World Cup books

I tweeted last week about my lack of enthusiasm for the 2022 World Cup compared to previous iterations of the tournament and the responses I got made it pretty clear lots of you guys will be feeling a bit ‘blah’ about it too. Between the horrific treatment of workers, the corruption, and the winter timing it just feels off. So… I figure it’s a good time to seek out some World Cup related books and rekindle that joy! What follows is a fairly unstructured list of World Cups worth seeking out.

I hope to put out my list of sports books coming next year within the next week or two. It’s always my most popular post each year so keep an eye out for that. Happy reading!

Tournament specific books

We all have a favourite World Cup. Usually you were 10 years old or your country did really well (or both). Either way, why not relive it with a great book on the tournament (or a specific team at the tournament) and a YouTube deep dive. Here are some books on individual World Cups that are worth checking out.

1950 – The Game of Their Lives: The Untold Story of the World Cups Biggest Upset by Geoffrey Douglas. The story of the ragtag group of players on the US team that shocked the world by beating England at the 1950 World Cup. Interesting read.

1954 – While not specifically on that tournament, the best material on the remarkable German victory is in Uli Hesse’s superlative Tor! The Story of German Football. An updated version of this wonderful book was published this year by Polaris Press.

1958 – Spirit of ‘58: The incredible untold story of Northern Ireland’s greatest football team by Evan Marshall (pub. 2016). Really enjoyable team about the team led by Danny Blanchflower and includes interviews with interviews with all the surviving players.

1962 – While not specifically about the tournament, it’s a handy way for me to recommend Garrincha: the triumph and tragedy of Brazilian’s forgotten footballing hero by Ruy Castro & translated by Andrew Downie (pub. 2004). One of the best football biographies ever and gives good insight on the 58 and 62 World Cup winning Brazilian teams.

1966 – Surprisingly, there isn’t a definitive book on the 1966 World Cup or maybe as an Irishman I just couldn’t bring myself to read too much about England winning it! A lot of the players have written autobiographies that cover this of course, and Bobby Charlton wrote a book specifically about the tournament.

1970 – The Greatest Show on Earth: The Inside Story of the Legendary 1970 World Cup by Andrew Downie (pub. 2021). This is a fantastic history of arguably the greatest team ever to play in a World Cup. Downie, author of the excellent Dr. Socrates book, uses new interviews and deep research to tell the story of the tournament in compelling detail. Really enjoyable book.

1974 – Beautiful Bridesmaids Dressed in Oranje: The Unfulfilled Glory of Dutch Football by Gary Thacker (pub 2021). A really enjoyable look at the great Dutch teams who lost the finals in both 1974 and 1978.

1978 – Blood on the Crossbar: The Dictatorship’s World Cup by Rhys Richards. The story of Argentina’s hosting of the 1978 World Cup while ruled by a military dictatorship and the protests that accompanied. Pretty relevant this year given this year’s host. On my reading list for the next few books but have heard great things.

1982 – 1982 Brazil: The Glorious Failure by Stuart Horsfield. The story the of the (arguably) best side not to win the World Cup. The book traces the development of the team from the 1970 winning team through Pele’s retirement and the preparations for the tournament. As much as it is about the 1982 Brazil team though, it’s also very much about the author’s personal experience of watching them as a young lad. Horsfield captures the magic, the awe, the sheer giddiness of the World Cup seen through a young fan’s eyes.

1982 – We Made Them Angry: Scotland at the World Cup Spain 1982 by Tom Brogan. Scotland’s third time in a row qualifying for a World Cup – but it still didn’t go very well!

1982 – Out of the Shadows: The Story of the 1982 England World Cup Team by Gary Jordan. An in-depth look at England’s return to the tournament after shockingly missing out on the 1974 and 1978 tournaments.

