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World Cup Fever: A Footballing Journey in Nine Tournaments
A Sports Book of the Year in the Irish Times, the FT and the Mail on Sunday
'The ultimate book for anyone who loves football, and plenty who don't ... Unmissable' Mail on Sunday
'Kuper is a wry and sharp-eyed guide' New Statesman
'A brilliant evocation of the joy of the football carnival and the absurdities of the global spectacle... an essential companion' David Goldblatt
It's the biggest sporting competition on Earth. A four-yearly chance for our greatest footballers to realise their ultimate dream. A month-long spectacle that's watched by billions. But the inaugural World Cup, held in Uruguay in 1930, was semi-professional, poorly attended and haphazardly organised - so how did it become a bonanza of multinational sponsorship, dubious ethics and shadowy characters, and the ultimate stage for football's greatest drama?
Simon Kuper is one of very few people to have attended every World Cup since 1990. In World Cup Fever he looks back at each tournament he's experienced - from half-empty stands at Italia 90 to the French triumph as hosts in 1998, South Africa's national dream in 2010 and the troubling legacy of 2022 - to reveal a captivating portrait of sport in a globalised world.
World Cup Fever is the story of how the tournament touches and sometimes even changes our lives, by one of the best writers on the beautiful game.
'The ultimate book for anyone who loves football, and plenty who don't ... Unmissable' Mail on Sunday
'Kuper is a wry and sharp-eyed guide' New Statesman
'A brilliant evocation of the joy of the football carnival and the absurdities of the global spectacle... an essential companion' David Goldblatt
It's the biggest sporting competition on Earth. A four-yearly chance for our greatest footballers to realise their ultimate dream. A month-long spectacle that's watched by billions. But the inaugural World Cup, held in Uruguay in 1930, was semi-professional, poorly attended and haphazardly organised - so how did it become a bonanza of multinational sponsorship, dubious ethics and shadowy characters, and the ultimate stage for football's greatest drama?
Simon Kuper is one of very few people to have attended every World Cup since 1990. In World Cup Fever he looks back at each tournament he's experienced - from half-empty stands at Italia 90 to the French triumph as hosts in 1998, South Africa's national dream in 2010 and the troubling legacy of 2022 - to reveal a captivating portrait of sport in a globalised world.
World Cup Fever is the story of how the tournament touches and sometimes even changes our lives, by one of the best writers on the beautiful game.
346 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 2, 2025
68 people are currently reading
396 people want to read
About the author
Simon Kuper
47 books388 followersSimon Kuper is a journalist for the Financial Times in England. He was born in Uganda of South African parents and moved to the Netherlands as a child. He studied History and German at Oxford University, and attended Harvard University as a Kennedy Scholar. He has written for The Times, Observer, Guardian and Le Monde, and also writes regularly for the Spectator and Dutch newspapers.
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
February 19, 2026
PAPERBACK EDITION!
Ah I see that yet again GR doesn't have the paperback edition so I'll go with this terrible cover instead?...
“Undisclosed and illegal payments, kickbacks and bribes became a way of doing business at FIFA.”
So said former FBI head, James Comey after the Swiss police in an operation with the FBI had arrested some of the offenders at a five star hotel in Zurich back in 2015.
From the opening lines Kuper conjures up a winning combination of personal travelogue, football history and commentary, blending this with the occasional teasing titillation of media and football gossip. One of the more refreshing and compelling aspects to Kuper’s approach is that he avoids so many of those lazy, cringe inducing WC related clichés, and openly admits to how often the tournament can be incredibly dull and boring, assuring us that more often than not the real excitement can be found off the field of play.
He also tests the mythology in other ways, like revealing how empty so many of the seats were when he went to games during Italia 90 or how bored and unimpressed so many of the actual players get when being billeted in hotels or retreats, missing their families or just bored in general – which gives a more balanced and reasoned account of these occasions, and of course contrary to the image and mythology desperately maintained by FIFA and their corporate sponsors.
The WC, like the Olympics has long since been hijacked by multi-nationals and cynical politicians and you’d need to be deaf, dumb and blind to not realise just how rotten and corrupt FIFA is. But as Kuper shows racism, exclusion and elitism were baked into the origins of FIFA since coming into being it was only concerned with white, wealthy nations of Europe and Americas. FIFA has always had a difficult and dubious past with a proven record of maintaining strong ties with Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and the Argentinian military junta, so awarding the WC to kleptocrats, tyrants and war criminals like Putin, Trump and bin Salman is actually pretty on brand.
