From Triumph to Tragedy is the glorious, uplifting but ultimately tragic story of Chapecoense, the small-town Brazilian football club that made worldwide news following their meteoric rise from non-league to continental sensation.
Yet the headlines that will be remembered centre on the air disaster en route to what should have been their greatest ever match. Less than ten years after the local mayor had intervened to save the club from liquidation, Associacao Chapecoense de Futebol had become champions of the Santa Catarina State Championship.
At the summit of the Brazilian national league structure, they also qualified sensationally for the final of the Copa Sul Americana. The team of rejects and journeymen became heroes not just in their own city, but also to the whole nation.
But the final was never to take place, as tragedy struck to render all those triumphant nights insignificant. Could the club now stage one more incredible recovery to allow Era Chape to continue, rather than to accept their fate as the tragic team beloved in fans’ memories?
Football changed in the 1990s. For better, for worse – but mainly for better. The shirts and shorts got baggier and brighter. Exotic-named players were enticed from overseas. New stadiums were built in the wake of the Taylor Report. The Premier League emerged, and England hosted its first international tournament since 1966. The era of ‘New Labour’ and ‘Cool Britannia’. It was the decade English football went mainstream.
In When the Seagulls Follow the Trawler author Tom Whitworth travels to the hotbeds of English football – the cities of London, Liverpool, Manchester and Newcastle – to meet the people who lived through that era of great change: the players and the managers, the owners and the fans. He looks back at key moments, the teams, the title races, the twists and turns, the characters and the rivalries. All from a decade when English football began to shrug off its bad-lad image – at least off the pitch – and move out of the darkness and into the light.
(Publisher: Pitch Publishing Ltd. March 2021. Paperback: 256 pages)
Michael Wagg goes in search of hidden histories and footballing ghosts from before the fall of the Berlin Wall. He revisits the 14 clubs that made up the 1989 DDR-Oberliga, East Germany’s top flight. From Aue in the Erzgebirge mountains to Rostock on the Baltic Sea, this quirky account of his whistle-stop tour is for fans who know that football clubs are the beating hearts of the places they play for.
There are portraits of the lower levels as well as the big league, stories of then and now that celebrate the characters he met pitch-side. There’s Mr Schmidt, who’s found a magical fix for the scoreboard at Stahl Brandenburg; Karl Drößler, who captained Lokomotive Leipzig against Eusebio’s Benfica; and the heroes of Magdeburg’s European triumph, last seen dancing in white bath robes, now pulling in to a dusty car park by the River Elbe.
The Turning Season turns its gaze on East German football’s magnificent peculiarity, with 14 enchanting stories from a lost league in a country that disappeared.
(Publisher: Pitch Publishing Ltd. October 2020. Paperback: 256 pages)
Taxi for Kiev: The Story of Six Strangers, Crossing Six Borders, Over Six Days is the true and uncensored story of six lads from very different backgrounds who had never met before but found kinship in a common goal: to get to Kiev for the 2019 Champions League Final between Liverpool and Real Madrid.
They embarked on a 3,500-mile taxi trip that took them to many places – physically, mentally and emotionally. Deprived of basic comforts for six days, this was never going to be an easy journey especially among strangers.
You’d be surprised what you can learn about a man living in such close quarters. Lack of sleep, space and sanctuary just compounded the issue. Add to this a severe lack of hygiene, and this trip looked like a recipe for disaster. Not only did the lads survive and get on well but, surprisingly, they formed lasting bonds.
Taxi for Kiev is one man’s account of that unforgettable six-day adventure – a candid tale that touches on the good, the bad and the ugly in human nature. It has shocks, tears and laughs aplenty.
(Publisher: Pitch Publishing Ltd. January 2022. Hardcover: 224 pages)
A million miles away from the rich uplands of the Premier League lies the Poundland world of non-league football. A far grittier version of the beautiful game, it’s a glorious ragbag of former EFL clubs on the down, impoverished minnows and ambitious outfits on the make, played by a mix of full-time, part-time and amateur performers.
This is the inside story of life in the lower reaches of English football, seen through the eyes of a player with over a decade’s experience in the Conference and National Leagues.
Footballer X lifts the lid on never-before-told stories of dust-ups, bust-ups, backhanders and betting scandals, the players lucky enough to get contracts and the rest who live precariously from game to game. It’s a story of constant financial struggle, big sacrifices and small victories for owners, fans and players alike. Our footballer is still playing, so the cloak of anonymity allows him to give us a true picture of what life is really like playing as a non-league footballer today.
