The Tibetan national team (photo: Kaos Pilot)

FIFA likes to promote the fact that it has more members than the UN. The international governing body of soccer got to its current level of 208 members (compared to 192 who belong to the UN) by various means, as Menary explains. Being the birthplace of soccer gives England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland separate teams. Chinese Taipei represents the island of Taiwan, and has since 1954 (the mainland Chinese team, like the country itself, was, for many years, an international pariah, and only joined FIFA in 1979). More recently, there has been a boom in FIFA membership, as some regional confederations with, as Menary dryly puts it, a “far looser idea of what constitutes a ‘nation’ than others” brought new members into the fold in a bid to boost their influence in the world governing body. CONCACAF has used this strategy most often, adding Arbua, the Turks & Caicos Island, and Anguilla among others to their ranks. Oceania boasts such powers as New Caledonia, Tahiti, and American Samoa. These three “countries” are not in fact independent. The first two are French territories, the latter an American possession. But they were let into FIFA in an earlier era. Today, becoming a new member of the club is a far more difficult proposition (only newly-independent countries such as Montenegro have achieved this goal in the past few years). But the fact that FIFA’s many non-independent nations have maintained their membership makes a mockery of the current argument that new members must be members of the international community (how exactly FIFA defined this is unclear, as Menary points out). Some of the teams have been rebuffed because they are technically parts of other countries that do have FIFA membership. In this category are Greenland, the Channel Islands, the Falklands, and Zanzibar, and the Sapmi people of Norway, Sweden, and Finland. For some countries, their entry into FIFA is too politically sensitive for the supposedly apolitical governing body to countenance. The national teams of Tibet, Northern Cyprus and Gibraltar have seen their progress hampered by larger countries with a political interest in the territories. When Greenland scheduled a match with Tibet, the Chinese government threatened to put an embargo on the Danish territory’s exports of shrimp to China. The match was called off. (In reality, FIFA is hardly apolitical. Menary describes their 1994 decision to give membership to Palestine as “a blatantly political act for a non-political organization.”) Then there are teams that Menary covers whose existence is an oddity at best. The Occitànian team is made up of speakers of the language of the same name, most of whom live in France, Spain, and Italy. The players who represent the Northern Marianas Islands, and whom Menary describes as “football missionaries” are mostly American expat “soccer dads.” In a game against neighbor Guam, the Northern Marianas team put out a team with a14 year-old and a teammate who, at 48 years old, could have been his grandfather. It’s easy to laugh off players and teams whose sole ambition is not to win, nor even qualify for the World Cup, but instead just to play in officially sanctioned matches. But all share the same dedication and work ethic as the players who lift the World Cup trophy every four years. Menary’s empathetic writing draws us into the world of Niklas Kreutzmann, Greenland’s captain and a dental student who would not let down his coach by missing a tournament that occurred just before his exams, and spent all his free time in between matches and training in his hotel room studying. Or Zanzibar goalkeeper Salum Ali Salum, who “has to be carried from the pitch crying uncontrollably” after his team loses a match in a penalty shootout. For these two players, as with nearly everyone Menary documents in Outcasts, the struggle to play international soccer is a task to which they have dedicated extraordinary effort.

Greenland (in red) and Zanzibar face off in the FIFI Wild Cup (photo: FIFI/Corbis)

The book is not without its faults. Many of the chapters were written as stand-alone pieces, and the book has a slightly pasted-together feel. And Menary’s decision to write about so many teams means that some of the more compelling stories are given short shrift. But overall, Outcasts is a wonderful addition to the increasingly homogenized diet of soccer writing being produced today. In an era in which so much soccer journalism simply repeats the latest result, transfer rumor, or Joey Barton arrest, the unique stories that Steve Menary writes about in Outcasts are a rare treat. Outcasts: The Lands That FIFA Forgot is published by Know the Score Books and is available from their website or Amazon.

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Telling the history of American soccer is no simple task. As Wangerin points out, record-keeping was not a strong suit of soccer officials throughout the years. For a long time, a record of all international matches the national team had played did not even exist. Nor did details of many American professional soccer leagues that came and went throughout the twentieth century.The light Wangerin sheds on these leagues is the highlight of his book. He seeks to correct, for example, the lack of information about the American Soccer League (ASL) of the early twentieth century. The league was quite successful and, Wangerin writes, “by the middle of the [1920s] the fledgling [ASL] had become popular and powerful enough to deprive European teams of genuine talent and produce a standard of play which many claim was among the highest in the world at the time” (45).

