One Football Fan’s Fear of Success
by John Crace
Constable, £12.99
Reviewed by Nick Dorrington
From WSC 296 October 2011

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Very soon into their life every Tottenham supporter is indoctrinated in the “Spurs way” and told stories of the brilliance of the Bill Nicholson-led 1961 Double-winning side of Dave Mackay and Danny Blanchflower, Cliff Jones and John White. To correlate this glorious past to teams featuring the likes of Jason Dozzell, Ramon Vega and Timothée Atouba is a task beyond all but the most blindly loyal.

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American Soccer's History of Missed Opportunities and Lost Causes
by David Wangerin
Temple University, £19.99
Reviewed by Ian Plenderleith
From WSC 296 October 2011

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Long is the history of failed football ventures in the US, and short is the list of writers who have been prepared to document them for the benefit of a doubtless unsuspecting world. In this follow-up to his excellent history of US football, the WSC-published Soccer In A Football World, David Wangerin focuses on a handful of the key characters and eras that were central to some of the game's false dawns in a country whose footballing possibilites have always loomed over the world game like a potential new age. Or potential apocalypse, depending on your view of US hegemony.

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Tackling Football and Radical Politics
by Gabriel Kuhn
PM Press, £12.99
Reviewed by Tom Davies
From WSC 296 October 2011

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The idea that football and politics cannot or should not mix has always been convenient nonsense. Both continually rub up against and influence each other, without either quite managing to bend the other to its will. The question of how football has been approached politically is addressed here – from an unashamedly leftist perspective – by Austrian activist and one-time semi-pro player Gabriel Kuhn in this collection of essays, interviews and excerpts from journals and pamphlets, interwoven with commentary from Kuhn himself.

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The Autobiography of a Goalkeeping Legend
by John Burridge
John Blake, £16.99
Reviewed by Damon Green
From WSC 295 September 2011

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Like the tale of one of those old ladies born in Paris to the sound of Robespierre's guillotine, and eventually run over by a motor car on the Champs-Élysées, it is hard to believe that the two ends of the John Burridge story belong in the same lifetime.

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Up Close with the Giants of the Modern Game
by Simon Kuper
Simon & Schuster, £16.99
Reviewed by Jonathan O'Brien
From WSC 295 September 2011

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Though it shares a near-identical title with John Giles's recent memoir, The Football Men is several galaxies removed from the pockmarked pitches, pitiful wage packets and gnarled enforcers of that book. The world upon which it gazes is one of big names, bigger contracts, jawdropping skill, lucrative endorsements, expensive sunglasses and public tantrums.

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