Football in Sun and Shadow
Eduardo Galeano
14 €
Coup de coeur
(Sport), by Ciaran
There are many books about football available but few, if any, are as poetic as Football in Sun and Shadow. Galeano, a Uruguayan, writes with passion but always with an eye on a beautiful phrase. A potted history of football from the first World Cup in 1930 to 2006, he draws out great goals, great players, incredible games and links it all to the socio-political situation of the particular year. Throughout, there is the paradoxical sense that the staggering increase in commercialisation and political manipulation destroys the innocent pleasure of the game, but football is so simple - all you need is a couple of people and something to kick to play a game - that its innocence can never really be destroyed.
'Football is a pleasure that hurts'
This unashamedly emotional history of football is a homage to the romance and drama, spectacle and passion of a 'great pagan mass'. Through stories of superstition, heartbreak, tragedy, luck, heroes and villains, those who lived for football and those who died for it, Eduardo Galeano celebrates the glory of a game that - however much the rich and powerful try to control it - still retains its magic.
'The Uruguayan whose writing got right to the heart of football ... readers were never in doubt of the warmth of the blood running through his veins' Guardian
'Galeano can run rings round our glamorous football intelligentsia' When Saturday Comes
'Stands out like Pele on a field of second-stringers' New Yorker
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Binding: Paperback
Publication date: 03 May 2018
Dimensions: 197 x 131 x 13 mm
ISBN: 9780241355350
