The Thinking Fan's Guide to the World Cup

The Thinking Fan's Guide to the World Cup

As a returnee to the sport of soccer in a co-ed over-30 league I am again exposed to the joys & crazy fans of the world's most popular sport. On the commute home yesterday I heard an interview with the editor of this book:
THE THINKING FAN’S GUIDE TO THE WORLD CUP
EDITED BY MATT WEILAND & SEAN WILSEY

I wonder if I should get it. Sounds like it could be interesting reading while watching The World Cup 2006: June 9 – July 9 in Germany

about the book...

An almanac, a literary anthology and a program rolled into one, The Thinking Fan’s Guide to the World Cup is a unique companion to the biggest event on the planet – indispensable to the reader with a passion for soccer and a thought and a care for everything else.

The Thinking Fan’s Guide features original pieces of reportage, travelogue, personal memoir and essay on the 32 participating nations by 32 leading novelists and journalists, including Robert Coover, Geoff Dyer, Dave Eggers, William Finnegan, Nick Hornby, John Lanchester, Henning Mankell, Eric Schlosser and many more. Plus all the information that any fan needs to follow the World Cup from opening match to the final: the complete match schedule, results from past tournaments, and facts and figures about the players, teams, referees, host cities and stadia and the nations themselves.

THE THINKING FANS AND THEIR NATIONS

ANGOLA – crime writer Henning Mankell recounts Angola’s suspenseful qualification campaign

ARGENTINA – London Review of Books editor Thomas Jones defends Maradona’s ‘Hand of God’ goal against England

AUSTRALIA – Somerset Maugham Award-winner Ben Rice on Australia’s magical realist soccer

BRAZIL – novelist John Lanchester describes the indescribable: the beauty of Brazilian soccer

COSTA RICA – Welsh journalist Matthew Yeomans reveals how foreign investment in Costa Rican soccer is bringing violence to a peaceful country

CÔTE D’IVOIRE – London Review of Books editor Paul Laity explores the ‘new ivory trade’: the transfer market in African soccer players

CROATIA – writer Courtney Angela Brkic sings ‘Croatia is World Champion’ in Zagreb

CZECH REPUBLIC – Observer columnist Tim Adams explains what unites Milan Kundera and Pavel Nedved

ECUADOR – Harper’s contributing editor Jake Silverstein remembers the summer of The Speedwalker and the Madman.

ENGLAND – Fever Pitch author Nick Hornby on the conflicting call of club and country

FRANCE – novelist Aleksandar Hemon proves, once and for all, that sex and soccer do not mix

GERMANY – German journalist Alexander Osang meets the great World Cup hero Gerd Müller

GHANA – novelist Caryl Phillips loans the Ghanaian national team his iPod

IRAN – playwright Saïd Sayrafiezadeh delves deep into his Iranian heritage — and is surprised at what he learns

ITALY – novelist Tim Parks on the pleasures and pains of watching the World Cup in Italy

JAPAN – Time magazine Tokyo bureau chief Jim Frederick shows how soccer is displacing baseball

MEXICO – former Foreign Minister of Mexico Jorge Castañeda invites George W. Bush to a game

NETHERLANDS – journalist Tom Vanderbilt wonders whether the Dutch are too exceptional to win the World Cup

PARAGUAY – Guardian reporter Isabel Hilton hunts for contraband crocodile skins with the Guarani Indians, namesake tribe of the Paraguayan national team

POLAND – New Yorker columnist James Surowiecki explains how frequent changes in Polish national team managers reflect its political system

PORTUGAL – New Yorker staff writer William Finnegan surfs with the Portuguese national team, just down the coast from Cristiano Ronaldo’s boyhood home

SAUDI ARABIA – NYU professor Sukhdev Sandhu on the anti-soccer fatwa in Saudi Arabia

SERBIA & MONTENEGRO – writer Geoff Dyer explores the Serbian soul on the soccer pitch and in Belgrade traffic

SOUTH KOREA – novelist Peter Ho Davies recalls his boyhood in Coventry, when he was the only Asian on the soccer team

SPAIN – American novelist Robert Coover recalls the destape—the ‘popping of the cork’ that came after the death of General Franco—and the glorious 1982 World Cup in Spain

SWEDEN – muckraking reporter Eric Schlosser visits a Swedish prison

SWITZERLAND – Swiss novelist Peter Stamm sings the Swiss national anthem &emdash; at least the verse he can remember

TOGO – Caine Prize-winner Binyavanga Wainaina visits a Togolese market full of soccer jerseys and the most spectacular bras he’s ever seen

TRINIDAD & TOBAGO – New Yorker deputy fiction editor Cressida Leyshon discovers the link between Bristol, Trinidad & Tobago, and VS Naipaul

TUNISIA – reporter Wendell Steavenson meets the medicine men and witchdoctors of Tunisian soccer

UKRAINE – journalist Benjamin Pauker discovers the other great Ukrainian Shevchenko, on New York’s Lower East Side

UNITED STATES – McSweeney’s editor Dave Eggers on the gym teachers who keep America safe from communism

PLUS an Afterword by Franklin Foer: ‘How to Win the World Cup’.

ABOUT THE EDITORS
Matt Weiland is deputy editor of Granta. Originally from Minneapolis, he lives in London.

Sean Wilsey is editor-at-large of McSweeney’s. He lives in New York.
—Posted 8 May 2006 by Matt Weiland