The Booklist: World Cup Fever
As the World Cup rapidly approaches, if you want more from your football reading than a sticker book can offer you, then look no further than this selection of titles.
African United, by Steve Bloomfield
A superb portrait of the divided continent of Africa, told through one fo the few things that unites it. Football inspires competition and inflames passions nowhere as strongly as in Africa. Take the player born and raised in Congo who scored the winning goal for Rwanda against the country of his birth and promptly had his house burnt down for his trouble. Or the Kenyan football chant ‘Oliech! Odinga! Obama!’, which celebrates the country’s star striker, its popular prime minister and its most famous adopted son. Meanwhile, the influence of African football continues to spread rapidly through Europe. Today, no Premiership team is complete without a major African star – Drogba, Essien, Touré, Adebayor, and Kanu. Countless African players are now enriching English football and becoming household names. Steve Bloomfield’s wide-ranging and incisive book investigates Africa’s love of football, its increasing global influence, the build-up to the 2010 World Cup and the social and political backdrop to the greatest show on earth.
FA Confidential, by David Davies
From England dressing room to FA boardrooom, David Davies has enjoyed access to all areas in football. He has known everyone from David Beckham to Wayne Rooney, from Sir Alex Ferguson to Sven-Göran Eriksson, as well as legends like Sir Matt Busby, Bill Shankly and George Best. He has lived through all English football’s triumphs, tragedies, farces and scandals of modern times. Now, with the national sport perceived by many to be in crisis, no one is better placed to shed light on what has happened and why.
His is a tale of fake sheikhs, fickle secretaries and beauty queens, and of how a boy from the Euston Road fell in love with football, and how he came to run one of the most high-profile organisations in the land.
Football Lexicon, by John Leigh, David Woodhouse
- Why is a left foot either trusty or educated, but a right foot is neither?
- Why is a bad back pass almost invariably suicidal?
- Why can you score from a corner with a free header, but never with a free shot?
- Why are hooligans always a tiny minority even when there seem to be hundreds of them throwing seats across Kenilworth Road?
Discover how stock phrases – schoolboy howler, sweeper system – are only part of the story in the artfully twisted language of football. Let Leigh and Woodhouse take you on a journey, from the top-flight vocabulary of commentators to the more speculative efforts of footballers, from the Champions League circus to a Wednesday night in Rochdale. And prepare to be very entertained.
Ingerland: Travels With a Football Nation, by Mark Perryman
The England Supporters Club boasts more members than those of several other European nations combined, many of whom travel to every England away game. And while young working-class white men still make up the majority of fans, the hooligans of the 1970s and 80s are today much more likely to be singing and chanting alongside black, Asian and female supporters, and the conduct — not to mention the reputation — of England supporters abroad has changed out of all recognition in recent years. Both celebration and exploration, Ingerland is a thought-provoking and evocative insight into what inspires the devotion of the England football fan. Packed with interviews with England supporters of all ages and backgrounds, each of whom gives their own individual voice to the debate, this is both a fascinating social document and a passionate personal testament to our national game.
