Customer Reviews

The Beautiful Game?: Searching for the Soul of Football

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a 'must have' book for any serious fan of the game but be warned, it may leave you with a nasty taste in your mouth and feeling very cynical about 'the beautiful game'!

Well written and a good read.Gives a good insight into the machinations of football,may possibly colour ones view of the game but it shouldn't stop you reading it.

The seller sent the book super quick and it was in excellent condition. The book itself is clearly intelligently written and there are a variety of topics covered relating to major issues in football such as the Hillsborough disaster and clubs not managing their finances correctly. It is certainly worth reading, though it couldn't really be classed as a light read, in fairness. On a personal note I simply didn't like the opening couple of chapters as they were about Arsenal and I am a Tottenham supporter. This may be one of those cases where if I wasn't a Spurs fan I would probably have loved the book - it's just one of those things really. I read a lot of sports books, mostly football, so I can appreciate the quality of the book and the quality of the research, and for this reason it is worth a read.

A great book from the best football industry writer there is. Not exactly uplifting or optimisitic, but then, why should it be? A really strong piece of writing.

The fact that David Conn's book, even in its revised edition, is some five years old now, doesn't make his assessment of modern football out of date so much as it does ever more painful. That the sport was in such denial by the mid-2000s only makes you wonder - actually what am I talking about, we know!! - how much trouble the game is in today. There are some corners of football culture that don't particularly like the naysayers; stop trashing the game, they say, look how exciting it all is, see how much enjoyment the fans get out of it and how much you can see and talk about football today; online, in the papers, and, oh yes on Sky for an average of £50 per month. At the end of a season where £50m buys you one goal in the second half of the year from your expensive striker (yes, we're talking about you Torres), where the ruling body of global football makes MPs in this country look like paragons of virtue, and where the champions of this so-called Premier League don't allow peaceful protest at their celebrations against the eye-poppingly ridiculous amount of debt that the club is actually in thanks solely to its owners, saying the game needs a re-think is a bit like saying The Only Way is Essex is comparable television to Our Friends in the North!! From top to bottom, Conn deconstructs the myths, scandals and downright lunacy that has plagued so many corners of the professional game from at least the 1970s. Amid salutatory and sometimes affecting conversations with the few owners/executives/chancers who admitted to getting it wrong, one recurring fact in the book rings out as a sorry indictment on it all: amid the creditors usually stacking up at football clubs when it all goes wrong,a smallish bill at each is a rolling metaphor for Conn. Nobody ever pays the St John Ambulance! A charity! Who turn up for the sake of fans and their clubs to look after people on a Saturday afternoon! This week, in June 2011, a number of clubs have got together to promote a new initiative at Burnley where a set of facilities will provide classroom space to study and hand out new degrees for football management/administration, thus supposedly encouraging the executives of tomorrow to get involved in the game. And run it better? Differently? With transparency? One can only despair at the hypocritical irony of it all! David Conn's work is nothing less than a gifted and sane voice in a world (especially in journalism where he is based) that has lost its soul and mind to money, greed, and nonsense. A still newer edition of this book is not just recommended and desired, it is essential if the game so many of us love, is not to disintegrate before our eyes.

this is an amazing book. i am a follower of all the football league and the premiership, and reading this book made me feel proud to follow the lower leagues. it writes about less glamarous clubs and their fans who fight to keep them in existence after glory-hunting fans from the area avoiding them and greedy chairman runing the clubs, and i should know how that feels as i am a leeds fan! i advise anyone to read this if they only support the teams who win the premiership and only watch the premiership and champions league, to show what the state of football is now like, because of clubs like chelsea, manchester utd etc. i guarentee that, in say 20 years the premiership will no longer be here because of greed and money in the game, after all who in the 70's thought the first division (now-premiership) would be ruined. football was once about pride, passion, now its about money, greed and foreigners. i guarentee if u only follow premiership and champions league (as evry1 in my school does) and u read this your views will soon chnage. if u call yourself a real football fan, you MUST read this.

Hmm - Was a Xmas present a year ago, so not sure how I should rate it....Three more words required

After reading all the rave reviews about this book ('A brilliant book', a quite 'magnificent book'), and being a frustrated and disillusioned Arsenal and England fan, I just HAD to have this book. I started reading it with an excited glee. At last, I thought, here was someone saying what I have been feeling about football for a long while now. At last, someone was going to tell me where the soul of modern football has gone, or at least how it was lost. But it didn't happen. I tried really hard to love this book, as everybody else seems to, but I just couldn't help feeling hugely disappointed. Yes, it is full of interesting facts and anecdotes about the beautiful game I once worshipped and all the shady deals and crimes that have been committed in its name. Yes, it kind of says a lot about the history of modern football, and yet, at the same time, it says nothing much that we didn't already know, and left me feeling bored and frustrated. Maybe my expectations were too high? I found myself skipping long, drawn-out sections of the book, trying to find the relevant bits, but I couldn't find them. I also found myself getting confused. I thought that football had been ruined recently by big money, vain players, etc.? But a lot of the facts in the book go back a hundred years or more; to the origins of modern football in the UK itself. So, is the book saying football has always been crooked? It seems to be saying that. And yet, if that is the case, why wasn't I disillusioned long ago? Why are so many fans only now turning their backs on the 'beautiful game'? Nevertheless, the book is well-written in its own way (though how anyone can call it a 'thriller' is beyong me!) and well-researched, so I would give it at least two stars. I look forward to all comments here about how I've missed the 'point' of the book, and I don't mean that sarcastically.