Foer's How Soccer Explains the World
Having slogged through nearly all sixy-four games of Germany 2006 World Cup, I've had little on my mind except soccer. What a perfect opportunity to pick up Franklin Foer's How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization. New York: Harper Perennial, 2005.
I enjoyed it, and think it would be an interesting read for most soccer fans. It is filled with many anecdotes and histories of "supporters" and clubs. But as for the grandiose title suggesting insights on globalization, there's not much there. I'd stick to Thomas Friedman's books for that fare.
Here's one interesting passage I found regarding globalization:
“In response to the rise of corporate power, there’s a natural inclination to believe that self-interest hadn’t always ruled the market. Soccer writers in England often portray the old club owners as far more beneficent, public-minded citizens doing good for their old working-class friends. But this is nostalgia for a social market that never existed. Before the nineties, there was so little money in the game that owners let their stadiums decay into reprehensible safety traps. In effect, owners treated their fans as if their lives were expendable. Their negligence resulted in a complete breakdown, the broken –windows theory of social decay in microcosm. Fans began to think of life as expendable, too. They would beat the crap out of one another each weekend. To be sorrowful about the disappearance of this old culture requires grossly sentimentalizing the traditions and atmosphere that have passed. Indeed, this is an important characteristic of the globalization debate: the tendency toward glorifying all things indigenous, even when they deserve to be left in the past." (pp. 98-9)
Another passage that helps to explain how American soccer fans differ from their counterparts, and in part, why soccer isn't as popular in the United States:
“In every other part of the world, soccer sociology varies little: it is the province of the working class. Sure, there might be aristocrats, like Gianni Agnelli, who take an interest, and instances like Barca, where the game transcendently grips the community. But these cases are rare. The United States is even rarer. It inverts the class structure of the game. Here, aside from Latino immigrants, the professional classes follow the game most avidly and the working class couldn’t give a toss about it. Surveys done by the sporting goods manufacturers, consistently show that children of middle class and affluent families play the game disproportionately. Half the nation’s soccer participants come from households earning over $50,000. That is, they come from the solid middle class and above.” (pp. 238-9)
I enjoyed it, and think it would be an interesting read for most soccer fans. It is filled with many anecdotes and histories of "supporters" and clubs. But as for the grandiose title suggesting insights on globalization, there's not much there. I'd stick to Thomas Friedman's books for that fare.
Here's one interesting passage I found regarding globalization:
“In response to the rise of corporate power, there’s a natural inclination to believe that self-interest hadn’t always ruled the market. Soccer writers in England often portray the old club owners as far more beneficent, public-minded citizens doing good for their old working-class friends. But this is nostalgia for a social market that never existed. Before the nineties, there was so little money in the game that owners let their stadiums decay into reprehensible safety traps. In effect, owners treated their fans as if their lives were expendable. Their negligence resulted in a complete breakdown, the broken –windows theory of social decay in microcosm. Fans began to think of life as expendable, too. They would beat the crap out of one another each weekend. To be sorrowful about the disappearance of this old culture requires grossly sentimentalizing the traditions and atmosphere that have passed. Indeed, this is an important characteristic of the globalization debate: the tendency toward glorifying all things indigenous, even when they deserve to be left in the past." (pp. 98-9)
Another passage that helps to explain how American soccer fans differ from their counterparts, and in part, why soccer isn't as popular in the United States:
“In every other part of the world, soccer sociology varies little: it is the province of the working class. Sure, there might be aristocrats, like Gianni Agnelli, who take an interest, and instances like Barca, where the game transcendently grips the community. But these cases are rare. The United States is even rarer. It inverts the class structure of the game. Here, aside from Latino immigrants, the professional classes follow the game most avidly and the working class couldn’t give a toss about it. Surveys done by the sporting goods manufacturers, consistently show that children of middle class and affluent families play the game disproportionately. Half the nation’s soccer participants come from households earning over $50,000. That is, they come from the solid middle class and above.” (pp. 238-9)
posted by Elliott at Thursday, July 20, 2006
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