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The men’s World Cup is underway and it’s my first time ever watching. As someone who spent time as an anti-Olympics organizer and is aware that the president of FIFA, Gianni Infantino, is basically a real-life Bond villain, I’m generally unenthused about mega sporting events. But I’ve been surprised at how much joy and humanity is present. Whether it’s the stories of Lawrence, Kansas falling in love with the Algerian team to the point that restaurants in the small college down have been adding halal options to their menu; the Tartan Army and the city of Boston falling into a mutual love affair; or the world watching Cape Verde’s groundbreaking success, I’ve been moved to tears many times by the beautiful stories of connection this tournament has produced.

“The experiences of joy, grief, and connection are intrinsic to the tournament,” Shireen Ahmed writes at CBC. “Fans are not simply pawns in a money-scheme but they add character, flair, joy and humanity to matches.” At Slate, Sydney Bauer writes about how diaspora fans are the best part of this World Cup—especially at a time when immigrants are being persecuted, the diaspora communities are highlighting how diverse the American and Canadian population really are.

But on top of all of the heartwarming stories about unlikely cultural exchanges and national pride are overwhelming reports of racism, homophobia, xenophobia that remind me why it’s so difficult for me to enjoy watching men’s sports or mega sporting events. Both the U.S. and Canada have denied large number of visas to fans from African countries. The Iranian national team was forced to stay in Tijuana and commute back and forth to the U.S. for their matches, putting them at a major competitive disadvantage. Even Cinderella stories like Curaçao and Cape Verde are immediately tarnished when the Curaçao goalkeeper is revealed to be an anti-vaxxer who thinks the Tate brothers are being set up on their trafficking charges, and the captain of the Cape Verdean team turns out to be facing rape charges in New Zealand.

The United States government is using photos of national team players as racist and xenophobic propaganda, but none of the athletes have denounced the use of their images in this way. Mexican fans are starting homophobic chants—which FIFA has not punished. It would probably be easier to make a list of teams without players who are facing or have faced rape or domestic violence charges than it would be to list all the problematic players because there are so many of them. The “Pride Match” in Seattle between Egypt and Iran highlighted that homosexuality is illegal in both countries (despite both countries’ football associations making formal statements condemning the Pride match, the players refused to participate in the controversy and FIFA allowed Pride flags into the game).

If you, like me, struggle to watch sports free from the broader context in which they exist, then this reading list is for you.

You can find links to all these books at my Bookshop account. All summaries below are from the official book descriptions.

Other recommendations include Karim Zidan’s Sports Politika newsletter; Alissa Walker’s Torched newsletter; and Joey D’Urso’s weekly newsletter.

“Soccer is so much more than the billionaire owners and eye-watering signing fees that dominate the headlines. Look beyond the Premier League and the World Cup, the sublime brilliance of Messi and Mbappé, and you’ll find a story unparalleled in the world of sport.

From England, France and Germany to Palestine, South Africa and Brazil, A People’s History of Soccer reveals how the ‘beautiful game’ has been a powerful instrument of emancipation for workers, feminists, anti-colonialist activists, young people and protesters around the world.

Countering the clichés about soccer fans, Mickaël Correia dives into soccer countercultures born after the Second World War, from English hooligans to the ultras who played a central role in the ‘Arab Spring.’ And with chapters on anti-fascism, the women’s game, and the rise in community-owned clubs, Correia reminds us that soccer can be a powerful social and political force—as generous as it is subversive.”

“At the heart of this analysis by acclaimed sportswriter and scholar Jules Boykoff, who himself played soccer professionally, is the concept of sportswashing, where political leaders use sports to stoke nationalism and legitimize themselves on the world stage, deflecting from chronic problems at home. Step forward the recipient of the newly cast FIFA Peace Prize, Donald J. Trump, a titan unrivaled in squeegeeing every drop of personal wealth and prestige from hosting the competition. In this, he is ably assisted by a governing body of global soccer dripping in patronage and corruption.

