|
The Beautiful Game?: Searching the Soul of Football
|
| List Price: | £9.99 |
| Price: | £6.96 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Delivery on orders over £5. Details |
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
Dispatched from and sold by Amazon.co.uk
21 new or used available from £2.52
Average customer review:
Product Description
Once, football proudly claimed to stand for passion, community, honour, even beauty. Today, football is about money. Its richest club, Manchester United, earned GBP175 million last year; yet since 1992 thirty-six of the Football League's seventy-two clubs have been insolvent. The game is in danger of losing its lifeblood - and its soul. David Conn, the game's most respected investigative journalist, sets out on a journey through the heart of our national game, exploring how the sport has failed - and who is to blame. Travelling to football's every outpost, Conn interviews players, managers, chairmen and fans, building up a picture of a game mired in crisis. At its heart, football is a game deeply loved by millions. This is a book for those who keep the faith, who believe that the sport itself, stripped of the greed and self-interest blighting its organisation, still has values, and can still be beautiful.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #14354 in Books
- Published on: 2005-08-04
- Original language: English
- Binding: Paperback
- 432 pages
Editorial Reviews
Review
This is a quite magnificent book- With a splendid eye for important detail and a determination to ask difficult questions, Conn reminds us of what is important- Conn's greatest feat in a book that is well researched and written with searing honesty is to show the game's magnificent resilience', David Wash, The Sunday Times .'For a fascinating insight into the causes, and the creators, of the game's ills this is a superbly told tale', Peter Corrigan, Independent .'An important book', The Times .'A thoroughly researched, well-crafted dissection of the modern game', Independent .'This is a must-read for all who love football', Delia Smith, .'An intelligent and passionate work about the business of football from Highbury to Glossop that is as skilfully written and structured as any thriller; a worthy book without a hint of worthiness about it', When Saturday Comes .'Hard-hitting- but the added value of The Beautiful Game lies rather in the effort to understand what is happening to the minnows, not the sharks. The stories he tells are scandalous, touching, and encouraging, at the same time', The Times
From the Publisher
A powerful, passionate exploration of a game in turmoil
About the Author
David Conn is football's foremost investigative journalist. He has a weekly column in the Independent, and is a frequent contributor to Radio 5. He is the author of The Football Business (Mainstream, 1997).
Customer Reviews
fascinating but depressing
I found this book fascinating but mightily depressing at the same time. All the usual issues are covered here -- overblown wages in the premier league, chairmen ripping off their clubs, the FA suits' indifference for the health of the real game, the devotion of the fans in the smaller clubs such as York City, Bury and AFC Wimbledon, the atrocities that were Valley Parade and Hillsborough and the incompetence of many of those (in)directly responsible. If you love football you simply have to read this.
Essential and compelling
Brilliant, emotional exposure of how football has evolved, been destroyed and the impact this has on the lives of the millions who play and love it from the boardrooms of Highbury to the wastelands of Salfords parks. Not only does it give a huge amount of insight into football and its mismanagement but gives a ray of hope in both the authors words and the sheer bloodymindedness of supporters. Clearly the author loves and understands the game far better than those who have mismanaged it from the top. Amazing book, should be the Blueprint for football and read by all who have any interest in the game
A Brilliant Book
Conn's account of modern day football, and the sinister forces controlling the game, makes for a wonderful read.
Too often books on football ignore the trials and tribulations of lower league clubs. That is not a charge that can be levelled at Conn. His chapters on Wimbledon, York, Crewe, Bury, Notts County and others are magnificent accounts of the enthusiasm, passion and fervour of football supporters. In the same chapters there are often desperate tales of the greed of chairmen and directors of these same clubs.
Conn reminds the reader how fans are told that football is now a business, and as a result, has to be viewed in different terms from the game that many supporters grew to love. However, Conn responds with the argument that if football is now a business, then why are people who have continually run their business into the ground been rewarded with well paid jobs.
As a Liverpool supporter I recoommend the book. It's especially recommended to those supporters who perhaps are unsympathetic to the demands of the Hillsborough families. If you're in any way unsure about what happened on April 15th 1989, please read the book. Conn is not a Liverpool supporter. He's not a spokesperson for Liverpool or the bereaved families - he's just a journalist who has restored this reviewer's faith in football writers - and quite possibly football in general.
