Product Description

Through 1996 and 1997 bestselling author Joe Mc Ginniss followed the Italian football season from Castel di Sangro, a small town nestled in the Abruzzi region of Italy. The motley crew that comprised the di Sangro soccer team in the early 90s masked an unparalleled prowess for playing soccer. This is the story of a team and a town with no aspirations, just a passion for the game, and how that passion allowed this team to rise to the top of the professional Italian soccer league. With the lust for life of Robert Crichton's THE SECRET OF SANTA VITTORIA and the sporting dreams of modern movie classic FIELDS OF DREAMS, THE MIRACLE OF CASTEL DI SANGRO is an ebullient story of how a two-hour game transformed a dot on the map into a place of magic, miracles and wonder.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #55976 in Books
• Published on: 2000-08-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

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

McGinnis is a rare bird, an American who likes football (please note, not soccer). As one who has recently had his eyes opened to the beautiful game he writes with the newly converted (if not always the accuracy) as he follows Castel Di Sangro, a tiny football team to the heights of SerieB (the second division) in Italy. This is a fantastic achievement, even more so because of the strange characters populating the club. The chairman is an inveterate womaniser, a player and his wife are imprisoned for possession of cocaine, two players die in a car crash and a referee is lynched. It's an incredible tale, well told (despite one or two stylistic irritations) which reads like fiction but is a genuine football romance. (Kirkus UK)

This venture into the murky waters of Italian soccer begins as a radical departure for the best-selling journalist McGinnis (The Last Brother, not reviewed, etc.), known more for his true crime volumes than his sports reporting. Over the first few chapters McGinniss explains how he became enamored of the world's most popular sport after watching the 1994 World Cup, which took place in the US. He pursued his newfound love to one of the hotbeds of football (to give it its proper name) mania, Italy. There he stumbled across an enchanting true-to-life fairy tale, the story of a beleaguered minor-league team from Castel di Sangro, a tiny mountain town in the gut-wrenchingly poor Abruzzo region, a team that had managed to climb up the ladder of soccer success. McGinniss resolved to spend the entire season with the Castel di Sangro team to see if they would survive a year in Serie B representing the smallest municipality to ever send a team that high in Italian football. At first, this seems unlikely and even unpromising material for McGinniss, but as he develops emotional ties to the individual players, the wacky coach who calls himself "a bulldozer," and the somewhat sinister figures who run the team, the book takes on a certain delightful momentum. Gradually, readers will come to care for and admire these young men with the same intensity as the author. Regrettably, it all turns sour at the end - for reasons having nothing to do with the outcome of their season's efforts - in ways that recapitulate the ending of McGinniss's relationship with other subjects, notably Jeffrey Macdonald, whom he wrote about in Fatal Vision. Too often, the author makes himself the center of his story; but he is too good a reporter not to convey some of what makes the sport and the people around it so compelling. Up to the last 40 pages, an entertaining and often moving read. (Kirkus Reviews)

SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
* 'A gripping and engaging tale'

FourFourTwo magazine
* 'The most essential football book other than FEVER PITCH and THE GLORY GAME'

Customer Reviews

Bellisimo
This is a book for anyone who has lost faith in the ability of football to amaze you. It is a wonderful account of joy, pain, scorn, fear, humiliation, anger, corruption and all the other things we love about football. Just read it and enjoy. Se molto buono!

Gripping and shocking
This unique bit of sports journalism follows the fortunes of a tiny Italian town whose heroic football team pull-off a remarkable promotion into Serie B. McGinniss--an American with little prior knowledge of football and even less understanding of Italian--chose to live in Castel di Sangro for more than a year while the team played out its story, which he writes-up in beautiful warm, honest prose as he becomes incredibly close to the club, the players and their families - which serves to make the final chapter a true gut-wrenching shock...

Bella!
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.