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

Keith Putnam

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I've just started reading David Goldblatt's new book and I figured we might as well have a thread in which to discuss it. Also, the Total Soccer Show will be doing a series of "book club" podcasts about the book.

From the end of the introduction, which uses the 2014 World Cup final as a framing device for talking about globalized soccer:

Here, at the very pinnacle of this global moment, this condensation of humanity's global networks and attention, we can, if we choose, see that after the football and the craziness that surrounds it, the real world has been present all along. The spectacle both dazzles and blinds us, but it has yet to seal itself off from challenge and critique, should we wish to engage with it. It is not obligatory to do so, but if we wish to retain some of the life and spontaneity of our game, if we want to preserve the real solidarities and collective identities we derive from it, if we think football should not be dominated by money and power alone, but by the logics of play, then it might be wise.​