Five essential books on football

The world should, by rights, be in the midst of a football World Cup this summer. But the controversial decision by FIFA, the body that governs the sport globally, to award the marquee event to Qatar, which will host it in the winter, has left viewers bereft of football action. Fans looking to fill this void could try consuming the game in another form. We have written on how art and football sometimes combine. Books about football rarely match the drama and beauty of the sport but these five come close—and show why, for many people, the world’s most popular sport is much more than just a game.

Fever Pitch. By Nick Hornby. Penguin; 272 pages; $14.99 and £8.99

All sports elicit obsession, and football stands out for its fanatic following around the world. But for much of its history, and especially in Britain, passion for football was sneered at. Fans were regarded as thugs or lunatics for expending so much energy and money on a game. That perception began to change in the 1990s. One catalyst for this was Nick Hornby’s novel. In “Fever Pitch”, he chronicles his own obsession with Arsenal Football Club and the challenge of balancing this with life’s more prosaic elements (such as his relationship with his partner). “Real life is paler, duller, and contains less potential for unexpected delirium,” he explains. The book was a hit, inspiring two film adaptations and, most important, legitimising football fandom. It stands apart not just for its import but its quality. It heralded a new era of football writing, and expanded the sport’s literature beyond vapid football biographies and niche club histories.

Soccer Against the Enemy. By Simon Kuper. PublicAffairs; 336 pages; $17.99. Published in Britain as “ Football Against the Enemy”; Orion Publishing; £9.99

The new wave of writing unleashed by “Fever Pitch” included a genre that examined football’s larger meaning. As the build-up to the Qatar World Cup has demonstrated, football and politics are frequent bedfellows. “Football Against the Enemy” provides perhaps the first and most vivid illustration of this relationship. Simon Kuper regales readers with footballing tales from 22 different countries, featuring totalitarian states, overbearing religious institutions and African despots. He shows how football shapes national identity and culture. Much has changed since 1994 when this book was published, including the game itself, but the role of football in the world remains undiminished. Even in today’s age of sportswashing, football retains its importance. Last year another book by Mr Kuper, “The Barcelona Complex” won much acclaim. We reviewed it here.

Soccer in Sun and Shadow. By Eduardo Galeano. Verso Books; 248 pages; $17.95. Penguin; £9.99

Many countries love football but for South Americans it is an almost torrid affair. Eduardo Galeano, a Uruguayan poet, elegantly portrays this passion in a love-letter to the game. This is a simple book, a series of vignettes of football’s greatest moments and players, and the circumstances surrounding them, described in rich language. A staunch socialist, Mr Galeano is vitriolic about the excesses of the professional game and its feckless bureaucrats. But like so many fans, he can never walk away. “Professional football does everything to castrate that energy of happiness, but it survives. And maybe that’s why football never stops being astonishing,” he writes.

This Love is Not for Cowards: Salvation and Soccer in Ciudad Juárez. By Robert Andrew Powell. Bloomsbury; 272 pages; $25 and £14.99

A recurring theme in books about football is the game’s ability to serve as a balm for social unrest. Robert Andrew Powell, an American journalist, shows how this is true even in the most desperate of circumstances. He spends a year in Ciudad Juárez in Mexico, just south of the Texan border, then the world’s most dangerous city. He follows Indios de Ciudad Juárez, a hopeless football team fighting for survival. Amid the terrible violence caused by the war on drugs and despite its terrible football, the team offers something for everyone, most of all to its devoted fan group, the sardonically named el Kartel. Don’t read this book to understand why Mexico is so violent but rather to understand how football can offer a distraction—and through that a degree of comfort—from that violence. Shortly after Mr Powell leaves Mexico, the club, which he suggests may have been a front for money-laundering, is disbanded. Yet, as he powerfully highlights, for a little while its existence showed why football can matter so much for so many. (Read our full review)

A Life Too Short: The Tragedy of Robert Enke. By Robert Reng. Vintage; 400 pages; £10.99

Despite often being drably-written guff, replete with platitudes and humdrum match descriptions, books about footballers are still a popular genre—thanks to loyal fans willing to swallow anything their heroes throw at them. One exception to the genre’s banality is Robert Reng’s biography of Robert Enke, a German goalkeeper. In 2009, just as Mr Enke was approaching his sporting peak, he took his own life. It shocked a sport wont to ignore the importance of mental health. Without becoming overbearingly sentimental, Mr Reng describes Mr Enke’s journey up to that point, providing a powerful account of self-doubt, depression and the under-appreciated burdens of high-level sport.■

____________________

More from The Economist reads:
Our Asia digital editor on seven books that best explain Hong Kong’s history
Our food columnist selects the seven essential cookbooks
Our former Moscow correspondent picks seven books on Vladimir Putin
Our Paris bureau chief picks seven books that make sense of modern France