Kicking Off Around the World: 55 Stories from When Soccer Met Politics

by Ramon Usall, Translated by Luke Stobart Pluto Press 6/20/2024, paperback SKU: 9780745350424   Think you know everything about football? Which football match triggered a war? How did 'the beautiful game' push back against the tyranny of dictatorship, and usher another into power? Kicking Off Around the World includes 55 incredible stories in which football clubs have been a mirror to--and a maker of--world history and politics. Full of anecdotes, surprising facts and illustrations, Ramon Usall mixes the grassroots with the greatest of all time; the unknown and the unforgettable. He looks at the women's game, football during the war in Ukraine, and stories of clubs from Britain to the US, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa, from football under the Nazis to the communists and everyone in between. Reviews: "Usall brings us closer, through these 55 stories, to that often overlooked and underestimated aspect of football, the most social, political, and advocacy-driven one,