Believe it or not we do find time to read a few books when we are on our travels.  So an idea popped into my head this week that perhaps we should do a little review of the books about football you should read, and whether we would recommend them.  So feel free to scroll down as the list gets longer and delve into the latest football reading.

50 Teams That Mattered – David Hartrick
We take the game of football for granted these days.  We just expected it to be there when we turn on the TV on a Sunday afternoon.  We pick up the newspaper and we read all about the goal that was never given, the players that was sent off and the manager being a twat.  But do we ever take a step back and wonder where it all began?  Well that is exactly what Dave Hartrick did.  In his maiden voyage into the world of writing he has picked what he believes to have been the 50 football teams that have shaped the beautiful game today.  Ranging from the likes of Blackburn Olympic and Queens Park in the formative years of the game, right up to the modern day, Hartrick focuses on why these teams made a difference.  All of the famous names are in here, but to me the fascination is reading about how the game has developed thanks to pioneers such as Queens Park, Enfield Town and The Wanderers just as much as Barcelona, Manchester United and Brazil.  This is a hefty beast and represents a couple of years of Hartrick’s life and you can feel his heart and soul on each page.  Buy it and I guarantee you will be still reciting facts to your friends and family in six months time.  A fantastic way to break your publishing cherry.

The smell of football – Mick Rathbone

Stories of footballer almost making it are two-a-penny but reading one that tells the story of the game from the other side of the physio’s couch are as rare as a Wigan Athletic away win.  The Smell of Football is a fantastic read, taking in Rathbone’s career as a teenage player at Birmingham City right up until his role as Head of Medicine for Everton FC.  It is a great read, lifting the lid as much as possible onto what goes on with players and clubs alike, dismissing the magic sponge myth and basically telling the story of someone who loves the game.  

The Worse Football Kits of All Time – David Moor
You can never win with a book like this because it is so subjective.  Every fan will have an opinion on what their worse kit has been, or even what any team’s kit is.  BUt this is a great book just to simply flick through (dare I say ideal for toilet reading?).  Every one of the 92 is included as well as a few extras that should never be forgotten (or perhaps they should). Some of my personal favourites included are Hull City’s tiger print shirt, where every one was apparently different, the  Arsenal bruised banana and the West Ham candy stripe.  I was disappointed by the omission of Scunthorpe United’s classic technicolour vomit kit (not just shirt but matching shorts), sponsored of course by Pleasure Island!

There’s a Golden Sky – Ian Ridley
Keeping with the Premier League theme, this long awaited account of the state of football during those two decades by Ian Ridley is probably the most comprehensive review of the beautiful game in print today.  Ridley has been away from the bookshelves too long and it great to have him back.  This book mixes his visits to the grassiest roots of grass roots in Hackney Marshes to the prawn sandwiches of Old Trafford.  He looks at the state of the women’s game, youth team football and generally asks the question “Would we be better without the Premier League?”.  With the death bells sounding in recent weeks for football below the top division(s) thanks to the announcement of the EPPP changes now is a time to read this, take stock and decide whether you want to see 125 years of footballing history disappear.  A truly wonderful read.

Kissing the Badge – Phil Ascough
Who doesn’t like a bit of decent football trivia, and with the Premier League celebrating it’s 20th birthday this season what perfect way to combine the two, which is what Phil Ascough has done perfectly in this book.  It is divided into sections (defenders, goals, managers – you get the picture) with twenty trivia facts in each section and then twenty questions.  It is a perfect book for those long away days when you can fire questions at your travelling companions such as:-

“Ray Lewis’s (referee) place of residence generally raised a smile when it was listed in match coverage.  Where is it?”

“Robert Warzycha scored the first goal in the Premier League by an overseas player for Everton versus Manchester United”

Top stuff for the same price of a programme at Wembley Stadium and thus worthy of our 4 star mark

The Story of TalkSport by Gershon Portini
Do you remember that episode in I’m Alan Partridge when he is faced with the dilemma of pulping his book.  He is invited onto a radio show where his book is reviewed and he takes offence that someone points out he says “I had the last laugh” on eighteen occasions.  Well, this book is the closest I have read to Partridge’s tome.  It is essentially 324 pages of how they have got one over on the BBC.  Some of the “hilarious” stories would hardly raise an eyebrow in most companies, and reading it you don’t get the sense that this is a revolutionary company, but one that takes itself far too seriously.  Some parts are interesting – the transcript of the conversation that ultimately led to the dismissal of Jon Gaunt makes fascinating reading but tales of Mike “Porky” Parry trying to be one of the lads are painful.  Not one to recommend unless you are someone who hangs on every word of Stan Collymore.

