The World is a Ball
1st Edition
Published on 27. May 2010
384 pages
978-1-4070-9470-0 (ISBN)
Description
In The World is a Ball, critic and author John Doyle travels the world in pursuit of his first love - football. In dispatches from Italy to Ireland and from Buenos Aires to Bratislava, and between encounters with crazed taxi drivers and drunken fans dressed as leprechauns or in lederhosen, Doyle celebrates the evolution of soccer as a global phenomenon.
He begins his journey with the first game he saw in repressed 1960s Ireland - a match which left a lasting impression on him - and then skips through the decades to concentrate on football in the twenty-first century. Here he focuses on the World Cups of 2002 and 2006, the European Championships of 2004 and 2008, and the key games and teams involved in qualifying for the historic 2010 World Cup in South Africa.
With eyewitness accounts that are both hilarious and nostalgic, The World is a Ball brilliantly weaves together travelogue, match-reporting and compelling social history. It's an insightful and thought-provoking vision of the beautiful game which for some is more a religion than a sport: where colonized nations can triumph over their colonizers, the poor are rich in the pleasure of play, and for ninety minutes, anything seems possible.
He begins his journey with the first game he saw in repressed 1960s Ireland - a match which left a lasting impression on him - and then skips through the decades to concentrate on football in the twenty-first century. Here he focuses on the World Cups of 2002 and 2006, the European Championships of 2004 and 2008, and the key games and teams involved in qualifying for the historic 2010 World Cup in South Africa.
With eyewitness accounts that are both hilarious and nostalgic, The World is a Ball brilliantly weaves together travelogue, match-reporting and compelling social history. It's an insightful and thought-provoking vision of the beautiful game which for some is more a religion than a sport: where colonized nations can triumph over their colonizers, the poor are rich in the pleasure of play, and for ninety minutes, anything seems possible.
Reviews / Votes
A witty and honest hymn to soccer, this book is also a meditation on fandom, television, international travel and national identity as mediated through sport. John Doyle registers in vivid prose the strange blend of genius, attrition and downright cheating that is modern football. -- Declan Kiberd International football tournaments are extraordinary things: sporting rituals, commercial bonanzas, international TV events and popular carnivals. In The World is a Ball, John Doyle is our laconic, sharp eyed guide to the circus. This a football travelogue alert to the complex identities, and emotions that international football evokes, and tuned to the political and social meanings that emerge from success and failure, but never makes them hard going. Playful, humane, observant, Doyle delights in his fellow human beings capacity to conjure pleasure and purpose from football. There's nothing quite like being there, but if you can't The World is a Ball will give you an irresistible taste that will make you want to be there next time, and a learned eye with which to take it in and enjoy it. -- David Goldblatt, author of The Ball Is Round: A Global History of SoccerMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Transworld Publishers Ltd
File size
1,53 MB
ISBN-13
978-1-4070-9470-0 (9781407094700)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
John Doyle
The World is a Ball
Book
05/2010
Transworld Ireland
€36.11
Article exhausted; check different version
Person
John Doyle has been a critic for Toronto's The Globe and Mail since 1997 and has written its daily television column since 2000. His first book, the memoir A Great Feast of Light: Growing up Irish in the Television Age, was published to great acclaim in the US, the UK, and Canada. He has also written for The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, The Guardian online, The Irish Times and The Toronto Star.
