Sven Daniel Wolfe’s analysis of the Russia 2018 FIFA World Cup is, similarly, not an easy read for a general audience.

But it has one highly significant - compelling - virtue that sets it apart from most literature I have encountered in the genre and makes it a riveting and important work for anyone with a stake in popularising big sport.

This is its focus on the ordinary people who must inhabit the urban spaces briefly colonised by this particular mega-event and who, by virtue of their long-term propinquity to the gleaming new structures, constitute the key constituency for any sincere discussion of legacy.

What have these individuals ultimately made of a project that was supposed to improve their lives? Wolfe’s diligence, and familiarity with Russian language and culture, leave him well-placed to answer this question in a detailed and nuanced way.

He shrewdly places one of his most telling encounters at the very start of his book.

Volgograd, the former Stalingrad, has a sombre if proud place in the history of both Russia and Europe, as the site of the appallingly bloody battle at which the tide of the Second World War was turned.

This victory is commemorated by the colossal, sword-wielding, 85-metre-tall, The Motherland Calls memorial. It is less than a kilometre from the memorial complex to the city’s new World Cup stadium.

While checking on construction progress, Wolfe found himself at the entrance of a nearby Soviet-era swimming-pool. A handwritten note on the door disclosed that the facility was closed for renovation.

Wolfe goes on: "An old woman shuffled through the gate and joined me at the door.

"She read the note and immediately complained, “Why would they do this? Where am I going to swim now?”

"I asked her if she came here often. “Every week,” she explained. “There are many pensioners swimming here, and children too! And I just paid my membership!”…

"I mentioned the phone number on the paper for people to get refunds, but she scoffed. “You really think they’ll give me any money?'"

This simple story brought to mind the idyllic East London allotment-plot complex, lovingly-tended over many years, that had to be sacrificed to make way for London 2012.

Even well-managed mega-projects can heavily disrupt the lives of ordinary people who happen to inhabit the spaces earmarked for project-related development.

One would hope that the aspirations and fears of these people would be among the first things taken into account by mega-project decision-makers.

The reality is, of course, that once the aims and requirements of national and local Governments, interested sports bodies, broadcasters and sponsors have been taken into account, there tends to be precious little room for local pushback.

According to Wolfe, "the flow of information down [Russia 2018’s] ideological pipeline was one way only."

This is also why the growing tendency in the last decade or so to hold local plebiscites when Olympic projects were in the air had to be bypassed.

Concentrating on the host cities of Volgograd and Yekaterinburg, Wolfe goes on to delineate a number of examples of Russia 2018-related initiatives which left local inhabitants angry or cynical or bemused.

There was the handling of the Widows’ Park in Volgograd, purportedly a heartfelt but unofficial memorial to the fallen in the great battle, there was the demolition of a football stadium in comparatively prosperous Yekaterinburg that had been opened as recently as 2011, also in Yekaterinburg, there were the "multiple VIP reconstructions" of the city’s airport, as balanced against its "need for an expanded metro system."

In a touch of pure Chekhov, Wolfe notes that Yekaterinburg’s metro "had only a single line since opening in 1991, although the map in every train and station optimistically displayed three lines, with the two non-existent tracks marked “prospective””.

This might strike a chord with residents of Rio de Janeiro, where a metro extension out to Barra de Tijuca may go down for posterity as one of the few things Rio 2016 organisers got right.

Says Wolfe: "Glimpsing the stark unevenness of these developments marked a moment of alienation for residents, and it underscored the distance between them and any kind of agency in determining the direction of World Cup developments."

"But, but, but…" I hear you cry, "this is all very well, but modern sports mega-projects minimise construction; so Wolfe’s work can amount to little more than an interesting historical footnote."

There is some substance in such a view. Nevertheless, Qatar 2022, Paris 2024, Milan-Cortina 2026, even Los Angeles 2028 all have building work associated with them, whether or not it is included in official Games budgets.

And, insofar as one can tell from behind the opaqueness of the International Olympic Committee’s new host selection process, the 2032 Summer Olympic project in Australia seems likely to involve a very great deal of infrastructure construction, both general and specifically sporting.

Wolfe’s text should make interesting reading for those with any sort of stake in that still rather far-off countdown.

I have spent much time over the past two decades in scrutinising sports mega-projects, including Russia 2018.

I remember being struck in December 2010 in Zurich at how, on winning the bid, then Prime Minister Vladimir Putin took to the microphone at the subsequent press conference completely alone, when others might have surrounded themselves with advisers. "Make no mistake, this is my project," the Russian strongman appeared to be saying.

Based on these two decades, I still think that it ought to be possible to use a sports mega-project as a catalyst to stimulate positive development in a prospective Host City, and to achieve genuine buy-in from a large majority of the city’s residents.

The longer I do this job, however, the more it has dawned on me a) how devilishly difficult it is to pull this off and b) that some do not even try.

Wolfe’s book, entitled More Than Sport: Soft Power and Potemkinism in the 2018 Men’s Football World Cup in Russia, is a most valuable addition to the literature on this key area of the sports industry’s operations.