Football in Sun and Shadow: An Emotional History of World Cup Football - Softcover

Galeano, Eduardo

Softcover

ISBN 10: 000716291X ISBN 13: 9780007162918

Publisher: Fourth Estate, 2003

Synopsis

Eduardo Galeano’s acclaimed classic of ‘the beautiful game’ has been fully updated to include the 1998 and 2002 World Cup.

To the pure football fan even winning and losing is of secondary importance to those moments when a glimpse is afforded of footballing perfection, made more perfect still by the long and unpredictable hours spent waiting for it, and often the parade of tragicomic errors that has preceeded it. Such instincts, of exultation and despair, are brilliantly recounted in ‘Football in Sun and Shadow’, a parade of all shades of international football.

Beckenbaur, Yashin and Zico are here with their balletic dazzle. Here too are the tragic Escobar, guilty of an own goal for Colombia and gunned down in the streets of Medellin as a consequence; the English Captain Neille who led a World War I charge on a trench by kicking a football across no man’s land; and the Dynamo Kiev team who, although warned not to win a game against the Nazis could not resist the temptation on the football pitch to overrun their oppressors: all eleven were shot in their Kiev shirts after the ‘game’.

It is also a story of muses and spells: of the Argentinian manager who wouldn’t feed his team chicken because it would bring bad luck, of the Russian goalkeeper who prepared his mind and his nerves with a cigarette and a dash of spirits before each game. This is the glory of football in all its vivid international hues, with its multilingual cries of despair, victory and sheer passion.

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About this title

Review:

‘A global history with the poetic flair of a Pele free kick.’ The Face

‘Galeano can run rings round our own glamorous football intelligentsia.’ When Saturday Comes

From the Back Cover:

'An emotional history of world cup football'

'Uplifting, reckless, ironic, impassioned – his book sparkles with supple imagery and a fine dry wit.'
Pete Davies, 'Independent'

To the true football fan even winning and losing comes second to those moments of pure footballing perfection: an acrobatic bicycle kick; an audacious piece of ball juggling; a dummy; a back heel; a flying header. Here is a parade of the world's greatest footballers from Beckenbauer to Yashin, Charlton to Zico, Cruyff to Pele with their inspired, almost baletic skill.

Here too is the tragic Escobar, guilty of an own goal for Columbia and gunned down in the streets of Medellin as a consequence; the English captain Neville who led a First World War charge on a trench by kicking a football across no-man's land; and the 1942 Dynamo Kiev team who couldn't resist beating their oppressors, the Nazis, and were then shot in their shirts after the 'game'.

'This is the world's greatest game in all its colour'

'Galeano can run rings round our glamorous football intelligentsia.'
'When Saturday Comes'

'Galeano has a style of a great left half. He constantly switches the direction of play. His observations are acute. He delivers with an air of insouciance which cannot mask his mastery'
'Herald'

'Sport's answer to 'One Hundred Years of Solitude'. A journey through a universe populated by the fantastic and the eccentric, reality turned magical.'
'Financial Times'

About this edition

• Publisher: Fourth Estate
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 000716291X
• ISBN 13: 9780007162918
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256