The Ball Is Round

A Global History of Soccer

By: David Goldblatt, David Goldblatt - foreword

Narrated by: Liam Gerrard

The definitive book about soccer, from the author of The Games: A Global History of the Olympics.

There may be no cultural practice more global than soccer. Rites of birth and marriage are infinitely diverse, but the rules of soccer are universal. No world religion can match its geographical scope. The single greatest simultaneous human collective experience is the World Cup final.

In this extraordinary tour de force, David Goldblatt tells the full story of soccer's rise from chaotic folk ritual to the world's most popular sport - now poised to fully establish itself in the USA. Already celebrated internationally, The Ball Is Round illuminates soccer's role in the political and social histories of modern societies, but never loses sight of the beauty, joy, and excitement of the game itself.

©2006 David Goldblatt (P)2020 Tantor

Bullet points

I had high hopes for this book going in as I love the game and wanted to get a feel for the origins. However, there was never a cohesive flow to it. I felt like the author created an outline with a few items of interest under them and left it at that. The performer read the bullet points. I found myself disengaged in the content more so than not. I made it through 4 hours and couldn't take it any more. I may try to continue, but I doubt it.

Great Book, Lots Of Mispronounced Names

This audio book is well worth the price, if you can stand the mispronounced names. You’d think that these mistakes would have been caught and corrected, or that the reader was familiar with world football pronunciations. Hearing Juventus of Turin’s nickname pronounced “Joov” instead of “You vay” was particularly grating.

long detailed history of football i

I like that its long also. took time to listen to. although I knew a lot about football I still learnt a lot

Good story, poor storytelling

This book, and every narrative in it, is about 5 times longer than it should be.This makes it really hard to maintain interest with so much excessive little detail. More is not always better...

Dry and Boring

To be fair I didn't finish the book. I made it about 10 hours in before I returned it, I feel the need to write a review though so other people don't make the mistake of buying this book like I did. It's a book about soccer sort of, but it's written, it seems, by someone that doesn't care about the game at all. Indeed the approach to the subject is at best academic and at worst grandiose and lofty to degree that it gets lost in its own smugness. To me the author comes across with absolute confidence that every statement made is unfailingly true. Even when its a sweeping generalization or inference from the limited information available. It comes across as if unraveling the complex and historical context of soccer and how its effected everything in the world is simply a matter of speaking enough words. There's no love or interest for the game in these pages. Just endless big words, with unnecessary and matter of fact statements. The author clearly did a ton of research and there is massive amounts of information, but its not organized in an interesting or thoughtful way. It's kind of like listening to an incredibly knowledgeable child try to tell you everything they know about a subject as fast as possible, and when I say everything I mean everything they can think of in an almost unplanned stream of thought sort of way. There are many other better books available on the subject. I would recommend anyone interested in the history of soccer read "Inverting the Pyramid" over this.