Jules Boykoff’s ‘Kicking’ Is Clear-Eyed And Warm-Hearted

Jules Boykoff loves soccer. He loves the feeling of the ball at his feet, he loves the rush of cheering on the Portland Timbers at the fortress that is Providence Park, and he loves the knowing hum that goes around a stadium when a player delivers a little moment of sublimity that isn't flashy enough to make the highlight reel. "It's a collective recognition of the tiny acts of soccer intelligence that make the game glow," he writes in his new book, Kicking. "If you know, you know."

In the same breath as Boykoff loves soccer, he is honest about its flaws. It's no surprise that the poet and political scientist has focused a huge chunk of his academic and journalistic career on the sport. He writes that it was his experience receiving a "frosty reception" while playing for the U.S. under-23 national team in France in 1990 that led him to enroll in political science courses.

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.