As a poet, public-facing scholar of sports politics, and former professional soccer player, having represented the United States on the men’s U23 national soccer team, Jules Boykoff draws on his lifetime of athletic experience to reflect on the practice of kicking. With short vignettes blending the personal, the reflective, the historical, and the analytical, Kicking is uniquely positioned to reflect on the most popular sport in the world. From the act of kicking a soccer ball, Boykoff looks outward to his own family history, including his mother’s struggle with polio, which fed her insistence on his athleticism; to broader trends like greenwashing and sportwashing; and to reflections on sport’s toxic masculinity, the poetics of on-field revenge, and the power-politics of both the men’s and women’s World Cups. Kicking is a must-read for all those who love the beautiful game.

Jules Boykoff is the author of What Are the Olympics For?, The 1936 Berlin Olympics, and NOlympians.

"Kicking is a culmination of Boykoff's life and work thus far, a memoir that is as much about his own life—which has touched and been touched by soccer in many ways—as it is about soccer as a sociopolitical force in the world. . . . Kicking is about his deepest expertise and passions, and it is deeply pleasurable to read a skillful writer and thinker in his element, who is committed to making his love for soccer accessible to all."
 
-- Abigail Segel Defector

Ghostface  1
“Mès Que Un Club”  13
Trophy Husband  37
Swish Swish  55
A Taste of Power  71
My Dhad  84
Home Field Advantage  91
Greenwash Gold  104
Kicking It  119
The Bonds of Soccer  130
Acknowledgments  139
Notes  141
Bibliography  151