Culture January 1, 1

Soccer’s global appeal has few analogues. The “world” in World Cup is a much larger place than, say, the one in World Series: Some seven hundred million people are reported to have watched the tournament’s final game in 2006, and the roster of fifa’s member nations is a virtual facsimile of the UN’s. In The Ball Is Round: A Global History of Soccer, David Goldblatt argues that the sport has become “our collective metaphor,” one that “expresses the Faustian bargain that all modern societies have made with the forces of money and power.” His book provides a scrupulous account of