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    I would recommend "Puskas On Puskas" for some gorgeous material on Hungary. Only £3.95 to buy on Kindle

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      New David Goldblatt book due soon, too. Along with Wilson I find his work really engaging.

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        Hello everyone,

        I have recently written a book about my team Huddersfield Town which charts what happened next for each and every player that has ever played a game for the club. Where Are They Now is a comprehensive guide to what happened next for all the favourites over the years and also the least favourite ones!!

        I know that this is probably a niche thing but I know that there’s a lot of football fans out there that collect football books and their collections are not necessarily limited to the team that they support.

        I thought I’d let you know of the book’s existence and if you’d like a copy the link is here; https://www.amazon.co.uk/Where-Are-T.../dp/1912027607

        Thanks for your time and if you manage to get a copy of the book, you won’t be disappointed!!

        LSM

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          Originally posted by Ray de Galles View Post
          I've not read this to review it as it's out today on ebook but it looks right up OTF's street :

          WCLDN
          Ah only just seen this. Thanks for sharing, RdG.

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            Originally posted by Uroš Predić View Post

            Ah only just seen this. Thanks for sharing, RdG.
            Congratulations on getting it out, Glen.

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              We've reduced the Kindle price of Things Can Only Get Better: Bury's mid-90s rise under Stan Ternent to £4.99 and The Forgotten Fifteen: How Bury triumphed in British football's worst year to just £1.99 for a week. Loads of five-star reviews on Amazon for each. Read them and realise just how much we all loved the club that Stewart and Steve destroyed. Cheers.
              Last edited by Giggler; 10-10-2019, 19:56.

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                Just finished "Recovering", the memoir of ex-Millwall and Ireland striker Richie Sadlier. Barely counts under the football books thread given how little there is about the game itself (not helped obviously by his curtailed playing career), but it's one of the best sports-related memoirs I've read in a while. I won't mention the salient points in case anyone who hasn't seen any reviews/coverage of its release is looking to read it without any spoilers, but suffice to say anyone familiar with Richie's warm and eloquent work on RTE, Second Captains, etc. will be quite shocked at what he's been through to get to the seemingly happy point in life he's at now.

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                  I'm trying to work out from Barney Ronay's Guardian review of David Goldblatt's The Age of Football, what it's really about - that is, what is the point, or what conclusions do we come to after 540 pages? Other than that it covers a lot of ground and is a tour de force for reasons not really specified.

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                    I fear my question was too challenging for OTF‘s greatest minds, so I‘ve downloaded the book to try and find out for myself. Am about to embark on a ‚football books of the year‘ round-up for my Soccer America column, so any recommendations for books published this year (either in hardback or paperback) are welcome. Bear in mind I‘m writing for a US audience, so more general themes preferred. ‚Scunthorpe United - The Old Showground Years‘ is probably not the kind of thing I’ll be writing about, although if that book existed I would definitely get it.

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                      Imp, I suggest this one because I'm aware of it and it's very much within your kettle of fish, but must also mention (or remind you, because I might have mentioned it on this thread already) that I am aware of it because I proofread it: Mensch by Jonathan Harding is one that you might (or might not) find interesting. Obviously if you do decide to include it then do mention if you're impressed with the quality of the spelling and the punctuation and that.

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                        Thanks, Sam - it's a fairly cheap download, so I'll try and take a look at it. I'm fucking ruthless on typos, though...

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                          Had a pile of books arrive from Pitch. Call me an old-fashioned stickler, but I find it really, really hard to get along with books that read like they were sent straight from the author's hard drive to the printer. At best there's someone with what they imagine to be a magic editor's wand who waves it briefly over the top of the manuscript.

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                            Originally posted by imp View Post
                            I fear my question was too challenging for OTF‘s greatest minds, so I‘ve downloaded the book to try and find out for myself. Am about to embark on a ‚football books of the year‘ round-up for my Soccer America column, so any recommendations for books published this year (either in hardback or paperback) are welcome. Bear in mind I‘m writing for a US audience, so more general themes preferred. ‚Scunthorpe United - The Old Showground Years‘ is probably not the kind of thing I’ll be writing about, although if that book existed I would definitely get it.
                            I read Zonal marking, which I thought was not bad (and will almost certainly be of interest to the Soccer America readership). Put it this way: it;s a very good book for a new fan and more longstanding fans will probably forgive some of the contrivances just to read a reasonably good narrative history of the last 25 years of football.

