Book 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.
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
.
