Football Books: News and Reviews

With the news of  Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement on May 8, a new book is set to provide an insight into the legacy of the most successful British club manager ever. While we wait the announcement of his replacement, author Søren Frank discusses the possible replacements for the (un)enviable position as Red Devils manager in his new book Standing on the Shoulder of Giants. Read more…

Yesterday the families of the 96 people who lost their lives at Hillsborough were finally told what they had known for 23 years: the tragedy wasn’t the fault of the fans, and a cover-up of monumental proportions had been orchestrated by the very people who should have been there to serve and protect.

Much has been written about the findings of the Hillsborough Independent Panel, which concluded that South Yorkshire Police had deliberately sought to change their version of events in order to protect senior officers whose abject failure to control crowds on the day (and, indeed, their decisions in the months ahead of the match) led to the needless and preventable deaths of nearly 100 men, women and children. Read more…

It’s not often that children’s football books are reviewed here, but Alfie Jones and a Change of Fortune is a worthy exception. This book, aimed at young children aged about 7-10, is the first in a planned series focusing on football-mad Alfie and his friends.

The story, by FA-qualified football coach David Fuller, who coaches a youth team in Brighton, manages to tap into not only the enduring popularity of football but also of Harry Potter-style fantasy, which is still very much in vogue.

Read more…

A quick note on some of the books due to hit shelves (or Amazon pages if you prefer) this month…

Everyone loves Jeff Stelling, right? Well, if you do, you’ve got to check out Jeffanory: Stories from Beyond Soccer Saturday, in which the award-winning host of Sky Sports’ Soccer Saturday and former Countdown presenter returns with a collection of what is billed as “the funniest, weirdest, most tragic, most heart-warming, under-the-radar stories of the football season”. Sounds a bit like an entertaining bog book or something to flick through on those long away days, but it might be good for a laugh. Read more…

There were lots of trivia/fun books released at the beginning of 2012, including The Football Grounds Quiz Book: 250 Questions on Football Stadium History, by Kevin Snelgrove, 101 Things That Get Our Goat: About Football, by Rick Holden and Dave Moore, and The Football Lover’s Companion, by Johnny Morgan. Among the new biographies were The Didi Man, by Dietmar Hamann.

One of the most interesting of the recent crop of new football books, though, is the acclaimed Up Pohnpei, by Paul Watson, which is rather lengthily subtitled “A quest to reclaim the soul of football by leading the world’s ultimate underdogs to glory.” It tells the tale of two Brits who coached the worst football team in the world to their first ever victory. The island of Pohnpei is a small dot in the Pacific ocean with a population of 36,000 people. It’s one of the wettest places on earth and two thirds of the population suffers from obesity. But, Matt and Paul helped overturn the “worst team in the world” moniker by coaching them to their first victory, avenging a 16-1 defeat to neighbouring island, Guam, ten years before.

The pair were on Soccer AM recently talking about the book, and are making a film about their adventures – see the trailer here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2028948731/the-soccermen.

Keep a lookout here for more updates – hopefully we’ll be able to report on the book and future projects soon. The film project needs to raise $35,000, so do visit the Kickstarter website to find out more.

Spitting in the Wind, the latest book by ranter extraordinaire Billy Furious, aka Kriss Knights, represents two decades of “crackpot ramblings” on Newcastle United.

As a collection of fanzine articles (some previously unpublished and others with updated comments added with the benefit of hindsight), it is a haphazard and outspoken volume. At first glance, you could be forgiven for thinking it’s just another one of those badly produced, badly written amateur books in dire need of a proofreader and editor. While some of this may be true, certainly with reference to the production (which Furious’s website admits is “irreverent, sweary, often drunk and lacking in a basic understanding of any punctuation that [isn’t] a exclamation mark”), don’t let that put you off – this Billy bloke has a way with words that had me hooked from the start, and I’m not even a Magpies fan. Read more…

This is a slim volume, but then it is called ‘a short history’. At just 64 pages, it might not seem possible to cover in great detail the history of the game, but the conciseness of this book (published in October 2011) is what makes it attractive, as well as the many illustrations in what is an attractive layout.

Taylor starts with the origins of association football, which lie “in the chaotic and unregulated forms of folk football popular throughout Britain from the Middle Ages”, before discussing the split between the amateur and professional games. Read more…

In November, Jonathan Wilson revisited the legend that was Brian Clough in Nobody Ever Says Thank You: The Biography. It claimed to be ‘the final word’ on the man, while the Sunday Times hailed it as “the most comprehensive account we have had of this remarkable man so far”. Read more…

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Nostalgia is always popular with football fans, and the rather lengthily titled Those Were The Games: A Nostalgic Look at a Century of Great Football Matches (When Football Was Football), released on October 6, promises a look back at “fascinating football matches from the last 100 years”, including the ‘White Horse’ FA Cup final of 1923.

Tim Quelch’s Underdog: Fifty Years of Trials and Triumphs with Football’s Also-Rans, published on October 14, looks back over a lifetime of watching struggling teams around the country, including some non-league teams. It’s a personal tale that also highlights the changing times and has been hailed as “a major work” by Backpass magazine.

Read more…