Product Description

When the first edition of The Glory Game was published in 1972, it was instantly hailed as the most insightful book about the life of a football club ever published. Hunter Davies was, and still is, the only author ever to be allowed into the inner sanctum of a top-level football team (Tottenham Hotspur) and his pen spared nothing and no one. 'His accuracy is sufficiently uncanny to be embarrassing,' wrote Bob Wilson in the New Statesman. 'Brilliant, vicious, unmerciful,' wrote The Sun. Davies spent a whole season with the team, training with them, visiting the players' homes and witnessing the dressing-room confrontations. In the modern era of painstaking media management and tight security, no sportswriter will ever again be granted such unprecedented access. While some features of the game have changed beyond all recognition - notably the all-consuming role that money now plays - inside every club the dramas and tensions revealed by Davies remain, making the book a timeless classic and securing its position as one of the best books about football ever written.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #35173 in Books
• Published on: 2000-01-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 376 pages

Customer Reviews

glorious in it's sideburned depiction
this book perfectly encapsulates spurs, and more widely, seventies football. tottenham hotspur were (and still are) a glamorous, charismatic club who attract a lot of media attention , both positive and negative - and this book is a fascinating insight into the runnings of a first division team from the manager, the players and all the backroom staff - no physios then of course, but hard trainers who told you to 'run off' that cartilage tear! the depictions of such luminaries as jimmy greaves, alan gilzean and the mercurial bill nicholson are exact - leaving no stone unturned. if somebody is blunt and impolite, even downright rude, it is stated in it's liniment-tainted way. this book is basically how it was!
my favourite passage covers the away european cupwinners cup tie in foreign climes. drawn away to a french side, bill lambasts the team at halftime due to their lack of application - and they promptly go out in the second half and proceed to gain a 0-0 draw, with barely any more effort. good result in hindsight, but that is not enough for bill - and he hammers that home to the players in typical unforgiving style.
a warts n all depiction of the way football was before the huge injection of cash and the new found interest in the premier league. definitely worth a read!

A book that spawned a new type of football writing
Don't let the fact that this book follows the 1971/2 Tottenham Hotspur club put you off from reading it (even if you're a Gooner). The Glory Game was the first in-depth look at what goes on at a football club, both on the pitch and behind the scenes. The fact that it's Spurs is inconsequential - it could have been any First Division club. Davies' account is easy-to-read, the chapters seem to fly by, and I found myself excited to know what happen next in Spurs' season, even though it took place 30 years ago! This is the standard that other season diaries of clubs should be measured against - sadly, most fall well short.

Honest Reporting of a classic period
A book that belongs in every football fans library, this master piece was published before any of the other journalist style accounts of the game filled your screen. Honest and critical appraisal of an average season in the early seventies before things started to go wrong for Nicholson. Younger readers might be forgiven for wondering why Spurs were the subject of the book. At the time of writing Spurs were regarded as the "Manchester Utd of the south" and the media eye was as firmly on them as it is on Chelsea and Arsenal today. The book follows the club thoughout the domestic and foreign season and covers every aspect of daily club life and every personality from staff through fan. I still feel the author is condesending at times and I understand the club was not thrilled at the time with the book, but credit to them for opening their doors and exerting no editorial control. Imagine getting similar access for an expose at any premiership club today. In short a must read for every Spurs fan and also every intellegent football devotee out there. Like the authors namesake wearing the club shirt today, Davies' book has a lot of style.