Simon Kuper - Soccer Against the Enemy: How the Worlds Most Popular Sport Starts and Fuels Revolutions and Keeps Dictators in Power

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Table of Contents

PRAISE FOR Simon Kupers SOCCER AGAINST THE ENEMY

WINNER OF THE WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD.

Voted best book on soccer ever by Four Four Two magazine

Voted as one of the TOP 50 books on sport by the Observer newspaper

The best from the last few years.

Nick Hornby, author Fever Pitch and About A Boy

It probably wont be long before Americans discover the decades worth of smart British books about the culture, political history and sociology of the game, like Simon Kupers Soccer Against the Enemy.

New York Times Book Review

An inspiration.

Franklin Foer, author How Soccer Explains the World

How Soccer Explains the World is a good and largely interesting read, but based on the failings that I found within its pages, I find it hard to recommend. A better choice for an interested reader would be Simon Kupers Soccer Against the Enemy.

Roger Holland, Pop Matters

If you like [soccer] read it. If you dont like [soccer] read it.

The Times (London)

Highly entertaining.

Financial Times

A terrific book.

The Guardian

ALSO BY SIMON KUPER

Ajax, the Dutch, the War

To my family, and to the memory of Petra van Rhede

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

THIS BOOK COULD ONLY have been written thanks to conversations with hundreds of people around the world. Many others acted as interpreters (some paid, others not) or as contacts. Some simply helped me buy train ticketsan act of mercy in Russia. I thank all the people I met and have quoted in the text, and also:

in England, Debbie Ashton and Francisco Panizza; at Amnesty International, Henry Atmore, Rachel Baxter, Joe Boyle, Nancy Branko, Jordi Busquet, Rachel Cooke, Shilpa Deshmukh, Gillian Harling, Matt Mellor, Simon Pennington, Celso Pinto, Keir Radnedge, Gavin Rees, Katrine Sawyer, and Simon Veksner

in Scotland, Raymond Boyle, Mark Dingwall, Gerry Dunbar, Jimmy Johnstone, Mark Leishman, and John Scott

in Northern Ireland, Thomas D.J. McCormick and his family, and John McNair

in Ireland, John Lenihan, and Marina and Pauline Millington-Ward

in Holland, Willem Baars, Rutger and Jan Maarten Slagter, the staffs of Nieuwe Revu and Vrij Nederland

in Germany, the Klopfleisch family, and the Hertha BSC fan club

in the Baltics, the Norwegian Information Office in Vilnius and Markus Luik

in Russia, Julia Artemova, Ana Borodatova, Vladimir Shinkaryov, Mark Rice-Oxley, Carey Scott, Sasha, and Irina

in Ukraine, Peter Lavrenjuk

in the Czech Republic, Vclav Hubinger, Karel Novotny, Jan Tobias, and the Press and Information Center for Foreign Journalists

in Hungary, Krisztina Feny and Gabor Vargyas

in Italy, the Herrera family, Isabelle Grenier, and Virginie

in Spain, Elisabet Almeda, Salvador Giner, and Nuria

in Cameroon, the staff at the British Embassy

in South Africa, all my relatives, Raymond Hack, Doctor Khumalo, Steve Komphela, and Krish Naidoo

in Botswana, the Masire family

in the USA, Michelle Akers-Stahl, Joy Bifeld, Sue Carpenter, Julie Faudi, Duncan Irving, Leo Kuper, Dean Linke, Celestin Monga, John Polis, Michael Whitney, Mike Woitalla, Ade, Ruth Aguilera, Andres Cavelier, Chris Cowles, Frank dellApa, Gus Martins, Meghan Oates, Derek Rae, Kristen Upchurch and Bea Vidacs

in Argentina, Rafael Bloom, Estela de Carlotto, Peter Hamilton, Fabian Lupi, Nathaniel C. Nash, Daniel and Pablo Rodriguez Sierra, and Eric Weil

and in Brazil, Ricardo Benzaquem, Cunca Bocayuva Cunha, Marcio Moreira Alves, Adam Reid, and Herbert de Souza.

I also want to thank Peter Gordon and Nick Lord of Yorkshire Television. In 1990 they produced a marvelous TV series on soccer around the world called The Greatest Game, and they let me take what I wanted from their enormous files of facts and interviews. I took a lot.

I owe a particular debt to Bill Massey and Caroline Oakley, my editors at Orion.

PREFACE TO THE U.S. EDITION

WHEN YOU DRIVE INTO the air force base, you feel like youre in a small American town circa 1953. Amit and I putter at about 15 miles an hour past the wooden villas where the air force officers live. Kids are playing on the street. Pedestrians say Hi to passing strangers. When Amit parks he doesnt even lock the car, and leaves the windows open. All this happens in the warm January sunshine of Alabama. It could be an old B-movie starring Ronald Reagan.

Here on the base youre at the heart of the mightiest military machine in history, but you feel utterly safe. Its partly because nobody on the base is allowed to carry a gun. You have to hand in all weapons at the front gate. The right to bear arms is honored rather better in the neighboring town of Montgomery.

I dont spend much time on air force bases. I live in Paris, and I usually consort with wishy-washy liberals. But Amit, a professor at the Air War College here, has summoned me to give his air force officers a seminar on sport. Its really because Amit is a Dutch soccer nut. We had never met before my plane landed at the Montgomery airport, but I knew Amit from his emails, because for years now hes been critiquing all my articles about Dutch soccer.

That first evening Amit takes me to eat ribs in a restaurant by the highway and tells me his ideas for the Dutch team as Euro 2008 looms. For a start, Marco van Basten, Hollands manager at the time, has to recall Dennis Bergkamp from retirement. Hes retired, who cares? says Amit, with a very dead pig in his hands. Van Basten has to go to him and say, Heres a train ticket, every game youll come on as a substitute with half an hour to go, and the other team will go crazy.

Amit has lots of ideas. He knows what hes talking about, too, because he coaches the air bases soccer team. (Some of his players want to copy the 3-4-3 formation of the great Ajax side of the 1970s. Amit tells them first theyll have to learn to kick a ball straight.) All he lacks is a direct line to Van Basten. He should start a blog, with space for suggestions for the team, says Amit. Because as things stand, hes losing patience with Van Basten. Amit used to be a devotee. He and his ex-wife have a pug named Mabel, and when Mabel started having knee trouble she was given the surname Van Basten. (In fact Van Bastens problems were with his ankle, but perhaps Amit was misled by my articles.)

Amit has only ever spent a total of about two weeks of his life in the Netherlands. While there he visited the club museum at the Ajax stadium, and the tomb of William the Silent and his faithful pug in the town of Delft. William led the Netherlands to independence from Spain in the sixteenth century, or as Amit puts it, Thanks to that pug Holland remained free to develop its independent soccer style. Otherwise you would now have clubs with names like Real Amsterdam and Celta Alkmaar.

Amit does not actually speak Dutch, but as soon as the book appears he intends to read the autobiography of the former Dutch international Edgar The Pitbull Davids. I suspect Amit is more excited about

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