REVIEW: How Soccer Explains the World

I first read this book a few years back on the recommendation of a good friend of mine. He knew I was a Liverpool supporter (football check) and on many occasions we would discuss music, society and politics (culture check). So after he had read How Soccer Explains the World, the first time we ran into each other he not only highly recommended it but gave me a quick synopsis of each chapter. I had never really looked into any part of the sport other than the actual game itself, and given I do try to keep in the loop with international politics (you know, Fox News) I thought this was a pretty perfect marriage of some of my interests.

I decided to revisit this book a few weeks back thinking that a lot has changed in the footballing landscape over the last few years, specifically in north America. I wanted to reread Foer’s chapter on football (or soccer) in America BEFORE Toronto FC existed to see if his thoughts would still hold today or at least if some of his points were still relevant. As well, since this book came out, Danny Dyer’s series The Real Football Factories and The Real Football Factories International went to air, and also coincide usefully with Foer’s chapters on various leagues around the world.


The book starts out in Serbia with How Soccer Explains the Gangsters Paradise. And here we have our Canadian content with Dejan Jakovic playing for Red Star Belgrade! Most of these international chapters, as mentioned above, go hand in hand with quite a few episodes of Danny Dyer’s series – so you can see the supporters first hand today and with Foer’s analysis can draw conclusions of how it became that way. Serbia, for instance, most of their hooligans are in fact former shock troops from the war 10 years ago – actually, the hooligans BECAME the shock troops for the genocide and one of the generals would organize his militia with the Red Star stadium as their gathering point.

Foer criss-crosses around the globe, from Iran to London and Brazil to Milan. He ends his book in the good ol’ U S of A. Up until this point he paints a picture of intense passion – in some cases bordering on a matter of life and death – before coming home to where his personal soccer journey began. It’s kinda funny because as I was reading this book, Ruud Gullit released his statements to Reuters regarding the state of football in America, specifically how no number of David Beckhams will make a difference on the popularity of the sport. America will never openly embrace soccer, especially above sports which are seen as traditionally “American”. It may sound conspiracy-theorist, however, Foer draws some similar conclusions in his book. From the sport’s push in the 60s, branded as a safe, suburban, almost whitebread pastime (in direct contrast to the rest of the world where football has traditionally been the sport of the poor and working class) to the notion that there is just too much teamwork (so communist!!), it was in direct opposition to other sports in the country which reflected a more American way of life. Foer even points out Jack Kemp’s 1986 speech to congress for the U.S. to not bid for the World Cup.

How Soccer Explains the World is an essential read for anyone who wants to find the ‘other’ history of football around the world. Especially if you’ve seen Danny Dyer’s Football Factories series, or read other ‘history of’ books, this book is really useful in understanding how the game has gotten where it is in a local to national to a global level.