Football Against the Enemy

Published to coincide with the 1994 World Cup, this book is the record of a journey through Europe, Africa and the Americas looking at the often surprising relations between politics, culture and football. The author describes his meetings with a remarkable variety of football fans, from the East German dissident whose crime was to support a West German team, to an Argentinean general with his own highly personal views of tactics - and throws new light on the political, religious and cultural forces at work in the game, from the bitter sectarian hatred of an old firm game to the emergence of racially integrated football in South Africa, from the mafia-controlled corruption of Dynamo Kiev to the Hollywood-style preparations for the USA World Cup.