Summer is almost upon us so it is time to start thinking of some essential reading material for when you get stuck in the worlds lost traffic jam.  We read quite a few sporting books at TBIR but only the best ever get our coverted five star rating and thus a recommendation to our global audience to go out and buy them.  Having written a book or two ourselves we know the difference one more sale makes, so I am sure these guys would be very grateful for your patronage – just follow the link on the title of each one to purchase a copy.

32 Programmes – Dave Roberts
I fail to believe that anyone who reads Dave Robert’s new book 32 Programmes cannot relate to his thinking as a football fan.  It traces his life as a football fan through 32 chapters in his life, going into the bitter-sweet details of growing up in the 1970s and ’80s via 32 football matches.

Roberts had always been a programme collecter, every since his father took him to see his first match, Fulham versus Manchester United in the 1960s.  From that day until 2002 he built up a collection of over 1,100 programmes.  However, life has a habit of throwing spanners in the works and so he is forced to chose just 31 to take with him in his new life in the US.  This chronicles his choices.

Building on and around his first book, The Bromley Boys (soon to be released as a film, no less), Dave introduces us to his career, his attempts to find a soul mate and finally in a twist his life changing circumstances that will have you reaching for a tissue.

The book includes a visit to Denis Law’s house as a teenager, bunking off work and ultimately getting the sack to watch West Ham (proof that he really is mad), the awkward moment of taking a girlfriend (or three) to their first football match, and the intimidating atmosphere of games in the 1980s.

Some of the matches still live in our memories today.  The “Three Degrees” demolition by West Bromwich Albion of Manchester United in the late 1970s, the England victory over Hungary at Wembley to take us to the World Cup Finals in 1982 and bizarre FA Cup game in 1971 between Bromley and Civil Service.

His final chapter, number 32 in his list details his return to England for a visit in 2008 to see his family after many years away as well as a trip back to Hayes Lane to see his beloved Bromley play in the FA Cup.

If you read one new book on your holidays this summer, chose this one. And then you try and detail 10, let alone 32, games that mark the milestones in your life.

32 Programmes is published by Bantom Press and available from early August 2011 from Amazon amongst other places.

92Pies – Tom Dickinson
There are over 1,250 members of the 92 club.  I know that because for a while I was helping them with their database.  I am a member (number 1,006 to be precise) but technically I am not any longer as I missed the season time limit to get to see a game at Stevenage and Oxford United since they have been in the Football League (despite visiting them last season in the Conference).  But how many members have been to EVERY ground on ONE season, and having a pie at each one?  I would suggest one man – Tom Dickinson.  This is the story of his epic journey starting on a wet August day at Charlton Athletic and ending nine months later on a sunny day at his beloved Bolton Wanderers.  This is not just the story of 92 different pies.   This is the story of an epic journey.  You can read our interview with Tom here, and an excerpt from his book here.

From Wick to Wembley – Andy Ollerenshaw
Every year when the preliminary rounds of the FA Cup in August start we all say “Wouldn’t it be great to go to a game in every round, following the winner through all the way to the final.  And every year we give up before the end of the qualifying rounds because we would need to be heading to Blyth Spartans or Workington on a Tuesday night.  Our good friends over at the The Real FA Cup do their bit before giving up when the corporate suits start to outnumber real fans.  But Andy Ollerenshaw has made us all jealous.  He followed his local team, Chertsey Town from their extra preliminary round until they were knocked out to Sittingbourne, then Dartford, Bromley, Eastbourne Borough, Weymouth, Cambridge United, Wolves and finally Cardiff City who reached the final at Wembley.  A great journey covering 2,300 odd miles and a good few hours of reading time.

To win a signed copy of Andy’s book then simply tell us which current Conference (Blue Square Bet) South side played Liverpool in the FA Cup back in 2008.  Type in your answer in the form below and we will draw one person at random out on the 30th June 2010.

Changing Ends – Mike Bayly
Last summer I came up with the best idea ever.  I was going to write a book for the forthcoming season on my travels around Non League football.  I drew up a list of the most obscure places to go in the four corners of the English grass roots game.  And then I saw an advert for Changing Ends by Mike Bayly.  He had the idea 12 months before me and had completed his journey.  I thought at first surely I could write a better one, and then I read it.  And gave up my plan.  It is an excellent read, really getting under the skin of teams such as Colwyn Bay, Ebbsfleet United, Rainworth Miners Welfare and of course his own side Wingate & Finchley.  He meets the owners, the volunteers , the managers and the fans.  I dare you to read this and not want to visit some of these far flung outposts of Non League football next season.

