Description

‘Kuper is a wry and sharp-eyed guide’ New Statesman

‘A brilliant evocation of the joy of the football carnival and the absurdities of the global spectacle… an essential companion’ David Goldblatt

It’s the biggest sporting competition on Earth. A four-yearly chance for our greatest footballers to realise their ultimate dream. A month-long spectacle that’s watched by billions. But the inaugural World Cup, held in Uruguay in 1930, was semi-professional, poorly attended and haphazardly organised – so how did it become a bonanza of multinational sponsorship, dubious ethics and shadowy characters, and the ultimate stage for football’s greatest drama?

Simon Kuper is one of very few people to have attended every World Cup since 1990. In World Cup Fever he looks back at each tournament he’s experienced – from half-empty stands at Italia 90 to the French triumph as hosts in 1998, South Africa’s national dream in 2010 and the troubling legacy of 2022 – to reveal a captivating portrait of sport in a globalised world.

World Cup Fever is the story of how the tournament touches and sometimes even changes our lives, by one of the best writers on the beautiful game.

Publisher Review

Kuper is an excellent guide… his book is filled with memorable vignettes * Spectator * Charming and amusing * Literary Review * An essential warm-up for making sense of the extraordinary World Cup to come … [Kuper] is a wry and sharp-eyed guide to the high-camp theatre of Fifa politics and the everyday carnival of fans on city streets; to the collective euphoria and national imagining that takes place at giant outdoor match viewing; and to the way hosts are changed by their encounter with their guests * New Statesman * A delightful memoir, travelogue, and journal, Simon Kuper’s World Cup Fever is a wry and sharp-eyed account of the world’s now biggest public ritual. A brilliant evocation of the joy of the football carnival and the absurdities of the global spectacle, it remains alert to the game’s ever closer pact with money and power. It is an essential companion to the tournament, for it allows us to look at the sun and not be blinded — David Goldblatt, author * The Ball is Round * A series of wise, wry and revealing reflections on football’s greatest tournament and what it tells us about the world. Football Against the Enemy was one the three books that effectively invented modern football writing, and Kuper continues to lead the genre. — Jonathan Wilson, author * Inverting the Pyramid * Praise for Barca: A masterfully written history of the world’s greatest football club — Gary Lineker An instant classic — Bill Buford Simply unmissable — Amy Raphael A masterclass on football — John Carlin Praise for Soccernomics: Magnificent * Guardian * An Arsene Wenger of a book – more thoughtful than most of its rivals and, by football standards, positively intellectual. * The Times *