ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the early development and sudden flourishing of football literature in Latin America up to around 1930, giving consideration to a selection of key texts from different genres. The two founding figures of football literature in Latin America, the Uruguayan Horacio Quiroga and the Peruvian Juan Parra del Riego, both spent time in Paris as an important part of their respective intellectual journeys and literary development. Juan Parra del Riego was an avant-garde poet who travelled from Lima to Chile in 1917, and arrived in Montevideo in 1918 via Tucumán and Buenos Aires, the year after the latter city saw Uruguay triumph as host nation in the second edition of the South American football championship. In addition to his poetic output, Parra del Riego also wrote 'Aspectos psicológicos del foot-ball' (Psychological Aspects of Football), one of the earliest essays on football.