On the road – Daniel Harris
I have to say that I wouldn’t normally pick up a book about Manchester United, let alone a diary of the season but something about the synopsis captured my attention and I ended up reading his book in a long weekend. A lot of the details of the games will be familiar to us all – after all they are the most reported on club in this country, but Daniel’s spin on things is quite unique and I would recommend this to anyone who wants a view of the Premier League from a fans point of view.

Behind the Iron Curtain – Jonathan Wilson
This isn’t a new book.  In fact Jonathan has written a number of books since.  But this first pricked my interest in football in areas off the tourist map and I used this as my inspiration for trips to Moscow, Minsk and Zagreb.  It is part travelogue, part historical record and the mix works really well.   Wilson’s passion comes through on every page and some of the stories such as his silent mugging on the Moscow Metro should act as a lesson to us all.  I do not think there is one book out there that covers football in Eastern Europe better.

The Bromley Boys – Dave Roberts
In the late 1960s, in the warm glow of England winning the World Cup, Dave Roberts, like most teenage boys his age, was football mad. There was just one difference: rather than supporting the likes of Arsenal or Manchester United, Dave’s team of choice was the ever so slightly less glamorous Bromley Football Club – one of the last genuinely amateur football teams left, fighting for survival in the lowest non-league division. This book is the story of Bromley’s worst ever season. It is a funny and heart-warming tale of football at the very bottom: Dave turns up to each match with his football boots in his bag, just in case the team are a player short; the crowd is always announced as 400 as no-one can be bothered to count; the team ship so many goals that in one match, the taunting opposition fans actually lose count of the score. It’s easy being a football fan when your team are always winning, but “The Bromley Boys” is the touching true story about supporting a club through thin and even thinner: proof that the more your team may lose on the pitch, the more there is to gain on the terraces. This is a brilliantly written part football memoir, part coming of age story – the non-league a??Fever Pitcha??? Author and publisher are blogging the book’s progress from start to end.

I absolutely loved this book.  Perhaps it was the fact that living in Bromley I know most of the places that Dave talks about, but also loving non league football I know the teams and clubs he writes about.  How he could put the whole book together after a near 40 year gap is beyond me but it reads like an Adrian Mole meets John Motson diary.  It draws you back into the innocent days when children were allowed to run wild.  His story of hitchhiking back from his school in Sevenoaks in the middle of the night would be met with horror in todays world.

Our first FIFA 5 star book. Buy it now and from here -The Bromley Boys: The True Story of Supporting the Worst Football Team in Britain

39 Days of Gazza – Steve Pitts
Paul Gascoigne was the English football icon of the 1990s. The outstanding player of his generation, his magnificent midfield play provided some of England’s most memorable moments, and he enjoyed a headline-grabbing career with Newcastle United, Tottenham, Lazio, Glasgow Rangers, Middlesbrough and Everton. Then it all went terribly wrong. He still made the headlines but for all the wrong reasons – alcoholism, drugs, wife-beating, personality disorder, run-ins with the law, nervous breakdown, revival from cardiac arrest. Like his great hero, George Best, Gazza seemed to have passed a personal point of no return.

Then, in the autumn of 2005, he was given a chance to rebuild his career with his first job as a football manager. As part of a consortium which bought Kettering Town, Gazza reinvented himself. Appearing to have his personal problems under control, he took charge full of big ideas about steering the club into the Football League and towards the big time. The people of Kettering were star-struck by the celebrity among them, and yet in just a few short weeks it would all fall apart spectacularly. 39 days after Gascoigne was appointed manager he was sacked amidst an increasingly bizarre series of allegations, leaving a once hopeful club on its knees. 39 Days of Gazza tells the story of Paul Gascoigne’s tragicomic reign as manager of Kettering Town, and how its disintegration impacted on so many people’s lives – not least his own.

Steve Pitts was group sports editor of Northamptonshire Newspapers during Gascoigne’s time at Kettering Town. He was uniquely placed to record the rapid turnaround of events, and builds the story with revealing contributions from many contacts involved in the club.

