Futebol

Starred review from April 29, 2002
After just a couple of pages into this account of the world's most popular sport, it becomes apparent that there is no American sporting equivalent to Brazil's obsession with soccer, and perhaps no equivalent worldwide either. Bellos, a Rio-based correspondent for the U.K.'s Guardian
and Observer
newspapers, covers virtually every acre of Brazil, from traffic-choked São Paulo to the barren backlands, to study the country's effect on soccer and, more importantly, soccer's effect on the country. He treks beyond its borders, too, arriving amid the frigid isolation of the Faroe Islands in the North Atlantic to chart the progress of Brazilian footballers living there. The book comprises 15 chapters, each a compelling stand-alone focusing on an individual or group and their unique relationship with the sport. Alternately funny and dark, the book covers Brazil's introduction to soccer in the late 19th century, when the locals altered it from an orderly British game to "a dance of irrational surprises," according to one sociologist. One journalist in 1896 wrote, "It gives them great satisfaction or fills them with great sorrow when this kind of yellowish bladder enters a rectangle formed by wooden posts." Bellos offers a cast of characters as colorful as a Carnival parade: Joe Radio, the certified "most irritating fan in Brazil"; the terrifyingly violent Hawks supporters club; the beautiful contestants of the Kickabout Queen pageant; and, most fascinatingly, Garrincha—a tragic, crooked-legged national team player with talent to rival Pelé. Unlike Pelé, however, Garrincha possessed zero ambition or wit, and died an ignominious and premature death.