How Football Explains The World

As we all know, football is much more than a game, or even a way of life. But it also provides a perfect window into the crosscurrents of today’s world. Football clubs don’t only represent geographical areas, they stand for social classes and political ideologies, and often command more faith than religion. Freighted with the weight of ancient hatreds and history, this is a sport played for real stakes - one that is capable of undermining regimes and launching liberation movements. In this remarkable book, American journalist Franklin Foer takes us on a revealing tour through the world of football. On his travels, Foer encounters a collection of fans that is stranger than fiction: from a British hooligan with a Jewish mother, a Nazi father, and a career as a soldier of fortune to a fan club in Serbia that turns into a brutal anti-Muslim paramilitary unit. From Brazil to Bosnia and from Italy to Iran, How Soccer Explains the World is an eye-opening chronicle of how the beautiful game and its fanatical followers can illuminate the fault lines of a society, from poverty to anti-Semitism to radical Islam. This is an utterly original book that makes sense of our troubled times