In these pages Boykoff demonstrates that it is possible to simultaneously treasure the skills and athleticism displayed on the pitch while lamenting their exploitation by malevolent powerbrokers for whom love of the game means nothing next to turning a buck or harvesting prestige. And, as Red Card so skillfully shows, this bait and switch is not confined to soccer. Precisely the same legerdemain will be used to distract and enrich when the Olympic Games come to Los Angeles two years from now.”

“When the tiny desert state of Qatar won the rights to host the 2022 World Cup, the news was greeted with shock and disbelief. How had a country with almost no soccer infrastructure or tradition, a high terror risk, and searing summer temperatures, beaten more established countries with stronger bids? The story behind the Qatari success soon developed into a global news sensation.

In 2014 The Sunday Times Insight team in the UK spilled the secrets of a bombshell cache of hundreds of millions of secret documents, which were leaked by a whistleblower. In forensic detail, they reported how Mohamed Bin Hammam, Qatar’s top soccer official, used his position to help secure the votes that Qatar needed to win the bid. The investigative team spent three months painstakingly piecing together Bin Hammam’s activities and reporting on cash handouts, lavish junkets, and evidence of payments to soccer officials around the world.”

“In 2015, FIFA-the multibillion dollar governing body of the world’s most-loved sport-was brought down by allegations of industrial-scale bribes, kickbacks, money laundering, racketeering and tax evasion. Beginning with early morning raids in Zurich and the indictment of twenty-seven executives by the US Department of Justice, the rottenness at the core of FIFA seemed to extend throughout all of soccer, from the decision to send the 2018 and 2022 World Cups to Russia and Qatar to lesser known cases of embezzlement from Trinidad to South Africa.

David Conn writes the definitive account of FIFA’s rise and fall, covering in great detail the corruption allegations and the series of scandals that continued to shake the public’s trust in the organization. The Fall of the House of FIFA situates FIFA’s unraveling amidst revealing human portraits of soccer legends such as Michel Platini and Franz Beckenbauer and features an exclusive interview with former president Sepp Blatter.”

“As the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games approach, ordinary Brazilians are holding the country's biggest protest marches in decades. Sports journalist Dave Zirin traveled to Brazil to find out why. In a rollicking read that travels from the favelas of Rio de Janeiro to the fabled Maracanã Stadium, Zirin examines how athletic mega-events turn into neoliberal Trojan horses.”

“Football is the world's most popular sport, and the shirts worn by teams and their supporters are its greatest means of cultural expression. Every year clubs launch new kits with increasingly extravagant marketing campaigns and convoluted explanations of how their designs reflect their history and local community. But football shirts are much more than just a symbol of which club we support. A seemingly innocuous combination of colours, sponsor logos and materials can all reflect the social values, financial struggles and political ideologies of the day, as geopolitical issues increasingly seep into every aspect of the game.

Investigative journalist Joey D'Urso has travelled across the globe, combining on-the-ground reporting with unparalleled analysis to collate a list of the twenty-two football shirts that best explain the modern world.  More Than A Shirt will take fans on a journey from Birmingham to Belgrade and onto Medellin and Mumbai, outlining how we can see the war in Ukraine in the shirt of Schalke in Germany or China's foreign policy in West Bromwich Albion's; how the shirts of state-owned clubs are used for sportswashing; and why the French national kit embodies worldwide migration patterns.”

“This book explores the role of FIFA in brokering the development of football in Africa and its relationship with that continent's football associations and regional governing body. Africa is no longer on the periphery of world football but the economic disparities between the first and the third worlds hinder the development of the game. The author shows convincingly how Africa's advance within world football is tied to its national political economy and how the balance of power within FIFA still clearly favours its European members.”

“From Accra and Algiers to Zanzibar and Zululand, Africans have wrested control of soccer from the hands of Europeans, and through the rise of different playing styles, the rituals of spectatorship, and the presence of magicians and healers, have turned soccer into a distinctively African activity. African Soccerscapes explores how Africans adopted soccer for their own reasons and on their own terms. Soccer was a rare form of “national culture” in postcolonial Africa, where stadiums and clubhouses became arenas in which Africans challenged colonial power and expressed a commitment to racial equality and self-determination. New nations staged matches as part of their independence celexadbrations and joined the world body, FIFA. The Confédération africaine de football democratized the global game through antiapartheid sanctions and increased the number of African teams in the World Cup finals.

