Narcoball, by David Arrowsmith (2024)

After reading Snowing in Bali I wanted to find out more about the South American influence on the global narcotics trade, so when I found Narcoball, a book also touching on football, I had to pick it up. The topic and the stories were cool, but as I read on I realised that they were poorly woven together. The book at its worse felt like rushed, and overly summarised Wikipedia articles as the writer struggled to intertwin the Escobar story and the football one, especially early on. This could have been a fault of the subject matter itself, simply too broad to be covered in such a short book, but also felt like a fault of the style which lacked intrigue and passion.

This was especially apparent at the start of the book, but admittedly improved as the context was established. I found myself enjoying longer passages, but mostly in isolation – whether it was the Colombian World Cup campaign in 1994, or Escobar’s days in his self-managed prison. Narcoball shined in moments but seemed to do too much in too short a space of time.