When he was a child, Eduardo Galeano wanted to become a football player, but he only played well in his dreams, because in the mornings, on the fields of Montevideo, he was one of the worst. However, with this book, he managed through his writing to achieve what he could not with the ball at his feet: to write the most beautiful book ever written about a sport.
He traces the history of football from its earliest beginnings, talks to us about the main protagonists, the stadium, the players and the fans, the administrations, the newspapers and television, the evolution and spread of the game, its rules, its particularities, its manipulation by economic interests, its occasional degeneration due to expediency, its passage from the age of innocence to the entertainment industry. He talks about legendary players—Garrincha, Pelé, Puskás, Maradona, Eusébio, Cruyff, or Platini, and even Ronaldo and Messi—describes goals and moments that went down in history with such vividness that you feel as if you are part of the game, dribbles occasionally bringing the ball into politics, and glances into the psychology of the human mosaic of the football universe. And he builds this football Bible piece by piece, story by story, with the World Cup tournaments as intermediate stops, ending with the World Cup in Brazil in 2014.