Showing Love and Blood: At the World Cup with the Footballers, Fans, and Freaks by Jamie Trecker

Paperback. Pub Date: October 2007 Pages: 272 Publisher: Mariner Books Every four YEARS The thirty-two-TEAM. Sixty-four-game World Cup captivates The Planet's 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 possible-even consulting witch doctors and astrologers-in 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 othels. 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 ...