(Publisher: Pitch Publishing Ltd. January 2022. Paperback: ?272 pages)
There is within the book a chapter titled, The Football Family, in which the author takes a tongue in cheek look at the range of fans, from the armchair variety concerned only with the Premier League and Champions League to those whose passion is seeking out the most obscure leagues, games and teams from around the globe. As Hartley says, “there’s no single kind of football supporter.”
And indeed through the 24 chapters of this eminently enjoyable and thought-provoking book, Hartley shows himself to be a fan of many facets. From the off readers get to understand how he came to be hooked on the game whilst attending the Wales v Yugoslavia European Championship Quarter-Final game in 1976, so beginning his love affair with the Welsh national team. Following the Y Dreigiau (The Dragons) has seen the author travel the world, sharing the high and lows with fellow supporters and his son Chester, even pulling on the red shirt as part of the Wales Supporters team. Whilst Hartley is a fixture at home and away with the national team, his club allegiance is with Cardiff City, following the Bluebirds as they moved from their spiritual home of Ninian Park to the Cardiff City Stadium. Hartley is no glory hunter, he understands what it is to be a fan – the hurt of defeat and the unbridled euphoria of victory. This is a man who has done the 92 and reflects on the completion of it at Barnet (when they were in the EFL) in the chapter Doing the 92.
He is also a supporter with a political and social conscience and with a story to tell, using a reportage style within the various chapters to explore with honesty narratives that lie just below the surface. So amongst the pages, readers will read how football is used as rehabilitation for inmates at HMP Prescoed in 90 Minutes of Freedom, discover how unification in Germany did no favours for clubs in the East in, One Game, Two Nations and how the political situation impacts the experience of watching football in North Korea and Hong Kong in the chapters, Kicking Off in North Korea and Red Star Over Hong Kong respectively. Hartley’s honesty in relaying his experiences is refreshing and his chapter on the 2014 World Cup Bem-vindo Ao Brasil (Welcome to Brazil) is a very telling one on FIFA and the legacy of tournaments such as this and others such as the African Cup of Nations (see chapter 16, First Clear The Goats).
This is an excellent must-read for anyone interested in the game and it is neatly rounded of with an Epilogue in which Hartley demonstrates his understanding as a journalist that “football is part of the globalised entertainment network” but “there is still much good…from bringing communities together and creating friendships to rehabilitating prisoners.” However, his final word is as a fan in that despite all that maybe wrong with the game and the people that run it, “if it weren’t for our support they wouldn’t exist. It’s we who put them there no matter how big they are.”
(Publisher: Pitch Publishing Ltd. August 2021. Paperback: 224 pages)
As mentioned by Jade Craddock in our two-part interview with the FBR regular writer, Football, She Wrote is a first, indeed unique anthology, in that it brings together 20 pieces of writing by women focusing on their experiences of the most popular team sport in the world – football. The contributions come from 10 experienced writers who were commissioned and 10 new writers who like Jade were chosen after submitting their pieces to a competition, set up by publisher of the book, Floodlit Dreams with the Women in Football organisation.
You might ask, ‘why is a female only book required needed in this day and age?’ Well, in the Foreword by Gabby Logan this is eloquently answered: “While there are now so many women working across the industry in front of a camera, as pundits and commentators…women writers still have less visibility and opportunities. So to curate a body of written work, by women, is a milestone that should be marked.”
The great advantage of an anthology is that readers get an introduction to a range of different writers and subjects, providing that exposure and opportunity for women writers that Logan hopes for. However, it is no easy task for contributors, as their pieces have to be short and focused to deliver their message or story.
Overall what can readers expect from this anthology? Stylistically, there are interview pieces, profiles, memories, views and some creative writing with football at their heart and in the process cover topics such as the women’s game, the fan experience, as well as diversity, inclusion and sexuality. Whether you are male or female this is a thought provoking collection, which will challenge readers, but in equal measure stir the emotions.
However to do justice to all the contributors and their piece a short review of each chapter follows. The first ten feature here with the second ten found in Part 2 (to follow).
Julie Welch – THE GIRLS OF ‘72
Scotland team 1972 v England (c) Daily Record
A real scene setter and great way to open the anthology with a potted history of the women’s game and how it was banned by The FA in 1921, this despite the significant popularity of teams such as Dick Kerr Ladies at the time. As Welch succinctly details, “the old man in blazers, the medical profession, the anti-suffragists, the patriarchy…won.”