The ASL achieved its success in large part in a distinctly American way: money. The European talent brought across the Atlantic was tempted by higher salaries at a time when pay for footballers in England was capped at a meager 8 pounds a week. Though British and other teams complained about their players being poached, the practice led to an American league of considerable quality.

Many ASL stars, however, had grown up in the United States. Archie Stark, for example, scored 67 goals in 44 matches during his debut season with the Bethlehem (Pennsylvania) Steel team (he later rejected a move to Newcastle and chose instead to open a car repair garage). Later, Billy Gonsalves would show his quality and impress visiting European players, who told a reporter that the American could be a star in any team in the world (92).

Archie Stark (L) and Billy Gonsalves (photos: National Soccer Hall of Fame)

The ASL existed at a time when the professional sporting scene was just beginning to be defined. Before American football, baseball, and basketball became dominant, Wangerin writes that “some have even argued that … soccer was the more viable prospect.”

Just as money brought hope to the ASL, so too did it bring about the league’s demise. Most ASL owners decided to pull their teams out of the Challenge Cup (America’s equivalent to the FA Cup, known now as the Open Cup), claiming the travel was hurting them financially. When the United States Football Association (today’s USSF) revoked the league’s membership, the so-called soccer war was on.

The dispute was eventually resolved, but the resolution came right before the Great Depression. At a time when money was scarce, few people were willing to pay for luxuries such as attending soccer matches. The ASL could not overcome this considerable obstacle, and went out of existence.

This pattern of boom and bust would repeat itself with the NASL. At one point in the 1970s soccer in America seemed on the edge of finding a permanent place. Top players such as Franz Beckenbauer, Giorgio Chignalia, Johann Cruyff, George Best, and of course Pelé had all come to the US (even if they were a bit past their primes) and attendance at NASL matches were high. Nearly 80,000 saw a Cosmos match at Giants Stadium in 1977.

Pelé plays for the Cosmos before a packed Giants Stadium (photo: Entertainment Weekly)

Reaching such heights proved easier than staying there. The NASL had not built the foundation necessary to maintain its success. Few teams, even the Cosmos, were making money and owners, though often possessing an evangelical zeal for soccer, also wanted to make a profit. When future hopes of moving into the black never materialized, support for the league fell away. By 1985 the NASL was dead.Both the NASL and the ASL suffered, Wangerin writes, because of the ineptitude of those in charge. Irrational exuberance, to use Alan Greenspan’s phrase, seems to have taken over in the minds of Phil Woosnam, who brought the NASL to prominence, just as it had with the ASL’s head honcho Thomas Cahill. Initial success led Cahill to envision huge crowds and huge profits that never materialized. Woosnam’s boast that the NASL would match NFL and that soccer would overtake American football in popularity (181) proved disastrously incorrect when his league collapsed completely.

The administrators of the national federation (today known as USSF, though previously known by a variety of acronyms) have often been as inept as those in charge of professional leagues. For a long time, the federation stuck with the European practice of playing soccer in the winter, despite the fact that American weather was much less hospitable. Wangerin also points out that the national team received little support until the past 25 years or so, making its current relative success even more astonishing.

The US National Team takes on Colombia at the 1994 World Cup (photo: ESPN)

The American sporting landscape is most definitely unique, complete with several major professional sports and a public whose attitudes seem to differ from many around the world. Officials have often made concessions to these different attitudes in claiming that Americanizing the game is the only way for soccer to succeed. The NASL’s tie-breaking shootout, modifications in the offside law, and indoor soccer are all examples of such changes. These modifications have been designed to reach casual American sports fans, but winning them over to soccer has proven difficult.It is with this realization in mind that MLS has removed some of these Americanizations from its game. MLS has also learned from past over-exuberance and taken a much slower and steadier approach.

The last few chapters of David Wangerin’s book are like looking through a family picture album: all of these people you’ve forgotten (Rick Davis, anyone?), but that come back so quickly when reminded of them. The 1994 World Cup, the rise of MLS, the 1999 Women’s World Cup; it’s incredible to think that these all happened long enough ago to be put into a history book. Wangerin writes entire chapters without breaks, which is tiresome in the early chapters when the content is unfamiliar, but propels the reader through the most recent, and more familiar, years.

