God is Round

God is Round: Tackling the Giants, Villains, Triumphs, and Scandals of the World's Favorite Game by Juan Villoro, translated by Thomas Bunstead, 255 pages

If you're looking for a truly universal talking point anywhere in the world, try starting up a conversation about soccer (or, as the rest of the world calls it, football). While it hasn't really truly caught on in the U.S., the rest of the world lives and breathes by it. In this collection (of essays? of articles? it's never really clear), Villoro talks soccer in both broad strokes--fans, the mentality of the game--and in narrow discussions about specific players and their styles.

While it's obvious that Villoro has a deep love of the game at all levels of play, he has a tendency to write without giving a frame of reference for those of us who aren't as familiar with global soccer's intricacies (read: Americans). This could be more the fault of the translator, however, who must have known that this version would be marketed to the U.S. and other English-speaking countries, which are little discussed in the book. That said, I enjoyed Villoro's discussions of Cristiano Ronaldo (who he can't stand) and Lionel Messi (who he loves), as well as his ruminations about left-footedness and his scathing takedown of FIFA. I also love the sometimes-hilarious ways he describes players, which completely illustrate the players' style that, even though I'm not familiar with them, I feel like I've seen them play (for example, "When Maradona doesn't have the ball, he's as lonely as Adam on Mother's Day.")

If you're a fan of soccer only when the World Cup rolls around every four years, feel free to pick and choose; I'd only recommend reading the whole thing if you're a diehard fan of soccer in the Spanish-speaking world.