Overview

A captivating exploration of how America’s complicated and ever-evolving relationship with the world can be seen through the two footballs of the world--American football and soccer--and the interaction between them. The United States is the only major nation on earth that can’t compete against others in its favorite spectator sport because no one else plays it. But as the world’s game of football keeps growing in popularity in the United States and the nation prepares to co-host the 2026 FIFA World Cup, the two footballing worlds are converging. In The Great Game, Andrés Martinez looks at how a generation of sporting billionaires, tech and media conglomerates, women players propelled by Title IX, computer game enthusiasts, and immigrants have sought to end America’s sports isolationism--not by continuing to expand the reach of “their” games, but by turning their country into an unexpected power in the other, international, football. It’s a story of America’s changing cultural customs and demography, as well as a tale of shifting business philosophies driven by technology. Sport has become an ever more massive industry, its economic value soaring thanks to its unique ability to still bring together audiences in the tens of millions on a regular basis and a growing appreciation for its “soft” yet impactful branding power. The Great Game is a fascinating examination of the evolving state of US sporting interests, as those with money, power, and celebrity seek to prevail in a global sport, eager to extend their reach, set the rules of play worldwide, and connect Americans to the outside world like never before.

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Reviews

The Great Game is a delightful, surprising book--a triumph of reflection and reportage--that will change the way you think about American and global sport. -- Steve Coll, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the C.I.A., and the Origins of America's Invasion of Iraq The Great Game is great fun. Andrés Martinez has crafted a lively and entertaining blend of anecdote and analysis, combining the passion of a diehard sports fan with an unsentimental investigation of global politics and economics. International relations professors should add this book to their syllabi as an enticing exploration of soft power. -- Anne-Marie Slaughter, CEO, New America Martinez takes a deep dive into the unique relationship between American football and global football and how these two sports are converging in ways that are redefining both of them. His crisp analysis and unique personal anecdotes showed me how these sports continue to overlap, how they learn from each other, and ultimately, how they will compete with each other for eyeballs and influence all over the world for years to come. A must read for any fan of sports and culture! -- Jason Garrett, NBC analyst, Football Night in America, and former head coach of the Dallas Cowboys For a long time, Americans seemed content to live in a sports bubble, believing their professional leagues to be the best--and frankly only--leagues worth following. And while the U.S. still jingoistically labels its winners ‘World Champions’ as if they’ve defeated a global array of teams and not just national competition, recent years have nonetheless seen a steady increase in viewing, attending, and doing business with the rest of the world’s offerings. Martinez expertly explores this acceleration of sports globalization with an appealing mix of academic rigor and anecdotal storytelling, charting the unique role women and immigrants played in helping soccer (aka futbol) capture America’s interest and send its gaze to leagues abroad, and examining the important role sport plays in connecting cultures and countries. -- Sarah Spain, Emmy and Peabody Award-winning host of the Good Game with Sarah Spain podcast and longtime ESPN personality As someone who has lived through sport’s tussle for global expansion on both sides of the Atlantic, I can’t think of many people better suited to explore such a fascinating topic than Andrés. He does so with the academic rigour you’d expect, but also deftly leaning on the cultural texture of his upbringing and the sporting and societal forces which so shape us. -- Ed Malyon, founder of The Athletic UK and co-owner of Queretaro FC Andrés Martinez has forged a masterpiece that will become a classic in the lexicon of sports studies reaching way beyond the playing fields, offering an acute elucidation of our current globalization. I simply could not put this book down, fully enjoying its vast empirical material while also learning from its acute conceptual observations, all presented in elegant writing! -- Andrei S. Markovits, Karl W. Deutsch Collegiate Professor Emeritus, University of Michigan, and author of Offside: Soccer and American Exceptionalism

Author Information

Andrés Martinez is co-director of the Great Game Lab at Arizona State University, where he also teaches at the Cronkite School of Journalism, and is a fellow at the New America think tank. He has been a business reporter, editorial writer, and editor at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and the New York Times, where he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for a series of editorials on global trade. He has also written extensively on sport and globalization for the Los Angeles Times, Slate, Time, Reuters, the Washington Post, and Reforma.

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