‘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.

(Publisher: Penguin Classics. May 2018. Paperback: 272 pages)