16 Quotes by Simon Kuper

It seems that soccer tournaments create those relationships: people gathered together in pubs and living rooms, a whole country suddenly caring about the same event. A World Cup is the sort of common project that otherwise barely exists in modern societies.

Other than sports, only war and catastrophe can create this sort of national unity.

Whereas fanatic is usually a pejorative word, a Fan is someone who has roots somewhere.

Football is not merely a small business, it's also a bad one. Anyone who spends any time inside football soon discovers that just as oil is part of the oil business, stupidity is part of the football business.

The club is not a business. It's a populist democracy.

You don't have to be charming to be a fan among fans.

People are enormously disappointed because if there's one country that really expected to be going and has a high opinion of its own qualities, it's Holland.

It's partly due to the overload on modern players, ... All the Dutch are playing in the Champions League or in top European leagues. So it's last week Barcelona, this week Dublin, next week Milan. It's just not that exciting.

In the United States, there's a strong taboo against racism; in England it's only happened in the past 15 years. In Spain and Eastern Europe, there is none of this revulsion among most people. There are few people of color, so a black player on the field is a new thing. In that sense, soccer is seen by racists as the vanguard of the world outside sweeping into town.