Short description
From the Uruguayan border to Rio de Janeiro to the Amazon jungle, this text shows how Brazil changed football and how football shaped Brazil. It tells the stories behind the great players, between the great teams, and the great matches, as well as the startling range of football spin-offs.
Long description
The Brazilian football team at its best exudes a skill, flamboyance and romantic pull. Football is how the world sees Brazil and Brazilians see themselves. The game symbolises racial harmony, flamboyance, youth, innovation and skill, and yet football is also a microcosm of Latin America's largest country and contains all of its contradictions. Travelling extensively from the Uruguayan border to the north-eastern backlands, from the coastal cities of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo to the Amazon jungle, the author, Alex Bellos, shows how Brazil changed football and how football shaped Brazil. Bellos tells the stories behind the great players, like Pele and Garrincha, between the great teams, like Corinthians and Vasco de Gama, and the great matches, as well as extraordinary stories from people and pitches all over this country. Bellos describes the startling range of football spin-offs found in Brazil from Autoball, literally football with cars and a giant leather ball to Ecoball, played in the heart of the rainforest, from Button football and its highly regulated procedures organised for fearsome Buttonistas to the truly alarming Footbull (yes, with bulls).
Review
'Entertaining and richly informative' Daily Telegraph 'Wacky ... spectacular' Daily Mirror 'Hugely entertaining ... wonderfully researched' New Statesman 'An affectionate and shrewd account of the game ... The book is full of intriguing sidelights on Brazilian popular culture; its hedonism, piety and wondrous absurdity' Guardian