One of the funniest aspects to this was learning that FIFA claims to have an “ethics code”. A culture of blatant legalised global gangsterism, where the corruption is so widespread and obvious that there is almost a mundane quality to it as they enjoy parading their greed, lies and corruption like a cheap, ill-fitting suit. Secure in the knowledge that impunity is (almost) always assured.
This book is routinely irreverent and never afraid to call BS out on the blatant opportunism and cronyism of former players, officials and those in the higher echelons of FIFA. At times Kuper put me in mind of Paul Theroux (another white, privileged man being paid to write and complain about visiting foreign countries) but like Theroux he can write well and so often his unflinching honesty makes this so different from many other similar accounts, like when he was watching his team - the Netherlands lose to Spain in the 2010 WC Final.
Kuper confesses that owing to the sheer cynicsm and negativity of the performance made him “unsupport” them, even though it was the WC final. I remember the awful game in question and the Dutch were shocking in their negative tactics, which often just constituted common assault. But this book also reminds us just how often very ordinary and mediocre sides progress really far in the tournament, usually down to luck.
He reminds us some of the ways that various leaders have used the tournament to distract the world from their atrocities, like how Israel choreographed the timing of various bombing and killing campaigns to coincide with various WC tournaments as distraction from their ongoing genocide programme.
Kuper was also very interesting on FIFA’s dubious approach to referee selection, resulting in the farcical outcome where you get a poorer quality and less experienced pool of referees owing to the fact that FIFA draws from such a wide range of nations, regardless if they have the experience or skills to actually manage such big games and big occasions and of course he touches on some of the exposed referee corruption as seen in 2002 with the Ecuadorian ref and the suspicious prevalence and power of a particular Spanish referee.
The anti-English agenda within FIFA is breath taking (and this comes from a Scot who still cheers loudly and explicitly for every team who plays against England). Despite being the self-proclaimed “home of football” and playing host to the most commercially profitable league in the world, FIFA has gone to great lengths to ensure that England has only hosted the tournament on one, solitary occasion away back in 1966.
To give some perspective, since those sixty years have elapsed the USA (once as co-host) and Germany have hosted it twice and Mexico three times (once as co-host). Taking an even broader view of the hosting nations since its initial inception back in 1930 we see that Italy, France and Brazil have hosted twice, leaving the English alongside nations like Uruguay, Chile, Argentina, Sweden, Switzerland, South Africa, Russia, Japan (co-hosted with South Korea) and Qatar with their solitary one time only. And to add just that little bit more salt into the wounds and hammer home the point in 2030 six nations will share duties (none of them England) and fast forward to 2034 and we see that another tyrannical, theocratic, human rights abusing, petro-state has been given it over England – i.e Saudi Arabia. It seems that it’s not only Scottish fans who have adopted the old Anyone But England mantra…
March 27, 2026
I was excited about and looked forward to diving into the topic of World Cup. The intro was def promising, but it turned out to be an uninteresting collection of miscellaneous diary entries of a sports journalist covering or just reminiscing about the matches.
December 18, 2025
There is a curiously dispirited tone to much of “World Cup Fever”, Simon Kuper’s personal history of the nine tournaments he has attended since Italia’90. On the one hand, Kuper begins his book by eulogising the tournament, describing the World Cup as “unending story that accompanies us through our lives”, a magical thread that connects us back to our childhoods. Conversely, many of its sections are much less a celebration of the World Cup, that they are a lament for its bloated decay and its exploitation by corporate and authoritarian vultures.
A journalist’s lamentation that reporting on the World Cup is increasingly a monumental pain in the hole is unlikely to elicit much sympathy from most football fans. But Kuper can convey in an entertaining way the monotony and grinding repetition of covering modern tournaments: the gruelling travel and security requirements, the vapid press conferences, the increasing homogenisation of the fan experience, the plummeting standard of football – it all sounds like a chore. And that’s before we even get to the topic of sportswashing …
In attempting to give a sense of the nine tournaments he has been present at, Kuper wisely decides against recounting the minutiae of specific games. Instead, he is more interested in capturing ‘vibes’, but also approaching the tournament from a political angle, and asking “what does the World Cup tell us about our changing world?”.
