but soccer-indifferent American readers, this book is recommended for all public and academic libraries. Scott H. Silverman, Bryn Mawr Coll. Lib., PA Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews