They put a soccer ball on the cover of a book but inside, it's really about divorce or girls or flightless birds in Africa--anything but soccer. If there is soccer in a book, the buzzer sounds at halftime. The ump puts the score on the scoreboard. The height of soccer striving is high school ball. 

We need more books about soccer that are really about soccer. Books that sing the joy of killerstink shinguards. Books that celebrate the first time you broke your arm. Or the first time you broke your opponents arm. Or the first time you broke that ref's arm. Oops. 

We need more books that curse in Spanish. In Portuguese. In Russian. And yes, in English. These are the voices of soccer, our teammates, our boys. 

I'm writing those books. Everything true. Everything seen, overheard, or experienced on the pitch. Soccer is the future of sport in America and in the world and that makes it the future of books. 

You heard it here first.