Futebol Nation: A Footballing History of Brazil

Description

The greatest footballing country, as recorded by the greatest football writer today No nation has so closely aligned its national identity with playing and watching football as Brazil. Football is regarded as a thing of joy, its yellow shirts a delightful amalgam of sport and art, entwined with its cultures of music and religion. This is true, but there is another side to the story too. Brazil may now be the sixth largest economy in the world but the corruption of its football authorities is characteristic of its society as a whole. To write the history of Brazilian football is to write the history of Brazil itself. This is the whole story - the players, the fans, the politicians, the passion - from the arrival of football in the country in 1894 just after the last Emperor had been deposed to the social unrest and riots at the Confederations Cup in 2013.

David Goldblatt was born in London in 1965 and is a supporter of Tottenham Hotspurs and Bristol Rovers. He teaches sociology at Bristol University, reviews sports books for the TLS, and for some years wrote the Sporting Life column in Prospect magazine.

A gripping account of how football captured a nation * Telegraph * A breezy, readable and nuanced primer to the centrality of football to Brazilian life -- Jonathan Wilson * New Statesman * Compelling, lucidly written, and furnished with detail to spare * PA * Futebol Nation isn't really about sport - it's a pimples-and-all portrait of the world's sixth largest country and the many ways it has succeeded in shooting itself in both feet * Irish Independent *