the global game
Reviewed by Marc Jolley, Mercer University Press
DECEMBER 19, 2008 archive
The most widely played sport in the world is football. It is truly a worldwide love. Of course, in the US, we call it soccer and we, as a nation, don’t really care about it as much as the rest of the world. Reasons for this vary from people you talk with and among historians, but how can a sport so widely revered throughout the world be so unpopular in the US? After all, it is estimated that more kids in the US play soccer than any other sport. Why then do we not watch soccer? Why do we not attend professional games? Is it the media? Is it the absence of “stars” who entrance us? Exactly what has the coming of David Beckham done for soccer in the US?
We celebrate when the US women’s team wins the gold, but the party is short-lived. After the Olympics, when we may watch a few games if we can find them on the air and after the World Cup, we usually quickly return to football, baseball, and basketball. These are perplexing questions and issues. Want answers? Read the book. Reed Johnson of the LA Times said, “Soccer is … the athletic equivalent of stream-of-consciousness writing, and its all-time greatest artists … practically scribbled Finnegans Wake in the sod with their cleats.”
Simon Kuper says that “not to play football was not to exist.”
While these quotes, and many, many more are found in this amazing collection of writings on football (soccer), words are there only in attempts to express deep-felt love of a game. Javier Marias tells the story of an incredible goal by the legendary Zidane about how a ball seemed to fall out of the sky at just the right place in time in order for Zidane to make an amazing goal: “a gift fallen from the sky …and the gift became flesh, and then the verb.” Did you know that Albert Camus said, “All that I know most surely about morality and the obligations of man, I owe to football.”
Did you know that Machiavelli played football? How about Albert Camus as a goalkeeper? In fact, Camus played goal because he was often too poor to buy shoes to play in the field. Did you miss that reference to football in King Lear? More? Read the book. These are the “shiny things” in the book. The sport is deeper. It is religious. It is also, at times, political. During the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, Peru beat Austria 4-2. Hitler had the game annulled. Why? Read the book.
It is obvious that this book was a labor of love. The editorial work is skillfully done and is more complete than similar books. The editors provide very helpful introductions to each of the readings.
There are some “big names” in this collection: Ted Hughes, Günter Grass, Mario Vargas Llosa, Charles Simic, and even Elvis Costello (my second favorite piece in the book). But each text brings something unique to the collection. To skip a single piece would be a mistake.
Julio Ramón Ribeyro’s piece “Atiguibas” is, for me, the most memorable in the book. When he was young, Ribeyro attended a game, when, following a goal that tied the game (a bad thing for his team had been ahead), a man stands up and shouts “Atiguibas.” The crowd settled and relaxed. This word is shouted many more times during the game by the man; throughout his life, Ribeyro tried to find out the meaning of this enigmatic word. He does. Want to know what it means? Read the book. It is worth every minute of your time to read this collection. You will never see, or experience football (soccer) the same way again.
Turnbull, John, Thom Satterlee, & Alon Raab, eds., The Global Game: Writers on Soccer. Lincoln: The University of Nebraska Press, 2008. 296 pages, $19.95.
Copyright © 2008 by Marc Jolley.