"Golazo" by Andreas Campomar
I'm on another site where I do a lot of roleplaying/reading about fictional soccer (association football) teams and their fictional countries. So I go through phases of being really into worldbuilding, even if it's the RL world, and wanting to learn about football there. Anyway, this book was...interesting. It's about Latin (mostly South) American football and arranged chronologically, but I kept being thrown out of the story by the author's word choice. I had so much to say I figured I'd write it up here so I can link to it, heh.
-The recurring theme is "people, inside and out of South America, trying to construct national identities (such as via sport), but also often falling into racism." Which, yeah, on the one hand, South American "nations" don't have an underlying unity because nationalism don't real, but also, the same is true on every other continent.
-Jorge Luis Borges didn't like football and was kind of annoyed it was such a big deal in the Argentinian consciousness
-If you thought Hamilton's comma sexting was great you're gonna love Elías Figueroa:
-There's a lot of semi-unofficial "tours" of South American professional teams in Europe, or vice versa. There are several more recent-ish (or more academic-ish) baseball history books/articles focused on this aspect, eg, in the first half of the 20th century there would be US all-star teams touring in Japan, and/or integrated teams barnstorming to earn extra money during the winter even though the organized leagues were racially segregated. Money is a big incentive!
-Victor Hugo Morales has one of the most famous South American sports broadcasts of all time, I can't tell if he's named after that Victor Hugo
-Where is this fanfic:
BUT:
I don't want to be too hard on Campomar, but his cliches/stock phrases kept pulling me out of the narrative. Maybe they are more common in UK (and/or Uruguay) English, but I'm not sure I have ever come across the word "quondam." It means "former," as in, "the former World Champions were upset by Bolivia."
-"put paid to"
-"put to the sword" (this one I'm more familiar with, but it was kind of stale after the other "put" cliche)
-"demimonde"
-"in extremis" (italicized every time)
-a lot of phrases like "la viveza criolla," creole cunning, put in italics and with the translation pretty much every time. Like I know that's part of the point he's trying to make, but if you're going to be insistent about it, you don't need to translate it as if it's still unfamiliar!
-calling teams "she" ("Argentina were losing, but she would score through Di Stéfano")
Anyway. QUONDAM.
-The recurring theme is "people, inside and out of South America, trying to construct national identities (such as via sport), but also often falling into racism." Which, yeah, on the one hand, South American "nations" don't have an underlying unity because nationalism don't real, but also, the same is true on every other continent.
-Jorge Luis Borges didn't like football and was kind of annoyed it was such a big deal in the Argentinian consciousness
-If you thought Hamilton's comma sexting was great you're gonna love Elías Figueroa:
After the match the Chilean dressing room was disconsolate. When a Peruvian player was heard to shout "¡Viva Chile mierda! ¡Viva Chile mierda!" Figueroa, outside, calmly got up and asked him: "Sorry, my friend, 'Viva Chile,' is that with or without a comma before the 'mierda' [shit]?" Intimidated by Don Elías's steely politeness, the Peruvian said that it was definitely with the comma. "Ah, I had thought so. Now you'd better go and celebrate on the other side," came the reply.
-Yeah the qualifying formats and byes have varied over time, but still, Brazil didn't lose a World Cup qualifying match until 1993.-There's a lot of semi-unofficial "tours" of South American professional teams in Europe, or vice versa. There are several more recent-ish (or more academic-ish) baseball history books/articles focused on this aspect, eg, in the first half of the 20th century there would be US all-star teams touring in Japan, and/or integrated teams barnstorming to earn extra money during the winter even though the organized leagues were racially segregated. Money is a big incentive!
-Victor Hugo Morales has one of the most famous South American sports broadcasts of all time, I can't tell if he's named after that Victor Hugo
-Where is this fanfic:
Eduardo Galeano felt that Luis Suárez's infamous "save" may have been the ultimate sacrifice for country, an act infused with the selflessness of a Sydney Carton. But there was, of course, another way of looking at it. Mario Kempes had similarly practiced his goalkeeping skills against Poland in the 1978 World Cup. ...
-So much violence, especially against the referee. Not that that's a cultural trait or anything, that'd be discriminatory (see point 1, above). Just, a worldwide hatred of referees.
BUT:
I don't want to be too hard on Campomar, but his cliches/stock phrases kept pulling me out of the narrative. Maybe they are more common in UK (and/or Uruguay) English, but I'm not sure I have ever come across the word "quondam." It means "former," as in, "the former World Champions were upset by Bolivia."
-"put paid to"
-"put to the sword" (this one I'm more familiar with, but it was kind of stale after the other "put" cliche)
-"demimonde"
-"in extremis" (italicized every time)
-a lot of phrases like "la viveza criolla," creole cunning, put in italics and with the translation pretty much every time. Like I know that's part of the point he's trying to make, but if you're going to be insistent about it, you don't need to translate it as if it's still unfamiliar!
-calling teams "she" ("Argentina were losing, but she would score through Di Stéfano")
Anyway. QUONDAM.