‘A tour-de-force that touches on how football is always mixed up with politics in every corner of the globe’ Mehreen Khan, The Times and co-host of the Humans & Heroes football podcast

‘Brings us closer to the overlooked aspects of football, the social and political ones, which truly imbue clubs with soul’ Carles Viñas, author of St. Pauli: Another Football is Possible

Think you know everything about football?

Which football match triggered a war? How did ‘the beautiful game’ push back against the tyranny of dictatorship, and usher another into power? Kicking Off Around the World includes 55 incredible stories in which football clubs have been a mirror to—and a maker of—world history and politics.

Full of anecdotes, surprising facts and illustrations, Ramon Usall mixes the grassroots with the greatest of all time; the unknown and the unforgettable. He looks at the women’s game, football during the war in Ukraine, and stories of clubs from Britain to the US, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa, from football under the Nazis to the communists and everyone in between.

Ramon Usall is a sports and crime writer, living in Catalonia. He is the author of Futbol per la llibertat, which won the Josep Vallverdú Essay Prize.