Eduardo Galeano - Futebol ao Sol e à Sombra

Every four years, around World Cup time, he would lock himself in his house for a month and post a sign on the door: Closed due to football.

A fervent fan, Eduardo Galeano lacked skill with the ball; clumsy with his feet, he used his hands to create one of the most beautiful odes to the great pagan mass, that spectacle "capable of speaking so many languages ​​and unleashing universal passions." In his unmistakable poetic and forceful vignettes, legends and the unloved take center stage – from Garrincha to Beckenbauer, from Puskás to Maradona – as well as infamous episodes in sports – such as that of the Ukrainian players who, in the midst of Nazi occupation, in the sights of the marines, could not resist the temptation to beat the German team.

Football in Sun and Shadow (in an edition updated by Galeano shortly before his death in 2015), an emotional encyclopedia of the sport, an epic of its origins, mutations and superstitions, is also a history lesson within the four lines - a broad summary of the 20th century, reviewing the victories and defeats of humanity, the arrogance of the powerful, the deals caught offside and the revenge of the peoples who fight for survival.