Kuper’s answers to that question are hardly reassuring. He sees recent World Cups as having “prefigured shifts in global power beyond football”, namely the expanding geopolitical influence of autocratic, fossil fuel-producing nation states. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Kuper’s account of the 2010 decisions to award the hosting of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups to Russia and Qatar respectively (what Kuper describes as the “World Cup Vote (that) explains the world”. Although maybe we shouldn’t be that surprised; Kuper’s summation of the early history of the World Cup – not least how the hosting of the tournament was manipulated by Mussolini’s Italy in 1934 and the Argentinian military junta in 1978 – shows how FIFA’s embrace of brutal authoritarian regimes was “baked in from the start”.
I found the most intriguing passages of this book to be those focusing on the 2010 World Cup in South Africa (perhaps paradoxically, as 2010 is widely considered to be the dullest, most soporific edition of the tournament). What elevates those chapters is Simon Kuper’s upbringing during apartheid-era South Africa, which allows him to bring a level of insight that you’d get from few other western journalists covering the tournament. By concentrating on the personal stories of the people living in the shadows of the glistening new stadiums, “World Cup Fever” taps into the continuing importance of the tournament in a way that a series of match reports never could.
What Kuper’s book does succeed in showing is what remains magical about the World Cup, whether that be meeting people from other cultures, or “the construction of memories” and child-like wonder that the tournament can occasionally still generate. Of course, these are just the joys at risk of being drained by vampires like Gianni Infantino, through FIFA’s price-gouging ticketing systems and their craven kow-towing to authoritarians ranging from Trump to MBS. Overall, “World Cup Fever” is a bittersweet primer for next summer’s extravaganza of sportswashing and despotic shape-throwing.
A journalist’s lamentation that reporting on the World Cup is increasingly a monumental pain in the hole is unlikely to elicit much sympathy from most football fans. But Kuper can convey in an entertaining way the monotony and grinding repetition of covering modern tournaments: the gruelling travel and security requirements, the vapid press conferences, the increasing homogenisation of the fan experience, the plummeting standard of football – it all sounds like a chore. And that’s before we even get to the topic of sportswashing …
In attempting to give a sense of the nine tournaments he has been present at, Kuper wisely decides against recounting the minutiae of specific games. Instead, he is more interested in capturing ‘vibes’, but also approaching the tournament from a political angle, and asking “what does the World Cup tell us about our changing world?”.
Kuper’s answers to that question are hardly reassuring. He sees recent World Cups as having “prefigured shifts in global power beyond football”, namely the expanding geopolitical influence of autocratic, fossil fuel-producing nation states. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Kuper’s account of the 2010 decisions to award the hosting of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups to Russia and Qatar respectively (what Kuper describes as the “World Cup Vote (that) explains the world”. Although maybe we shouldn’t be that surprised; Kuper’s summation of the early history of the World Cup – not least how the hosting of the tournament was manipulated by Mussolini’s Italy in 1934 and the Argentinian military junta in 1978 – shows how FIFA’s embrace of brutal authoritarian regimes was “baked in from the start”.
I found the most intriguing passages of this book to be those focusing on the 2010 World Cup in South Africa (perhaps paradoxically, as 2010 is widely considered to be the dullest, most soporific edition of the tournament). What elevates those chapters is Simon Kuper’s upbringing during apartheid-era South Africa, which allows him to bring a level of insight that you’d get from few other western journalists covering the tournament. By concentrating on the personal stories of the people living in the shadows of the glistening new stadiums, “World Cup Fever” taps into the continuing importance of the tournament in a way that a series of match reports never could.
What Kuper’s book does succeed in showing is what remains magical about the World Cup, whether that be meeting people from other cultures, or “the construction of memories” and child-like wonder that the tournament can occasionally still generate. Of course, these are just the joys at risk of being drained by vampires like Gianni Infantino, through FIFA’s price-gouging ticketing systems and their craven kow-towing to authoritarians ranging from Trump to MBS. Overall, “World Cup Fever” is a bittersweet primer for next summer’s extravaganza of sportswashing and despotic shape-throwing.
March 26, 2026
Starts off as a notebook dump, which made me worry it was just Kuper taking advantage of the market opening and just tossing everything he hadn't found a spot for out there, but the second half is more connected and develops a complex firsthand vision of how to think about the much-advertised unifying/development benefits of mega-events. First half is about European World Cups, the first of which he attended in 1990. Meta-plot there is the gradual normalization of Germany from the Darth Vader of Europe to a side people could actually root for, partly through their falling back to the pack. Second half is about moving the World Cup outside its European (and, he notes, almost always normatively Catholic--had not even made the connection that 1966 England is the only majority-Protestant nation ever to win) roots, which he sets up nicely in a short opener about founder Jules Rimet, who seems weirdly unwritten-about in English.
