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Some Football Literature for the Weekend

Somehow I managed to miss most of the hype leading up to the World Cup, but now that things are about to kick off I’m actually genuinely excited (not least by England vs. The U.S. on Saturday) and have spent the last couple of days catching up. Here are a few literary, typographical, and just plain interesting things that I’ve stumbled across…

Soccer Aid — A typographic poster for the World Cup designed by Treble Seven | 777 in aid of UNICEF.

Simon Kuper, author of Soccernomics, on CBC Radio’s The Current discussing the World Cup.

The very same Simon Kuper reviews four books about the World Cup and African football for The Financial Times:

Great claims are often made for football’s significance. In fact it’s almost always a mirror rather than a gun: it reflects society, rather than changing it. Usually the sport has just one significant effect on real life: it makes people happier. At least, it usually does.

Nation’s Only Soccer Fan Becoming InsufferableThe Onion of course:

According to sources only peripherally aware of the World Cup, Janovich’s infuriating behavior first became apparent during a Super Bowl viewing party last February when he repeatedly used the phrase “American football” to describe the action on the field. In recent weeks, Janovich has also begun referring to the supposed suspense involved in choosing the players for the U.S. “side,” and has struck up several extended but one-sided conversations concerning figures such as “Kaka” and “Ronaldinho,” generally mystifying and alienating everyone he has come into contact with.

Typographic World Cup T-Shirts. Sadly Drogba is already out for the Ivory Coast, but otherwise these are great (via Kottke).

How Did Football Get So Big? — Tim de Lisle at Intelligent Life:

If the hype is extraordinary, so is the ambient presence. The last World Cup was all around us, on billboards, drink cans and cereal packets, on garage forecourts and millions of flag-bearing cars, in the windows of Boots the chemist and McDonald’s the burger joint (“Want tickets? Win tickets! Buy any large meal to play”). The cup-winning captain from 1966, Bobby Moore, was on every KitKat wrapper, despite having died 13 years earlier; his team-mate Geoff Hurst, now Sir Geoff, was appointed director of football for McDonald’s and had columns in two newspapers. The boys of 1966 were bigger in 2006 than they were in 1966.

Footballers as Film Stars — In a related item at the Intelligent Life blog looks at the Nike’s slick World Cup commercial created by Oscar-winning director Alejandro González Iñárritu (Babel):

And finally… A few literary football lists:

And, not to be outdone, here’s a list of 10 football books worth your time (in no particular order) compiled at great haste for The Casual Optimist by my good friend and recovering sportswriter Nick Clifford who is a great source of useless facts about the beautiful game:

  1. Football Against The Enemy by Simon Kuper
  2. Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Football by David Winner
  3. Full Time: The Secret Life of Tony Cascarino by Paul Kimmage
  4. Futebol: The Brazilian Way of Life by Alex Bellos
  5. The Hand of God: The Life of Diego Maradona by Jimmy Burns
  6. Morbo: The Story of Spanish Football by Philip Ball
  7. Calcio: A History of Italian Football by John Foot
  8. Soccer in the Sun and Shadow by Eduardo Galeano
  9. Among the Thugs by Bill Buford
  10. The Ball is Round: A Global History of Soccer by David Goldblatt

(full disclosure: this list has a couple of late additions from me, so if you disagree, it will probably be with my selections — Nick has impeccable taste).

Update: Flavorwire also has a list of 6 books to read during the World Cup.

2 Comments

  1. Great review. I am too excited by the world cup to be looking at blogs but I really enjoyed this post! Thanks for sharing.

  2. […] even if you ignore all the book on football mentioned last week (not to mention the endless number of books on baseball and cricket), and the entire output of […]

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