Football in Sun and Shadow

Eduardo Galeano's "Football is a Pleasure that Hurts" is a passionate and emotional history of football, celebrating its romance, drama, spectacle, and passion. It explores the superstition, heartbreak, tragedy, luck, heroes, and villains of the game, and how it retains its magic despite attempts by the rich and powerful to control it. Galeano's writing is praised for its warmth and ability to get to the heart of football, and his book is considered a standout among sports literature.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 272 pages
Publication date: 03 May 2018
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd

'Football is a pleasure that hurts'

This unashamedly emotional history of football is a homage to the romance and drama, spectacle and passion of a 'great pagan mass'. Through stories of superstition, heartbreak, tragedy, luck, heroes and villains, those who lived for football and those who died for it, Eduardo Galeano celebrates the glory of a game that - however much the rich and powerful try to control it - still retains its magic.

'The Uruguayan whose writing got right to the heart of football ... readers were never in doubt of the warmth of the blood running through his veins' Guardian

'Galeano can run rings round our glamorous football intelligentsia' When Saturday Comes

'Stands out like Pele on a field of second-stringers' New Yorker

Weight: 200g
Dimension: 197 x 131 x 13 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780241355350