Simon Kuper

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World Cup Fever

The football World Cup is the biggest sporting competition on Earth - a chance every four years for the greatest players to win international glory, and a month-long media spectacle that's watched by an audience of billions. But the tournament has changed beyond recognition since the inaugural event in Montevideo, Uruguay, in July 1930. What was once a semi-professional meeting beset by haphazard

The football World Cup is the biggest sporting competition on Earth - a chance every four years for the greatest players to win international glory, and a month-long media spectacle that's watched by an audience of billions. But the tournament has changed beyond recognition since the inaugural event in Montevideo, Uruguay, in July 1930. What was once a semi-professional meeting beset by haphazard play has evolved to become a game of multinational buyouts, dubious ethics and questionable aims - and the new era of football has much to tell us about the globalised world. Simon Kuper is among the vanishingly small number of writers who have attended every World Cup since 1990. World Cup Fever is his journey to find the heart of football, through the nine tournaments he's experienced first-hand - from watching matches in half-empty stands during Italia 90, a tournament that at times felt like a village fete, to witnessing the French triumph at home in 1998, South Africa's national dream in 2010 and the troubling legacy of Qatar 2022. Told on the pitch and in the stands, and in the pubs, front rooms and on the streets, this is the story of how football has changed the world.