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Football in Sun and Shadow
Football in Sun and Shadow
May 19, 2024 5:45 PM

Author:Eduardo Galeano

Football in Sun and Shadow

'Football is a pleasure that hurts'

This unashamedly emotional history of football is a homage to the romance and drama, spectacle and passion of a 'great pagan mass'. Through stories of superstition, heartbreak, tragedy, luck, heroes and villains, those who lived for football and those who died for it, Eduardo Galeano celebrates the glory of a game that - however much the rich and powerful try to control it - still retains its magic.

'The Uruguayan whose writing got right to the heart of football ... readers were never in doubt of the warmth of the blood running through his veins' Guardian

'Galeano can run rings round our glamorous football intelligentsia' When Saturday Comes

'Stands out like Pele on a field of second-stringers' New Yorker

Reviews

Galeano can run rings round our glamorous football intelligentsia.

—— When Saturday Comes

Stands out like Pele on a field of second-stringers.

—— New Yorker

Galeano has a style of a great left half. He constantly switches the direction of play. His observations are acute. He delivers with an air of insouciance which cannot mask his mastery

—— Herald

Uplifting, reckless, ironic, impassioned... sparkles with supple imagery and a fine dry wit.

—— Independent

Deeply humane . . . he has produced literature that will endure, monuments to the imagination

—— Toby Green , Independent

Highly recommended reading. An excellent and important book . . . No Hunger in Paradise explores the world of youth football and, if the stories within do one thing, they press the claim for serious discussion about how the English game treats the thousands of children who come into contact with the sharper end of youth football – and their families who often get reeled in to a cut-throat environment without really understanding what is going on

—— Amy Lawrence

Eye-opening and compelling

—— Iain Macintosh

Terrifying

—— Richard Williams , Guardian

No Hunger in Paradise is somehow both heart-breaking and uplifting. Just brilliant!

—— Waterstones Sport

No Hunger in Paradise is humbling, educational, worrying and a great read. Can't recommend it highly enough. One of the best sports books I've ever read.

—— Barry Glendenning , Guardian

Started reading this and it's brilliant. Seriously recommended. Yet another important football book from Michael Calvin. In-depth well-researched accounts of the journey from kids football to the professional game..or rejection

—— Adrian Durham , TalkSPORT

If you've any interest in the future of football in this country and the young players who will provide it, No Hunger in Paradiseis a must-read.

—— Liverpool Echo

Bleak but brilliant. Contains stories that need to be heard.

—— i-Paper

A brilliant & very important book. Vital, highly recommended. Tempted to say it's Michael Calvin’s best yet, which is some praise.

—— Oliver Kay , The Times

The best sports book I'm likely to read this year. Highly recommend you buy it.

—— Simon Hughes , Independent

A brilliant insight into the journey young kids now make from kicking a ball around in their back garden, through the glossy facilities of academy football.

—— David Preece , Sunderland Echo

His research is, as ever, impeccable… No Hunger in Paradise is a fascinating and fitting finale to a trio of books any football lover should own.

—— Sunday Sport

Heartbreaking . . . an excellent piece of reportage

—— i-Paper

The award-winning writer’s new forensic, and sometimes alarming, case study into why some young prospects make the cut – and others fall away – is fascinating…
The FA would do well to read this if they want success

—— FourFourTwo

Brilliantly sourced and written… As a portrait of the state of the modern game, No Hunger In Paradise is vital reading. With Calvin’s previous studies, it serves as a record of what football is like today and should place him alongside Arthur Hopcraft, John Moynihan and Hunter Davies in providing the sport with its defining literature

—— When Saturday Comes

One of the great, and most important, sports books of 2017. Passionate, incisive, gripping.

—— Don McCrae

Calvin is a natural storyteller who is unflinching as he goes behind the scenes and meets the people at the heart of the youth development network.

—— Irish Independent

The book is an eye-opener into the pressures put on young players by clubs, coaches and parents; the corruption and conceit, bullying and harassment. Plus the lengths those clubs and their scouts go to, to recruit kids who have yet to reach secondary school.

—— Independent, 10 Best Football Books of the Year 2017

Completes his formidable trilogy on the game with a blistering indictment of how it treats its youngest players

—— Guardian’s sport books of the year

Outstanding

—— Times

Ann Wroe’s Six Facets of Light is a fascinating and original meditation [on light]. Six Facets of Light is an exquisite collage of relations, a prose poem to “what escaped” absolutely everyone – and to how madly, brilliantly, they tried to “be in step”.

—— Joanna Kavenna , Times Literary Supplement
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