On the seventh day of Christmas….the best book

On the seventh day of Christmas my true love sent to me…a few books to bring on the beach by the sea

Spending so much time travelling backwards and forwards between London and Scandinavia means I have lots of time at airports where the best solution to travel boredom is a beer and a decent book.

Football books are hit and miss.  Go back ten years and you would see one a week being published, with an autobiography being saved for Christmas release by someone who actually has a story to tell.  Nowadays players normally wait a week after they have made their Premier League debut before putting pen to paper and publishing their account of their “tough upbringing” and “how lucky they were to be a footballer otherwise it would have been a life of crime”, conveniently forgetting to retell the events of their arrest for assault, drugs or shagging underage girls.

For every interesting story such as Steve Claridge’s “Tales from the boot camp” there is a “Walking Tall” by Peter Crouch, or an “Off the record” by Michael Owen.  The real writers of these books should actually get a medal for a)agreeing to write the book and b) making it so uninteresting.  However, there have been some absolutely fantastic football books published over the past decade, and many simply do not get the credit they deserve as they do not have the headline subject.  So if you do want a decent insight into some of the more interesting areas of the game pick up one of the following three books.

The Bromley Boys – Dave Roberts
Supporters diaries of a season are two a penny these days.  However, this one covers a season following non-league Bromley who endured their worst ever season and seen through the eyes of a teenager.  Still not convinced?  Well what about the fact it was written over 40 years ago.  A fascinating look at what life was like growing up in the 1970’s as well as supporting a less than fashionable team. The paragraph about taking his boots to his first ever game “just in case a few players were involved in a car crash” rings so true for those of us who remember our first football match.

Stamping Grounds – Charlie Connelly
Books about Liechtenstein are pretty thin on the ground.  Books about football in Liechtenstein are as rare as a West Ham win at the moment.  In fact you could say that this fantastic book by Connelly is the best ever written about the subject, simply because it is the only one.  Bored with work the author decides to follow Liechtenstein as they try to qualify for the 2002 World Cup.  He begins with a first visit to the landlocked Alpine country and through the book meets not only all the people behind the game in Liechtenstein but also all of the movers and shakers in the country, including a drunken introduction to the Crown Prince and a comprehensive guide to the Postage Stamp museum.  Part story of despairing hope, part travelogue to a place few actually know where it is, this is a great book to put our modern Premier League game in perspective. We all know there would be no happy ending for the team but its a great journey.

Scum Airways – John Sugden
It’s a bit unfair to just pick this book as it goes hand in hand with Badfellas, written by Sugden and Alan Tomlinson about the corruption in the game at the highest level – FIFA.  This book goes undercover to research the ticket touting market and how it has become an important market force for the owners of the game and the clubs and how it will never be eradicated.  Focusing on the 1998 World Cup, Sugden manages to meet some of the people on the inside of Football Associations as well as “running” with some of the most profitable touting firms in world football. You are left with a feeling that whilst everyone in football publically deploys the touts and their business practices, actually they provide a valuable service to football as a whole.  Wrong, simply wrong.

Choosing three books is incredibly hard as there is some wheat amongst the chaff.  Notable other mentions have to go to Tim Parks “A season with Verona“, David Conn’s “A Beautiful Game” Andrew Jennings “Foul” and David Peace’s “Damned United“ . Oh, and of course there is a great book by a little known author called Stuart Fuller called “Passport to Football” that should be on everyone’s Christmas list this year!