Know your enemy

Seeing as I'm not in touch with all the new football releases (I think the most current book I've read is Match Day, which technically isn't even a book!) a colleague of mine pitched me a sorta old one. I don't mind reading up on the state of the game from the 80s and 90s because I only really got into football during the '94 world cup and didn't start following a team until about 10 years ago. Anything historical interests me, and any new knowledge I can get on the game, especially on eras that I was alive for but missed out on I feel is important to understand. In that sense, Soccer Against the Enemy is a perfect book to gain knowledge on the history of football around the world through the 20th Century up to the 90s, and even if you were following football then, Simon Kuper travels to places where at that time unless you lived there would have had no idea what was going on.

Kuper's Soccer Against the Enemy (obviously changed from Football for N. America) takes place in 22 different countries, as he travels around the world with typewriter in tow. You might think this book was written in 1947, but you are wrong! Yes, only sixteen years ago were writers touring the world not with laptops, blackberries or sidekicks but typewriters!! It doesn't seem that long ago but this book is proof how small the world has gotten in just over fifteen years. As mentioned before, a good portion of the book is Kuper traveling to countries because first hand knowledge was the only way to get information on the state of the game. Places such as post-communist East Berlin, Russia and Ukraine to Cameroon, South Africa and Brazil. It is all covered, and I would go as far as saying his travels are far more thorough, detailed and historical than Franklin Foer's How Soccer Explains the World.

The book's subtitle is "How the world's most popular sport starts and fuels revolutions and keeps dictators in power" and for the most part sticks to the theme of "football is politics". Kuper does a good job of reinforcing this idiom by starting off detailing the history of the rivalry between the Netherlands and Germany, peaking at the 1988 Euros. The hatred was fueled by Germany occupying Holland in the Second World War, however, Kuper grew up in Holland and notes that this hatred did not truly manifest itself until the 80s. International matches between these two powerhouses - Cruyff and Gullit, Beckenbauer and Matthaus - sparked old feelings of an occupied country and these matches became much more than a game. The victory over Germany in the 1988 Euros Semi-Finals in Hamburg sent millions into the streets in Holland.



Kuper moves from country to country - East Germany, the Baltics, into Russia and the Ukraine covering the history of football under communist dictatorships into the present and how the game copes in this transition to a capitalist society. I don't need to give a lesson on the state of economy and justice in the former Soviet Union, but rest assured it is messed up.

Perhaps the most lengthy and detailed portion of his book is when Kuper travels to Africa. It is interesting to read the goings on in Cameroon and South Africa in light of the upcoming 2010 World Cup. We've all read many quotes over the decades of managers and pundits claiming that you will see an African team lift the World Cup by so-and-so date. After reading these chapters it is clear that an African team lifting the cup would be almost as shocking as Canada doing it. We think our soccer association is backwards, you've seen nothing. The World Cups that Cameroon performed so well at, they didn't even come clost to fielding their best players! The president picks the team, and at the '94 World Cup Roger Milla was 42 years old. The 1990 World Cup is the tournament that stands out and is highlighted for the Lions, where they almost made it past England.



Holy shit did you see that guy's vertical!?! Both in Cameroon and South Africa their football associations are riddled with corruption and mismanagement resulting a disconnect between the sport and fans. It is now easier to understand why there have been so many problems linked with the 2010 World Cup and now even easier to know why people are being assassinated.

There is so much more to this book than what I've mentioned in a waaaaay too long blog. Rest assured Soccer Against the Enemy is one of the best all encompassing books I've read so far on football. A tour around the world meeting fans, players, coaches and directors, answering the questions that you'd want to know from Helenio Herrera to Pele. It serves as a historical reference for 22 footballing nations that brings you up to the '94 World Cup - which works perfect for me!! If you want to truly understand the back stories between the politics from some of the biggest footballing nations and their teams this is the book to read.