Soccer in a Football World was published before David Beckham signed with MLS. This monumental event, however, shows how important David Wangerin’s book is. At a time when platitudes are spoken about the importance of Beckham’s arrival, it is worth remembering that American soccer itself has a long and proud history.

Panahi knew that taking on the subject of female football fans in Iran would be controversial, and so tried to make his movie quietly so as to avoid the censors. In an interview, he described how even his best attempts to avoid notice were ultimately unsuccessful.

We tried to be very discreet and avoid any mention in the press. However, five days before the end of the shoot, a newspaper published an article stating I was directing a new film. The military immediately gave orders to interrupt the shoot. We were instructed to bring them our rushes to be verified. I immediately announced to the official in charge of cinema in Iran that this was out of the question, and that I would not allow a single soldier during the final days of the shoot. Luckily, there were only a few scenes left to shoot, inside a minibus, so we just left the military zone and continued filming sixty kilometers outside of Tehran.

But the difficulties Panahi faced from overzealous authorities is nothing compared to those encountered by the subjects of his movie. They are the female football fans who so desperately want to watch Iran play Bahrain in a 2005 match that would decide which team would go to the World Cup.

The movie opens on a bus, as Iranian fans make their way to the Azadi Stadium to see the crucial qualifier against Bahrain. The scene is joyous, with fans hanging out the windows and singing, psyching themselves up for the game. But one fan is more nervous than excited. This fan, it turns out, is a she and shes are not allowed into stadiums in Iran.

The female fan (we never find out names of any of the women in the film) is going in disguise, trying to avoid the glare of police at the stadium. But her cover is blown by her own nervousness and she is taken to a holding pen, along with other female football fans.

It’s in this holding pen, which is really just metal barricades shaped into a rectangle, that the majority of the movie takes place. The action of the movie, if it can be called that, is mostly the captive female fans attempting to persuade their captors to let them watch the game. Those looking for dramatic shots of the action on the field will be sorely disappointed; this is a movie about the repressive realities of contemporary Iranian life that just happens to have a crucial World Cup qualifier as its background.

The Azadi Stadium is as good a place as any to show many of the injustices that exist in Iran today. The rationales that the female fans are given for not being allowed into the stadium are as numerous as they are absurd: women will be harmed by the coarse language in the stadium, they should not be looking at attractive young male players, soccer is just not a women’s game, etc. The most argumentative of the detained female fans points out that Japanese women were allowed in to a game at the same stadium and wonders if “my only problem is I was born in Iran?”

The soldiers who become the women’s captors are hardly enthused with having to keep the fans from watching the game. One soldier is completely disinterested in his work, another continually sneaks peeks at the game, and a third laments that his conscription has taken him so far from his family farm. The root of the problem does not lie with the soldiers; they are merely forced to carry out the unjust laws created by those above them.

That seems to be the point Panahi is most interested in making. Individually, Iranians may support female fans’ right to go to the stadium, but the authorities in the country create a system that forces some citizens to oppress others.

Panahi also clearly hopes that Iranians might take collective action to stop these injustices from occurring. When a female fan escapes from her captor with the aid of some male fans, it is impossible not to see Panahi’s desire that more Iranians take a stand against injustice in their country. As the famous quote goes, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”

Jafar Panahi

Offside is undoubtedly an interesting, it is not the most engaging movie. Its topic may be unique, but the film itself is all too predictable. The soldier least interested initially in the female fans’ plight comes to see their perspective by the end of the film. The women are detained, but in the end are released onto the streets of Tehran to celebrate with their countrymen and women. Watching Offside, you’ll rarely be surprised by what’s coming next.

The one surprise in the movie is how little soccer there is. Leaving the theater, my friend and I concurred that we would have liked to see shots of what sounded like an intense game. Of course, as we quickly realized, not showing the game was an intentional decision on Panahi’s part and that we had little right to complain. We, two twenty-something American men, had been denied a peek at the game during the ninety-minute movie; women in Iran have been denied the right to watch soccer for their entire lives.

The announcement in the Washington Post warned readers to get there early to get seats, but I didn’t take it that seriously. How early did I have to arrive on a Thursday evening to see an obscure art film about a French soccer player? This is America, after all. Nobody cares! Or so I thought.

