Author Archive

Winning club. Losing faith
by Colin Shindler
Headline, £16.99
Reviewed by Ian Farrell
From WSC 308 October 2012

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Of all the nostalgic How-I-fell-in-love-with-my-club books that followed in the wake of Fever Pitch, Colin Shindler’s Manchester United Ruined My Life was perhaps the most notable and fondly remembered. Charming and amusing as it was, the reason for its popularity and success can undoubtedly be traced to its subject: Manchester City. They were the quintessential underdog back then, well liked and sympathetically regarded beyond fans of their few natural enemies. Fourteen years on, they are seen as football’s new supervillains and it is time for the sequel: the considerably rarer How-I-fell-out-of-love-with-my-club book.

The newfound disenchantment that has given Shindler his title is only an issue in the last third, with most of the book taking the form of a straight autobiography. City’s fortunes of the time may weave in and out, occasionally taking centre stage, but this is really the story of the last decade and a half of the author’s life, as he copes with the breakdown of his marriage, bereavement, ageing and the search for a new partner. What it is emphatically not – and does not claim to be – is A History of Manchester City 1998-2012. Anyone expecting that is likely to be bemused by what they get, much in the manner of someone reading The Origins of the Second World War and finding AJP Taylor going off on a lengthy digression about a dating agency he has signed up to.

How interesting you will find Manchester City Ruined My Life largely comes down to how interesting you find Colin Shindler. His concerns, when we finally get to them, about the money, the club’s desire to globalise its previously parochial image, the character of the last two owners and the crass arrogance of former CEO Garry Cook are all legitimate but hardly original. You begin to ask yourself why he felt the need to write this book. Financial considerations aside, perhaps the answer is that the football side is the selling point, there to enable the writing of a cathartic autobiography.

Though it had its downbeat moments Shindler’s first book was essentially optimistic in tone, so it is a strange experience to read such a negative follow-up. The lack of enthusiasm over recent (pre-title) successes is particularly jarring and supports his claim to have fallen out of love with the club. Had City won 6-1 at Old Trafford 40 years ago it would probably have merited a whole chapter in the first book. Here it is given the briefest of mentions, as if it had been achieved by someone else’s team. It seems that in a sense, for Shindler, it was.

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A long-suffering supporter’s search for the soul of Scottish football
by Iain Hyslop
Luath Press, £9.99
Reviewed by Archie MacGregor
From WSC 308 October 2012

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The tumultuous events of the last few months in Scottish football have made any effort to offer a narrative on the longer term implications a hazardous affair, even for those providing the most up to the minute commentaries on the unfolding litany of farce, ultimatums and actual drama. Pity then Iain Hyslop, who set out the season before last to research and write this overview on the state of the Scottish game. Though he has tried manfully to keep his manuscript as up to date possible by adding brief references here and there on the Ibrox crisis, the sheer pace and scale of what has taken place leave his efforts looking hopelessly Canute-like.

Hyslop is actually a Rangers fan himself and the downfall of his club fowled by the emergence of “Newco” has served up several unforeseen ironies, not least the fact that here is a Rangers follower undertaking a safari tour of the grounds of all 42 senior clubs in Scotland. Like most of us he probably never imagined that his team would soon be following in his footsteps, paying visits to Annan, Berwick and Montrose.

Hyslop makes the case for some radical changes to the structure of the Scottish game, including that hardy annual suggestion – League reconstruction. In a desperately cynical throw of the dice, the chief executives of the SPL and SFA, Neil Doncaster and Stewart Regan, belatedly embraced all manner of changes to the league structure but only as a means of facilitating a soft landing for Rangers into Division One. The days of smoke-filled rooms having long since gone, everyone saw through that one.

Unfortunately it is not just the aftermath of the Rangers saga that leaves a sense of things not quite hitting the mark with this book. The format of visiting all the League grounds in Scotland has been just about done to death in recent years and observations about run-down facilities and sub-standard catering are hardly revelatory. There is little colour or insight afforded on the individual clubs, so the reader might as well head for the last 20 pages and consider Hyslop’s suggested prescription for getting Scottish football off its knees.

