Book Review - How Football Explain The World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization.

2018 is a great year for Mo Salah. This year he brings Liverpool to the European Champions League Final. This year too, he brings his country, Egypt, to the World Cup. The Liverpool forward has reached demigod status in his home country and even Egyptian Real Madrid fans want him to win the Champions League final against the Spanish side, as reported by The Guardian. In an era where racism, the prejudice toward others still exist, it’s really great to have a player like Mo Salah. He is no ordinary football player. He plays so great that the excited fans of The Kops started to create the famous “I’ll be Muslim too” chant. Maybe it’s only a chant. It couldn’t change anything. But the positive sentiment is there.

The 70s era had their own guitar hero, it was the time for the greatest rock n roll movements. Ritchie Blackmore, Jimmy Hendrix, Jimmy Page, etc. Someone could easily argue that the guitar riff of "Smoke On The Water" was the riff of the 70s decade. What about the 2000s? One strongest candidate could be “Seven Nation Army” by Jack White. That strong guitar riff has been sung by football fans in many many stadiums, during many football matches, all over the world.

These kinds of thoughts are what I get from Franklin Foer‘s book “How Football Explain The World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization.” In this football (in America: Soccer) world, life is much complex as the world outside. This book takes you to a tour to different locales in Serbia, Glasgow, Vienna, London, Brazil, Ukraine, Milan, Barcelona, Tehran, and the US. From those tours, Foer successfully shown different faces of football, such as hooliganism, corruption, racism, ethnic hatred, anti-semitism, nationalism, and patriotism. Football is not merely a green field with eleven players. It’s much bigger, and it is fascinating.

Foer did great ethnographic research on many countries regarding their football cultures. From the bloody clash between Glasgow’s Ranger vs Celtic to the deep meaning of El Classico (Real Madrid vs Barcelona), what it means as a political statement, identity, and historical context. His exploration about how football has a significant role in the sectarian conflict in Yugoslavia was so vivid. He showed how a particular football hooligans turns into ''Milosevic's shock troops, the most active agents of ethnic cleansing, highly efficient practitioners of genocide." Indeed it’s a gloomy one to read.

Foer managed to interview some important figures that might be never heard in football world before. They were not stars, they were just people who happen to love football, and see football as a reflection of life. In this book, Globalization has not wipe away local institutions and cultures. Instead, it launched a counter on the hegemony. As Foer's write, "you could love your country -- even consider it a superior group -- without desiring to dominate other groups or closing yourself off to foreign impulses."

To be honest, the book title feels exaggerating. Despite being the biggest sport on the planet, Football in only a little piece of the globe. He could linked football with many other things, but clearly it won't explain the world. There were not so many globalization theories either. The best segment about globalization would be the segment about Chelsea. In this chapter, Foer explained about the gentrification of London in Chelsea area. How this ‘modernization’ brings a lot of changes, and how these changes had to make Chelsea as the most cosmopolitan club in the England Premier League. This chapter was interesting because Foer uses Allan Garrison, a sentimental Hooligans as the central character.

Gentrification is a process of renovation of deteriorated urban neighborhoods by means of the influx of more affluent residents.

England claimed that football was born there. But as Foer's reported, Margaret Thatcher in 1980s once said that hooliganism in football was "a disgrace to civilized society." The situation getting worse as a consequence of the tragic Hillsborough Disaster. The stadium needs monitoring, better seats with better safety. To made that changes, the stadium need large amount of money. So, it begun, a new model of football as an entertainment industry. When the businesses are coming to Chelsea stadium, brands and money tag along, it changed the football realm. Allan Garrison was the 'owner' of the stadium before this gentrification begin. But now, the stadium is prepared for the middle class, not for him.

The chapter about England Football was so fascinating. Maybe because I've been exposed by England Premier League since I was a kid. I personally think this chapter could explain David Beckham transformation into a real deal superstar too. What a global phenomenon He is.

The theme of globalization as an economic term can be seen too when Foer goes to Brazil. While foreign multinationals invested in Brazilian soccer teams, in Brazil national teams, only seven player were playing for Brazilian local clubs. This brings us the to the phenomenon of a football transfer market. How players are traded from one club to another, across the globe. The market expansion is fantastic, the price value is unimaginable.

The other chapters were interesting reads about life and cultures. Football is indeed a way of life. Foer did an outstanding job here. Working like an anthropologist, he really digs deeps into people behavior, and we would busy guessing about how are they thinking. As a journalist, he made this book as a great example of how narrative journalism should be done. We could read the details, the backstory, the ambiances and nuances of a civilization where football has left a deep meaning for the society.

When we're speaking about great journalism, we'd want to see a great piece of prose, with plenty of rich characters. Foer's characterizations, many of them based on interviews, are fit in that definition of journalism. Foer's portraits are dramatically effective caricatures.

There are other books of football, varies from the tactical point of views, philosophy, or the hard life of the Hooligans. But Foer did a distinctive work, thanks to the ethnography approach. If you're not a Football fan, this book is still a valuable read. Especially if you'd take it as reports of an ethnographic research with a great narrative journalism effort. It's a good study of the relationship between popular culture, geopolitics, and identity.

Further reads on Interesting Football book:

• Football Against The Enemy - Simon Kuper
• Fans of the World, Unite! A Capitalist Manifesto for Sports Consumers by Stefan Szymanski
• Touched by God: How We Won the Mexico '86 World Cup by Diego Armando Maradona and Daniel Arcucci
• Inverting the Pyramid: The History of Soccer Tactics by Jonathan Wilson
• Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby

Picture by Liam McKay