                            Also, Barefoot to Boots, a history of Indian football which was kind of interesting despite the league and cup structures being absolutely baffling (think Brazil in the 60s only much less organized). Probably not what you are looking for though.

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                              Next up from the Pitch pile is 'Stateside Soccer: The Definitive History of Soccer in the United States' by Tom Scholes. And look here, on page 144 there's a book quoted called Rock n Roll Soccer. Who wrote that, then? A guy called "Ian Plenderith". Really, never heard of him. Oh, hang on a minute...

                              Ha ha ha, of all the people to be reviewing this book. Bad luck, mate.

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                                Originally posted by imp View Post
                                Had a pile of books arrive from Pitch. Call me an old-fashioned stickler, but I find it really, really hard to get along with books that read like they were sent straight from the author's hard drive to the printer. At best there's someone with what they imagine to be a magic editor's wand who waves it briefly over the top of the manuscript.
                                I had four people look over mine per chapter and then go through it whole when I'd finished it because I couldn't afford an editor. I think mine hang together well.

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                                  Every published book should have at least two edits, ideally three - a structural edit, a style and content edit, and finally a proofreading edit. It doesn't matter who the author is, these edits are an absolute must. Otherwise, it's like going to a restaurant, ordering food, and then the waiter dumps the raw ingredients on the table and tells you, "Sorry, but the chef's not in tonight. Bon appetit!"

                                  Back to Goldblatt - Alan Tomlinson's review in the latest WSC doesn't tell me any more than Ronay's. Maybe the sheer scope of the book makes it impossible to sum it up in 500 words. In which case, don't try. Just tell me why this book is important and why I should read it. I'm on the third chapter, and it's a struggle. Not because the book's bad (it isn't), but because there's too much to get your head around, and you feel like you're being bombarded with a series of already known facts and events. You feel too like you have to read this book, and that's not a good motivation. That is, I'd feel guilty about giving up, but that's what I want to do because I know how many chapters of this are still to come. So despite its depth, it's all too much, and so depressing in its catalogue of corruption, political meddling, and death through oppression and stadium disasters that you start to wonder if you should not just give up on the book, but football too.

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                                    Originally posted by imp View Post
                                    I fear my question was too challenging for OTF‘s greatest minds, so I‘ve downloaded the book to try and find out for myself. Am about to embark on a ‚football books of the year‘ round-up for my Soccer America column, so any recommendations for books published this year (either in hardback or paperback) are welcome. Bear in mind I‘m writing for a US audience, so more general themes preferred. ‚Scunthorpe United - The Old Showground Years‘ is probably not the kind of thing I’ll be writing about, although if that book existed I would definitely get it.
                                    have you read Grounds for Divorce by Mel Huckridge?

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                                      Would love to, but unfortunately it's not a 2019 publication. Unless there's a Legacy Edition in the pipeline.

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                                        Here's what I had published at Soccer America (which is largely behind a paywall) a couple of weeks ago on the Goldblatt /Wilson books:

                                        The Age of Football: The Global Game in the Twenty-first Century by David Goldblatt (Macmillan)
                                        The Names Heard Long Ago: How the Golden Age of Hungarian Football Shaped the Modern Game by Jonathan Wilson (Blink)

                                        Britain's most prolific and widely read football authors, David Goldblatt and Jonathon Wilson, have reached the stage where it has apparently become difficult to offer an objective assessment of their books. Reviews will point to their past works as evidence of quality, while summarizing the latest in the form of an extended jacket blurb. In the incestuous circles of soccer journalism, however, critics often seem too tentative to answer the most important questions: is this book any good? And if so, is it good enough to make it worth reading?

                                        Goldblatt's The Age of Football is not quite such an epic work as his shelf-straining history of soccer The Ball is Round. Still, it's long enough, straddling the five continents to offer an overview of soccer's health. The overwhelming conclusion: the state of our game is not good. Corruption, poor administration, avarice and death blight these pages from cover to cover, with only the odd scrap of optimism thrown in to stop the reader closing the book and taking up embroidery instead.

