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Overview

A brilliant, kaleidoscopic exploration of soccer—and the passion, hopes, rivalries, superstitions, and global solidarity it inspires—from Juan Villoro, “Mexico's top fútbol expert” (NBC News).

On a planet where FIFA has more members than the United Nations and the World Cup is watched by more than three billion people, football is more than just a game. As revered author Juan Villoro argues in this passionate and compulsively readable tribute to the world’s favorite sport, football may be the most effective catalyst for panglobal unity at the time when we need it most. (Following global consensus, Villoro uses “football” rather than “soccer” in the book.)

What was the greatest goal of all time? Why do the Hungarians have a more philosophical sense of defeat than the Mexicans? Do the dead play football? In essays ranging from incisive and irreverent portraits of Maradona, Messi, Ronaldo, Pelé, Zidane, and many more giants of the game to entertaining explorations of left-footedness and the number 10, Juan Villoro dissects the pleasure and pain of football fandom. God Is Round is a book for both fanatics and neophytes who long to feel the delirium of the faithful.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781632060587
Publisher: Restless Books
Publication date: 04/19/2016
Pages: 256
Sales rank: 964,467
Product dimensions: 5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Juan Villoro is Mexico’s most prolific, prize-winning author, playwright, journalist, and screenwriter. His books have been translated into multiple languages; he has received the Herralde Award in Spain for his novel El testigo, the Antonin Artaud award in France for Los culpables. His novel, Arrecife, was recently short-listed for the Rezzori Prize in Italy. Villoro lives in Mexico City and is a visiting lecturer at Yale and Princeton universities.

Thomas Bunstead's translations from the Spanish include work by Eduardo Halfon and Yuri Herrera, Aixa de la Cruz's story “True Milk” in Best of European Fiction, and the forthcoming A Brief History of Portable Literature by Enrique Vila-Matas (a co-translation with Anne McLean). A guest editor of a Words Without Borders feature on Mexico (March 2015), Thomas has also published his own writing in the Times Literary Supplement, The Independent, the Paris Review blog, 3ammagazine, Days of Roses, readysteadybook, and kill author.

Table of Contents

Onetti the Ticket Vendor 9

Winter Champion: Fandom in the First Person 13

The Final Passion 29

When a Goal is More Than a Goal 59

The Football and the Head 73

The Peculiarity of Being Two-Legged 137

The Deaths of Others 143

Magic Number 10 153

Diego Armando Maradona: Life, Death, Resurrection, and a Little More Besides 169

Ronaldo: The Way of All Flesh 199

A Diatribe Against Cristiano Ronaldo 205

Lionel Messi: Childhood Prefigurations 213

Blood on the Terraces: Violence in the Business of FIFA 239

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