Football fantasy

Modern football is changing. From being the people's working class sport to big business in pursuit of perfectionism. Players no longer just create results on the field and trophies for the trophy case. They are grabbing global market share as advertising and marketing pillars with billions in revenue, with Portuguese superstar Cristiano Ronaldo as the personification of football's journey.

Performances that live are immortalized by television cameras, flashing cameras and fans' flashing mobile phones, making the sensational matches and goals live on on social media. Football has gone from folk sport to fantasy.

That journey and transformation is an analysis of 'Football Fantasy – Ronaldo, Real Madrid and Modern Football', written in a compelling and vivid language.

The author is Denmark's leading Real Madrid writer, media researcher at SDU, Bo Kampmann Walther, who with a strong narrator's voice takes the reader into football's modern engine room and initiates the reader into the sport's new being.

A mindset that has seen a young Portuguese boy named Cristiano with crooked teeth and an awkward smile become football's biggest star, and what role mighty Real Madrid has played as the hatchery of football, which today operates with billion-dollar budgets as the world's biggest sport.