Book Review: The ESPN World Cup Companion (Part II)

Here’s Part II of my interview with David Hirshey, co-author of The ESPN World Cup Companion: Everything You Need to Know About the Planet’s Biggest Sports Event. (Part I is right here). The book, which he co-wrote with author and documentary filmmaker Roger Bennett, is an essential go-to guide in preparation for this year’s historic World Cup in South Africa, and a bit of fascinating reading for soccer buffs, casual fans, and those on the fence. And you know how painful that can be. Highly recommended; I give it five out of five van Nistelrooys. And now, 11 questions (get it?) for David Hirshey (second of two parts).
Out of Bounds: Why should the casual soccer fan purchase this book?
David Hirshey: The thing that I think sets our book apart from the tsunami of other World Cup tomes is that we celebrate both the beauty and the vulgarity of the sport with equal verve. We see soccer as an intersection of high and low culture, where rogues are to be venerated as much as heroes and perhaps more. For every mention of wondrous goals and no-look passes, there’s a countervailing example of physical assaults, diving cheats, and crooked refs. We champion not just the greatest World Cup team but the worst; not just the one-named legends of the game but the no-name cult figures; not just the clean-cut warriors but the hirsute party animals. A true appreciation of the World Cup can’t be limited to what happens on the field because then the world won’t know, for instance, that Garrincha, Brazil’s bowlegged hero of the 50′s and 60′s, fathered almost as many illegitimate children with multiple consorts as he scored goals at the two World Cups he starred in.

Is Maradona as big a train wreck as he seems?
All the great geniuses, with the possible exception of Yo Yo Ma, eventually go insane. They’re either chopping off their ear or standing with a boombox in the rain. In Maradona’s case, he destroyed his nose with cocaine and soon began to resemble the love child of Mickey Rourke and Nick Nolte. Still, no matter how loco or corpulent he’s become, Argentineans will forgive anything Maradona does, except destroy their beloved national team. And he has been doing his best to accomplish that ever since he took the job as its manager. Under his erratic guidance, Argentina struggled to qualify for the World Cup even though it has a ton of talent, including the world’s best player in Lionel Messi. It’s possible that Maradona will find a way to take Argentina far into the World Cup, but the more likely scenario is that he will crash and burn and then rant at reporters like he did after an abysmal Argentinian performance last year, “You can suck it and carry on sucking it.”
Why are the 1970s considered the game’s glory days?
I think it’s because you had three of the five best players of all time — Pele, the Dutch maestro Johann Cryuff and the regal German defender Franz Beckenbauer — all strutting their brilliance on the same stage. Plus, to many observers, the 1970 World Cup still represents the apotheosis of the sport, showcasing as it did the imagination and dazzling skill of the Brazilians, who played the game at a level the world had never seen before or since. The final against Italy was seen as a morality play with the Italians, masters of the dark, defensive arts, trying to lock down a team that attacked with joyful, almost reckless abandon. In demolishing Italy 4-1, Brazil put a glorious exclamation point on a tournament that was an advertisement for the wow factor in soccer.
Was writing this book as exhaustive as it seems?
There were times during the 18-month-long slog that I would have given anything for an I.V. of Adderall. And I only had to write HALF the book. But at the same time I was writing my portions of the book, I was working at my day job (Hirshey is the Executive Editor of HarperCollins Publishers) and editing three big memoirs by people — Craig Ferguson, Sarah Silverman and Billy Joel — who expect a certain amount of care and feeding from their editor. I enlisted two friends, James Tyler and Paul Kanarek, both soccer bloggers for the wonderful web site Unprofessional Foul, to help with the book research, and they would send me endless streams of information that I would try to fashion into a cohesive narrative between the hours of 6-9 a.m. and 10 p.m.-midnight. Needless to say, I looked like a bleary-eyed, unshaven zombie during the day, but it’s a look that works for me so nobody suspected anything untoward.
Do you have a prediction for the big U.S. vs England showdown?
My heart says the U.S. will play the game of their lives and pull out a 1-1 tie but my head, my mustache and my torn meniscus say England will coast 3-1.
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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”.