Philosophy Football’s Mark Perryman recommends ten reads that reveal the tournament at its best – and worst.

After three weeks, the World Cup finally gets down to the serious business. The starting 48 teams have been whittled down to the last sixteen. It’s win – or go home.

Yet the ‘serious business’ of a World Cup for the best part of a century has from the beginning, Uruguay 1930, always stretched way beyond the touchline. It’s the only truly global sporting event, the Olympics don’t even come close to mobilising the passions, partisanship and shared community of a worldwide fan base.  It uniquely combines both a popular nationalism and a popular internationalism that politicians and activists struggle to comprehend.  The joyfulness of the tournament more often than not survives in spite of, not because of, FIFA, the multinational sponsors and the  host nation political leadership. The World Cup, if we look carefully enough, shakes the world.

Dancing in the Streets: Tales from a World Cup City – Don Watson 

The last time the USA was a World Cup host it was on its own and England had failed to qualify. All the joy of Italia ’90 and England’s barnstorming run to the semis came to naught with Graham Taylor’s mishap-strewn management. Meanwhile, 1966 World Cup winner Jack Charlton who had been snobbishly overlooked as England manager because he didn’t quite fit what the FA thought the holder of the post should look, sound or behave like took the Republic of Ireland to their second successive tournament, USA ’94. 

Don Watson, previously best known as a music writer on the 1980s weekly must-read the New Musical Express, in ’94 turned his hand to football to write a book that captures not only the unique experience of following your nation to a World Cup – for Scotland 2026, read Ireland 1994 – but also how this hopelessly and joyfully intersects with the globalism of both the host nation and fellow World Cup competing nations. Of course, we can get a flavour of this via the media coverage but nothing like the experience itself. With Dancing in the Streets, Don captured this brilliantly and along the way both coins and develops the term “World Cup City.” My dog-eared copy was what helped convince me to be there the next time, France ’98. 

Available from second-hand copies at Abe Books here 

Going Oriental: Football after World Cup 2002 – Mark Perryman 

You could say, just like tens and hundreds of thousands of other England fans, I promptly caught the World Cup travelling bug – a bug given an injection of full-blown footballing global internationalism by England in Japan World Cup 2002. Unlike France ’98, this was a country few travelling England fans had visited before and knew next to nothing about, including me. 

So how to do a book? Japanese and South Korean contributors, my favourite football writers, filled in the blanks. England fans reported on their own experiences. Political and cultural writers provided the broader context. England went out at the quarter-final stage so no happy ending on the pitch, but thanks to this brilliant range of contributors, with Going Oriental I did my best to provide one off it. 

 Available from second-hand copies at World of Books here 

The Other Side of the Hand of God: Inside the Most Notorious Match in World Cup History – Asif Burhan 

Are World Cups all sweetness and light? No, of course not. Any World Cup is made up of a complexity of rivalries, some the product of a history off the pitch, some down to events on the pitch, most a potent mix of a bit of both.

Mexico ’86, preceded by the small, or rather, the big matter of the 1982 Falklands/Malvinas war. It’s an episode that, on both sides, has become hopelessly confused with events on the pitch ever since. For the Spain 1982 World Cup, FIFA fixed the draw so that unless the two teams made the final they couldn’t meet. Sorted, or so they thought. 

Asif Burhan, whom I first met as a fellow travelling England fan, in his debut book The Other Side of the Hand of God tells in fascinating detail how the football and this short war became hopelessly mingled. Argentina, their armed forces humiliatingly defeated off the pitch, were able to win on the pitch only by bare-faced cheating. What’s to like? Not much. Asif helps us to understand this moment in two nations’ shared football history.  It’s one that can’t be divorced from the contrary fact that all but the most embittered England fans would gladly, if a little grudgingly, recognise. Notwithstanding his ‘hand of God’, Maradona is one of the world’s footballing greats. 

Available from Pitch Publishing here 

Football and Fascism: The National Game under Mussolini – Simon Martin

Sport and fascism? Oh, you mean Berlin 1936, the Nazi Olympics, the Olympic movement’s co-habitation with Hitler, his infamous walkout when Jesse Owens wining four gold medals humiliates Adolf’s fervent belief in the racial superiority of the white Aryans. A familiar enough episode for most sports fans.