When I arrived at quarter to eight, I knew immediately I had underestimated the interest in the movie. The line at the Hirshhorn Museum stretched from the back door around the large building to the front. Crowd-estimation skills have never been my specialty, but I’d say there were a good three to four hundred folks there.

A very small part of the line waiting to see Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait

I asked the middle-aged man at the end of the line if he was waiting to see the Zidane movie. He said he was but that he’d already been informed that the cut-off for the eight o’clock showing was a good hundred or so people in front of him. He told me they’d decided to add a ten o’clock showing due to the extraordinary interest.

Now, I love Zidane, but not that much. Zidane’s beautiful moves can’t make up for my lost beauty rest. Having decided I wouldn’t wait around to watch the movie, I immediately became interested in the masses who were responsible for me not getting to see it. I watched as those who had gotten there early enough (some arrived at 6:45, I was later told) were ushered into the theater and those who hadn’t stayed outside.

A Hirshhorn employee came to the door to tell those who were left outside that they would, most likely, not get to see the movie that night. She said that they had let in those who would see the eight and ten o’clock showing. People could wait outside in the hopes that some inside would leave, but there were no guarantees.

To my surprise, some of my fellow rejects were downright angry. One tried to bully the employee into letting him in. Others simply looked frustrated and forlorn. The employee’s attempts to tell them they could order the movie on DVD from the UK were almost like salt in the wounds (doesn’t she know about DVDs being coded by region?). Most of people eventually left, but a few stuck around.

Kasim George was emphatic about trying to get in to the ten o’clock showing. “Oh yeah, oh yeah, I’m definitely going to stick around.” Was he frustrated? “Not at all,” he told me. “[Zidane] is a legend.”

George told me he had long followed Zidane’s career (his first memory of the Frenchman was when he still had hair) and said “if you are a real fan of the sport, you would have ultimate respect for him.”

What was he hoping to gain from the movie? George said he had “heard the way they did the documentary was like you being beside him. I had to see it … to get an idea of what he sees on the field.”

George was not the only person who to refer to the now retired Zidane in the present tense. José Granados told me that Zidane “is still a good player.” For many, it seems, Zidane’s influence on the game and on them was so huge that they still think of his presence on the field in the present.

Does Zidane live on even in retirement?

I was only able to speak to a limited number of people, those dedicated enough to stick around for two hours on the off chance they might be let in, which means I can only speculate about those who did see the movie. I imagine they had similar motivations for wanting to see Zidane as did those I spoke with, but what surprised me most was the number of fans who had shown up to see the movie.

If Americans don’t like soccer, someone forgot to tell the hundreds in line at the Hirshhorn last Thursday night. Of course, Washington is a large city with a huge immigrant population that was well-represented in that line. But those who say that America is not a soccer country often fail to take into account the diversity in the US of A. Immigrants who play soccer in this country, often under the radar, have been an important, if often ignored, part of the sport in this country.

That’s not to say there were no native-born Americans in the crowd. I saw suburban high school kids, college frat boys, and middle-aged men reading serious magazines. Anthony Stepter and Maria Flores, among those who were hoping to be let in for the ten o’clock showing, told me they were attracted by the art of the film as much as the soccer. The reasons to want to see the film were as diverse as the people who espoused them.

I draw two lessons from my experience of trying and failing to watch Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait: 1) there is more of an interest in soccer in this country than many people recognize and 2) when the Washington Post says show up early, take them at their word.

(If you want to read actual reviews of the movie, I would recommend hitting up Rotten Tomatoes. And if you’ve seen the movie, feel free to leave a comment and let me know what you thought of it.)

The Soccer Tribe is a coffee table sized book from the early 1980s. The biography of the author said he had earned a Ph.D. from Oxford and had carried out much important research on animal behavior (he may also be known to readers more worldly than I was at the time as the author of the classic The Naked Ape).

The book, in 320 pages and complete with full-color pictures, looks at everyone (players, coaches, referees, fans, bureaucrats, etc.) who has anything to with soccer. This so-called “Soccer Tribe” is studied with the type of precision usually reserved by anthropologists in their work on tribes in remote parts of the world. As I flipped through the pages for the first time, I couldn’t tell whether Morris had written a serious study or if his book was simply intended to amuse.

