Journalist Juan Villoro speaks about his book and the beautiful game

Renowned author Juan Villoro spoke and engaged with attendees about his acclaimed book “God is Round: Understanding Soccer” at UC San Diego Park and Market on Monday, Feb. 27.

The event was hosted by the UC San Diego Center of U.S.-Mexican Studies with representatives of the Centro de Enseñanza Técnica y Superior (CETYS) also present along with the Consul General of Mexico in San Diego Ambassador Carlos González Gutiérrez who moderated questions from the crowd after the hour-long presentation.

“Something that’s very important is a recovery of our origins of what we’ve been as a species and who each and every one of us are as people,” said Villoro. “Because fútbol brings us back to when our feet were important and decisive instruments in our civilization.”

His talk covered several topics all relating to the sport, also known as the beautiful game, including anecdotal and historical accounts of players like Lionel Messi, and Hugo Sanchez, the era of hooliganism, and the Cachirules scandal that prevented Mexico from competing in the 1990 World Cup.

The 66-year-old Villoro was born in Mexico City and has been a writer and journalist for decades. He is the son of philosopher Luis Villoro and is well-known among intellectual circles worldwide but specifically in Mexico, Latin America, and Spain. Success among his readership has only grown since receiving the Herralde Prize for his novel “El testigo.”

Besides his journalistic accomplishments, Villoro has taught at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, which is the largest university in Latin America, and has also worked as a visiting professor at Yale, Princeton, and Stanford universities.

“The world has organized itself better for the sport than for politics,” he added. “In a world that has become better equipped to organize itself when it comes to sports, this provides a signal as to what that says about us in our time. I’m convinced that in order to understand any era, we have to understand how people living in that era entertained themselves.”

In 2011, Villoro appeared in the film production “Guerrero 12,” a feature-length documentary examining soccer fandom passion, and received Chile’s Manuel Rojas Ibero-American Narrative Award in 2018.

During the question and answer session with the audience, Villoro concluded with words of advice for journalists and those aspiring to enter the profession.

“The job of a journalist is, to tell the truth,” said Villoro. This answer came in response to a question about how the people came to learn about the Cachirules scandal and how many players and fans of the Mexican national soccer team, better known as El Tri, reacted to the news reports that uncovered the story more than 30 years ago.

HOTO BY CETYS UNIVERSIDAD

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