Books about football

[mr.hobblesworth]

Is it just me or does everyone on here, when seeing a new book by a footballer, automatically turn to the index and start looking under the letter P...

 

Anyway, here's a thread to talk about books about football, Vale related or otherwise.

 

Not actually read the following but have often laughed at journalist Taylor Parkes' take down of Tim Lovejoys appalling sounding book.

 

Helen Chamberlain’s former sidekick has celebrated leaving Soccer AM for 6.06 with a book. Taylor Parkes wants to know why anyone – anyone – thought it was a good idea to expose the presenter’s ego and prejudices across 288 smugly written pages

 

Soccer AM is a bad memory: hungover mornings in other people’s flats, disturbed by a crew of whooping simpletons, the slurping of pro and ex-pro rectums, cobbled-together comedy that made me long for the glory days of Skinner and Baddiel’s old ****. Yet Tim Lovejoy himself, with his fashionably receding hair and voice oddly reminiscent of Rod Hull’s, I remember only as an averagely blokey TV presenter – in fact, one of the few averagely blokey TV presenters to make me clack my tongue in irritation, rather than buff my Gurkha knife. Other than as a namesake of The Simpsons’ self-serving man of the cloth, he barely registered; just a bland, blond ringmaster in a cocky circus of crap. Almost a surprise, then, to find that his new book is not just *tedious in the extreme, it is utterly vile.

 

Chopped into “chapters” that barely fill a page, in a font size usually associated with books for the partially sighted, Lovejoy on Football is part autobiography, part witless musing, and one more triumph for the crass stupidity rapidly replacing culture in this country. Hopelessly banal and nauseatingly self-assured, smirkingly unfunny, it’s a £300 T-shirt, a ****-you-off ringtone, a YouTube clip of someone drinking their mate’s vomit. Its smugness is a corollary of its vacuity. I hope it makes you sick.

 

First, it’s clear that being Tim Lovejoy requires a very special blend of arrogance and ignorance. When he’s not listing his media achievements with a breathtaking lack of guile, he’s sneering at those “sad” enough to take an interest in football history, revealing his utter cluelessness about life outside the Premier League (in a section called “Know Your Silverware”, he refers to “League Three”) and making sundry gaffes, major and minor. He names Johan Cruyff as his all-time favourite player, then admits he’s only seen that five-second World Cup clip of the Cruyff turn. Grumbling about footballers’ musical tastes, he complains that “all you’ll hear blasting out of the team dressing room is R&B, rather than what the rest of the country is listening to” – by which he means indie bands. Everywhere there are jaw-dropping illustrations of insularity, self-*satisfaction and a startlingly small mind.

 

There’s something sinister here, too: beamingly positive, thrilled by wealth, too pleased with himself to ask awkward questions, Tim Lovejoy is the football fan Sepp Blatter has been waiting for. Roman *Abramovich’s darling young one. Not least for his complacency: his lack of understanding of how football works (and doesn’t work) is best illustrated in a section called “Give Your Chairman A Break”, in which he defends “that Thai bloke at Man City”, and implores us to “look at the Glazers... you would have thought they were nothing but a bunch of Americans intent on buying the club and selling off Old Trafford to Tesco judging by the howl of protests from the fans. Within two seasons though, they had won the title and built a squad the envy of Europe.” Bang your head off the wall at such unreviewable stupidity – Tim’s infantile ideas of shunning “negativity” prod him into precisely the kind of thinking that has had such hugely negative influence on the game. “Look across our national team” – he means England, by the way – “and there isn’t one player who wouldn’t walk into any side in Europe... why is it, before every tournament, we start believing we’re overrated?”

 

And, surprise: Lovejoy is as wretched a starf**ker as could be inferred from his television shows. Everyone in football is Tim’s mate (and here we have pictures to prove it, stars looking confused in his grinning, over-familiar presence, frozen by an arm around the shoulders). He’ll “even watch the occasional game of rugby now, because I’m friends with a lot of the players like Will Greenwood, Matt Dawson, Lawrence *Dallaglio and Austin Healy”.

 

It’s perhaps telling that among the many anecdotes offered here, the most heartwarming (and least surprising) involves Tim getting clattered hard by Neil Ruddock in a charity game; even in this version of the story, there’s nothing to suggest Razor meant it affectionately. Still, our man is blinded by quite astonishing hubris, reprinting a photo of a banner at Anfield reading “LOVEJOY SUCKS BIG FAT C*CKS” with a glee that is nothing like self-deprecation. “The hardest thing about leaving *Soccer AM,” he says regretfully, “is the thought that I might no longer be influencing the game.” True, it’ll be tough. But who knows? Perhaps the game will struggle on.