Meta-plots for the whole book: steep decline of sports-journalist prerogatives and paychecks (he notes mordantly that one colleague was offered all of 8 pounds [!] by The Guardian to file a story from Brazil); how miserable it is to cover a World Cup in person (worst bit: 9 games in the event's first 100 hours in Qatar); how much worse the quality of play is for national teams v club teams; which team is agreed to be the worst at each Cup, and why; how he's hopelessly attached to the Dutch team, even after their thuggish and very non-Dutch aesthetic in the 2010 final; how globalization is dooming African prospects; Diego Maradona as symbol, mascot, relatable human, index of general wellness of the soccer world. His single biggest section covers South Africa before during and after, with fascinating material about soccer as the Black game there and the 2010 Cup as at once a success and failure, a symbol of enormous national pride and overcoming stereotypes but also something that, from a 2024 visit, changed absolutely nothing permanently. His on-the-ground takes from Russia and Qatar suggest similar fates there.
Also, some very funny bits, in that mordant tone I associate with soccer commentary, mocking teams' and individual players' styles, strategies, and moves. Overall point, somewhat surprisingly, is more positive that I (or I think, he) expected--some notion that, despite everything (and there's a LOT of everything; he has two sections on FIFA self-enrichment, and he interviewed Sepp Blatter after his fall), there's something redemptive to the fantasies and the deliverance a victory, illusory and temporary though it is, can mean.
Decided I'll assign this next year for the sport-and-society class and have them read half the book or so.
Meta-plots for the whole book: steep decline of sports-journalist prerogatives and paychecks (he notes mordantly that one colleague was offered all of 8 pounds [!] by The Guardian to file a story from Brazil); how miserable it is to cover a World Cup in person (worst bit: 9 games in the event's first 100 hours in Qatar); how much worse the quality of play is for national teams v club teams; which team is agreed to be the worst at each Cup, and why; how he's hopelessly attached to the Dutch team, even after their thuggish and very non-Dutch aesthetic in the 2010 final; how globalization is dooming African prospects; Diego Maradona as symbol, mascot, relatable human, index of general wellness of the soccer world. His single biggest section covers South Africa before during and after, with fascinating material about soccer as the Black game there and the 2010 Cup as at once a success and failure, a symbol of enormous national pride and overcoming stereotypes but also something that, from a 2024 visit, changed absolutely nothing permanently. His on-the-ground takes from Russia and Qatar suggest similar fates there.
Also, some very funny bits, in that mordant tone I associate with soccer commentary, mocking teams' and individual players' styles, strategies, and moves. Overall point, somewhat surprisingly, is more positive that I (or I think, he) expected--some notion that, despite everything (and there's a LOT of everything; he has two sections on FIFA self-enrichment, and he interviewed Sepp Blatter after his fall), there's something redemptive to the fantasies and the deliverance a victory, illusory and temporary though it is, can mean.
Decided I'll assign this next year for the sport-and-society class and have them read half the book or so.
February 7, 2026
World Cup Fever by Simon Kuper
Rating: 7.75/10
This is not a football book in the usual sense. World Cup Fever uses the tournament as a lens on countries, power, identity, and how meaning gets attached to events that often feel bigger in memory than they ever were on the pitch.
I have supported Germany since 1990, the year they won the World Cup. I barely knew football then. A friend told me to support Argentina, so I did, until they lost to Cameroon in the opener. I dropped them immediately. I waited for the first round to finish and chose the team that scored the most goals. West Germany beat Yugoslavia 4–1. Decision made.
That tournament also gave me my footballer for life, Lothar Matthäus. Leadership, authority, presence. I had no idea that a casual choice would end with world champions, the Euro 1992 final loss to Denmark, redemption in 1996, and years later the 7–1 against Brazil, still the most ruthless performance I have ever seen.
What comes through clearly in the book is that World Cups never stand alone. Each tournament carries history, disappointment, pride, and unfinished business from the last. Fans remember them as chapters in their own lives, not just results on a page.
