- Hardcover: 407 pages
- Publisher: Little, Brown & Company (26 Aug 1999)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0316644730
- ISBN-13: 978-0316644730
- Product Dimensions: 23.4 x 16.2 x 3.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (56 customer reviews)
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
310,136 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #62 in Books > Sports, Hobbies & Games > Football > European > European Leagues
- #96 in Books > Sports, Hobbies & Games > Football > Leagues
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Review
'This wonderful, compelling book seems destined to join the shortlist of football classics' INDEPENDENT 'A gripping and engaging tale' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 'The most essential football book other than FEVER PITCH and THE GLORY GAME' FOUR-FOUR-TWO MAGAZINE 'reads like good fiction.' OBSERVER 'the football book of 1999' INDEPENDENT 'the most bizarre, yet enchanting, football story ever to hit the bookshelves.' IRISH INDEPENDENT 'Joe McGinnis has written an extraordinary book.' WORLD SOCCER 'a fascinating read.' SPORT FIRST 'It's part travelogue, part intrigue, part romance, part grim reality, but always calcio. Absorbing.' DAILY TELEGRAPH
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
* 'A gripping and engaging tale'
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
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First Sentence
The day before I went back to Italy, I got a fax from a man named Giuseppe. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
The day before I went back to Italy, I got a fax from a man named Giuseppe. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The beautiful game?,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Miracle of Castel di Sangro (Paperback)
The first season spent in the dizzy heights of Serie B, in their entire history, by Castel Di Sangro is shared by American writer Joe McGinniss in this fascinating book.McGinniss spends the entire 1996/97 season in the small hamlet of Castel Di Sangro. It's calcio (football to you and me, maybe soccer to the author) club is at the very heart of this remarkable tale of survival. The author gets so close to the team though that the book is about far more than football. Lies, deception, scandal and tragedy all come to the fore whilst the footballing miracle unfolds. In fact, so much unfolds between September 1996 and May 1997, that you will not want to do anything else but read on. The book, by and large, seems to be written with the American audience in mind, which in actual fact helps the tale have small respites for avid football followers. The season is described chronologically, which again makes the story very readable. The only negative is that the author, despite by his own admission being new to the sport, seems to consider himself an expert in the game. Frequently he describes how he told the manager to do this or that, and seems genuinely surprised when the experienced Italian coach rebuffs his ideas. Overall, a fascinating tale of an almost surreal season for Castel Di Sangro. Joe McGinniss is welcomed so much into the heart of the community and club, that we find out a great deal about the activities of a small Italian football club, in this intelligently written story.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Bella!,
By Napolean (Manchester, England) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Miracle of Castel di Sangro (Paperback)
This is a fantastic read and literally has you sat on the edge of your seat trying to guess what will happen next. The first season of lowly Castel Di Sangro in Serie B of the Italian football league is a roller coaster ride and ends with a fantastic twist. The reviews of each league game are brilliantly written and really do have you screaming for the final whistle and a win for Castel.
The book goes into slightly too much detail about the basics of football at times but this obviously increases its target audience to those who don't know too much about the game. It really is a great read and a fascinating true story. The only blemish is the author who clearly knows little about European football and the passion which surrounds it. It is almost embarrassing at times to listen to his opinions and points of view as he is very often misguided and uninformed. Saying that, it adds a bit extra to the story as you get sucked into the politics and passion of Italian football.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
An anorak's guide to calcio.,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Miracle of Castel di Sangro (Hardcover)
God this book could have been good. There is a great story here and any writer with a real feeling for football could have delivered us a wonderful book. Mr McGinnis is not that writer.Rather than focussing on the morality tale which is this Serie B football club we really get is Mr McGinnis telling his Massachusetts chums about his discovery of this new thing called football. The book is really bout convincing us how much he loves football and how he knows so much about it. But time and again he shows that beyond dealing in facts he has no feel for this game and unfortunately this means he does this story an injustice. Look at the evidence. We don't have injury time we have overtime. He decorates his room with his collection of football scarves which he improbably brings all the way from the US to Italy. He tells a friend that Inter Milan will not be interested in a local player by listing their whole midfield contingent, reserves et al. He backs up his assessment of players by treating the subjective marks given to the players in the local papers as if they were objective scores. He even genuinely tries to convince the local manager to make a team change by showing him the results of a football software program. This might seem like nit picking but this type of thing permeates the book and then when he is lost on a point he relies on recourse to the 'spirit of calcio'. I just did not believe his assessment of what was going on around him because when he kept trying to reassure us that he did understand football he only proved the complete opposite and unfortunately you have to believe in Joe if you are going to be convinced by his book. I felt the same way reading this book as I do when a born again evangelist turns up on the doorstep; the story may have been a good one but the self righteous, self serving naivety of the story teller almost had me rooting for the bad guy.
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