1986 – In the Heat of the Midday Sun: The Indelible Story of the 1986 World Cup by Steven Scragg. This is on my reading list for the next few weeks. Scragg’s other books on European Club competitions are great so I’ve no hesitation recommending this one without having yet read it.

1986 – Touched By God: How We Won the Mexico 86 World Cup by Diego Maradona (pub 2017). Reads like a 3 or 4 hour long stream of Maradona’s consciousness as if someone asked him an open-ended question about the 1986 World Cup. Half the book is score settling with former Argentina coach Bilardo and former captain Daniel Passeralla – with a little bit of spite left over for ‘that heartless turkey’ Platini.

1990 – Days of Heaven: Italia 90 and the Charlton Years by Declan Lynch (pub 2010). Captures so much of what it means to be an Ireland fan – the dread, the worry, the hope and the brief unbelievable moments of joy. Lynch also captures the Ole Ole nature of away trips where its as much about the journey and the story as it is the football – although he is probably more critical of such jollies than I am.

1990 – All Played Out: The Full Story of Italia ’90 by Pete Davies. Davies spent 9 months with the England team and gives a first hand-account of the tournament. A sensational book.

1990 – World in Motion: The Inside Story of Italia ‘90 The Tournament that Changed Football by Simon Hart. It zooms in on interesting aspects and stories form the tournament to explore the full global impact of the 1990 World Cup.

1990 – New Kids in the World Cup: The Totally Late ‘80s and Early 90s Tale of the the Team that changed American Soccer Forever by Adam Elder. Recently published book looking a the USA’s team in 1990. Really detailed and enjoyable read.

1994 – USA 94: The World Cup that Changed the Game by Matthew Evans (pub. 2022). I found this book to be a very enjoyable nostalgia trip. It was a tournament of great number 10’s – Baggio, Hagi, Stoichkov, Brolin – of great defenders – McGrath, Baresi, Maldini – and of great goals. Its key moments are burned into my memory from countless replays of All the Goals of USA 94 on VHS. To relive them in this enjoyable, informative and well written book was a real pleasure.

1994 – Andy’s Game: The Inside Story of the World Cup by Andy Townsend with Paul Kimmage (pub. 1994). A contemporaneous account of Ireland’s tournament.

1998 – Soccer Empire: The World Cup and the Future of France by Laurent Dubois (pub 2010). A look at France’s success in 1998 and the significance of it’s team being made up of the descendants of immigrants to France. Zooms in on Zidane and Thuram in particular.

2006 and 2010 – I’m not aware of any particular books looking at these tournaments in detail. Let me know if I’m missing out on any!

2002 – When Asia Welcomed the World: The 2002 World Cup Revisited by Danny Lewis. A look back at the World Cup in Japan and South Korea (I’ll always maintain Ireland could have won it!). On my reading list for the next few weeks.

2014 – Das Reboot: How German Soccer Reinvented Itself and Conquered the World. A really enjoyable read with great insight into the rise and rise of German football. It looks behind to scenes to identify how German football changed from a defensively minded game to the remarkable attacking football that led Germany to the 2014 World Cup. The book gives fantastic insight in the philosophical debate for the soul of German football that was sparked by terrible tournaments in 1998 and 2000 and led to a revolution in youth coaching.

2018 – Sacre Bleu: From Zidane to Mbappe– A Football Journey by Matthew Spiro. A really great book tracing the period between France’s two World Cup wins, 1998 and 2018.

2018 – How Football (Nearly) Came Home: Adventures in Putin’s World Cup by Barney Ronay. Ronay’s account of covering the World Cup in Russia and England’s surprise trip to the semi-finals.✓

Books on FIFA corruption:

Some very good books have helped expose the rot at the heart of the game’s global governing body.

