McInerny, Paul Michael

English

epublications@Marquette

Marquette Universitye-Publications@MarquetteCollege of Professional Studies Faculty Researchand Publications Professional Studies, College of4-1-2012Review of A History of the World Cup, 1930-2010 byClemente LisiPaul Michael McInernyMarquette University, paul.mcinerny@marquette.eduAccepted Version. Journal of Sport History, Vol. 39, no. 1 (Spring 2012): 184-185. Publisher Link. ©2012 Journal of Sport History and the North American Society for Sport History. Used withpermission.JOURNAL OF SPORT HISTORY184 Volume 39, Number 1LISI, CLEMENTE A. A History of the World Cup, UPDATED ED. Lanham, Md.:  ScarecrowPress, 2011. Pp. xvii + 475.  Photographs, glossary, appendix of statistics, appendix ofWorld Cup records, and index. $35.Clemente Lisi’s A History of the World Cup is a tribute to the world’s most popular sport,soccer, and its famed tournament held every four years.  The author details the growth ofthe World Cup from a fledgling tournament that at first begged teams to compete andwhich was halted for twelve years due to World War II to a multi-billion dollar operationwatched by close to a billion people world-wide.  Thirteen national teams competed forthe first men’s 1930 World Cup championship won by host Uruguay.   Two hundred andfive teams vied over several years to be among the thirty-two World Cup finalists in 2010,eventually won by Spain.Lisi adds his final chapter on the 2010 tournament, and one of his best, to his well-received earlier work to produce the second edition.  He captures the latest World Cup—from the vuvuzela horn blasting fans that plagued South African stadiums to France’squestionable qualifying and eventual team collapse due to infighting, and from the nu-merous errant referee calls marring games to the demand for incorporation of technologyto avoid future injustices.Many of the highlights of 2010 reflect themes that run throughout the previous eightchapters.   As Lisi chronicles the eighty years of the World Cup, he emphasizes the changesand decisions that influenced outcomes.  Different playoff and seeding formats were usedto adjust to the growing number of entrants making each tournament unique.  Teamtactics and strategies, roster selections, and game substitutions are credited with earningdefeat or victory.  Blown calls by referees, vicious play to counter superior offensive skills—first notable in 1934—and critical plays in games are vividly recounted as the backdropfor understanding each World Cup.  Comparisons between 2010 and previous tourna-ments abound—South Africa hosting in 2010 helped unite the country after apartheidreminding readers of Chile in 1962 and Mexico in 1986 both of whom used the tourna-ment to bring their people together after devastating earthquakes.  Even France’s handballin the qualifying rounds is reminiscent of Maradona’s “hand of God” goal for Argentina in1986; the difference in how the world reacted to each attests to the increased influence oftechnology.Yet, the play of superior teams and individuals ultimately highlight the history of theWorld Cup.  Brazil playing its jogo bonita (beautiful soccer) has appeared in every WorldCup. Germany, Argentina, and the defensive-minded Italians have been dominant teamsthroughout the history of the tournament.  Lisi also captures the excitement of the fans’emotional favorites who emerge at each tournament such as Cameroon in 1990, whichbecame the first African nation to advance to the second round.  The United States ascentin soccer is followed beginning with its role as fan favorite in 1950 and its stunning defeatof England resulting in the Brazilian fans carrying the players off the field in triumph.Tragic consequences add depth to the work such as the apparent murder in 1939 of Austria’sREVIEWS: BOOKSSpring 2012 185greatest player Matthias Sindelar who had avoided playing for Hitler’s Germany and thekilling of Andreas Escobar after Columbia was eliminated from the 1994 tournament.The tensions caused by rampant nationalism runs throughout the book.Nineteen short biographies serve as sidebars throughout.  The author highlights play-ers who had an impact on World Cup competition over their careers and includes suchstars as Ferenc Puskas, Bobby Moore, Pele, Mario Kempes, Paolo Rossi, Diego Maradona,Ronaldo, Fabio Cannavaro, and others.  Not just the soccer triumphs but personal strugglesmake these interesting reading such as the numerous players who emerged out of extremepoverty or battled with drugs and alcohol.The purpose of the book is to “recount the history of the World Cup to an Americanaudience largely unfamiliar with the tournament’s past” (p. xvii). Lisi, who describes him-self as a “soccer junkie” (p. xiii) and is a reporter for the New York Post, has written a bookthat will be most appreciated by the avid soccer enthusiast.  His approach to writing thisbook is journalistic; in his last three chapters, which are his best, ninety-two of his 106citations are from interviews or news conferences.  Earlier chapters rely on secondarysources; the bibliography is only a half-page long and makes one wonder what could havebeen written with greater historical research and analysis.  Until that book is written, thiswork will serve any serious student of soccer.—PAUL M. MCINERNYMarquette UniversityLYONS, ROBERT S. On Any Given Sunday: A Life of Bert Bell. Philadelphia: Temple Univer-sity Press, 2009. Pp. xv+328. Index, illustrations, and bibliography. $35.00 cb.One could idealize Bert Bell as the embodiment of a simpler era when professional sportswere more about having fun than about multi-million-dollar player contracts and multi-billion-dollar television deals. After all, Bell in 1936 paid a mere $4,500 to purchase thePhiladelphia Eagles of the National Football League (NFL).  He intervened to assist play-ers in need and was genuinely concerned for their wellbeing.  As NFL commissioner from1946 until his death in 1959 he stored the league’s records in a few manila folders.  Robert S.Lyons’ On Any Given Sunday rejects this easy nostalgia to position Bell instead as the manmost responsible for transforming the NFL from a barnstorming league into today’s sport-ing colossus.  Lyons, a longtime journalist and author of Palestra Pandemonium: A Historyof the Big Five and The Eagles Encyclopedia, combines print sources, minutes from leaguemeetings, and interviews with Bert Bell’s sons to produce a solid study of this key figure inAmerican sports history.On Any Given Sunday does not aspire to be a complete biography.  It dispatches Bell’sfirst twenty-five years in ten pages and rarely scrutinizes his life outside of football.  AsLyons makes clear, however, Bell’s life was football.  A product of a well-heeled Philadel-phia family, he fell in love with the sport while an undersized quarterback at the Universityof Pennsylvania.  After serving a few months in France during World War I he transitioned

Review of \u3cem\u3eA History of the World Cup, 1930-2010\u3c/em\u3e by Clemente Lisi

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Review of \u3cem\u3eA History of the World Cup, 1930-2010\u3c/em\u3e by Clemente Lisi

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