                                        In terms of its scope, The Age of Football is a roller-coaster ride around a theme park of greed and depravity, and is a comprehensive catalogue of the scandals and stadium disasters of the past 50 years. I can only recommend it as a work of reference, because unless you've been watching nothing but Real Madrid from the safety of a tint-glassed executive box for the past few decades, there is little new information in this book. There are no author-sourced interviews, and little research beyond the archives of readily available media and the internet. Reading it is like being hit over the head with a rhetorical hammer, and finishing the book is like walking out of the stadium after a 5-0 defeat - your depression may only be tempered by relief that it's all over.

                                        Goldblatt also has the machinated habit of backing up any point with a quote in the form of, "As [insert name] once said, [insert quote]." Over and again. Add to this the sporadic inaccuracies (there never was a team in Wales called Trans Network Solutions) and the endless, needling subjective asides ("Even Celtic, in a good year like 2016... were at best a strong Championship club". Really? How do you measure something like that?), and you wonder why Goldblatt's books are subject to eulogy. He writes in a cogent, attacking style, but maintaining that pace over several hundred pages is like sprinting a marathon. It's not long before exhaustion kicks in.

                                        Nonetheless, if you want a book to goad you into a state of revolutionary anger (and there's nothing wrong with that), then The Age of Football could meet your needs. If you want to read a soccer book in a state of fascinated pleasure, then you might prefer Wilson's The Names Heard Long Ago.

                                        Where Wilson tops Goldblatt is in terms of readability and research. I believe that the two are connected. When Wilson scours the archives to unearth interviews or talks to anyone still connected with the Hungarian soccer scene of the early twentieth century, it's the quotes and anecdotes that bring his material to life. That's no mean feat when you're covering teams and personalities that most of your readership might, at best, be only vaguely aware of.

                                        So while reading about the players and coaches who gave Hungary such a key role in the formative years of soccer history, it's not important to retain any knowledge of how many titles Ujpest Dozsa won in the 1920s. What remains is the disparity of peripatetic Magyars who moved around Europe and the world, their chaotic lives and seesaw careers more often than not shaped by the political and economic situation both at home and abroad. The middle section of the book, covering the period before, during and after the Second World War, is a profoundly affecting testament to the truth that sport may be important but, like all other aspects of mundane existence, it can be rapidly subsumed by the insanity of terror, violence and war. Players and their families you've come to love in the first section of the book disappear, last seen on trains destined for Nazi death camps.

                                        The book lacks a linear narrative due to the nature of its material, and to contrive one would have been a dishonest reflection of the fragmented lives it depicts. Had it covered just one team, or even one person - pioneering English coach Jimmy Hogan, say, or the utility player György Orth, labeled by Hogan as "the most versatile, greatest and most intelligent player I have ever seen" - then the publisher would have had had an easier hook to sell it on. The strength of Wilson's approach is that it defies the demands of marketing for a simple selling-point. His books are so much the richer for it, and provide an engrossing read for all who are entranced not just by soccer's history, but also by the immersion of its characters into their social and political context. Massively recommended.

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                                          I've read neither book but I know which I'll be reading. Excellent reviews and thanks for sharing Imp.

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                                            Excellent review of two very impressive books. Agree with everything Imp says - Goldblatt can be intense whereas Wilson just wants to spread the joy - but I do think they are worth the effort. Would concur also that Goldblatt's prognosis of the game's present and future state is so bleak that it makes you want to, you know, do something. If it can stir someone with my current levels of antipathy towards the elite strata of football into meaningful engagement then I guess it's done a job.
                                            Last edited by Tony C; 19-12-2019, 17:33.

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                                              Thank you, AE and Tony. I've just finished Andy Woodward's 'Position of Trust'. I'll post the review here in a few weeks. It's a crushing but absolutely necessary read, and easily the best football book of 2019. Props to our own Giggler for his cameo appearance - a brief but very important role in Woodward's brave public revelation of the abuse he suffered.

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                                                That must have been a difficult read, who was the co or ghost writer?

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                                                  "With Tom Watt" in very small letters on the inside, but not on the cover. He's also mentioned in the acknowledgments.

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                                                    Originally posted by imp View Post
                                                    Thank you, AE and Tony. I've just finished Andy Woodward's 'Position of Trust'. I'll post the review here in a few weeks. It's a crushing but absolutely necessary read, and easily the best football book of 2019. Props to our own Giggler for his cameo appearance - a brief but very important role in Woodward's brave public revelation of the abuse he suffered.
                                                    Cheers imp.

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