by Stephen Constantine
De Coubertin, £12.99
Reviewed by Neil Andrews
From WSC 368, October 2017
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It was thought criminals would not dare attempt to fix a top-level match, but IFK Gothenburg v AIK Stockholm was targeted and the authorities’ response has been swift
Awarding Sassuolo’s points to the losing team also hurts the rest of the clubs in Serie A
5 September ~ On August 28, Sassuolo beat Pescara 2-1 to go joint top of Serie A with maximum points from two games. Two days later it was ruled that they had fielded an ineligible player and the game was awarded 3-0 to Pescara, who went to four points with Sassuolo staying on three.
by Lutz Pfannenstiel
Vision Sports, £12.99
Reviewed by Jon Matthias
From WSC 344 October 2015
The slogans on the cover indicate that this is more than a journeyman footballer’s lifestory. “Died on the pitch”, “Kidnapped a penguin”, “Played on six continents”, “Wrongly jailed for match-fixing”, “Lived in an igloo”, “Played against Beckham” and so on. The igloo, it turns out, is a throwaway reference about a stunt to raise awareness of climate change.
What really stands out throughout Lutz Pfannenstiel’s story is his naivety, which seems undiminished after several years. Born in Bavaria in 1973, his globetrotting career began aged 19 when he met an “agent” and flew to Malaysia for a pro contract that never materialised. Fifteen years later he is recruited for a new super-club in Armenia, but the money runs out before the season starts.
Being overly trusting led to his match-fixing conviction and five-month prison sentence in Singapore. One night he was followed home by a fan who had recognised him in a restaurant. Normal people might be suspicious of that but Pfannestiel befriended the fan, who almost inevitably worked for a betting syndicate. Pfannestiel thought they had just been chatting about football, but when the friend gets busted by the Singaporean Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau he says Pfannenstiel was supplying information. The experience of prison is not overly elaborated, but the bare details are horrible enough.
The book is reasonably well written (possibly due to the assistance of journalist Christian Putsch), but padded out by cliches and familiar facts about places he has visited. It only takes eight pages before he says you have to be mad to be a goalkeeper. The Premier League, meanwhile, is every professional’s “utopian dream”, even though Pfannenstiel was barely connected to it, barring a season without playing at Nottingham Forest. With a charming lack of self-awareness, he gives a potted history of legendary German goalkeeper Bert Trautmann’s experience in England before saying he couldn’t possibly compare himself to Trautmann. Of course, he promptly then goes on to do exactly that.
Pfannenstiel has been through trauma. His heart stopped three times after a hefty challenge in a game for Bradford Park Avenue (for whom he played 14 games in 2002-03) – he copes with it by going back to training a week later. He is less affected by his failed marriage and other relationships and there are some seedy womanising tales, including helping an English under-21 team avoid police charges of rape while on tour in Asia. His lack of awareness prevents him from realising how these stories implicate him.
Still, Pfannenstiel has plenty of interesting observations to make. He reckons at least a dozen Bundesliga players are gay; North American soccer crowds “just came to the stadium to eat” – one game in Calgary is ignored by the crowd, who are watching a Stanley Cup ice hockey game on the big screen instead. Everywhere, though, has “lovely people”, the fans are great and he’d love to go back. Recently Pfannenstiel set up Global FC, a charity highlighting the threat of climate change which he hopes will get people seriously addressing the issue. Sadly, it’s hard not to think this is his trademark naivety on display again.
by Steven Kay
1889 Books, £8.99
Reviewed by Paul Brown
From WSC 327 May 2014
Rabbi Howell was the first footballer of Romany origin to play for England. A slight but skilful half-back, he was a star of the excellent Sheffield United team of the 1890s, alongside the better-remembered likes of William “Fatty” Foulke and Ernest “Nudger” Needham. “A Gipsy by birth, [Howell] perhaps owes some of his inexhaustible vitality to his lucky parentage,” wrote Needham of his team-mate. That “inexhaustible vitality” won Howell the nickname the “Evergreen”. But in 1898, despite his talents, and with United on the verge of securing their first League championship, Howell was hurriedly sold to Liverpool for reasons that remain unclear.
The “Wikipedia version” of Rabbi (or Rab) Howell’s story, sourced from club history books, suggests that he was booted out of United after being accused of deliberately throwing a game against championship rivals Sunderland by scoring two own goals. Author Steven Kay has never believed this version of events, and has been unable to find any evidence of match-fixing. He has, however, uncovered suggestions of a very different kind of scandal. Kay’s research forms the basis for a novel, The Evergreen In Red And White, a fictional account of Howell’s pivotal 1897-98 season.
This is football fiction based on fact, much like David Peace’s recent Red Or Dead, albeit with fewer and further-removed sources. Nevertheless, The Evergreen feels suitably authentic, set in an evocatively realised Victorian Sheffield during football’s thriving early years. Kay’s Howell has a quirky sense of humour, extrapolated from contemporary interviews, and a voice coloured with the use of Romany and Sheffield dialects. He rubs embrocation on swollen knees and worries about his waning football career, but it’s his personal life that proves to be his downfall.
The facts, as Kay has found them, are that when Howell moved from Sheffield to Liverpool he left behind a wife and four children – one of them a new-born baby – for another woman. In the novel, Howell meets the “other woman”, Ada, in Sheffield as the city prepares for the Diamond Jubilee visit of Queen Victoria. Torn between Ada and his pregnant wife, his football performances suffer and his season becomes derailed, culminating with the climactic match at Sunderland’s hostile Newcastle Road ground, where a tormented Howell scores those two fateful own goals. “If tha don’t keep things steady in life, it affects thi game,” Needham tells Howell, who is dropped from the team and effectively exiled from his home city.
Despite the defeat at Sunderland, Sheffield United did win the Championship. Howell was a Liverpool player by then. He subsequently played for Preston North End, where his career was ended by a broken leg in 1903. He did apparently find stability in his personal life – he married Ada, and the couple had five children. We may never know the whole truth about Howell and his hurried departure from Sheffield United, but Steven Kay’s novel is so diligently researched and affectionately written that it’s easy to believe the author’s claim in his introduction that it is “as close to the truth as is possible”.