The beautiful book about the beautiful game. Galeano's series of brief vignettes on the game are poetic, luminescent, and downright informative.

"El gol es el orgasmo del fútbol." Truer words have never been written, and may never be. ( )

A few reasons to re-read Galeano's reminiscences on global football, whether or not it's "updated" with new World Cup results:
● Galeano's take is distinct from that of the dominant European conversation, which places almost everything against the EPL and its Continental pretenders (La Liga, German Bundesliga, Serie A, Ligue 1).
● It's also distinct from that of the US "outlaw" conversation, soccer being one of the few areas of global capitalism in which the US doesn't control and dominate developments and preferences; that underdog perspective is a good one, but it's shot through with a prideful hurt manifesting as a perennial chip on the shoulder. I suspect it won't last another 50 years, and that will not be an improvement over the current situation.
● Galeano provides both a history lesson, primarily of South American football but also the World Cup; and he is decisively anti-FIFA.

This isn't a linear history or even closely-reasoned essay, but a few themes recur. Between his fond recollections of seeing individual players (in person or televised) and recounting legendary feats on the pitch, Galeano builds up a story of how football steadily becomes more and more regimented, increasingly efficient in both athletic and financial terms, and so further distant from the everyday player and fan. I took to heart the personal benefit of playing with friends as much or more than following a professional league or hometown team, especially to the extent the latter are contributing to the flattening of the overall experience. Make it your own, he urges.

A number of recurring jokes, among them "Well-informed sources in Miami were announcing the imminent fall of Fidel Castro, it was only a matter of hours." (e.g. p154) and the occasional series "It Happened At The World Cup". This edition illustrated with a number of silhouettes, icons, and clip art, used as chapter heads / tails.

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LTer Sunita_p's review captures much better than mine the heart and rage driving Galeano's prose.

John Trumbull was interviewed for the series Five Books, with Galeano's one of his picks. After acknowledging Galeano's pedigree as an investigative journalist ("well-known for his social activism, his writing about the marginalised, and the underside of Latin America"), he claims that Galeano's prose follow a recognised format: "All his work is written in what in Latin America is called the crónica form, which are very short episodes." Incidentally, Trumbull's organising theme for his five picks is provocative (Football as a Second Language) and those of his remaining picks which weren't already went right on my syllabus. ( )

All the stars.

This is deservedly a classic, and it's a book everyone who cares about soccer should read. It focuses on South American history, but it also incorporates discussions of Europe (a lot), Central America (some), and Africa, Asia, and North America (a little). The book is a series of mini-chapters, some just a couple of paragraphs, some a few pages, and it is structured by the World Cup years. Every World Cup chapter opens with a paragraph about what else is happening in the world, which serves as a reminder that soccer is embedded in and inseparable from the rest of life.

There are marvelous portraits of players, and players dominate the pages (as they should). Galeano never lets the reader forget how many great players came from poor, minority, and disadvantaged backgrounds, and how often they were used and then discarded by the soccer elites. He traces the roots of the sport's corruption back decades, and he excoriates the commodification of athletes and the greed of owners, association heads, and politicians (who are sometimes all the same person).

But this is also a warm, embracing love letter to the sport. You can recognize and acknowledge the flaws and still love soccer deeply, and Galeano shows you how. ( )

Short chapters about random soccer facts ( )

There had to be a favourite football book during the 2018 World Cup. The Uruguayan author takes us back to the very beginnings and the success of Uruguay in 1930. It then takes us forward step by step, almost to the present day, gathering momentum as books and matches should.