Foul!: the Secret World of FIFA: Bribes, Vote Rigging and Ticket Scandals by Andrew Jennings. Jennings has been the most consistent voice attacking FIFA for years – Foul came out in 2006!
Fall of the House of FIFA: The Multimillion-Dollar Corruption at the Heart of Global Soccer,” by David Conn.
Red Card: FIFA and the Fall of the Most Powerful Men in Sports by Ken Bensinger
The Ugly Game: The Corruption of FIFA and the Qatari Plot to Buy the World Cup by Jonathan Calvert and Heidi Blake

‘Gazza in Italy’ by Daniel Storey (2018)

I’m not sure if this qualifies as a book as it is incredibly short at only 83 pages – the perils of buying an eBook and not checking how long it is in advance.

Gazza in Italy tells the story of England footballer’s Paul Gascoigne’s three-year spell at Italian club Lazio during the peak of Serie A’s reign as the best league in the world. Gazza was young and relatively fresh from his famous tears at World Cup semi-final in Italia ’90 when Lazio began to show an interest. The Italian club were flush with cash and seeking to build a Scuddetto winning team around the mercurial Geordie.

The move was delayed due injury but Lazio stayed committed and Gazza eventually rocked up in Rome. Storey recounts the highs and lows of Gazza’s time there – from brilliant goals to injury worries, from adoration from the fans to vilification in the media. At its heart, Storey is trying to square the circle – why is Gazza seen as having failed in Italy but still absolutely adored by Lazio fans 20 years on. It is a combination of individual

The most nostalgic part of the book for me was the background in how Channel 4 came to show live Serie A and Gazzetta Football Italia – my absolute favourite tv show as a kid. Storey poses the interesting theory that the coverage of Serie A in England helped shape the Premiership by exposing the British game to Italian football on a much more regular basis. However, Storey also appears to use the arrival of Arsene Wenger as the turning point for the Premiership modernising which is probably giving the Frenchman a little too much credit!

Storey also questions whether the move was right for Gazza given his addiction issues. The great ‘what if’ of Gazza’s career has always been whether there was an alternative path that he could have taken that would have seen him stay on top of his demons. Given the nature of his addictions it does seem unlikely, but, as Storey sets out, being away from home and highly scrutinised by an invasive media certainly couldn’t have helped.

Storey read widely for the story and the bibliography would be a great starting point for a PhD in Gazzamania. However, there don’t seem to be any original interviews of the kind that would help the book standout . I appreciate it’s a very short book that maybe wouldn’t justify the expense – but it makes the €5 price a bit steep for such a quick read. (I feel a bit bad complaining about price when authors struggle to make money but it would be remiss not to mention it my enjoyment was diminished by feeling I didn’t get a lot of book for my buck).

Overall, an enjoyable and insightful, if very short read. Interestingly it was originally launched as an audiobook only – narrated by the brilliant James Richardson who hosted Gazzetta Football Italia.

gazza

Frankly Speaking by Frank Stapleton (1991)

Published in 1991, Frankly Speaking is a (kind of) autobiography of former Arsenal, Man Utd and Ireland striker Frank Stapleton.

fankly-speaking

Stapleton seemed to be coming to end of his career when the book came out and his international career was over having been on the fringes of the squad during Italia ’90 having previously captained the team during Euro ’88. He ended up playing four more years in the English lower leagues.

The book feels like half of an autobiography – it covers his football career with each season covered in a chapter and his club and international careers covered in separate halves of the book. It’s focus is on entirely on Stapleton’s football career with almost no discussion of his life outside of football. The version of the book I found in the library has no summary on the front or back cover, no forward, no acknowledgements or any scene setter at all. It just goes straight into his first few years at Arsenal.

One of the striking things is the amount of focus on the FA Cup over the team’s performance in the league. This seems to be partly because the FA Cup still maintained its elevated status in the game and partly because Stapleton played in five Cup finals but never in a team that competed for the league title right to the end of the season. The amount of replays in the cup is also striking. You can see why penalties were eventually preferred to so many extra games.

