His memoir Fever Pitch is one of the finest things written about soccer fandom, and Hornby’s unchallenging, extremely likeable style appeals to a broad range of people regardless of the level of their obsession. Soccer is lucky to have a writer like Nick Hornby in its corner.
Best tactical soccer books full#
For a fine example of his work, see his piece on soccer and World War I in which he draws out the context of a photograph and then expands on its themes, pulling together various disparate facts and images to create a remarkably cohesive article full of fascinating detail and beautiful prose. He writes about a wide range of subjects for Grantland, and soccer features heavily in his output. Reading it is hard work, but as is the case with many a weighty tome by an ambitious writer, it is a rewarding experience.īrian Phillips is an excellent writer capable of mingling vivid poetic imagery with meticulously researched factual detail. Written in a repetitive, sometimes hypnotic style, it is more an epic poem than a conventional novel, detailing every game, every player, every goal overseen by Shankly over the course of his 15-year Liverpool tenure. In it, Peace devotes roughly 750 pages to the imagined internal thoughts of the late great Liverpool manager Bill Shankly over the course of his career and subsequent retirement. His most well-known work, The Damned United, is a dark and comical novel that has reached a wide audience thanks to a film adaptation and a growing cult following, but his most singular and striking achievement as a writer is perhaps his latest novel, Red or Dead. David Peaceĭavid Peace is a man of singular vision and one of the most unusual living soccer writers. Some of it will move you, some of it will fascinate you, some of it will make you laugh out loud, and much of it will make you see the game in a new light.īelow are 15 of the best writers currently plying their trade with soccer publications of one form or another.
From bitingly humorous blog posts to long form essays and meticulously researched books, there is a wide range of high quality writing out there about the beautiful game. We are arguably in a golden age of soccer writing.
Best tactical soccer books series#
Gone are the days when writing about soccer simply involved reporting on the score of a match and describing its key moments with a series of rote, overused phrases.