I simply couldn’t warm to this book.  The first few chapters contained too many factual errors for my liking (“Here was an England legend who had played for some of Europe’s top clubs” – Middlesborough? Everton? Spurs?  Lazio? or Rangers?? “Mark and I were big football fans with vivid memories of the excitement Gascoigne had whipped up at World Cups” – he only played in one! and “he wanted to be asked about his goal in Italia 90″ – he didn’t score one there!) and it seemed like a Gazza love in.  The story repeats itself in so many ways, and the focus on the team rather than Gascoigne AFTER he leaves defeats the object of the story.  It would have been a much better read as a syncronous diary of events rather than skipping from one event to another.  It is a shame that neither Ladak (The Kettering Chairman who brought Gascoigne in) or Paul himself were able to contribute to the book, giving it a feeling in some places of hearsay.

Sorry Steve, a 2.5 out of 5 from us on this one. The book can be purchased from 39 Days of Gazza

A Different Corner – Richard Brentnall
Fed up by life in a country losing its soul, sorely disenchanted by its football, and uncluttered by any ties other than his beloved club whose season ticket he still retains, Richard Brentnall took a plunge in March 2007, leaving England for southern Spain. Embracing a new culture within this fresh, expansive lease of life, he held a particular hope: to be enabled to feel something different deep inside that would resuscitate his lifelong love of the game.

Brentnall hoped this different corner would provide match day experiences to warm the cockles of his heart again and provide a scene whereby ambition could still genuinely be chased. His exploration took him the length and breadth of Spain – from Almeria to the Basque Country, to Galicia to find out how Compostela’s fans dealt with their team’s spectacular plummet from the top flight to the regional leagues, from Seville to the Bernabeu, to Huelva to see where it all began.

Don’t be fooled into thinking this is a travelogue type of book.  Brentnall goes into social and historical detail about the places he visits which may not be to somes liking.  However, he has certainly done his research on some places that rarely make it onto the map, such as Huelva and its growth through the prosperity of the Rio Tinto company.  It is a bit short in length, at 180 odd pages, but is comprehensive in its nature of the places he visits.  It would have been nice to see a few more little places such as Numancia or Valladolid but that may be for a follow up.  The one let down is the quality of the pictures used in the book that are low resolution and give an amateur feel to it.  Faced with a similar problem in my latest book, A Passport to Football, I decided to omit them altogether.

A 3.5 out of 5 from the review team here though.  The book can be purchased from Amazon.co.uk by clicking A Different Corner: Exploring Spanish Football

The following piece was written for the outstanding In Bed With Maradona last year

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 five books.

The Bromley Boys – Dave Roberts (Read our interview with Dave here)
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 (Read our interview with Charlie here)
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.

The Miracle of Castel di Sangro – Joe McGinnis
Take an American writer with little knowledge of “soccer” and stick him in a small village (population 5,500) in the middle of  Abruzzo in Italy and ask him to write about the local team.  That is the basic summary of this excellent book, published in 1999 as McGinnis follows the team and the village in their first ever season in Serie B in Italy.  Castel di Sangro had somehow defied all of the odds to make it to Serie C in the first place, but then to win the playoffs and to make it into the second tier of Italian football was, as the book title suggest, a miracle.  McGinnis is given full access to the team, the management and the fans as he tells the tale of the historic season which saw them play clubs such as Palermo, Genoa, Torino and Bari.  He also recounts the difficult times as two of the team are killed in a car crash and another is imprisoned on drugs charges.  And just when you all believe in miracles he reveals at the end some evidence that it all could have been fixed.  Now there’s a surprise.

Broken Dreams – Tom Bowers
Vanity, greed and corruption at the heart of our beautiful game?  Surely not.  We all know its true, we all know that dodgy deals go on but few seem prepared to break the taboo and name names and provide some hard facts.  Bowers book, first published in 2003 certainly opens your eyes on some of the household names today and what their pasts reveal.  Ken Bates, Harry Redknapp and Terry Venables will be glad this book has faded from public view now after it exposed a few things they didn’t want people to know.  The chapter on Bates, and essentially how he made his money from construction projects in the West Indies is fascinating, especially in a day when the FA’s “Fit and proper persons test” is apparently so rigorously enforced for club owners.    All of the issues that Bower highlights in his book are still with us today, which gives you the impression that if we knew all of this seven years ago why hasn’t someone done anything about it?  Spurs fans – buy a copy and just read the chapter on Redknapp and then pour yourself a large brandy because you know what is coming down the line.

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 five 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!