A shame this thread keeps slipping to the second page.

I just finished reading Always Next Year no. 4. Excellent collection and I'm disappointed I have now reached the end of the series. One of the pieces that interested me was Steve Field's essay on Bilston. He notes at the end of his piece that he was finishing a book about lower league clubs, Give My Regards to Queen Street. I'm wondering (A) if anyone read this book and can provide some recollections about its overall quality, and if the book was good (B) if someone has contact information for Field (it doesn't seem like he has written for WSC in a few years given what comes up in a search of the on-line archives). I have only found one copy of the book on-line and the exchange rate (I'm in the US) makes it a bit pricey. I'm not expecting to chase down a super cheap copy; however, I'm not too interested in buying a pricey used book when the author won't see any of that money.

I'm working through Feet of the Chameleon: The Story of African Football by Ian Hawkey. So far, so good.

No, I've changed my mind! I may have to stop reading this book. It's interesting enough, but the commas are so randomly inserted and omitted it's driving me bonkers. I don't know if this is Hawkey's fault, but someone at Portico needs to be told that you set off a clause with two commas and not just one.

Grrr...

Have to disagree with Vole here, as I thought that Feet of the Chameleon was brilliant. One of the best football books around and one that can stand with the likes of Tor and Morbo.

I've also recently finished A Different Corner which is a look at Spanish football. It is a good book, without pretensions but entertaining. Warning for Gramsci, however, it is a sort of travelogue so you'd better stand clear.

At the moment I'm trying to get into the 'Why England Lose...' book but can't really get excited about it. It seems to be trying too hard to show you just how clever the authors are when in reality they've just ripped off someone else's idea.

Oh, and most of the arguments, have huge gaping holes in them. For instance, they say that England lose at major championships basically because there aren't enough people and because the country was so isolated to new ideas.

Which is clever enough but how then do you explain the near dominance of European football that English sides had in the 70s and early 80s?

Anyway, the truth is that I'm trying to fill up the time until I get the copy of Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer and Best of American Sports Writing 2009. Not to mention that I'm itching to buy Outcasts United and the Spartak Moscow book.

Am liking the book, pawlu, but loathing the shit copy-editing.

Which Spartak Moscow book, pawlu? Not the one by Jim Riordan of dubious veracity?

No, not Comrade Jim but this Spartak Moscow book.

Nice. I'd not seen that one before. Thanks for the tip.

I have only started listening to this BBC World Book Club session about Fever Pitch, so it might be crap, but I figured I'd pass it along either way.

EDIT: That link is slow to load, so if you prefer an MP3, you can find one here.

I'm 200 pages into Goldblatt's 900-page 'The Ball Is Round'(it's been troubling my conscience on the shelf for a year), and loving every page. Superb writing, excellently paced, and canny switching of geography, themes and eras. Not to mention the obvious benefit that I'm learning a ton of new stuff about the game.

Seconded. An incredible amount of research must have gone into that thing - and yet it never gets in the way of the narrative. I'm envious of anyone who can write like that.

Thirded. The worst that can be said about it is that it's weak on Asia and North America. Which, y'know, meh.

The chapter on Africa is very good - in fact, if you took that chapter out and published it as a book, it would be the best book on African football ever written (although, to be fair, I have yet to read the Chameleon book).

Fourth-ed (?)

AG: US and Asia represent the future. Didn't you get the memo?!

I'm ashamed to admit that I've never read The Ball is Round despite being continuously told how great it is.

Yesterday, the winners of the British Sports Books awards were named with Cantona and Feet of the Chameleon tying for the best football book title.

PS - danielmak, just sent you a PM.

Inshallah Iron - well, yes, that's true, but since the book is in fact a history, it's not entirely relevant.

Nice to have you back - are you still in the mid-east? I thought I saw one of your pieces in World Soccer a couple of months ago.

I'm pretty sure that I've plugged this on here before, but Goldblatt's significant contributions are one of the many good things about the "Africa Kicks" series of documentaries from the BBC World Service.

There are a total of four parts, all of which are downloadable from here.

Been lurking for a while...

True, although the history of why soccer didn't stick in America is incredibly important, a story of American nation building - which, as historical narratives go, is pretty important. Asia, yes, although I find the history of Asian football endlessly interesting, just because it is soaked in the bloody politics of the past 100 years... but then you know that already!

I was in Beirut for six months but back in London now although try to get back when I can. Gaza was pretty crazy, as was the Egypt-Algeria game in Cairo. Iran, Saudi, Egypt, Iraq and Bahrain's failure to make it to South Africa means there's little interest in the Middle East at the moment. But it does mean I get to enjoy the world cup this summer as a fan...

That's an interesting idea about American football - writing it from the point of view of why it didn't catch on. Exploding Vole's book focused more on the resiliance of football...although if memory serves his chapter on the 1920s does talk about how football was systematically discriminated against at the college level, which was quite interesting. TEV, what do you think?

It's also true that there is a lot of country-level stuff about Asian football which has yet to be synthesized into any kind of continental view of the game. There's a lot on India, for instance (much of which lies on my shelf, unread), some on Japan, your stuff about the Arab areas. But no one (to my knowledge) has really done much on Korea, or SE Asia, and no one has given the AFC the kind of attention the CAF has received in a couple of books now, (though this may be rectified in the next few months if Bin Mohammed's challenge to Blatter turns into something serious). But maybe it's just that no one thinks that a continent-wide lens makes any sense - that from a footballing point of view it's an artificial entity, too many disparate traditions to be worth lumping together.

AG, don't you think Markovits and Hellerman's book, from 2001, has covered this ground?

Sure looks like it, but it's a new one on me. Not sure how I could have missed something like that. Cheers, TEV.