Yet Mussolini’s connection with Italian football is in many ways much more significant. The inaugural World Cup was held in Uruguay, 1930. The second was in Italy in 1934, at the height of Mussolini’s power. Italy won the competition, the first European nation to do so.  And at France 1938 they became the first team to win the World Cup away from home.

Mussolini unashamedly exploited these victories for their propaganda value, at home and abroad. But more than that, Italian football was reorganised under Mussolini’s leadership: he created the first Italian national league, Serie A. Sounds familiar? In Rome, Turin, Bologna, Como, clubs’ stadiums were rebuilt, featuring Musolini’s name in their title, or a statue in his honour, or both. This was a regime that absolutely knew, and exploited, the power of football to promote fascism. Simon Martin’s book reveals a history that football would rather forget. The account leaves the reader feeling thankful that, Trump, apart from no doubt showing up to spoil the World Cup Final, unlike golf, shows zero interest in football. The tournament, in spite of his worst efforts, instead has shown the power of football to unite in joy, not divide with hate, or worse.  

Available from second-hand copies at World of Books  here

The Power and the Glory: A New History of the World Cup – Jonathan Wilson

For dedicated followers of the World Cup and a certain vintage, the late Brian Glanville’s History of the World Cup has always been a must-read.  First published in 1973 updated editions appeared in 1974, 1980, 1984, 1993, 1997, 2002, 2005, 2006, 2014 and 2018. Brian passed away in 2025. 

Jonathan Wilson is perfectly placed to continue this there-or-thereabouts quadrennial tradition. A learned writer on the evolution of football tactics, a historian of the game and as founding editor of The Blizzard, he is steeped in football as culture.  The Power and the Glory showcases Jonathan’s rich mix of talent to chronicle the cultural reach every World Cup produces. I can’t wait for the 2030 updated edition, yes please.

Available from Abacus Books here 

 World Cup Fever: A Footballing Journey in Nine Tournaments – Simon Kuper

Simon Kuper made his debut in 1994 as an author with Football against the Enemy. It won the hugely prestigious William Hill Sport Book of the Year. A kind of Fever Pitch, published two years earlier in 1992, it goes global, or if you prefer, on tour.  I don’t mean this in a derivative way: rather, Simon like Nick entirely understood how football’s meaning is located in the deep-seated attachments, and sometimes antagonisms, it ignites. He’s subsequently explained this via books on Ajax and Barcelona and expanded his reach to explain, with Stefan Szymanski ‘Soccernomics’, and further afield an English class and political system rooted in Oxbridge. 

Simon combines all this to produce World Cup Fever, made all themore special via his own travelling tales to World Cups 1990-2022. Four of these I’ve been to, 1998-2010; at one, I shared a pre-match lunch with Simon, 2002, in Sapporo (I think) prior to England v Argentina.  By then he was travelling with media accreditation. But Simon, whose first World Cup, Italia ’90, he went to as an escapee student, absolutely gets what a unique experience for fans the tournament is. FIFA, governments, sponsors do their worst to police, monetise and ruin this experience, but all my experience of France, Japan, Germany, South Africa tells me they never entirely succeed in their endeavours: fans from every competing nation and the hosts have the time of their lives, in spite of.  Warning: after a read of this book the irresistible inclination will be to want to join in the next time. Start saving now! 

Available from Profile Books here 

What Is FIFA For? – Alan Tomlinson

I’ve probably learnt more about the politics of sport from Alan Tomlinson than any other author. As a critical thinker he is simply peerless. Most, including me, would answer the question, “What is FIFA for?” with two words: Eff all. Fair enough – an explosion of anger at FIFA’s purposeful ineptitude is entirely justified. Alan’s short book perfectly captures the deep-rooted reason why so much of what FIFA does is wrong: clientelism which inevitably breeds a rush for revenue generation at any cost, and corrupt practices to service. But at the same time, football is by some considerable distance the most global of sports. It functions as such thanks to FIFA, so credit, where credit is due, is properly recorded to balance the critique of FIFA with appreciative understanding of its much understated role. 

