A Sports Book of the Year in the Irish Times, the FT and the Mail on Sunday 'Kuper is one of the best sportswriters in the English language today' New Yorker 'Unmissable … The ultimate book for anyone who loves football' Mail on Sunday 'A brilliant evocation of the joy of the football carnival and the absurdities of the global spectacle… an essential companion' David Goldblatt It's the biggest competition on Earth. A four-yearly chance for the world's greatest footballers to realise their ultimate dream. A month-long media spectacle that's watched by billions. The World Cup has changed beyond recognition since the early days, when the players were semi-pros and the trophy went missing. Today, it's a corporate-led bonanza of dark money and dubious ethics. Simon Kuper, bestselling author of Barça, reflects on every tournament since Italia 90 to reveal a captivating portrait of sport in a globalised world. Entertaining and compelling, World Cup Fever is the definitive story of football's greatest drama, and of how the tournament can touch – and even change – our lives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The football World Cup is the biggest sporting competition on Earth – a chance every four years for the greatest players to win international glory, and a month-long media spectacle that’s watched by an audience of billions. But the tournament has changed beyond recognition since the inaugural event in Montevideo, Uruguay, in July 1930. What was once a semi-professional meeting beset by haphazard play has evolved to become a game of multinational buyouts, dubious ethics and questionable aims – and the new era of football has much to tell us about the globalised world. Simon Kuper is among the vanishingly small number of writers who have attended every World Cup since 1990. This is his journey to find the heart of football, through the nine tournaments he’s experienced first-hand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"product_brand":[],"product_cat":[659],"product_tag":[1002],"class_list":["post-119193","product","type-product","status-publish","product_cat-sport","product_tag-football-soccer-association-football","pa_book_author-kuper-simon","pa_cover-paperback","pa_dewey-796-33466809-edition23","pa_imprint-profile-books","pa_language-english","pa_pages-8497","pa_publisher-profile-books","pa_readership-general-trade-code-k","first","instock","taxable","shipping-taxable","purchasable","product-type-simple"],"yoast_head":"\n