Edited by Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey (397 pp.)
This collection with the unfortunately elitist sounding title, was put together prior to the 2006 World Cup. It's made up of 32 essays by different writers, one essay for each country in the final. Plus there's a recap of the 02 WC and a preview of the 06 WC and a bunch of statistics about the countries and the World Cup. There was no format for the essays. Some of them read like school reports about the country with a sentence or two about soccer thrown in. Others are like school reports about soccer in the country. The best ones are personal anecdotes where the writer has a personal connection with the country and with soccer. My favorite was the Iran essay by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh. It's both sad and hilarious and unfortunately that link is only an excerpt. I don't think you can really appreciate it without reading the whole thing. I also loved Portugal, Italy and Togo but lots of the essays are great. I recommend for soccer fans but the Iran essay I recommend to everyone.
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