It turns out the book is quite serious (it would have been quite a lot of work to simply make a joke, I now realize). The Soccer Tribe is, in some ways, reminiscent of the satirical paper Body Ritual Among the Nacirema, in which anthropologist Horace Miner made typical American behavior (like teeth brushing) seem exotic. Like Miner, Morris employs tools that anthropologists typically use to study “real” tribes in other cultures in looking at those involved in soccer. The result is a book that is simultaneously brilliant in analysis, hilarious in making light of things we take for granted, and beautifully presented (fair warning: short shorts and mullets do make many, many appearances).

I now have The Soccer Tribe on my coffee table and love to show it off to both soccer fans and non-fans alike. It is, to be sure, not a typical coffee table book, but this uniqueness is one of the things I most value about it. Morris’s book is now, sadly, out of print so it will take some searching to find it. But trust me: it’s worth it.

* * *

Looking back at Morris’s book recently made me think again about some of the funniest of soccer rituals. Having watched so much soccer in my life, I rarely stop to consider the uniqueness of many such rituals, as I am so accustomed to seeing them. It is only in looking at The Soccer Tribe or watching games with friends not familiar with soccer that I remember how unique they are.

The pre- and post-game rituals offer some of the most striking examples. The most interesting pre-game ritual I have seen develop in the past few years is the players walking out to the field with young children in tow. Every Premier League game has these “mascots,” to use the British terminology. The sight of cute little children accompanying sporting superstars to the pitch is something I have not seen in other sports. Perhaps the thought of how Allen Iverson would respond if this happened to him is enough to dissuade the NBA from trying something similar.

On behalf of Steven Gerrard and all overpaid superstars ever treated poorly by four year-olds, Thierry Henry gets revenge on a mascot before a game against Ajax.

In Argentina, four year-olds are clearly over the hill. Most games there involve players carrying out infants to the field. But watching this Argentine spin on the pre-game ritual, one can’t help wonder if this might be a bit too young. The deafening roar of the crowd, the confetti thrown toward them, and the thought that they might be dropped by a sweaty many with strange clothes on has brought several of these young children to tears. And quite why parents trust soccer players, who clearly have other things on their minds right before a game, to not drop their infants is beyond me.

Boca Juniors’ Martin Palmero is lead to the field by young children.

There are also several post-game rituals which are unique to soccer. Players in most sports will exchange some sort of handshake at the end of a match. Soccer players (in big games, at least) take it a step further in exchanging shirts. On occasions when a smaller team players a bigger opponent, less well-known players fight to be able to exchange their shirt with superstars.

The US’s Claudio Reyna and the Czech Republic’s Pavel Nedved exchange shirts at last summer’s World Cup.

Soccer players also have a post-game ritual that I find completely endearing: applauding their supporters. Even in this era of massive money in sports, it is refreshing that professional soccer players recognize their fans after nearly every game by clapping to them. The gesture may be symbolic, but it epitomizes the fact that soccer teams in Europe have historically been clubs to which all belong, not the franchises that reduce the connection between professional athletes in American and their fans.

Sunderland players applaud their fans.

The post-game ritual of applauding fans is given a Japanese spin in that East Asian country. Instead of simply applauding, players there bow to their fans. This has come as a shock to some foreigners who have played in the J-League, but bowing is, of course, prevalent in Japanese society.

When I lived in Japan, I often saw bowing in soccer games. The middle school I worked at had a team whose players would bow both before and after matches to show appreciation to their coaches, opposing players, and referees.

Japanese (American) football players bow before a game.

* * *

If a new version of Desmond Morris’s book The Soccer Tribe were to be written, it could certainly include this Japanese and the above Argentine example of soccer rituals. The 20 years of globalization since it was published have brought increased connection among the peoples of the world. In this time, we have been shown the similarities and differences of the rituals of the soccer tribe.

Further Reading

The US Soccer Players Association did a review of The Soccer Tribe in 2005.

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Paul Cuadros’s book A Home on the Field documents the economic and sporting tensions seen since the beginning of what he calls the “Great Latino Migration” to rural areas. Cuadros went to North Carolina intending to study the impact of the growing Latino population on life in the southern United States. While there, his focus shifted as he became involved with the high school soccer team in rural Siler City. But even as his interest in soccer increased, he never lost his original focus. In the end, Cuadros performs a masterful feat by drawing the reader in with an engaging story of soccer success while at the same time showing them the complex lives of Latinos living in the rural south.