 

It’s not that there was ever a time when football on telly wasn’t in the hands of dimwits, poseurs and blowhards. It’s not that Lovejoy is significantly more objectionable than TV ***** of ages past. The point is, in his own mind and that of the powers that be, he’s one of us. He is us. Savour that. God help us.

 

Lovejoy on Football is published by Century at £16.99

[robf]

My favourite is the Miracle of Castel di Sangro.

 

It's described as:

 

Master storyteller Joe McGinniss travels to Italy to cover the unlikely success of a ragtag minor league soccer team--and delivers a brilliant and utterly unforgettable story of life in an off-the-beaten-track Italian village.

 

For those not aware of the story it's a mix of fairytale and comedy (the rise of a tiny team against the odds) and also grim realism (there's a tragedy two thirds of the way through while the owner makes some of ours seem reasonable)...

[Joe B]

Have enjoyed Pep Confidential, Das Reboot, and Provided You Don't Kiss Me (the Brian Clough biography, by far the best written about him).

 

If you haven't read the last one, I urge you to go and do so now.

 

Despite being a bit of a stats nerd when it comes to sports, I struggled to get through The Numbers Game. Just a little bit dry, despite some very interesting findings.

 

I also couldn't drag myself through Inverting the Pyramid, the tactics book, but I do intend to revisit it.

 

On a sporting but not football note, I really enjoyed A Fighter's Heart. I am no fan of combat sports by and large but this is a superb travel/sports book exploring why so many people love getting punched in the face/choked out for a hobby.

[For Us All]

Brian Clough's autobiography is a classic and his controversial bestseller goes into real depth about his short time at Leeds United.

[Jacko51]

My favourite is the Miracle of Castel di Sangro.

 

It's described as:

 

Master storyteller Joe McGinniss travels to Italy to cover the unlikely success of a ragtag minor league soccer team--and delivers a brilliant and utterly unforgettable story of life in an off-the-beaten-track Italian village.

 

For those not aware of the story it's a mix of fairytale and comedy (the rise of a tiny team against the odds) and also grim realism (there's a tragedy two thirds of the way through while the owner makes some of ours seem reasonable)...

 

That's a great book. I read it years ago and it struck me at the time that the owner of the club bore a marked similarity to the late Billy Bell!

[TheSage]

A vote for Rob's pick above, as well as Tim Parks' A Season with Verona, but both are a touch dated now.

 

Leo McKinstry's biography "Sir Alf" is very good for us older readers. So too England's Last Glory (D Miller) and The Boys of 66 (John Rowlinson).

 

Don't miss reading "Hillsborough, the truth", by Prof. Phil Scraton - frightening as well as enlightening.

[Jacko51]

Another one about Italian football which is worth looking at is A Season with Verona by Tim Parks.

[TheSage]

Catch up at the back, please.

[Jacko51]

A vote for Rob's pick above, as well as Tim Parks' A Season with Verona, but both are a touch dated now.

 

Leo McKinstry's biography "Sir Alf" is very good for us older readers. So too England's Last Glory (D Miller) and The Boys of 66 (John Rowlinson).

 

Don't miss reading "Hillsborough, the truth", by Prof. Phil Scraton - frightening as well as enlightening.

 

Scraton's book is indeed very good but a mate of mine who was on the Hillsborough Independent Panel reckons it doesn't pay sufficient emphasis on the failings of the medical services on the day. A great read though.

[Jacko51]

Catch up at the back, please.

 

Simultaneous postings!

[Paul6754]

Always got Charles Buchan's Football Annual as a kid for Xmas, had read it before Xmas dinner.

[Jacko51]

Always got Charles Buchan's Football Annual as a kid for Xmas, had read it before Xmas dinner.

 

Did you get the monthly mag as well? It was SO out of date by the time you got it!

[Paul6754]

Did you get the monthly mag as well? It was SO out of date by the time you got it!

 

I didn't, I used to get "Goal" magazine, it was a brilliant read.

[mr.hobblesworth]

I recently got a book called Face In The Crowd. It's got a decent written introduction but it generally just comprises of archive copies of those competitions they used to have in programmes where there's a crowd shot with one fan's face circled. It's really interesting to see lots of them all in one book, both funny and disturbing.

 

https://www.fourcornersbooks.co.uk/books/face-in-the-crowd/

 

 

 

 

[themightyvale]

I'd recommend The Miracle of Castel di Sangro by Joe McGinnis. It's the story of a small Italian side's one season in the big(ish) time of Serie B.