Agent Palmer

Soccer Against the Enemy by Simon Kuper was first published in 1994 with the subtitle “How the world’s most popular sport starts and fuels revolutions and keeps dictators in power.” I recently read the updated 2006 version, but since a lot has happened in those intervening years, like for example a World Cup in Qatar, this book is just exhibit A. This book is about Simon’s research by being boots on the ground in places like Scotland, Ireland, Holland, Germany,…

Football.

Where you are when you talk about it, defines which sport you are discussing. On Netflix, there exists two eight-part docu series about both of the sports. Captains follows six players who are attempting to lead their countries to the World Cup final in Qatar through qualification, while Quarterback follows three NFL QBs as they attempt to lead their teams to a Super Bowl victory.

Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds bought a Welsh football club, or soccer team if you prefer the American lexicon. It just so happens to be the third oldest professional football club in the world, Wrexham AFC. Why Wrexham? Why Rob and Ryan? Those two questions and many more can be answered, to some degree, in Welcome to Wrexham.

The series Welcome to Wrexham is part business documentary, part travel documentary, part history documentary, and part sports documentary with a throughline of the human condition.

Is the summer of 2021 the greatest Summer of Soccer the world has ever known? I believe it might be, despite not being a World Cup year, it is jam-packed with international tournaments that are unlikely to ever coincide again.

The EUROs (postponed from 2020), the COPA, the Gold Cup, and the Olympics (also postponed to this year), have created a buzz around international soccer, the likes of which we only usually experience during a world cup year, and that is only a fraction of the number of participant nations.

Season One of Amazon Prime’s “This Is Football” six-part documentary is a perfect example of all that is actually beautiful with the beautiful game.

In a world where, on Amazon Prime or Netflix, a search for soccer or football will bring you to documentaries on the FIFA scandals, which is an example of everything that is wrong with the game, this series is about everything that is right with the game.