A review of Ramon Usall, Kicking Off Around the World: 55 Stories From When Football Met Politics (London: Pluto Press, 2024).
I read every single book about football from a leftist perspective that I can get my hands on. I suppose that, on the one hand, this makes me an apt reviewer for a new release. On the other hand, it doesn’t, because it becomes hard to say what the book means for uninitiated readers.
The latest of books on the world’s most popular game released by a leftist press is Ramon Usall’s Kicking Off Around the World: 55 Stories From When Football Met Politics, which has been published by Pluto Press. It’s a translation from Catalan. Usall is an academic and activist based in Barcelona. He writes that “the idea guiding this book is that football is always a political phenomenon whether we like it or not.” Not much to argue there.
Usall uses 55 clubs, divided into regional chapters (from the Iberian Peninsula to the Americas), in order to illustrate the connections between football and politics. Some clubs (Berliner FC Dynamo, JS Massira) illustrate the (ab)use of football by people in power, but most illustrate the role that football can play in resistance movements.
Some of the chapters are very short, but they are all well-written and engaging. Many of the clubs presented are predictable (FC St. Pauli, Celtic FC, FC Barcelona), but it couldn’t be any other way. You can’t leave them out once you’ve decided to structure the book in this manner. It is also petty to argue over whether some more clubs would have deserved a spot (FC Arsenal Kyiv, Seattle Sounders FC, or any of the fan-owned clubs in the UK such as the FC United of Manchester, for example) – you have to draw the line somewhere. With that said, the choice of Erbil SC over Amedspor as a symbol of Kurdish resistance came as a surprise.
Even the most seasoned of leftist football readers will learn something in Usall’s book. Stories about IRA icon Bobby Sands playing for the Star of the Sea Youth Club, or about the Passive Resisters clubs of South Africa are rarely told. In addition, Soccer vs the State is featured in the bibliography, so there really isn’t much to criticize.
Kicking Off Around the World is a fine release and can easily be recommended to anyone with an interest in the fascinating world of football (and) politics.
Gabriel Kuhn
(July 31, 2024)