Football Books: News and Reviews

Sightlines: A Stadium Odyssey, by Simon Inglis (2001)

Self-confessed stadium addict Simon Inglis pursues his obsession to bring us the weird and wonderful worlds of usherettes at the Houston Astrodome, competing architects in Australia, angry neighbours in Auckland and wistful groundsmen in Bombay.

Watching live sport as a regular spectator is all very well, reckons Inglis. But stadiums are far more interesting because in a stadium, whether it be a cathedral of sport or a collection of sheds in the back end of town, you can tune in to the mood of a nation or a community. Read more…

Soccer in a Football World: The Story of America’s Forgotten Game, by David Wangerin (2006)

This book claimed to be the first comprehensive history of the game in the United States, a story of wild swings from brief euphoria to seemingly endless despair over the chances of the world’s game winning over its most powerful country.

In the 1920s the US had a league that robbed Europe of some of its best players. In 1950 it produced the greatest World Cup shock of all. In the the 1970s it persuaded the world’s most famous footballer to help sell the round-ball game to a public that was largely baffled, always sceptical and sometimes downright hostile. And in the 1990s it staged a successful World Cup even though it had no national league. Not until the turn of the 21st century did steady growth at the grassroots get the US off the rollercoaster. Read more…

Sing When You’re Winning: Football Fans, Terrace Songs and a Search for the Soul of Soccer, by Colin Irwin (2006)

Colin Irwin dons his bobble hat and scarf in pursuit of the ultimate football anthem. From Gillingham to John O’Groats FC, he joins the fans of Liverpool, Manchester United, Chelsea, Newcastle and all the other leading clubs in the country… and many obscure ones too.

He looks at the history of the songs and drinks with the fans in an attempt to unravel the mystery of the seemingly spontaneous songmaking, devours a lot of dodgy pies and attempts to launch his own terrace chant. After meeting a bewildering array of colourful, noisy characters with interesting haircuts, he returns with a sore throat and a million anecdotes about tribal anthems, full of passion, wit and cultural identity that can instantly inform, delight and provoke in equal measures.

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Rivals: The Offbeat Guide to the 92 League Clubs, by Geoff Harvey and Vanessa Strowger (2004)

With extensive quotes and contributions from supporters, this book examines the extraordinary cult of British football derbies, and the stereotypes and opinions supporters have about their footballing rivals.

The authors use statistics and fans’ testimonies to reveal facts such as Bolton Wanderers being the most loathed club in Britain, or Portsmouth possessing the most vocal fans. The book uncovers the amusing, bizarre, and sometimes alarming portraits of the intensity of fans’ feelings; the way in which they perceive other teams, towns and cities, and how they personally relate to the areas where they live and were brought up.

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Post-fandom and the Millennial Blues: The Transformation of Soccer Culture, by Steve Redhead (1997)

Football fandom has traditionally been seen as an important part of adolescent, generally male, identity-making.

In this timely and important contribution to the field of popular cultural studies, Steve Redhead looks at the way youth culture is being reshaped by media culture in its various aspects at the end of the millennium. Read more…

Power, Corruption & Pies – Volume Two: The Best Writing from the Second Decade of WSC, foreword by Adrian Chiles (2006)

This anthology takes up the story from 1997 to 2006, the second decade of legendary football fanzine When Saturday Comes.

It was an era when the football bandwagon became a juggernaut, apparently with no-one at the wheel. In spite of rampant commercialisation, the game nonetheless retained its appeal, even among those for whom almost every season is a sequence of disappointments.

The second WSC anthology reflects the big issues of the era, from the rise of the Champions League to the disappearance of old football grounds, with trenchant opinions on a range of topics including the heyday of football boardgames, the calamitous decline of the FA Cup and Delia Smith’s unusual half-time announcements. Throughout its existence WSC has provided a platform for innovative football writing. Widely known authors such as David Conn, Dave Hill and long-standing contributor Harry Pearson all feature in this book. Most of all, WSC gives space to the view of those who know football best: the supporters.

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The Passion and the Fashion: Football Fandom in the New Europe, edited by Steve Redhead (1993)

This book was one of the first to analyse the changing culture of the soccer terrace.

Commentators are now as likely to refer to the carnival or “party” atmosphere at football matches as violence and disorder. This does not mean that “football hooliganism” – as the media labelled it for the past 30 years – has somehow disappeared. Read more…

Moving the Goalposts: A History of Sport and Society Since 1945, by Martin Polley (1998)

This book argues that sport is not neutral, asocial or apolitical and so it needs to be assessed in its widest cultural context to be understood.

It provides a comprehensive survey of sport in Britain since 1945 and examines its place in British culture. The author also offers a critical introduction to existing literature on the subject and places contemporary sport in the context of recent history. He discusses issues of politics, national identity, gender, class and race and explores representations of sport in the media. Sports covered include: football, rugby, tennis and polo.

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Manslaughter United: A Season With a Prison Football Team, by Chris Hulme (1999)

One of the best things about this interesting book is the deceptive title – at first glance, one thinks that this is just another book about a certain team at the top of the Premier League that wins things occasionally.

But the subtitle reveals a more sinister focus (although, given the ever-growing number of disturbing allegations in the tabloids, the subjects of prison and soccer are maybe not that far apart after all). Read more…

The Italian Job, by Gianluca Vialli and Gabriele Marcotti (2006)

Former Chelsea manager Gianluca Vialli, in conjunction with sportswriter and broadcaster Gabriele Marcotti, tackles the debate about how the characteristics of England and Italy affect the game of football in the two soccer-mad nations.

Do the national stereotypes of Italians as passionate, stylish lotharios and the English as cold-hearted eccentrics still hold true when they kick a ball around? The authors provide a fascinating and often controversial commentary on where football is now and where it is headed, and they have invited some of the biggest names in the sport to join in their discussion.

Sir Alex Ferguson, Jose Mourinho, Arsene Wenger, Sven-Goran Eriksson, Fabio Capello and Marcello Lippi, among others, add their not inconsiderable weight to the debate, which looks at every aspect of football, be it tactical and technical or cultural and sociological.

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