Even here there is a sense of frustration. Few would disagree with clubs developing stronger ties with their local communities, greater supporter involvement or reduced admission prices. Rather than taking up space describing the texture of meat pies and cost of Bovril around the country, however, it would have been far more informative to have spent time examining why these worthy initiatives have worked at some clubs, but not in all instances. If summer football is indeed the way ahead why not take stock of the impact it has had on the League of Ireland? If earlier kick-offs really are more supporter-friendly as the author suggests, surely put it to the test by canvassing some opinions? The baw may not be burst, but the reader is certainly left more than a tad deflated.

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Football’s greatest rivalry
by Richard Fitzpatrick
Bloomsbury, £12.99
Reviewed by Andy Brassell
From WSC 308 October 2012

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If there is a sign that Barcelona and Real Madrid’s gradual colonisation of the summit of world football is inexorable, then the fact that the pair are beginning to take a grip on the world of sports book publishing is it. El Clásico enters a crowded marketplace, with Graham Hunter’s fascinating access-all-areas portrait of Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona recently released and Sid Lowe’s tome on the rivalry to come.

Fortunately, it stands up very well on its own merits. Joining the dots between the historical genesis of the rivalry between Spain’s two biggest clubs and El Clásico’s current position as the pinnacle showpiece of the club game, Richard Fitzpatrick chips away at a few myths, while maintaining genuine balance throughout.

Carefully positioning himself as an outsider, the author never lets ego get in the way of exploring the subject matter as thoroughly as possible. There is no streak of self-righteousness in an attempt to sound authoritative. Instead, Fitzpatrick gives voice to a huge range of opinions and personal stories from both sides of the fence.

One of El Clásico‘s main strengths is that it resists tired stereotypes in describing key figures such as José Mourinho and Guardiola. The Real Madrid boss is neither canonised nor demonised but presented as a rounded character – sometimes laudable, sometimes needlessly cruel. His erstwhile Barça counterpart is portrayed within his historical context at the club, from arriving as a skinny teenager at La Masia in 1984 through his development into Johan Cruyff’s on-pitch leader. Similarly, Fitzpatrick looks deep into the characters of Luís Figo and Vicente del Bosque, two figures often presented in cliche.

A lot of time is spent discussing the clubs’ present-day relationship but the author’s efforts in scratching beneath the modern marketing sheen to unearth the subculture of the two clubs are highly laudable. A chapter is spent analysing the main hooligan groups of the two clubs, Real Madrid’s Ultras Sur and Barça’s Boixos Nois. They may be niche – as the book acknowledges, partly due to the fact that away support is far less numerous in Spain than England, where the groups draw much of their inspiration from – but both still have a foothold in their respective clubs.

In the case of the Ultras Sur, this extends to tacit endorsement by current management and players, while Fitzpatrick gives a detailed description of Boixos Nois terrorising “normal” Barça fans at away matches, as well as the serious criminality within the group. As well as providing compelling reading on its own, it works well in further blurring widespread presumptions about political lines being the overriding definition
between the two clubs.  

The leaps between concepts can be a little jarring and abrupt but this is generally a skillfully woven narrative of the clubs’ rivalry from assumed political opposition to global commercial competition. “This is a hypocritical world,” Mourinho says to begin a rant in one chapter. That Fitzpatrick acknowledges the nature of Real Madrid and Barcelona’s world as such is what makes El Clásico such a satisfying read.

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The Estádio Dr Magalhäes Pessoa is the 23,500-capacity home of UD Leiria in Portugal. Constructed for the 2004 European Championship, it originally held 30,000 people but seats were removed to allow the inclusion of an athletics track after the tournament had finished. The use of different colours around the ground extends to the seats, which are placed randomly and serve to make the ground appear full from a distance, even when no one is inside.