A year after the death of Eduardo Galeano, Papyros Editions honor his memory by presenting, in translation by Ismini Kansi, one of his best works, "Football in the Shadow and in the Light". This is perhaps the most lyrical book ever written about a sport: here Galeano uses his literary gift not to talk about revolutionaries and dictators, about imperialism and oppression, but to speak, as a true Latin American, about his passion, about football. He essentially writes the history of the football culture, its glorious moments, but also its shadows, not from the perspective of an intellectual who distances himself from a mass phenomenon and cancels it out with his words, but from the perspective of a man who speaks about what he loves.
Galeano writes the Bible of football. He starts from the beginning, from the historical origins, he talks about its main protagonists, about the stadium, the players and the fans, about the administrations, the newspapers and the television, about the evolution and the spread of the game, its rules, its peculiarities, its manipulation by economic interests, its occasional degeneration due to opportunism, its transition from the era of innocence to the industry of spectacle. He sketches the entire complex universe of a sport-game that can only be compared to the phenomenon of religion in terms of its massiveness. He talks about the mythical players, Garincha, Pelé, Puskás, Maradona, Eusébio, Cruyff or Platini, as well as Ronaldo and Messi, he describes goals and moments that have remained in history with a vividness that makes you feel like you are participating in the game, he performs dribbles occasionally throwing the ball into politics, he takes glimpses into the psychology of the human mosaic of the football universe. And he builds this football Bible bit by bit, story by story, with the World Cup tournaments as intermediate milestones, the last one being the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.

"Football in the Shadow and in the Light" was first published in 1995. But every time the book was reissued, Galeano "played extra time": he completed the text, adding some new vignettes for the latest events in the world of football, which he constantly followed. The present Greek edition is also the definitive edition of this unique work: it is certain that when the reader closes its last page, they will see football with different eyes from now on. So, have a good game.