Non-Western American

Many European football fans view South America as the ultimate embodiment of football as much more than just a game, with incredible fan culture and intimate relationships between football and politics. In Passion of the People (1994), Tony Mason seeks to study the origins of the beautiful game in the continent and examine the accuracy of this romanticised depiction.

“Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” This often-misquoted reflection from Karl Marx on religion’s societal role criticises the masses’ self-generated addiction to religion, as a method of dealing with capitalist society’s brutal inequalities.