Book Review: The ESPN World Cup Companion

One of the greatest things about my former job at Deadspin.com was getting to know David Hirshey, who, as the soccer editor, tried his best to convert me into a lover of the world’s most popular sport. While he wasn’t entirely successful, he did make inroads; for instance, I now know what a vuvuzela is, and can tell the difference between Cristiano Ronaldo, Ronaldo and Ronaldinho (he drew me an elaborate chart).
Now comes the book The ESPN World Cup Companion: Everything You Need to Know About the Planet’s Biggest Sports Event, which he co-wrote with author and documentary filmmaker Roger Bennett. It’s not only an essential go-to guide in preparation for this year’s historic World Cup in South Africa, but it’s fascinating reading on several other levels. If you’re already a fan, you’ll revel in colorful detail of the world’s biggest sporting event. If you’re not, you just may become one. Highly recommended. And now, 11 questions (get it?) for David Hirshey (split into two episodes. Stay tuned for Part II Thursday afternoon).
Out of Bounds: The past few months have given us a steady stream of disquieting news about Johannesburg; from the marauding baboon gangs to the prostitution, it seems like a recipe for disaster at every turn. I hear that organizers are having trouble with advanced ticket sales. What’s the prognosis for the Cup’s success?
David Hirshey: On one hand, I’m thrilled that Africa, a continent which for so long has come to be associated with famine and war, will have an opportunity to show a buoyant and triumphant face to the world when it stages the biggest sporting event on the planet. On the other hand, anti-stab vests are reportedly selling briskly at World Club venues throughout South Africa. Given the fear-mongering in the media, you can’t be sure which Africa we’ll encounter starting on June 11th, but I believe the verdict will depend, as it has so often in the past, on the quality of soccer on display. For all the price-gouging and poor planning which threaten to make it the least attended World Cup in recent memory, if the games themselves offer compelling drama and individual heroics, I think South Africa will come out it unscathed. The same, however, can’t be said for the eardrums of anyone going to the matches due to the presence of those infernal plastic horns known as vuvuzelas, which make a din even more horrific than Kenny G.

Forward by Steve Nash? How did this come about?
Nash spends his summers in New York City and I coach a team that plays at the same soccer complex where every week Steve competes in a men’s league with a bunch of friends from his local pub. One evening I happened to stumble upon his game and was amazed by his technical ability. Then a few months later, I attended a charity match in Chinatown where Nash played alongside his pal Thierry Henry, as well as international stars like Edgar Davids, Solomon Kalou, and Javier Zanetti, and held his own. So when Steve Wulf, the editor-in-chief of ESPN Books asked who I thought could write an intro to our World Cup book, I said, “Steve Nash is a big soccer weenie. Why don’t we try him?” And Wulf knew someone who was close to Steve and within a week we heard back that Nash would be happy to write the intro.
Discuss your connection/love for soccer. How did your interest in soccer begin?
I grew up playing soccer with my Dad, who had represented Switzerland in international schoolboy competition and was a fanatic about the sport. He took me to closed circuit games as a kid and when England beat Germany to win the World Cup in 1966, we did a victory jig on the floor of Madison Square Garden. Sixteen years later, we danced again on Germany’s World Cup grave when we were in Spain for the 1982 World Cup and the Germans lost to Italy in the final. This time we were part of a delirious conga line that snaked through the streets of Madrid. I was never as good a player as my Dad but I was decent enough to play in college at the D3 level, albeit poorly. After graduating I lucked into a job as a sportswriter at the New York Daily News, where the sports editor, the crusty, flag-waving columnist Dick Young, advised me not to waste my time on soccer. “It’s a sport for Commie pansies,” he said. A year later, Pele came to play for the New York Cosmos and even Young was forced to cover a pansy sport that drew 77,000 to the Meadowlands.
At first glance, my reaction to the book was, “Hey, lots of pictures! Fun and colorful!” But of course when you settle in to read it, there’s a lot of substance here. I loved the early history, especially the WWII era stuff. What was your favorite portion to research?
I pretty much had followed every World Cup since 1966, but I knew almost nothing about the tournaments that preceded England’s one and only victory. It was fun to comb through the pre-televised era with its outsized characters like the legendary Italian Giuseppe Meazza, who led the Azzuri to its first World Cup title in 1934 while giving Mussolini the Fascist salute before every game and spending his time off the field dancing the tango and sleeping in brothels. Then there was the celebrated German star Fritz Walter, who during World War II was captured and interned at an American POW camp. Just before he was to be handed over to the Russians and shipped out to Siberia –,and almost certain death — he was watching a pickup game between policemen when one of them recognized him from Germany’s epic victory over Hungary in 1942. The next day his name was removed from the internment list and he was made the trainer of the prison camp’s soccer team. When the war was over in 1945, he was released and nine years later, he captained his country’s first ever World Cup championship team.
What surprised you most in researching and writing about Pele? What’s unique about his story that we learn from your book?
I had written a book with Pele when he played with the Cosmos, so I was fairly conversant with his life, including his horndog antics during the fabled Studio 54 years. But for those of us who came of age during the 70′s and covered the Cosmos, Pele was a soccer deity and we held him in such awe that we overlooked his nocturnal activities and focused on his on-field heroics. Yet as I learned writing this book with my co-author Roger Bennett, younger generations did not worship at the Brazilian’s shrine with quite the same blind idolatry. Whereas we saw Pele as soccer’s Messiah, spreading the gospel of the beautiful game to the heathen masses in the United States, Bennett viewed Pele as more motivated by monetary gain than any philanthropic urge to convert Americans to soccer. In the book, we include a transcript of our pretty heated debate as to who was better, Pele vs Maradona, with Bennett giving the Argentine genius the nod because he was always human, flaws and all, while Pele hid his personality behind his telegenic smile. To that, I say bollocks. As far as I’m concerned, Maradona was a fat bastard who could dribble circles around a statuesque England defense.
(Part II of this interview on Thursday).
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David Hirshey is the Executive Editor of HarperCollins Publishers and was a longtime editor at Esquire magazine. A former college player, he has been covering soccer for more than 30 years for a variety of publications, including the New York Times, the New York Daily News, ESPN The Magazine, and Deadspin.com. He is the co-author of two books, “Pele’s New World” and “The Education of an American Soccer Player”, and played himself (almost convincingly) in the acclaimed soccer documentary “Once In A Lifetime”.