We’re still getting used to the idea of a World Cup in the midst of Thanksgiving. It’s usually a summer affair, but this year we’ll be sneaking peeks in between colossal turkey dinners, family reunions and connecting flights.

Soccer’s popularity is spiking among Americans: It’s the fastest-growing major sport in the U.S., with 52% more adults calling themselves soccer fans in 2019 than in 2012. To celebrate our expanding embrace of an event cheered on by billions — a record 3.572 billion people watched the 2018 FIFA World Cup! — we’ve compiled five of our favorite books about the beautiful game, from a classic memoir about fandom, to the definitive history of soccer tactics, to a new release about two all-time greats. We’re sure there’s something for every literary soccer fan below.

How Soccer Explains the World by Franklin Foer 

With billions of fans around the planet, no other sport comes close to matching soccer’s worldwide popularity. In How Soccer Explains the World, journalist Franklin Foer suggests that the game’s position as a global cultural unifier provides us with a unique lens to understand the triumphs as well as the failures of globalization. 

While soccer has brought the world closer together in some ways, it has not ended the divisions that have historically kept people apart. Indeed, in many cases it would seem the opposite were true. Journalist Samiran Mishra called the book “absolutely brilliant” and we think anyone interested in the overlap between politics, culture, and sport should check this one out.  

Inverting the Pyramid by Jonathan Wilson

Few books are cited as regularly by critics and coaches as Jonathan Wilson’s celebrated history of soccer tactics, Inverting the Pyramid. The book takes readers on an epic tour of the people, places, and ideas that have been crucial in shaping the beautiful game that we know and love.   

The Athletic’s Jon Mackenzie called it a “masterpiece” and “the best book on football tactics.” While it’s even rumored that Arsenal legend and current Crystal Palace manager, Patrick Vieira, kept an annotated copy of the book in his office while he was manager of NYCFC.

Soccer in Sun and Shadow by Eduardo Galeano

Praised for his sublime writing, Eduardo Galeano is perhaps best known for his novels, poems, and biting political nonfiction. Perhaps it’s not so surprising then that Soccer in Sun and Shadow has received a level of praise that, while expected for the finest literary fiction, is quite rare for most sports writing. 

Galeano’s 1995 classic is an unorthodox history of the game told in small, lyrical doses. Soccer writer Andrew Thomas called it “a cavalcade of diversions and tangents and idle thoughts and musings and eulogies and excoriations and laments” which “all amounts up to something unique, righteous and quite beautiful.” Poet Ross Gay said in a recent interview in The Week that it was “one of the best sports books” he had ever read. 

Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby

The Economist said this memoir “heralded a new era of football writing.” At its essence, Fever Pitch is a book about fandom. For novelist Hornby, being a fan, “is essentially an exercise in despondency,” writes Carey Baraka in The Atlantic. It is about our relationship with a game that we know will bring us as much pain and disappointment, as satisfaction and euphoria. 

But don’t let the moody sentiment fool you, this is a seriously funny book. “The book,” Baraka says, “unfolds scene after scene of agony, each funnier and more morose than the last.” 

Messi Vs. Ronaldo by Jonathan Clegg and Joshua Robinson

Authors Clegg and Robinson have followed up their hugely popular book about the Premier League, The Club, with the recently released Messi Vs. Ronaldo, a book about the intertwined legacies of two of the game’s all-time greats. 

With this year’s World Cup likely the last time we will see the pair perform on this brightest of stages together, the book offers a timely reflection on the era that their rivalry has come to define.