in the last decade or so a new literary genre has appeared. football books.
even though i quite like football, i have only ever read 3 football books.
i mean, who would wanna spend his precious spare time reading “the tony adams story” or other such wastages of paper (= trees), glue and ink
all of the 3 books i did read, i can highly recommend!
to anybody!
football fan or not, they are all really good reads!
barca by i-forgot-his-name [an account on the political, social, cultural and sporting history of the fc barcelona]
fever pitch by nick hornby [an autobiographic novel about nick’s connection with, of all clubs, arsenal fc [!] yet quite nice]
and currently i am reading:
futebol by alex belos [a highly entertaining journalistic research into the role of football in brazilian life]
i don’t know about you, but i have always been quite fascinated with the fact, that brazilian football players give themselves artistic nicknames.
one of my recent favorites would have to be mozart, who caresses the ball as if he was in the process of composing eine kleine nachtmusik.
then today, in futebol, i read about one mauro shampoo – football player, hairdresser and man[?!]. now retired as a football player, shampoo used to play for a club in the 70’s, who’s defining feature was, that they had lost every game during three years. they were at that time known as the world’s worst club.
shampoo has named his son shampoozinho.
usually after winning a worldcup strange names are given to newborn babies in brazil.
one kid born shortly after the 1970 worldcup was named: tospericagerja;
that’s of course in hommage to the brazillian heroes: tostao, pele, rivelino, carlos alberto, gerson and jairzinho.
after 1962, worldcup also won by brazil, a newborn baby was named gol santa silva. whenever his mother yelled at him, passers-by must have wondered: “who just scored?”.
one of the players for the brazillian women football team playing the 1996 worldcup was nicknamed michael jackson. she did, however, not moonwalk onto the pitch.
and: did you know that pele was first known as gasolina. one wonders if he would have been such a succesfull football player, had he not changed his nickname to pele in due time…???
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