Love and Blood: At the World Cup with the Footballers, Fans, and Freaks

Every four years the thirty-two-team, sixty-four-game World Cup captivates the planet's populace for a month. Work absenteeism skyrockets. Political campaigns grind to a halt. Fans mortgage their houses to buy tickets. And teams employ every means possible — even consulting witch doctors and astrologers — in their quest for national glory.

Veteran soccer commentator Jamie Trecker traveled to Germany for FIFA World Cup 2006. Here, reported from the restaurants, trains, bars, town squares, hostels, press boxes, and brothels, is his unvarnished account of the games and parties, great plays and fistfights, gossip and tacky souvenirs that turn the largest sporting event on earth into a true world bazaar. With equal measures insight and irreverence, Trecker captures the passion, politics, controversies, and economics that make soccer a reflection of the world.

"The FIFA World Cup is the planet's biggest event. Not sporting event — event, period, writes Trecker in this in-your-face firsthand account of the 2006 World Cup in Germany. Trecker, Fox Sports soccer columnist, is passionate about the game (Munich exploded in the sixth minute when Phillip Lahm, employing his signature move, cut from the left side into the area to sink a powerful right-footed shot into the top of Jose Porras's net) and the players (What makes Zidane truly special is not that he can control the pace of a match — there are other holding mid-fielders in the game, but that his motions and instincts are artful, serene, and beautiful). Unfortunately, Trecker, while covering the sport, the games and the '06 World Cup comprehensively, falls prey to clichéd sports writing. He spends much time describing brothels (in South Korea and Germany), topless women and drunken debauchery of both fans and the media alike. While not without its pleasures, this is mostly for the already initiated rather than the general reader." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"The FIFA World Cup is the planet's biggest event. Not sporting event — event, period,' writes Trecker in this in-your-face firsthand account of the 2006 World Cup in Germany. Trecker, Fox Sports soccer columnist, is passionate about the game ('Munich exploded in the sixth minute when Phillip Lahm, employing his signature move, cut from the left side into the area to sink a powerful right-footed shot into the top of Jose Porras's net') and the players ('What makes Zidane truly special is not that he can control the pace of a match — there are other holding midfielders in the game — but that his motions and instincts are artful, serene, and beautiful'). Unfortunately, Trecker, while covering the sport, the games and the '06 World Cup comprehensively, falls prey to clichd sports writing. He spends much time describing brothels (in South Korea and Germany), topless women and drunken debauchery — of both fans and the media alike. While not without its pleasures, this is mostly for the already initiated rather than the general reader." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"A devoted and comprehensive tour guide, Trecker delivers the goods with gusto." Kirkus Reviews

Lead soccer columnist for Fox Sports and an analyst for Fox Soccer Channel, Jamie Trecker is a contributor to the New York Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer as well as the Guardian, the Observer, the Telegraph, and Loaded magazine. He lives in Chicago.