How Soccer Explains the World (An Unlikely Theory of Globalization)

By: Brendan Verano
Soccer does explain the World. It is a very interesting book drawing parallels about historical moments/recent history and how they were connected with football issues going on at the moment in the same places.
Franklin Foer asserts that both the positive and negative effects of globalization have over done its influence. He proves this through soccer. This sport, which everywhere but in the United States is the most popular team sport of the poor, provides an alternate focal point to both globalized economies and traditional religions and cultures. Capitalists are unable to compete against a sport that manages to change its image in ways to suit local conditions. (Text to Itself)
The first chapter for example tells about Serbian groups, their connection with football and how they were instrumental in the Yugoslavian wars. In that chapter you read lots of names that ring a bell from having followed football recently: Obilic, Arkan, the great Red Star of 1991 (Prosinecki), Ognjenovic (a singing of Real Madrid), Zvonimir Boban… all these names let the reader connect with the story.http://soccerfootballwhatever.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-former-yugoslavia-without-croatia.html
There are other chapters that may draw the attention of many: a whole chapter dedicated to F.C. Barcelona (the favourite team of the writer, Franklin Foer), disdain for soccer in the USA, Ajax, racism in football… (Text to World)
World Cup match between Argentina & Belgium (Beginning of a new game: The Petroc)
He looks into why is it that some European clubs are still being identified as Jewish even though their owners left two generations ago. In the 1920's, Jewish people set out to prove their critics wrong in saying that Jews lacked manliness in soccer. They established entire Jewish teams that won championships. Anti-Semitism is more complicated than it seems, for it has reached all across the globe through sport. Tottenham Hotspurs players are referred to as “Yids.” Chelsea fans kept yelling in unison, “Hitler's gonna gas’em again.” So, since globalization has brought immigrants into Britain, people express their annoyance in ape noises directed at black players (occasionally throwing bananas on the pitch), and anti-foreign chants. It is one of most terrible struggles that the world sport has been unfortunately accustomed to.
(This video is not my work but a perfect representation of this books theme!)
“Soccer's appeal lay in its opposition to the other popular sports. For children of the sixties, there was something abhorrent about enrolling kids in American football, a game where violence wasn't just incidental but inherent. They didn't want to teach the acceptability of violence, let alone subject their precious children to the risk of physical maiming. Baseball, where each batter must stand center stage four or five times a game, entailed too many stressful, potentially ego-deflating encounters. Basketball, before Larry Bird's prime, still had the taint of the ghetto."
"But soccer represented something very different. It was a tabula rasa, a sport onto which a generation of parents could project their values. Quickly, soccer came to represent the fundamental tenets of yuppie parenting, the spirit of Sesame Street and Dr. Benjamin Spock."

 - Franklin Foer (Text to Text)

This came directly from the book and it analyzes the struggles of parenthood for which they try to find a suitable but physical sport that subjects their kids from the economical image.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Kite Runner

Image
Rhetorical Triangle Writer, Audience, and Context Novelist Khaled Hosseini came to the United States as a 15-year-old Afghan asylum seeker who knew only a few words of English. Today, he is a doctor, a United Nations goodwill ambassador, and author of two internationally acclaimed books, “The Kite Runner” and “A Thousand Splendid Suns.” H e left Afghanistan in 1976, Kabul was a "growing, thriving, cosmopolitan city." By the end of his father’s four-year post at the Afghan Embassy in Paris, his country had been invaded by the Soviet Union.  Hosseini and his family sought asylum in the United States and ended up in California, where he became a doctor and eventually wrote “The Kite Runner,” which was an overnight literary sensation.   I believe this book is geared toward a more mature  audience  as well as one interested in learning about the cultural differences between the United States and Afghanistan. They would need to be prepared...
Read more

1984 Rhetorical Analysis

Image
Rhetorical Triangle Writer, Audience, and Context In 1984, George Orwell inputs his own popular opinions and describes what life would be like in the future if history were to head that direction. Having witnessed firsthand the totalitarian governments in Spain and Russia would go in order to sustain and increase their power. O rwell most likely designed 1984 to sound the alarm in western nations still unsure about how to approach the rise of communism. Orwell was uneasy that the widespread cruelties and oppressions he observed in communist countries, and seems to have been concerned by the role of technology in enabling oppressive governments to monitor and control their citizens. His opinions and concepts such as the dangers of a Totalitarian government, psychological manipulation, control of information and history, and many more. It seems that Orwell’s purpose is to not only persuade his audience, but to warn them of what can come in the future if communism was to sp...
Read more