The Thinking Fan's Guide to the World Cup
by Matt Weiland, Sean Wilsey
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Book Summary Information
Author: Matt Weiland, Sean WilseyEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2006-06-01
ISBN: 0061132268
Number of pages: 416
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Book Reviews of The Thinking Fan's Guide to the World Cup
Book Review: THE ART OF THE FLOP:
Summary: 5 Stars
Nowhere is the Italian art of flopping more underappreciated than in America. Witness the passage in this book written by American author Dave Eggers who egregiously labeled flopping the greatest obstacle to the popularity of the soccer in the US and described it as, "essentially a combination of acting, lying, begging and cheating . . ."
Yes, Mr. Eggers, and I suppose it follows that Shakespeare is essentially a combination of lying, punning, and crossdressing?
A "dive," is defined as any and all airborne maneuvers employed by a player, such as Emmanuel Eboue's tongue extension in the recent Champions League Final, following a simulated foul. The ensuing "flop" is the second movement to this grassbound ballet whereas the mood of flight is ruptured. No opera is complete without its splay of carnage, and no dive is complete without the agony of the "Faustian" flop. The flop is the prose of darkness, an organ blast, the memento mori of the football pitch that reminds us we too are mortal and transforms us all, momentarily at least, into Prince Hamlet perched by an open grave pondering Yorrick's putrid skull and exclaiming, "He was my homie, Horatio, a man of, like, infinite jest."
Like the Italian sonnets of Petrarch, great flops are in no way arbitrary, and a great flopper is already scripting his performance during his dive, specifying to himself which wing or organ has been mortally wounded, what degree of roll to employ, and what range of writhe and grimace might prove most effective. And then, during that last moment of flight (as Icarus crashes to the earth) all of this information is dispatched, vanquished, and the flop is performed like a great jazz improvisation, like Coltrane's later ballads, a movement of pure intuition. Men gasp, women avert their eyes, children weep. The whole stadium stands silent and the very oxygen lingers in our lungs--oh, reader, he is dying!--while our hero grasps, gasps, rolls, shudders, spasms, and perhaps even foams at the mouth. Wrote Keats: "I fall upon the thorns of life, I bleed," and what mortal among us cannot be pondering Keats' poetry as the gurney is jockeyed onto the field and teammates huddle around their fallen comrade feigning concern or perhaps even shoving or pushing a smaller member on the opposing team in a gesture of revenge that quickly fades away at the sublime catch-breath moment the red card appears. Red for blood. Red for death.
Here, Mr. Eggers, for the connoisseur only, is the truest moment of beauty in sport, this spasming orgasm, this coitus of the dive & the flop: the presenting of the red card followed by the stark, grinning contrast between the legitimate rage of a defender and the feigned agony of an accomplished thespian.
Death too gives way . . . like the onset of spring, the magic of the red works its way through the frozen pitch. The dead arise like crocuses, shake off their injuries, test their joints and limbs, perhaps toss out a few curse words toward their opposing bench, halfheartedly, before trotting back to position, ready to resume the play. Bravo! Encore!
Aside from Mr. Eggers' uncouth remarks, this is a fine book filled with moving essays, especially the ones about Africa.
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