Love and Blood : At the World Cup with the Footballers, Fans, and Freaks

Every four years the thirty-two-team, sixty-four-game World Cup captivates the planets populace for a month. Work absenteeism skyrockets. Political campaigns grind to a halt. Fans mortgage their houses to buy tickets. And teams employ every means possibleeven consulting witch doctors and astrologersin their quest for national glory. Veteran soccer commentator Jamie Trecker traveled to Germany for FIFA World Cup 2006. Here, reported from the restaurants, trains, bars, town squares, hostels, press boxes, and brothels, is his unvarnished account of the games and parties, great plays and fistfights, gossip and tacky souvenirs that turn the largest sporting event on earth into a true world bazaar. With equal measures insight and irreverence, Trecker captures the passion, politics, controversies, and economics that make soccer a reflection of the world.

Lead soccer columnist for Fox Sports and an analyst for Fox Soccer Channel, JAMIE TRECKER is a contributor to the New York Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer as well as the Guardian, the Observer, the Telegraph, and Loaded magazine. He lives in Chicago.