In this compact, highly readable book Alegi shows that the result of this success has been the departure of huge numbers of players to overseas clubs and the growing influence of private commercial interests on the African game. But the growth of women’s soccer and South Africa’s hosting of the 2010 World Cup also challenge the one-dimensional notion of Africa as a backward, “tribal” continent populated by victims of war, corruption, famine, and disease.”

“Soccer is much more than just the most popular game in the world. It is a matter of life and death for millions around the world, an international lingua franca. Simon Kuper traveled to twenty-two countries to discover the sometimes bizarre effect soccer can have on politics and culture. At the same time he tried to discover what makes different countries play a simple game so differently.

Kuper meets a remarkable variety of fans along the way, from the East Berliner persecuted by the Stasi for supporting his local team, to the Argentine general with his own views on tactics. He also illuminates the frightening intersection between soccer and politics, particularly in the wake of the attacks of 9-11, where soccer is obsessed over by the likes of Osama bin Laden. The result is one of the world’s most acclaimed books on the game, and an astonishing study of soccer and its place in the world.”

“Why do clubs almost always lose money—and does it mean some will disappear? Why doesn’t America dominate the sport internationally? Do coaches actually even matter? These are the questions that most consume soccer fans—and Soccernomics holds the answers. 
 
Soccernomics is a revolutionary way of looking at soccer that has helped to change how some of the world’s biggest clubs are run. Using insights and analogies from economics, statistics, psychology, and business to cast a new and entertaining light on how the game works, experts Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski reveal the often surprisingly counterintuitive truths about soccer.”

“A groundbreaking work—named one of the five most influential sports books of the decade by Sports Illustrated—How Soccer Explains the World is a unique and brilliantly illuminating work of political journalism that looks at soccer, the world’s most popular sport, as a lens through which to view the pressing issues of our age, from the clash of civilizations to the global economy.

From Brazil to Bosnia, and Italy to Iran, this is an eye-opening chronicle of how soccer culture and its fanatical followers can highlight the fault lines of a society, whether it’s terrorism, poverty, anti-Semitism, or radical Islam—issues that now have an impact on all of us. Filled with blazing intelligence, colorful characters, wry humor, and an equal passion for soccer and humanity, How Soccer Explains the World is an utterly original book that makes sense of our troubled times.”

“Racism in football is reduced to neo-Nazis and monkey chants. But if we want to understand its origins, we have to go back further. Drawing on more than 100 interviews from five different continents, this hard-hitting investigation reveals how:

At the center of this book are people – players, fans and activists – who stand up to racism with courage and grit. In England, black referees are networking to have a stronger voice. In Brazil, reporters are producing a podcast for Afro-Brazilian issues in sport. Above all, the question is: how can racism in football be pushed back?”

“With Following the Ball, Todd Cleveland incorporates labor, sport, diasporic, and imperial history to examine the extraordinary experiences of African football players from Portugal’s African colonies as they relocated to the metropole from 1949 until the conclusion of the colonial era in 1975. The backdrop was Portugal’s increasingly embattled Estado Novo regime, and its attendant use of the players as propaganda to communicate the supposed unity of the metropole and the colonies.

Cleveland zeroes in on the ways that players, such as the great Eusébio, creatively exploited opportunities generated by shifts in the political and occupational landscapes in the waning decades of Portugal’s empire. Drawing on interviews with the players themselves, he shows how they often assumed roles as social and cultural intermediaries and counters reductive histories that have depicted footballers as mere colonial pawns.

To reconstruct these players’ transnational histories, the narrative traces their lives from the informal soccer spaces in colonial Africa to the manicured pitches of Europe, while simultaneously focusing on their off-the-field challenges and successes. By examining this multi-continental space in a single analytical field, the book unearths structural and experiential consistencies and contrasts, and illuminates the components and processes of empire.”