What's in a title? Writers often disown – or at least deny culpability for – the titles their editors attach to their work even as readers frequently read too much into them. I don't know if Franklin Foer is responsible for the title of his new book – How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization – but it is exactly the type of title than can drive picky readers crazy. It is right out of a SNL Coffee Talk sketch – it neither explains the world nor contains a theory of globalization (talk amongst yourselves). But if you can get past this over-reaching title, you will enjoy what is in essence a collection of essays on the interaction of culture, politics, and soccer.
Foer begins the book with the blunt statement: "I suck at soccer." Despite his lack of physical prowess, however, Foer grew up to love the game and follow it intensely. As a political reporter – mostly for the New Republic – Foer soon got caught up in the debates about globalization and its effects. It wasn't long before he began to wonder about the connection between these two worldwide phenomena and, like all good journalists, he decided to write a book about it. This required him to undertake, as Foer puts it: "the (oh-so-arduous) task of traveling the world, attending soccer matches, watching training sessions, and interviewing his heroes." Tough work if you can get it!
So what did Foer's eight-month soccer world tour produce? An explanation of how the world works told through the lens of its favorite sport? A theory of globalization based on the passion and violence of the game? Not quite.
In the prologue Foer tries to weave a structure for the anecdotes and reporting that follow, but as you read the individual chapters they come off as vignettes rather than building blocks in a theory or explanation. Foer claims that the chapters attempt to explain "the failure of globalization to erode ancient hatreds in the games greatest rivalries;" that it addresses "the consequences of migration, the persistence of corruption, and the rise of powerful new oligarchs;" and that the book defends the "virtues of old-fashioned nationalism – a way to blunt the return of tribalism." And in a way this is true, Foer does touch on these points, but in a descriptive and illustrative way rather than an explanatory one.
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