Proust’s madeleine cake is evoked as the taste of World Cup nostalgia lingers throughout Simon Kuper’s autobiographical work.
The Financial Times columnist’s sixth book charts his backpacker days at Italia ’90 up to the politically poisoned winter World Cup in Qatar.
South African by birth, Kuper’s parents emigrated to England and later the Netherlands before the author raised his own family in Paris, so his peculiar perspective of World Cups is evident throughout.
World Cup Fever comes into direct competition with Jonathan Wilson’s The Power and the Glory: A New History of the World Cup, which is richer in detail. Nonetheless, Kuper shines a light on the geopolitical happenings around each tournament, detailing how the public are eventually transfixed by a squat Argentinian, or whatever form of sports-washing is presented by the host nation.
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Diego Maradona is ever-present, from the overlooked teenager at the Junta-sponsored Argentina 1978 to his drug-fuelled fall at USA 1994. When Kuper returns home to South Africa in 2010, there is even a Maradona epilogue about “a bearded hermit who had just been discovered after forty years living off cheeseburgers on a desert island, then washed, given several watches, poured into a posh grey suit and made coach of Argentina”.
Kuper’s prose keeps the pages turning as the journey becomes a re-examination of the author’s life choices. He remembers the French windows in his Dutch home as Argentina beat Holland in the 1974 final, watching alongside his “immigrant” parents and grandparents “visiting from apartheid South Africa”.
“I recall that night as vividly as almost anything else in my childhood. A World Cup is like Proust’s madeleine. Each new World Cup reminds you of past World Cups, and the people you watched them with.”
This struck a chord with the seven-year-old who witnessed Brazil at Mexico ’86. As Josimar rocketed the ball beyond Pat Jennings, I remember nagging my dad to explain the difference between the Republic and Northern Ireland.
Kuper delivers a version of the Con Houlihan line about Italia ’90 as his memory of France beating Argentina 4-3 at Russia 2018 remains coloured by his French-raised son saying that Kylian Mbappé’s second goal in Kazan was the best moment of his life.
“I won’t feature in my children’s World Cup memories, because I was always away at the World Cup.”