Available from Bristol University Press here 

Red Card: The 2026 World Cup, Sportswashing and the FIFA Greed Machine – Jules Boykoff

Jules Boykoff ‘s critique of World Cup 2026 is unashamedly agitational, an adjective I use entirely positively. He’s a former international footballer, academic and campaigner. The anger leaps off the page to drive the reader on from one murky episode of World Cup ‘sportswashing’ to the next. If there was a ‘man of the match’ award for sportswashing there is little doubt Jules would dishonour Gianni Infantino with it, job done. But the difficulty remains: once the games kick off, the joy of the spectacle takes over. The answer Jules provides is much like a match: 

“We’re living a pick-a-side moment in history when one must choose democracy or authoritarianism. If someone refuses to choose, then in reality, they have chosen. To that battle, I say game on.” 

Off the pitch, in the land of Trump, or indeed Farage, such a binary opposition is understandable. but with football, the lines are blurred. The global carnival of joy of a World Cup at its best is a genuine, it’s not ‘false consciousness’ rather a welcome break from all the world throws at us the rest of the time. How to make that connection critical as well as joyful? The answer lies in a quote that Jules opens his book with from Stuart Hall, the political theorist not the disgraced former TV commentator:

“Politics does not reflect majorities, it constructs them.”

1-0 to Hegemony United. 

Available from OR Books here 

Injury Time: Football in a State of Emergency – David Goldblatt

Of course, World Cup 2026 doesn’t stand in (un)splendid isolation. The kind of critique Alan Tomlinson and Jules Boykoff provide of FIFA and the tournament come mid-August will be just as necessary to apply to the domestic game. There’s no one better to provide precisely this than David Goldblatt. 

David excels as a writer by combining a counter-history of football to identify an alternative present to the one we’ve been lumbered with. At the same time, he provides a detailed understanding of the system that has produced the state football is in.   

His most extraordinary achievement? None of this leaves the reader depressed, instead intellectually armed with the belief that another football is possible, if right now implausible.

Injury Time ranges far and wide. Choose to dip into chapters for insights into how football frames Europe, economics, racism, national identity, the climate crisis. Or reverse the process: how Brexit, the decline of authority, nationalism, Covid, the changing geography of club ownership frame football. Either way, or a mix of both, once World Cup 2026 is over, this is a book that will focus minds, and the hope, for season 2026-7. That’s if England haven’t won the trophy – in that eventuality, all critical thought might need to take a gloriously-earned rest 

Available from Mudlark here 

FIVE STAR BOOK CHOICE 

All Played Out: The Full Story of Italia ’90 – Pete Davies 

For my Five Gold Star choice of a book to make sense of World Cup 2026, I’ve gone all the way back to Italia ’90. In one beautifully crafted sentence author Pete Davies summed up precisely the meaning of that, this, any World Cup. 

“Planet Football – it’s a place where the simple dreams of boys kicking a ball between coats on the ground are force-nurtured, under floodlights and cameras, to the most mutant and enormous dimensions.”

With one amendment, “and girls”. Pete’s next book I Lost My Heart to the Belles: Story of the Doncaster Belles is the best book ever written on women’s football (aberration forgiven).

Pete’s book was his first book on football. A novelist, he came to Italia ‘90 afresh, and left it bewitched. Italy, Bobby Robson, Gazzamania, Lineker, missed penalties, he gloriously captures the lot. It is no criticism to note that swiftly following the success of the tournament ‘Planet Football’ became ‘Mod£rn Football’. In 1992, both the Premier League and the Champions (and rich runners’ ups) League were founded. The rest is history.

But before all that, All Played Out describes a World Cup at its very best. When I set out to edit a collection The Ingerland Factor: Home Truths from Football about the first World Cup I travelled to, France ’98, I was chuffed to bits that Pete agreed to contribute a chapter. He did it again, for my World Cup 2002 collection. Never mind my own modest efforts, those two chapters of Pete’s are the finest ever achievement of my football books. If you haven’t read it, grab yourself a copy of All Played Out and you’ll understand why.  

Available from second-hand at Abe Books here   

Note No links in this review are to Amazon. If you can avoid boosting the obscene wealth of tax-dodging billionaires please do.   

Mark Perryman is the co-founder of the self-styled ‘sporting outfitters of intellectual distinction’ AKA Philosophy Football.