i am happy to report that the title of this book is, in today's context, misleading; there is no grand totalizing new-new journalism/freakonomics-style narrative.

this is a themed travelogue, and as such, it works really well. the text is built to contain anecdotes both odd and expected. negative reviews suggest that kuper doesn't have anything new or interesting to say, and while i understand, i think that's missing the point. kuper didn't travel to glasgow (or yaounde or zagreb or johannesburg or buenos aires) to break a big, new story...he's here and there to talk to fans and managers, generals and guerillas. so yeah, if you want some definitive take on celtic-rangers...look elsewhere, but honestly: good luck.

you may want to read this book if you, like me, would be simultaneously appalled and delighted to learn that a rangers fan, in the course of discussing the actual game, digresses to state that a) there is undeniable job discrimination against catholics and b) catholic parents are kind of to blame for said discrimination due to naming their kids things like "bridget teresa" and "patrick." ( )

This book is quite interesting, Simon has done a lot of research and travels the world to uncover the love of the beautiful game and how it is often used as a way of expression but also how Politicians exploit football.
Simon goes to Netherlands, South Africa, Russia, Balkans ,Argentina, Brazil, USA, Northern Ireland and Scotland.
This book is a bit dated as it was written in 1993. ( )

Kuper somehow arranges trips to many football-organised countries in western & eastern Europe, Africa, and the Americas; interviews a raft of players, coaches, owners & organisers (both current and legendary); pointedly leavens their narratives with those from football-minded culture critics (anthropologists & sociologists as well as journalists); and weaves the results into a travelogue which somehow manages to be about the spirit of football more than anything else. Fabulous read, and includes many vignettes and set pieces on the strategy, style, and history of the game. One of Kuper's primary questions was both how and why football was played differently in Spain than in England, in South Africa than in Jamaica, and so on. He doesn't bring the book to any sweeping conclusions or generalised theory of the game, but wisely opts to focus on specific instances of difference and similarity.

To his credit, Kuper also is as critical of the game (socioeconomically, but also vis-a-vis the power relations it engenders) as he is supportive. He's a fan, clearly, but a clear-headed one. And perhaps unintended is the book's role as time-capsule: the world is not as isolated and insular as it was in 1992-93, at least in those aspects susceptible to media influence, and the game of football reflects it. Celtic and Rangers, the Red Army of either Man U or of Torpedo Moscow, these have merged into an international brand. Kuper wrote before that was quite so much the case.

Can't imagine a better context in which to follow football at present: in the US, the sport has a high-enough profile to allow a fan to follow most leagues as well as international fixtures, and the domestic league probably has the highest level of professional skill and ability as ever ... yet it's still eclipsed by NFL, NBA, MLB. This means, I think, the focus such as it is remains on the game, and less on the extraneous stuff: marketing, cultural dominance whether hooliganism or machismo or rivalries. (Perhaps I kid myself.) Don't think I'd appreciate the same teams, matches, rivalries were I neck-deep in it all. In Britain or Europe, I suspect I'd probably follow a second league club.

//

Levon Abramian's theory of social revolution via FCs, the only organic communities in the Soviet bloc. Abramian anticipated Moscow would see the first revolutions, its multiple FCs aligned with social classes (military, working class); in fact, the nationalist clubs in the republics were more involved in revolt. [53ff]

Dynamo Kiev's manager Valeri "Loba" Lobanovski and his Billy Ball sabermetrician Anatoly Zelentsov, pre-PC and VHS, mapping out plays like American football: "Our aim was to invent the science of soccer." [63-64] The club's stars did not succeed on Western clubs, they excelled within the Dynamo system.

"As I see it, there are four approaches to soccer which dominate today." [91]
● Long-ball game (Britain), aka counter-attacking football
● Total football, aka possession football (Netherlands, Barcelona's tiki-taka, AC Milan, Sao Paolo, Dynamo Kiev, and now Bayern Muenchen)
● Happy-go-lucky style of o jogo bonito (Brazil) or "piano and shoeshine" (South Africa)
● Catenaccio ("padlock") or defensive football, identified with Helenio Herrera (Inter Milan, and the Azzurri)

U.S. edition, "Soccer Against the Enemy" with a new preface. Yes, in places the editors just swapped out "football" for "soccer" with absurd results: when football referred to the object, not the game, for example. ( )

I'd been told that I'd like this book. In actuality, I'd been told I'd like the 2003 edition of this book. Sadly (or maybe it was fortunate), the only edition I was able to get (from Michigan State University, of all places) was the original 1994 edition. My friend was right, I absolutely loved this book. Kuper's writing is exceptional, the style he uses is exactly what I look for when I read non-fiction. Football Against the Enemy is not just a book about sport. Sure, it's a book about football, but it's also about everything in between. It's a travel book about what football means to the world. There are lots of these books out there who do a decent job explaining football and the world. But what Kuper does best is turn it into a travel book. This is not one of those Fodor's guides, nor is it a third person look at sports through the lens of an outsider. Kuper starts as an outsider almost everywhere he goes and somehow always ends up an insider. He talks with fans (of course), be they politicians or just average citizens of the world. But Kuper doesn't stop there, he talks to players, former players, managers, former managers, owners, and everyone in between. This is the story of football, with more than little history. Eventually I'll read the updated edition, but for me, the 1994 version was a brilliant read. ( )

Two quibbles. First, the book does not live up to it’s lofty subtitle: “How the world’s most popular sport starts and fuels revolutions and keeps dictators in power.” Basically an English sportswriter travels around the world interviewing fans, players, managers, owners, sponsors, journalists, mobsters, and politicians about the game. Second, it’s obvious that in making the US edition of the book someone just ran a computer program to replace the word “football” with “soccer” in the manuscript. This created nonsensical phrases such as “I picked up the soccer and bounced it off my foot” and “similar to the role of a running back in American soccer.”

Despite that, the articles are interesting, insightful and humorous. I particularly like the story of the devoted fan from East Berlin of a team from West Berlin. How Soccer Explains the World was a better, complimentary book on this subject.

“When we say that Americans don’t play soccer, or that they celebrate Thanksgiving or come to Europe in tour groups, we are thinking of big white people who live in American suburbs. Tens of millions of Hispanic Americans do play and watch and read about soccer. Yet even white suburban America plays soccer in its way…Richer Americans tend to. Missionaries are trying to spread the word, but for the moment ghetto kids take the view that soccer is for softies.” (p. 191)

“For the Malandro, the con man on the pitch, it was madness to plan how to play. You simply did what came to you.” (p. 241)

“…the Old Firm rivalry has outlived religious hatred. I suggest that that is the case, and that the Old Firm has survived as a phenomenon because the fans enjoy it so much. They are not about to give up their ancient traditions just because they no longer believe in God.” (p. 264)

“In fact, Iran’s ‘soccer revolution,’ in each of its incarnations, has changed nothing. This illustrates a greater truth about soccer and politics: the game is a good way of studying what is going on in repressed societies, but it rarely changes these societies.” (p. 292) ( )