Bookdiva's Full Review: Eduardo Galeano - Soccer in Sun and Shadow
A true soccer fan will love this little book of vignettes by the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano, in an excellent translation by Mark Fried. As Galeano explains in his foreword, which he calls the author's confession, "Years have gone by and I've finally learned to accept myself for who I am: a beggar for good soccer. I go about the world, hand outstretched, and in the stadiums I plead: "A pretty move, for the love of God." And when good soccer happens, I give thanks for the miracle and I don't give a damn which team or country performs it." Reading these words, the soccer fan feels a delicious tremor of anticipation at the recognition of a kindred spirit about to lay out in beautiful prose a hundred little reasons why we are all captivated and delighted by this sport.
Galeano's book is by turns the self-portrait of a soccer fanatic, a primer of the basics of the game, a collection of private favorite moments in the history of the sport and a useful, if abridged, guide to its most historically important moments - the World Cup tournaments. Considering Galeano's background, it's not surprising his focus is heavily Latin American, but his appreciation for the beautiful goal, the tricky move, and the startling save extends to all nations (except, perhaps, the United States - although an appendix in the 1999 edition includes a report of the 1998 World Cup tournament, no mention is made of some of the great plays and stunning goals achieved by the Americans in 1994 and 1998).
The book unfolds more or less chronologically. First come sketches of the major components of the game - the player, the goalkeeper, the idol, the fan, the goal, the referee, the manager, and so on - then a look at the origins and development of the game to the level at which is now played. That out of the way, Galeano devotes himself to portraits, equally sketchy but lyrically evocative, of great players, amazing plays, near-fiascos, and outright disasters throughout soccer history. Every few chapters comes a report on a World Cup tournament, in order from 1930 to 1998. In these pages we rediscover names from the past - Zamora, Moreno, Zizinho, Di Stefano, Garrincha, Matthews, Beckenbauer, Cruyff, Maradona, Platini, Baggio, and of course the greatest of them all, Pele.
Interspersed with these tributes are more somber reminders of how the reality of a world torn by famine, poverty and war interfere with the more elevated pursuit of good soccer. There's the confluence of soccer and national pride, as in this tear-jerking item, beautifully related in its simplicity: "A monument in the Ukraine commemorates the players of the 1942 Dynamo Kiev team. During the Nazi occupation they committed the insane act of defeating Hitler's squad in the local stadium. Having been warned, "If you win, you die," they started out resigned to losing, trembling with fear and hunger, but in the end they could not resist the temptation of dignity. When the game was over all eleven were shot with their shirts on at the edge of a cliff." Just as heartbreaking is the short tale of Abdon Porte, a player for Uruguay's Nacional team whose luck took a turn for the worse. Goal-less and despondent, he finally shot himself in summer 1918, at midnight "at the center of the field where he had been loved." Do not doubt soccer is a serious matter - just ask Andres Escobar, the unfortunate Colombian player who scored an own goal in an elimination match against the U.S. during the 1994 World Cup. Upon returning to his hometown of Medellin, he was fatally gunned down in the street.
These few blots are more than balanced by glorious moments - game-winning goals, remarkable acrobatic feats and honorable defeats. Galeano notes the invention of the bicycle kick later made famous by Pele; the first time a goalkeeper became an aggressive part of the team; the first black man to play for a national team; the player who walked a goal into the net by balancing the ball on his chest; and the great Brazilian national Zico re-creating a disallowed goal exactly, move for move, until the referee had to acknowledge it.
These are just a few moments to remember in the history of a sport that captivates practically the entire population of the globe, outside the U.S., that is. Galeano's book is a confection of pure pleasure for the soccer fan, whose only defect is to be too short.
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