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Stapleton rarely expresses his opinion on the various people he played or worked with outside of commenting on what they added to the team. Ron Atkinson, his manager at United is the clear exception with Stapleton being pretty critical of Big Ron’s ego, love of the media, and lack of tactical nous. His biggest praise is for coach Don Howe – a figure who seems to pop up in any biography of footballers who played in England in the 80’s and 90’s.

The material on Ireland was definitely the most interesting for me. Stapleton gives a bit more background colour on the Euro ’88 and Italia ’90 campaigns and a decent sense of Jack Charlton’s management style. I’d actually read all the most interesting bits before in the excellent ‘The Team That Jack Built’ by Paul Rowan (1994)

It’s a quick and easy read that has some interesting bits for any Arsenal, United or Ireland fan. It feels like a book from a bygone era and was designed to be read at the time, when any reader would have known the main people mentioned. It’s also the first book I’ve reviewed that I couldn’t find on Goodreads (until I added it), giving some sense of how obscure it is at this stage!

Panini-Italia-90-Frank-Stapleton-Ireland

‘Days of Heaven: Italia 90 and the Charlton Years’ by Declan Lynch (2010)

“Look back on those days, on Euro 88 on Italia 90 and the rest of what we call the Charlton era, it certainly wasn’t about football. It was an overwhelming combination of so many things, a journey the like of which we had never made before, and all we know for sure, is that very few of us made it entirely sober“.

I’m a huge fan of Declan Lynch’s writing. I first read Days of Heaven not long after it came out in 2010 expecting a more standard telling of the Charlton era – an updated version of Paul Rowan’s excellent Team That Jack Built. Instead, I found myself devouring an immensely well written look in the Irish psyche, our relationship with success, failure, alcohol and the world. With some football in it.

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I was 6 during Italia 90, too young to fully grasp what has happening. By the time USA 94 came around I was 10, and nothing had ever been as wonderful as that tournament. I’m always amazed that anyone my age, or particularly slightly older, could have grown up in Ireland and not have an irrational obsession with the Irish international team.

So while I was too young to really remember the period Lynch writes about, the portrait of Irishness Lynch paints is instant recognisable to anyone who calls Ireland home. Lynch looks into the soul of Irish people – and hits on home truths we all know, but maybe can’t or don’t want to admit.

Lynch evaluates the Celtic Tiger creation myth that Italia ’90 was the catalyst for Ireland’s emergence into the world and the boom era. He recognises the role that failure, emigration and outsiders also had in our success. In many ways, Lynch also extends the narrative to consider how Italia ’90 and the changes in Ireland at the time, also laid the seeds for the crash that would follow the Celtic Tiger.

As the book jacket says, Lynch considers the sporting, the social and the autobiographical as he paints a picture of a special time to be Irish and the lessons that time teaches us about ourselves. God

Alcohol plays a key part in the story – both in how it happened, and in how Lynch feels we should view it. I’ve been reflecting on alcohol a lot of late and have given it up for 2018 to get a proper sense of when and why I would drink and the impact on my mental health. Lynch’s comments on alcohol really struck a chord with me. Any look back on this period, or maybe any period, of modern Irish history would be incomplete without consideration of the role of alcohol. Ultimately Lynch links the national drink problem with an immaturity as a country, the same immaturity to leads to bad political decision both on the part of politicians and the electorate. Its a hard view to dispute.

Lynch captures so much of what it means to be an Ireland fan – the dread, the worry, the hope and the brief unbelievable moments of joy. He also captures the Ole Ole nature of away trips where its as much about the journey and the story as it is the football – although he is probably more critical of such jollies than I am.

Although I disagree with his lack of trust for those who identify as Ireland fans – you can love football without being overly attached to any one club side – for the most part Lynch is spot on in his observations – about our nation’s immaturity, our relationship with alcohol, and with our sense of ourselves in the world.

Overall, this a must read for any Irish sports fan or anyone seeking to understand how modern Ireland came to be.

ThePope

Tag: Italia 90