Back to Goodreads

Greetings, gentle readers.
I'll be back at length before long, never fear.  Until I am, here is one of the many book reviews that I intend to start publishing.
The Away Game: The Epic Search for Soccer's Next Superstars by Sebastian Abbot
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The premise of this book shows great promise. Everyone loves underdog, rags-to-riches anecdotes, and the narrative of third-world African children being whisked away from poverty and into the sparkling dream castle of a Qatari football academy sounds like Cinderella recast into a sports paradigm.
There are two stumbling blocks that inhibit any real joyful or life-affirming interpretations of the work - the style and the content.
I recall watching early North American broadcasts of English Football. The commentators seems at pains to use the entire and clearly-enunciated phrase "Barclays English Premier League" at least once during each passage of play, as in "That's the sort of passing play one has come to expect from the Barclays English Premier League," and "Many players find it difficult to make the transition from another league to the physical demands of the Barclays English Premier League." After a while, it ceased to sound sincere and instead just sounded like routine and contractually obligated product placement.
Somehow, the author of this book seems to think that dropping the name "Messi" every three paragraphs will keep reader attention or add some sort of credibility to the exposition of events. As a reader, I found it tedious and artificial.
As for the content [SPOILER ALERT], the largest problem with the entire framing of the historical situation is a sham. The real point of this story is not that there are some bright and talented blood-diamonds-in-the-rough waiting to be discovered in Africa, but that poverty and institutionalized corruption has made talented children into yet another resource to be exploited and trafficked. Everyone lies, cheats, bribes, and steals in order to get money - including the children themselves - making the whole story just a depressing voyage into cynicism.
A typical example would involve a young player showing tremendous promise, evaluated favourably by scouts and coaches, and then he suddenly runs off with the first agent that offers cash because the academy will shortly discover that he has been lying about his age. Then you realize that most of the kids have faked their birth date because that is how the system works. As soon as they are told that there is an MRI test that can scientifically verify their age, they suddenly grasp for the first handful of cash they can grab.
Even if they haven't lied about their age, many young athletes are governed by family members or other figures of authority that make decisions based on how much they stand to gain personally from the player's success.
In short, sympathy for 13-year-olds striving to transcend abject poverty starts to run dry when you discover that they are, in fact 16 years old, and the money that they have been wiring home to their destitute families has been appropriated by the local church or some belligerent coach or uncle.
Finally, you are left with a collection of sob stories of fraudulent and cheating failures blubbering about how much they love God and wish that God would give them another chance. That they betrayed the trust and faith of others in them seems to be an afterthought.
The one case of success presented in the book is a Senegalese boy who was born into a more middle-class family than his peers, and one who kept his head down, did as he was told, and played within the lines. Not exactly fairy-tale stuff.
The book is worth a read, but it only starts feeling authentic when the reader appreciates that the narrator is thematically untrustworthy. The language used is appropriated from a thousand inspirational posters and motivational speeches, but the bottom line is that poverty creates flaws in the human character that football cannot repair.


View all my reviews

Cheers,

—mARKUS