The Soccer Tribe PDF

When Desmond Morris became a director of a professional football club in 1977 he found his interest in the game mounting to the level of an obsession.

As a student of human behaviour he grew fascinated by the way a simple ball-game had risen to become the twentieth century's most widespread and popular sport, and set about making a special study of this new world he had entered.

The result is an extraordinary book, The Soccer Tribe.

In it he writes about the players and managers, the directors and the officials, the supporters and the fans and the game itself as if he were an explorer visiting a fascinating native tribe for the first time.

The analogy is valid - football has rituals and ceremonies, superstitions and beliefs just as remarkable as those of any remote, exotic culture on a faraway island.

Desmond Morris's unique way of looking at the human race, seen so clearly in his book The Naked Ape and, more recently, in Manwatching, gives this view of the most pervasive of all modern sports a special quality.

For anyone who has been to even a single soccer match it will come as a surprise.

For those who know the sport well, it will be a revelation.

There are hundreds of soccer books, but never before one which can actually change the way you see the game.

Followers of Desmond Morris will enjoy his description of soccer as a modern counterpart of the primeval hunting pattern, and anyone who knows little of the game will soon want to find out more.

In short, the book is a colourful, lively and unbiased presentation of the soccer lifestyle and an explanation of the increasingly important role the sport has to play in modern society.

Lavishly illustrated with more than 580 photographs, nearly 500 of them in colour, and many charts and diagrams, the book is divided into forty-four short chapters, each taking one vital aspect of the life of the Soccer Tribesmen.

Here are the Tribal Rituals (the taboos and punishments, the goals and strategies); the Tribal Heroes (their skills and superstitions, their triumphs and defeats); the Tribal Trappings (the balls, the costumes, the banners and badges, the trophies and medals); the Tribal Elders (the directors and referees, the managers and trainers); the Tribal Followers (old and young, celebrities and fans); and the Tribal Tongue (the chants and slogans, the cheers and curses).

It has been claimed that over 1,000 million people tuned in to the finals of the last World Cup - roughly one in four of the entire human population.

No one who opens this book can fail to recognize that the phenomenon of football is even more remarkable than we thin.