And I feel that irreparable melancholy we all feel after making love and at the end of the match.
(244)

(As a woman, I feel that I have to preface this review with proof that I am a “real fan.”
It doesn’t matter. I switched off comments from non-“friends” because of trolls on another review.
However, I love talking football, so I will indulge myself.)

I have not been a rest-of-the-world football fan long. It has always been in the background of my life, but I never cared about it.
The white noise became an orchestra about 10 years ago, around the time Mauricio Pochettino was the manager of Tottenham Hotspur. I needed to be distracted, and there the Spurs were to save me.
I will always cheer “COYS” with my whole heart.

How is soccer like God? Each inspires devotion among believers and distrust among intellectuals.
(40)

As the world falls apart, the orchestra has thundered into a chorus of Zadok the Priest. I am obsessed. I love it. I can’t get enough.

If there is a game playing in Spain, Argentina, Italy, Mexico, or Germany, I’ll find it, and I’ll watch it without picking a side.

I can explain (and scream at the refs) the offside rule. I can even explain the pre-1925 offside rule and how the 1925 amendment revolutionized the game. You’d rather talk about Hungarian Jews and how we owe modern game play to them? I can do that, too.

So, when I tell you I loved this book, I’m not offhandedly saying it. I loved this book.

Sometimes women take part too and score their own goals, though in general the macho tradition keeps them exiled from these fiestas of communication.
(94)

Galeano captured everything I love about football, futbol, calcio, soccer, the beautiful game.
He also captured everything I hate and fear about the sport: the racism, the sexism (he only talks about it a little bit), the homophobia, the corruption.
He does not, however, mention the anti-Semitism and even partakes of it himself. This is a major flaw of the book, unfortunately. As an example of anti-Semitism, the Spurs are jeered with anti-Semitic chants; I was even taunted that way in a New York bar (and it wasn’t the word that Spurs fans coopted then realized is awful and stopped using — deep sigh).

In his introduction, Rory Smith wrote that the book is prescient. Galeano fears for the game now that the corporations and mind-boggling Everests of money are involved.
And you see it. Manchester City are expected to win the Premier League. Luton Town (a team owed by its fans, like Swansea City) is expected to be relegated to the Championship again.
It’s all just business. Sure, you learn angles and speeds, but the January transfer window feels like sitting in Contracts class.
That makes me sad.

In the frigid soccer of today’s world, which detests defeat and forbids all fun, that man [Maradona] was one of the few who proved that fantasy too can be effective.
(236)

Galeano blends world history and sport history with a dry wit and biting tone. I think sport is not credited enough as a mirror of a country’s social issues and priorities, and I appreciate when writers examine this area of sociology.
He becomes more acerbic as the book progresses.

It’s not on any map but it’s there. It’s invisible, but there it is. A barrier that makes the memory of the Berlin Wall look ridiculous: raised to separate those who have from those who need, it divides the globe into north and south, and draws borders within each country and within each city. When the south of the world commits the affront of scaling the walls and venturing where it shouldn’t, the north reminds it, with truncheons, of its proper place. And the same thing happens to those who attempt to leave the zones of the damned in each country and each city.
Soccer, the mirror of everything, reflects this reality.
(201)

(COME ON YOU SPURS!)