Matthew Bizer’s Reviews > The Power and the Glory: The History of the World Cup > Status Update

“Here, overtly, was the imperial lion transformed into something cheeky and welcoming—but it was also a commercial ploy, a mascot whose image could transform anything from T-shirts to tea towels into a salable souvenir: imperialism first defanged by an increasingly classless irreverence and then repackaged as commercial junk.”

“Brazil is a land of myth, a place where objective fact struggles for traction, and few have been so mythologized as Pelé.”

“Soccer has, at least if claims made in the moment of glory are to be believed, put Uruguay on the map, reintegrated postwar West Germany into the global community, and ended racism in France. That's almost entirely nonsense, of course, but it doesn't mean that the assertions are not revealing.“