One of the first experiences Cuadros has upon arriving in Siler City, North Carolina is a KKK rally, complete with a David Duke speech. Many in the rural town are clearly not pleased with the recent influx of Latinos. This rally shows the degree of resentment many in the area have toward the new arrivals, and these negative feelings come through time and time again throughout the book. When Cuadros later attempts to organize a soccer team at the local high school, he is met with much resistance, undoubtedly fueled by anti-immigrant sentiment. Administrators in the school system offer him excuses that show both unwillingness to help their Latino students (they refuse to share the fields used for other sports) and their open mistrust of them (they claim that not enough students will have the grades to make them academically eligible). It is a miracle that the team gets off the ground at all.

The initial hostility to the team’s formation in Siler City is nothing, though, when compared with that shown by some opposing fans. At away games, the players are often showered with insults that leave little doubt the fans’ views on outsiders. Cuadros’s players often struggle to hold back tears and fists while being pelted with cries of “wetback.”

Over the next three years Cuadros’s team steadily improves, though not without growing pains, many of which are unique to the lives of the Latino students. The beginning of the second season is almost ruined when the team’s goalkeeper must return to Mexico to see his ailing grandmother. Not having legal residence in the US, he must return with the help of a coyote. He arrives just before the beginning of the season, having hiked through the desert for a week with only meager supplies of food and water. Clearly, these are not the concerns of most high school athletes.

When the team eventually wins the North Carolina state championship, it is nothing short of a miracle. Formed from scratch only three years earlier, the boys have become the best in the state despite incredible obstacles. The final whistle at the final game will be moving to any reader.

The sporting triumphs in A Home on the Field are reminiscent of the movie Hoosiers: a small-town team with an incredibly dedicated coach overcomes numerous obstacles to win a state title. The book does, in fact, read like a movie at times. Cuadros describes the games his team plays in with an incredible level of detail, making you feel like you’re sitting on the bench next to him. This is both a positive and negative. While the descriptions of the games will surely draw in readers brought to his book by the soccer angle, but I found them a bit long and drawn out. The games, while important in story development, distract from what the book is really about: the lives of Latinos in the rural south. Soccer is an important aspect of this, of course, but I would have preferred shorter descriptions of the team’s triumphs and more analysis of the larger issues which underlie Cuadros’s team.

That is not to say that the books lacks analysis of larger issues at play with regard to Latinos in the rural south. Cuadros has clearly done a wealth of research, which enables him to put the narratives of his team’s success into context. His ability to use soccer to bring out larger issues surrounding this newest Latino migration is the high point of his book.

In an era in which many try to demonize “illegal immigrants” under such demeaning monikers, Cuadros provides the stories of the Latino residents from their own perspectives. There is the mother who has brought her children from Chicago to Siler City to keep them away from gangs, the families who work hard to get by on meager salaries in the poultry processing plants, and their children who struggle to feel connected to the United States as well as their homelands. Cuadros does an excellent job of reminding us that immigrants are people, and have stories that ought to be heard.

Cuadros also points out the larger economic issues at play. The Latino migration to the rural south has been fueled primarily by economic factors. Most of the Latino residents of Siler City work in the town poultry processing plant. This is difficult, dirty, and low-paying work. Cuadros’s book dispels xenophobic claims that immigrants are taking American jobs: non-Latinos who have tried working in the plants have not lasted long. What’s more, the rise of poultry plants has led to an economic resurgence in a part of the North Carolina that had seen little hope since its textile factories realized they could not compete with products coming in from abroad. Some in Siler City may resent the arrival of Latinos, but their coming has boosted the lives of everyone in the town.

Even those outside of rural North Carolina are playing a part in the Latino migration there. Cuadros demonstrates the link between consumers who increasingly rely on the convenience of pre-processed chicken and the need for workers to do this work. If you cook boneless, skinless chicken breasts tonight, there is a good chance that a Latino immigrant processed it for you.

Paul Cuadros’s book A Home on the Field is a wonderful account of the lives of Latinos in the rural south. It focuses on a soccer team, but that is only the jumping-off point to discuss the many issues which surround this demographic shift in our country. Cuadros’s detailed research, insightful reporting, and clear writing make his book a must-read for soccer fans as well as those interested in immigration.

Further Information

• Excerpt from the book
• Official page from publisher HarperCollins
• Purchase on Amazon

Other Reviews

• Only a Game
• Matchnight
• Triangle Soccer Fanatics (also check out this podcast interview with Paul Caudros)
• News & Observer