Kuper is unsentimental about control. Hosts overreach. Favourites collapse. Underdogs get their moment. Meaning is usually added afterwards. Running through it all is corruption. Political interference, compromised decisions, and governing bodies repeatedly choosing power and money over the game. Not treated as scandal, but as part of the system the World Cup operates within.
It is not a book for tactical obsessives, and some sections wander, but it is thoughtful, grounded, and honest about why the World Cup matters far beyond the pitch.
The next World Cup across the USA, Canada, and Mexico feels like another chapter waiting to be written. The final in New Jersey adds a personal note for me. It is the hometown of my favourite band, Bon Jovi. Football has a way of intersecting with life like that.
Rating: 7.75/10
This is not a football book in the usual sense. World Cup Fever uses the tournament as a lens on countries, power, identity, and how meaning gets attached to events that often feel bigger in memory than they ever were on the pitch.
I have supported Germany since 1990, the year they won the World Cup. I barely knew football then. A friend told me to support Argentina, so I did, until they lost to Cameroon in the opener. I dropped them immediately. I waited for the first round to finish and chose the team that scored the most goals. West Germany beat Yugoslavia 4–1. Decision made.
That tournament also gave me my footballer for life, Lothar Matthäus. Leadership, authority, presence. I had no idea that a casual choice would end with world champions, the Euro 1992 final loss to Denmark, redemption in 1996, and years later the 7–1 against Brazil, still the most ruthless performance I have ever seen.
What comes through clearly in the book is that World Cups never stand alone. Each tournament carries history, disappointment, pride, and unfinished business from the last. Fans remember them as chapters in their own lives, not just results on a page.
Kuper is unsentimental about control. Hosts overreach. Favourites collapse. Underdogs get their moment. Meaning is usually added afterwards. Running through it all is corruption. Political interference, compromised decisions, and governing bodies repeatedly choosing power and money over the game. Not treated as scandal, but as part of the system the World Cup operates within.
It is not a book for tactical obsessives, and some sections wander, but it is thoughtful, grounded, and honest about why the World Cup matters far beyond the pitch.
The next World Cup across the USA, Canada, and Mexico feels like another chapter waiting to be written. The final in New Jersey adds a personal note for me. It is the hometown of my favourite band, Bon Jovi. Football has a way of intersecting with life like that.
March 25, 2026
As a fan of Kuper's writing on sport with its broad lens of economics, sociology, and politics along with deep, practical, but also Dutch-philic & idiocyncratic, understanding of football (soccer).
Much to my delight, but as a caution to other readers, this book is more "Fever" (like Nick Hornby's marvelous Arsenal-fan memoir "Fever Pitch") and little less "World Cup" in is balance as Kuper recounts his long, personal history of attending World Cup's since Italia 90 (my own awakening to the sport).
As befits the personal narrative, different World Cups received different treatment lengths, with South Africa 2010 - a coming home moment for the global-citizen Kuper - getting the deepest and most poignant rendition. The book also manages to capture the transformation over time of the World Cup into the last shared global ritual for fans and the ongoing global corruption racket for its organizing body, FIFA.
Hope this book gives Kuper the excuse to revive his brilliant football podcast (with Mehreen Khan) "Heroes and Humans of Football" that gave such an incisive look into football history, personalities, and politics - a much needed antidote to the anodyne punditry of former players.
Much to my delight, but as a caution to other readers, this book is more "Fever" (like Nick Hornby's marvelous Arsenal-fan memoir "Fever Pitch") and little less "World Cup" in is balance as Kuper recounts his long, personal history of attending World Cup's since Italia 90 (my own awakening to the sport).
As befits the personal narrative, different World Cups received different treatment lengths, with South Africa 2010 - a coming home moment for the global-citizen Kuper - getting the deepest and most poignant rendition. The book also manages to capture the transformation over time of the World Cup into the last shared global ritual for fans and the ongoing global corruption racket for its organizing body, FIFA.
Hope this book gives Kuper the excuse to revive his brilliant football podcast (with Mehreen Khan) "Heroes and Humans of Football" that gave such an incisive look into football history, personalities, and politics - a much needed antidote to the anodyne punditry of former players.
