Eduardo Galeano: Uruguayan whose writing got right to the heart of football

A certified intellectual, Galeano loved football for its ability to survive corruption, its stubborn capacity for surprise, and readers were never in doubt of the warmth of the blood running through his veins

• Eduardo Galeano obituary

In the aftermath of Brazil’s 7-1 defeat at the hands of Germany in Belo Horizonte last July, the man I wanted to hear from was Eduardo Galeano. No one had more interesting things to say about the South American passion for football. But if he wrote about the trauma induced by that thrashing, nobody translated it into English. Either way, it was a loss.

Galeano died this week in Montevideo, his birthplace, aged 74. He was widely mourned as a great historian and novelist but none of the obituaries failed to mention that he was also the author of Football in Sun and Shadow. First published in translation in 1997, it established itself as a firm favourite among a certain kind of reader of the game’s literature.

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from Sport | The Guardian http://ift.tt/1CXvk28

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