How Soccer Explains the World
Franklin Foer wrote an extremely interesting little book called “How Soccer Explains the World”. Obviously, by using the “S” word, Foer outs himself as a Yank right away. So don’t expect much, right?
The full title of the book is “How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization”. I’ve read the book a few times (well, technically, I’ve read it once, and skimmed some of the interesting bits a few more times) and I’m still unsure what he’s referring to with “unlikely”.
Is it the theory itself that is unlikely, in the sense that it has a small chance of accurately describing the world using soccer as a metaphor…or is it simply that the author is assuming that few people would expect or make such an argument? Does unlikely mean “probably wrong” or “hard to imagine”? Makes my head hurt. Maybe some online slots will do the trick…
Whatever the case, the theory takes a classic three-part approach. In the first act, Foer describes all of the fun and proud things that we’ve already discussed (i.e., yob riots) and amazingly tries to argue that this represents not the grand advance of unification and civilization, but “the failure of globalization to erode ancient hatreds in the game’s great rivalries”.
Hmm. I think that I’d find assertion somewhat at odds with this website’s position, if I understood it. Let’s move on (after a brief word from the beautiful and talented online casino USA, of course).
The second part compares the rise of corporate hegemony with soccer, and the third part questions whether large-scale international institutions such as the United Nations and the EU actually bring people together, or whether they’re just a facade, underneath which the crawling vermin of subcultures and gangs threatens to tear this unified world into various warring factions in a new Dark Ages. Or something like that.
“If you have liberal politics and yuppie tastes, it isn’t easy to find a corner of the soccer firmament that feels like home. The [European] continent has too many clubs that have freaky fascist pasts bleeding into a xenophobic present. … You could never accept clubs with a cloud of virulent racism trailing after them. … And for the sake of the underdog, you couldn’t possibly abide the multinational conglomerates, like Manchester United and Juventus, which buy championships every year.”
Hey, give the guy some slack — he’s an American, and we just don’t get soccer or international culture. Obviously.
