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A review by sydsnot71
Football Against the Enemy by Simon Kuper
3.0
This is a re-read. I read this when it first came out in paperback a long time ago. It is still an interesting read. I don't think it does what Simon Kuper claims he wanted it to do, but I think inside it is the seed of a book about how football is a weapon of the oppressed against their oppressors.
Also time has affected some of its chapters more than others. This edition contains two new chapters that I don't remember being in the original. One on the 1994 World Cup and one on football in Croatia in the immediate aftermath of the war in the Balkans and the role played by football fans - some might say hooligans - in fighting that war.
It might be interesting for Kuper to re-visit some of these chapters if he could. To see how things have changed. I mean British football is no longer the terrible game Kuper seems to think in was when he wrote this - long ball and 4-4-2. I don't even think it was all like that then. But Kuper might argue that the reason for that is that the EPL doesn't have many English players or Managers in these days.
Globalization has changed football like it has changed a lot of things. Not always for the good.
I found the chapters of Argentina and Brazil the most interesting. Celtic and Rangers are just two bald men fighting over a comb.
Kuper had two questions he wanted the book to answer:
My first question, then, was how football affects the life of a country. My second was how the life of a country affects its football.
I think it does some of the first, but not enough of the second. Still it is an interesting read, even if it seems even more like a historical document now than it did when it was published.
Also time has affected some of its chapters more than others. This edition contains two new chapters that I don't remember being in the original. One on the 1994 World Cup and one on football in Croatia in the immediate aftermath of the war in the Balkans and the role played by football fans - some might say hooligans - in fighting that war.
It might be interesting for Kuper to re-visit some of these chapters if he could. To see how things have changed. I mean British football is no longer the terrible game Kuper seems to think in was when he wrote this - long ball and 4-4-2. I don't even think it was all like that then. But Kuper might argue that the reason for that is that the EPL doesn't have many English players or Managers in these days.
Globalization has changed football like it has changed a lot of things. Not always for the good.
I found the chapters of Argentina and Brazil the most interesting. Celtic and Rangers are just two bald men fighting over a comb.
Kuper had two questions he wanted the book to answer:
My first question, then, was how football affects the life of a country. My second was how the life of a country affects its football.
I think it does some of the first, but not enough of the second. Still it is an interesting read, even if it seems even more like a historical document now than it did when it was published.