Read
March 31, 2026*not rating*
𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙨𝙩𝙤𝙧𝙮 𝙤𝙛 𝙝𝙤𝙬 𝙨𝙤𝙘𝙘𝙚𝙧 𝙝𝙖𝙨 𝙩𝙧𝙖𝙣𝙨𝙛𝙤𝙧𝙢𝙚𝙙 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙬𝙤𝙧𝙡𝙙—𝙖𝙨 𝙨𝙚𝙚𝙣 𝙩𝙝𝙧𝙤𝙪𝙜𝙝 𝙣𝙞𝙣𝙚 𝙒𝙤𝙧𝙡𝙙 𝘾𝙪𝙥𝙨—𝙗𝙮 𝙤𝙣𝙚 𝙤𝙛 𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙢𝙤𝙨𝙩 𝙩𝙖𝙡𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙚𝙙 𝙬𝙧𝙞𝙩𝙚𝙧𝙨 𝙤𝙣 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙨𝙥𝙤𝙧𝙩.
I am a huge soccer fan and I am eagerly waiting for the World Cup this year… I saw this book in NetGalley and immediately requested the audiobook! I found myself so intrigued in following Simon Kuper throughout different world cups. It was so fascinating being able to hear his experience and how each game was different from one another.
Kuper takes us through nine different tournaments through his love for the sport. Soccer is an international sensation and I will always cherish the sport, I’m so glad I was able to listen to someone’s story who has experienced the world cup throughout the years. This made me even more excited for this year!
Thank you so much Dreamscape Media and NetGalley for the review copy in exchange for my honest review.
𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙨𝙩𝙤𝙧𝙮 𝙤𝙛 𝙝𝙤𝙬 𝙨𝙤𝙘𝙘𝙚𝙧 𝙝𝙖𝙨 𝙩𝙧𝙖𝙣𝙨𝙛𝙤𝙧𝙢𝙚𝙙 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙬𝙤𝙧𝙡𝙙—𝙖𝙨 𝙨𝙚𝙚𝙣 𝙩𝙝𝙧𝙤𝙪𝙜𝙝 𝙣𝙞𝙣𝙚 𝙒𝙤𝙧𝙡𝙙 𝘾𝙪𝙥𝙨—𝙗𝙮 𝙤𝙣𝙚 𝙤𝙛 𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙢𝙤𝙨𝙩 𝙩𝙖𝙡𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙚𝙙 𝙬𝙧𝙞𝙩𝙚𝙧𝙨 𝙤𝙣 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙨𝙥𝙤𝙧𝙩.
I am a huge soccer fan and I am eagerly waiting for the World Cup this year… I saw this book in NetGalley and immediately requested the audiobook! I found myself so intrigued in following Simon Kuper throughout different world cups. It was so fascinating being able to hear his experience and how each game was different from one another.
Kuper takes us through nine different tournaments through his love for the sport. Soccer is an international sensation and I will always cherish the sport, I’m so glad I was able to listen to someone’s story who has experienced the world cup throughout the years. This made me even more excited for this year!
Thank you so much Dreamscape Media and NetGalley for the review copy in exchange for my honest review.
March 5, 2026
Kuper is heel erg op dreef in dit beschouwende memoir, dat gaat over het wk-voetbal, zonder dat het al te veel over voetbal gaat. Hij heeft een goed oog voor de randzaken, en laat daardoor heel goed zien wat een wk wel en niet is. Het is niet een vehikel voor economische vernieuwing, je kan je stadiongeld nog beter in zee gooien. Het is ook geen podium voor het beste voetbal, daarvoor trainen nationale teams veel te weinig samen. Het is wel ons grootste wereldwijde evenement, waar leuk genoeg de grootste machthebbers van de wereld een bijrol spelen.
Informatief, sympathieke toon waarin hij zichzelf niet ontziet. En wat een productie heeft Kuper, 5 boeken in 5 jaar. Moet mijn best doen hem bij te houden
Informatief, sympathieke toon waarin hij zichzelf niet ontziet. En wat een productie heeft Kuper, 5 boeken in 5 jaar. Moet mijn best doen hem bij te houden
March 27, 2026
Of the three recent books that have offered histories of the World Cup, this is the least interesting, despite the author's obvious pedigree. This reads like someone going through their reporter notebooks, and thinking that a collection of random thoughts that didn't make their regular stories might be interesting. Apart from the sections about his return to South Africa, a lot of this comes across as travelogue, and a bunch of wishy washy writing about corruption and sportswashing. None of it is destined to linger in your mind.
November 19, 2025
Any football fan should enjoy this book, which delves into the wider contexts of World Cups (right up to the last one in 2022) and provides insights into how they operate outside the football itself, in a very entertaining way. As an England fan, it's very interesting to hear about the tournaments from a more neutral perspective (though the author does technically support the Netherlands).
