Product Description

'Football matters, as poetry does to some people and alcohol does to others...Football is inherent in the people...There is more eccentricity in deliberately disregarding it than in devoting a life to it. The way we play the game, organise it and reward it reflects the kind of community we are' Written just two years after England's '66 triumph when the national game was at its zenith, Arthur Hopcraft's The Football Man is repeatedly quoted as the best book ever written about the sport. This definitive, magisterial study of football and society is a snapshot of a defining era in sporting history; changes and decisions were made in the sixties that would create the game we know today. For many who are disenchanted with the modern game - the grip of businesses and corporations, the dominance of advertising, the extortionate ticket prices and inaccessible matches, the fickleness of teenage millionaires - The Football Man takes the reader back to the heart and soul of the national game when pitches were muddy and the players were footballers not 'brands'. This is a long awaited reissue of the classic football 'bible'.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #227327 in Books
• Published on: 2006-01-26
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Review
Hopcraft's The Football Man remains the best book on the game' Observer 'Masterpiece among sports books' Guardian 'It remains one of my favourite football reads' Graham Taylor

Observer
Hopcraft's The Football Man remains the best book on the game

Graham Taylor
It remains one of my favourite reads

Customer Reviews

The Only Football Bible
I have only read a few excerpts from this book when Graham Taylor mentioned it in his column in Daily Telegraph. I then searched the web for more info & many Man Utd fans described one of the chapters from that book "The Death of Duncan Edwards". It was the most moving account of Edwards, which had the essence of what we all & England missed following the tragic air-crash. Hopcraft's most famous lines"The way we play the game, organise it & reward it, reflects the kind of community we are."
I would love to have this book.

A very dated classic
When this book came out is was accepted to be possibly the best book ever written about football up to that time. Unfortunately that was 40 years ago and I time as not been kind to it.
Read today Football Man seems outrageously dated; football in the UK as changed so much in the ensuing years that you could be forgiven for thinking that you were reading about a totally different game altogether, which, you could argue, you are.
Football Man is best read as a snapshot of football in the sixties. There are some interesting pieces - George Best as a young man, already showing signs of entering into a lifestyle of booze and blondes which would ultimately bring about his too early death; the first footsteps into football chairmanship of Ken Bates at Oldham, then in his late thirties; the referee Maurice Fussey, reminding you of the days of the character ref - Roger Kirkpatrick, Jack Taylor, Gordon Hill etc.
This is an interesting read then, but only if you were a fan back in the 60's.

A Classic
Written some forty years ago, but still one of the best insights into football ever written. The book is worth reading for the introductory chapters alone in which the author captures the appeal of the game and its place in the culture of society - eg "It (football) is not a phenomenon; it is an everyday matter. There is more eccentricity in deliberately disregarding it than in devoting a life to it. It has more significance to the national character than theatre has."
Further chapters follow on players, managers, supporters, referees and so forth. In these days of millionaire footballers the detail seems quaint and dated but the passion and love for the game does not. Highly recommended.