Don't know whether this is important to us as as music and beer but.....

'La letteratura e l'eros, il calcio e' uno dei grandi piaceri'

..as Pasolini says on the tshirt.

As a reader of football books, not just Shoot! annual either, and having enjoyed , 'Morbo', 'Tor!', and 'Brilliant Orange', recently, can I reccomend 'A Season with Verona' by Tim Parks to you? A diary of a season home and away at the bottom end of Serie A with Hellas Verona and their right wing fans in 2000-2001. Parks is a well known Booker Prize nominated author and lecturer as well as Verona supporter and the book was amusing, disturbing and very interesting in view of recent events in Serie A. I enjoyed it almost as much as 'The Far Corner' by Harry Pearson, my favorite footy book ever.
And it makes you realise how shit 'Fever Pitch' was.

Must admit that I found the Tim Parks book a really annoying read - middle class ex-pat slums it with the proles for a year, that kind of thing.

However would highly recommend "Ajax, the Dutch and the War" by Simon Kueper. Absolutely tremendous expose of the revisionism the Dutch have built up since 1945 and caused a right old stink when it came out in the Netherlands a couple of years back.

i read a season with verona and rather enjoyed it. However i don't think it can go down as a true great. He doesn't reveal anything in the book that other people wouldn't be able to discover. If anyone spent a season with the verona fans they could write pretty much the same book.

thoroughly enjoyed all of the above but not yet read Brilliant Orange or Far Corner...will have to now

It might be hard to get a hold of but 'A Mag For All Seasons' by Billy Furious (ISBN 0-9544089-0-X) Mag Publishing 2002 is a very funny read....

"The Miracle of Castel di Sangro" is a similar idea though in this case the journo in questions spent a season hanging out with the players of a wee local team promoted to Serie B for the first time ever - of course their only aim is avoiding relegation. I quite enjoyed it though there's very little about left/right politics but plenty about dodgy chairman type politics.

Bhachgen wrote:

"The Miracle of Castel di Sangro" is a similar idea though in this case the journo in questions spent a season hanging out with the players of a wee local team promoted to Serie B for the first time ever - of course their only aim is avoiding relegation. I quite enjoyed it though there's very little about left/right politics but plenty about dodgy chairman type politics.

seem to remember Chris Donald, the Viz founder wrote that column for the mag..i'll have to ask him for a copy

If Kuper's "Ajax, The Dutch..." was your cup of tea, then possibly "Dynamo" and "Pasavochka" (sic) - about the Kiev / Moscow teams in 1940-1 and 1945-6 respectively, might interest you. Especially as the books are looking at the bigger historical picture at the time. Alex Bellos' "Futeball" was really good - I'm not really interested in the 'Brasilian game' normally but thought I'd give it a whirl, and it was a great read.

"ABC - Ajax, Barca, Cryuff" for any Dutch fans was interesting, without being particularly entertaining. The only 2 Dutch interviewers Cryuff would talk to published the transcripts of their interviews, and for all you anoraks out there, Cryuff explains how the Total Football system boiled down to one particular player - and I won't spoil the surprise - needing to retain possession for the system to work (alright, I really enjoyed that bit ).

But "Barca - A Peoples Passion", by Jimmy Burns, with the exception of Simon Kuper's book, remains my favourite - it was basically the first book on Spanish history I read and he really gets across what the club were about, and why it means so much to the Catalans.

Finally, as an antidote to the 'middle class slumming it' books, Bill Buford's "Among the Thugs". Anyone who hasn't read it - I'll gladly send you my old paperback copy! Self - confessed middle class American, hooks up with United's firm in the mid 1980's in an attempt to understand 'what it's all about?' with disastrous results. You really should read it if you never have.

Does striker in the sun count

Enjoyed the Alex Bellos book - particularly the descriptions of different versions of football played in Brazil. Surreal.

The David Downing book about Moscow Dynamo's visit to GB took more effort!

The 'Dynamo' book has interested me for a while even though I haven't read it. Is that the one which describes the games against the German army teams during the Nazi occupation? Lose or die basically. I might buy it for the description of that episode alone.

GeordieLes wrote:

The 'Dynamo' book has interested me for a while even though I haven't read it. Is that the one which describes the games against the German army teams during the Nazi occupation? Lose or die basically. I might buy it for the description of that episode alone.

That's the one - it starts with the wedding of one of the players on the eve of Operation Barbarossa. Subtitled 'Defending the Honour of Kiev', it's a fantastic and moving story. Amazon have a second hand copy for 89p if you're interested!

i read somewhere that the story of the ukrainian team getting shot after beating the germans was a myth(communist propganda)...mind, i also saw something a while ago which i'm pretty sure spoke to the son of one of the players supposedly killed so who knows?
i shall have to add the book to my library anyway

That Dinamo book is very good. The other good (football) book I read recently was

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which is a history of Belfast Celtic. Recommended.

I enjoyed 'A Season with Verona', with Tim Parks traveling the length and breadth of Italy. How long can a man sit on a bus?
But a great fan read is Irons In The Soul (West Ham) by Pete May. Any football fan can relate to this if you support a team that season after season generally frustrates......... Hearts, Carlisle etc etc etc.

pissed off christophe wrote:

Finally, as an antidote to the 'middle class slumming it' books, Bill Buford's "Among the Thugs". Anyone who hasn't read it - I'll gladly send you my old paperback copy! Self - confessed middle class American, hooks up with United's firm in the mid 1980's in an attempt to understand 'what it's all about?' with disastrous results. You really should read it if you never have.

The best bit of the Buford book was him getting a complete kicking from the Italian police at the 1990 world cup.

If you can still find it "My Favourite Year" is a collection of reflections on their favourite season by various authors. Highlights are the Raith Rovers promotion and Nick Hornby's Cambridge chapter.

Well worth a read.