February 18, 2026
Journalist Simon Kuper beschrijft zijn bezoek aan de afgelopen negen WK’s voetbal. Het voetbal zelf speelt slechts een rol op de achtergrond. Kuper beschrijft met een kritische toon de toernooien met hun moeizame organisatorische achtergronden als het vierjaarlijkse wereldwijde carnaval van het menselijk geluk. Als groot voetballiefhebber begrijp ik dat helemaal. Met veel plezier gelezen!
March 4, 2026
7/10. Interesting look at World Cup tournaments, considering the politics as much (probably more so) as the football. Which is its downfall - it really could do with a bit more love of the game.
As a child, becoming a sports journalist would have been my dream job. Simon Kuper makes it sound miserable … and maybe it is. But I’d have rather he didn’t ruin that dream 😂
As a child, becoming a sports journalist would have been my dream job. Simon Kuper makes it sound miserable … and maybe it is. But I’d have rather he didn’t ruin that dream 😂
March 26, 2026
I was excited to read this as I get ready to watch the World Cup this summer! This book focused on the history of the tournament and the challenges countries hosting this global spectacle. I found this insightful, but the overall book felt disappointing.
Thank you to NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for this ARC.
Thank you to NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for this ARC.
March 30, 2026
The book is structured as a series of chronological anecdotes rather than a polished account, but some narrative throughlines still came through. The focus was less on the soccer than on the experiences of spectators, the politics of FIFA, and the effects on the host countries. Kuper has family history in South Africa so the section on that tournament was the most in depth and thoughtful.
January 19, 2026
As a World Cup fanatic that followed more or less the same tournaments, it's very interesting to compare my experience to a Dutchman's (much more modest expectations) and to someone that, in theory, holds a dream job (as usual, much less glamurous from the inside).
December 10, 2025
A disappointment in the sense that I expected an account of games and insights into the game by someone who was a devoted supporter and went to the different World Cups during my lifetime (also a reason for buying the book) out of appreciation for the game. Instead, what you get is a tired journalistic account of the hassle of working through a World Cup, with an odd detachment from the game itself and an almost offensive view on what will remain a dream of many that the author painstakingly describes as an effort. Sometimes you almost get the feeling that the author is trying to make you feel sorry for him. If you are not able to enjoy it, perhaps you shouldn’t write a book about it, and if you are enjoying it, perhaps you shouldn’t make it out to be such a tiresome experience. Also, I’m not sure what the intent is, what this is supposed to be - a diary? A political introspection? A statement on sportswashing and corruption? An attempt at understanding cultures through fan behaviour? Perhaps an editor could have helped steer this in the right direction, but sadly reviews seem to have been too positive previously for this to appear warranted in their eyes.
December 13, 2025
Some great stories here, an enjoyable read
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March 6, 2026Really not sure why I read this, but it is restrained in its intensity, and yet full of so much drama!!
January 25, 2026
In World Cup Fever: A Footballing Journey in Nine Tournaments , Simon Kuper reflects on his experiences attending nine World Cups, using the tournaments as a lens through which to explore not just football, but the political, cultural, and economic forces that surround the world’s biggest sporting event. Somewhat counter-intuitively, the book is relatively light on match analysis, focusing instead on the history of the competition, the evolution and corruption of FIFA, the geopolitics of hosting decisions, and the particular challenges faced by developing countries tasked with staging a global spectacle. Kuper also weaves in observations about nationalism, media narratives, fan culture, and the gap between the romantic image of the World Cup and the messy realities behind the scenes. While I found much of this interesting and often insightful, the book’s structure feels loose, reading more like a collection of essays and diary entries than a single, tightly focused argument. Engaging in parts, but somewhat diffuse overall. 6/10
December 26, 2025
The book was as geopolitical as it was World Cup history but I didn’t mind and I found most of the book enjoyable and it taught me aspects of the countries involved and their role on the World Cup stage.
At times I found the author a bit condescending and quite anti west/white etc but maybe I was thinking too deeply about some of his comments
All in all I think the book was deeply researched, written passionately and well worth reading. Would definitely recommend this book especially to football fans with an interest in wider topics.
At times I found the author a bit condescending and quite anti west/white etc but maybe I was thinking too deeply about some of his comments
All in all I think the book was deeply researched, written passionately and well worth reading. Would definitely recommend this book especially to football fans with an interest in wider topics.
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