The Age of Football: The Global Game in the Twenty-first Century

Description

The epic exploration of society, politics, and economics in the twenty-first century through the prism of football, by the critically acclaimed author of The Ball is Round. 'David Goldblatt is not merely the best football historian writing today, he is possibly the best there has ever been' Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times In the twenty-first century football is first. First among sports themselves, but it now commands the allegiance, interest and engagement of more people in more places than any other phenomenon. In the three most populous nations on the earth - China, India and the United States where just twenty years ago football existed on the periphery of society - it has now arrived for good. Nations, peoples and neighbourhoods across the globe imagine and invent themselves through playing and following the game. In The Age of Football, David Goldblatt charts football's global cultural ascent, its economic transformation and deep politicisation, taking in prison football in Uganda and amputee football in Angola, the role of football fans in the Arab Spring, the footballing presidencies of Bolivia's Evo Morales and Turkey's Recep Erdogan, China's declared intention to both host and win the World Cup by 2050, as well as the FIFA corruption scandal. Following the intersection of the game with money, power and identity, like no previous sports writer or historian, Goldblatt's sweeping story is remarkable in its scope, breathtaking in its depth of knowledge, and is a brilliantly original perspective of the twenty-first century. It is the account of how football has come to define every facet of our social, economic and cultural lives and at what cost, shaping who we think we are and who we want to be.

In 2006 David Goldblatt published The Ball is Round: A Global History of Football, now considered the definitive history of the world game. In 2014 he published two national studies, Futebol Nation: The Footballing History of Brazil and The Game of Our Lives: The Making and Meaning of English Football, the latter going on to win the 2015 William Sports Hill Sports Book of the Year Award. In 2016 he published The Games: A Global History of the Olympics.

Magnificent . . . Goldblatt is the doyen of sports historians and brings to this account his forensic and telling eye for detail * Mail on Sunday * David Goldblatt is not merely the best football historian writing today, he is possibly the best there has ever been -- Dominic Sandbrook * Sunday Times * Next time people tell you politics has no place in football, tell them to read David Goldblatt's The Age of Football -- Cas Mudde, Stanley Wade Shelton UGAF Professor A globe-trotting magnum opus -- Tobias Jones * The Sunday Times * Reading David Goldblatt, you don't just understand football better. You understand the world a bit better, too. The breadth of his research is unmatched, and the writing is always a pleasure * Simon Kuper * There are football books. And then there are football books...a scintillating survey of the great 20th-century gold rush, from before the second world war to the boom times of the single European market...The age of football really is upon us. It has after all given us The Age of Football, a history that is, for all the familiarity of some of the detail, unlike anything else written on this subject. * Barney Ronay, The Guardian * Superb . . . Goldblatt provides vignettes and beautifully crafted studies, country by country, of contemporary politics and economics, told through, and around the global game * TLS * Extraordinarily wide-ranging * New Statesman * Impressively vast * Literary Review * David Goldblatt's fine study shows how football worldwide has been co-opted by populist movements * Observer * A monumental piece of work * When Saturday Comes * Comprehensive yet light of touch * Sunday Times *