Soccer has the most widespread appeal of any sport on Earth; everyone knows that. What may not be as readily apparent – especially in countries like the United States and Canada, where soccer lags in popularity behind football, baseball, basketball, and hockey – is how strongly soccer can influence social, cultural, and political life in the countries where it is most popular. Simon Kuper’s Soccer Against the Enemy takes to the pitch with the intent of exploring that often-overlooked aspect of t

Soccer has the most widespread appeal of any sport on Earth; everyone knows that. What may not be as readily apparent – especially in countries like the United States and Canada, where soccer lags in popularity behind football, baseball, basketball, and hockey – is how strongly soccer can influence social, cultural, and political life in the countries where it is most popular. Simon Kuper’s Soccer Against the Enemy takes to the pitch with the intent of exploring that often-overlooked aspect of the game.



Kuper, a British sports journalist who currently writes for the Financial Times, traveled the world as a young and struggling writer in order to explore How the World’s Most Popular Sport Starts and Fuels Revolutions and Keeps Dictators in Power (the book’s subtitle). His travels led him to literal visits to, or journalistic explorations of, Holland, Germany, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Russia, Ukraine, Hungary, Italy, Spain, Botswana, Cameroon, South Africa, Argentina, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Croatia, Iraq, Libya, Iran, and the United States of America. One consistent theme of Kuper’s book is that aside from religious practice, “there is no public pursuit to match the game” of soccer (p. 1) as an element of cultural life in societies around the globe; a subsidiary theme, and an increasingly important one in a world that seems daily to become less stable, is that “the less free a country is, the more soccer matters” (p. xiii). Throughout the book, Kuper explores both of these themes energetically and knowledgeably.



Kuper assumes that the reader will have a certain familiarity with many of world soccer’s major stars and historic events. If you would tend to think that the Battle of Highbury must have been a military engagement from the English Civil War (it wasn’t), or that the “Hand of God” incident at the 1986 World Cup must have involved the actual Hand of God (it didn’t), then you may find yourself going to Wikipedia a time or two to garner some necessary background information. The effort will be worthwhile. Watch the “Hand of God” goal on YouTube while you’re at it.



Which chapters of Soccer Against the Enemy interest you the most may depend on your nationality, or on your own prior experiences with soccer as player or spectator. As an American, I particularly enjoyed Chapters 15 and 19, both of which deal with the place of soccer in the United States. Chapter 15 explores, among other topics, the uncertain future of professional soccer in the U.S.A. I keep meaning to go attend a match of my local professional soccer team, the Carolina Rail Hawks (they play in Cary, outside of Raleigh, and are part of the NASL, the highest level of minor-league soccer in the United States). I know that the Rail Hawks have worked hard to build a loyal fan base, and to develop fan rituals analogous to what one sees at Premiership games in England; but I haven’t gotten around to seeing them yet. By contrast, I would never let a year go by without attending games of Carolina Hurricanes hockey or Durham Bulls baseball. Perhaps my story is somehow characteristic of the American attitude toward soccer. I wonder.



Similarly, Chapter 19 looks at the way soccer builds in popularity across the States with each new World Cup tournament, only to recede into relative obscurity for the next three and a half years. During the recent Brazilian World Cup, we all read the articles about how international soccer has finally arrived as a major American spectator sport. I remember reading the same articles 20 years ago, during the United States World Cup of 1994, and I look forward to seeing the same articles being dusted off and re-filed yet again four years from now, during the Russian World Cup of 2018.



I also liked Chapter 7, which deals with soccer in Hungary, and focuses specifically on the Ferencváros club of Budapest, because I lived in Hungary in the fall of 2011, and often drove by the Ferencvárosi stadium when I was on my way from our home in Szeged to downtown Budapest. The scenario that Kuper describes in the chapter, of Ferencvárosi fans at an away game in Bratislava, Slovakia, “who may or may not have been chanting ‘Greater Hungary’ and ‘Give us Southern Slovakia back’” (p. 79), made sense to me, because from living in Hungary I know what a scar the 1920 Treaty of Trianon, which deprived Hungary of two thirds of its pre-World War I territory, left in Hungarian national life. As it is in Hungary, so it is throughout the world; in Kuper’s persuasive formulation, soccer in each country reflects the political and social issues that are part of that country’s life and character.



Particularly interesting, and disheartening, was Chapter 18, which examines the “Old Firm” – the longstanding Glasgow-based rivalry between Celtic, whose fans are predominantly Catholic, and Rangers, whose supporters are mostly Protestant. As Kuper points out, fewer Glaswegians of any religious heritage are attending church, and more are entering into religiously mixed marriages; but supporters of both clubs cling to their old practices of engaging in verbal and sometimes physical violence against each other “because the fans enjoy it so much. They are not about to give up their ancient traditions just because they no longer believe in God” (p. 264). Leaving the tension of early-1990’s Northern Ireland to attend a Rangers-Celtic match in Glasgow, Kuper listens as Celtic fans cheer IRA hunger-striker Bobby Sands and Rangers fans chant “No Surrender” and “Nooooo Pope of Rome” slogans, and asks himself, “Had I really left Ulster that morning? Was this really part of the country I lived in?” (p. 265). And when he refers to Rangers-Celtic as “The Ninety Minutes’ Hate” (p. 265), the echo of the Two Minutes Hate from George Orwell’s 1984 is unmistakable, and troubling. What does it say about us as human beings, that so many of us draw so much pleasure from hatred?



Reading this book during the 2014 World Cup was a memorable experience, and I found that some of Kuper’s insights were downright prophetic. Chapter 17, “Pelé the Malandro,” considers the role of soccer in Brazilian society, with particular attention to conflict between modernists and traditionalists regarding how the Brazilian side should play soccer. When Kuper writes that “The modernizers, in politics as in soccer, want to turn Brazil into a second Germany” (p. 247), I couldn’t help but think back to Germany’s 7-1 defeat of Brazil in the 2014 World Cup semifinals in Brazil. That event – for Brazilians, a deep cultural wound and historic trauma, if not a national crisis – will certainly take its place within World Cup lore, along with many of the other historic events that Kuper chronicles and examines throughout his book.



Updated from its original 1994 publication to include a new chapter on soccer in the Middle East and its ties to Islamist jihadism, as well as a new preface and postscript, Soccer Against the Enemy is essential reading for anyone who is interested in the cultural power and influence of soccer.

