‘Magnificent . Goldblatt may be the doyen of sports historians and brings to this accounts his forensic and informing eye for fine detail’

Mail on Sunday

The epic exploration of society, politics, and economics in the twenty-first century through the prism of football, from the critically acclaimed author of The Ball is Round.

‘David Goldblatt is not merely the very best soccer historian writing today, he’s possibly the best there’s ever been’

Dominic Sandbrook, Weekend Times

In the twenty-first century about Age Football: The Global Game in the Twenty-first Century football is first. Initial among sports themselves, but it today instructions the allegiance, curiosity and engagement of more people in more locations than every other phenomenon. In the three most populous nations on the earth – China, India and the United States where just two decades ago football been around for the periphery of society – it has now arrived once and for all. Nations, peoples and neighbourhoods across the globe imagine and invent themselves through playing and following a game.

In The Age of Football, David Goldblatt charts football’s global social ascent, its financial transformation and deep politicisation, taking in prison football in Uganda and amputee football in Angola, the function of football fans in the Arab Spring, the footballing presidencies of Bolivia’s Evo Morales and Turkey’s Recep Erdogan, China’s declared intention to both host and win the World Cup by 2050, and the FIFA corruption scandal.

Following the intersection of the game with money, power and identity, like no previous sports historian, Goldblatt’s sweeping story is remarkable in its scope, breathtaking in its depth of knowledge, and it is a brilliantly original perspective from the twenty-first century. It is the accounts of how football has come to define every element of our interpersonal, economic and cultural lives and at what price, shaping who we think we are and who we want to be.