It wasn’t until 1969 that the Women’s Football Association was established, with UEFA’s directive to member countries to recognise women’s football decisive in 1971. With this recognition, the Women’s FA Cup had its first final in 1970/71 and later on Saturday November 18, 1972 at the Ravenscraig Stadium in Greenock, Scotland Women hosted England Women in what was the first official women’s international for both countries. The events leading to that historic match driven by the efforts of Patricia Gregory and Elsie Cook lie at the heart of Welch’s piece.
It is an enlightening story that does make you consider what path the women’s game might have taken if it hadn’t been banned for half a century. Given that, it is a testament to all those down the years like Gregory and Cook and despite that ban, that in November 2019 England played Germany at Wembley in front of 77,768 – a record attendance for an England women’s home fixture.
Hayley Davinson – MY SEASON-TICKET FRIEND
This piece is amongst the shorter ones within the book, but still packs a telling punch in an observational tale of life as a season-ticket holder. Like this FBR reviewer Davinson is a fellow Fulham supporter, so totally got her references to past players, the Europa League Final run and even the difficulty of getting a pint at half-time in the Hammersmith End!
Davinson’s focus though on how the area you frequent in your regular seat on matchday can lead to a unique type of friendship. It is a story of the shared experience of going to a game, and despite maybe having different political views, being a different age, sexuality or religion, cheering on your team is the one thing that binds you through all the ups and downs supporting your team brings.
Kate Battersby – THE COOK WHO FOUND THE RIGHT RECIPE
This piece is based around an interview with a quite remarkable woman with an ordinary name – Joyce Cook. Readers discover that Cook overcame an abusive childhood, a battle with her sexuality, and disability to be awarded both a CBE and OBE as well in 2019 FIFA’s first Chief Education and Social Responsibility Officer.
It details how a visit to Old Trafford gave Cook the drive to get out of the depression she felt at being forced into a wheelchair with her disability and was the start of a journey that led ultimately to her role at FIFA. There are some real eye-opening descriptions of the awful conditions disabled fans have had to endure down the years even at major tournaments.
Battersby does a great job in telling the story of a women acknowledged as “one of the world’s leading voices on inclusion, anti-discrimination, and sustainable development in sport and wider society.”
Kehinde Adeogun – TWO BLACK ROOKIES AND A MICROPHONE
(c) FIFA
Part of this anthology’s strength is its ability to challenge, stir emotion, create debate and make us laugh and indeed on occasions cry. Kehinde Adeogun’s tale is one that falls into the category of making readers smile. This piece tells of football fans Kehinde and sister Taiwo, who through their love of the game come to report on the FIFA 2007 Women’s World Cup in China for BBC World Service and its African sports programme, Fast Track.
With only a short course in radio journalism under their belts, and armed with a audio recorder, a copy of Lonely Planet: China, and no understanding of Mandarin, these two resourceful women set about providing both live and recorded content for the programme from the tournament.
What is evident through the writing is the joy and sheer enjoyment that their adventure brought them, and this translates to the reader. There are some memorable tales included as the women seek to order food at their hotel purely through sign language and on another occasion they are followed around late night supermarkets with the locals unused to seeing black people. However, this is not to detract from the fact that they carried out their role as required getting the interviews and content as required, which included an interview with now men’s Brighton manager but then technical director for the Ghana women’s team, Graham Potter. It’s a great advocate of the old adage, ‘you don’t get, if you don’t ask.’
Suzanne Wrack – ESTATE OF MIND: THE MAKING OF EMMA HAYES
It’s quite an achievement to find out about a person without interviewing them, but this is what Suzanne Wrack achieves in this piece devoted to Chelsea Women’s manager Emma Hayes. Instead readers get to understand what makes the successful Hayes tick through Wrack’s interviews with her relatives and others within the game, as well as a look at her council estate upbringing – a childhood that Wrack herself experienced, and one that she likes to point out is not always about the cliqued view of concrete, poverty and negativity.
Against this background, we learn of how Hayes’ career was ended through a skiing accident, but that this only drove her on to earn coaching badges in various sports before travelling to the USA, the country most highly regarding in terms of football in the women’s game at the time and to this day. Back in the UK her quality as a coach took her to Arsenal working as an assistant, helping them to win 11 major trophies in a three-season spell. She moved to Chelsea in 2012 bringing the club nothing but success.
Emma Hayes is undoubtedly a winner but is founded on a deep determination to always strive to be the best, combined with creating a positive and trusting environment.
Cassie Whittell – ANFIELD OF DREAMS
This piece is written in a diary format, relaying significant football related memories starting with the seven-year old Whittell at primary school in 1978, through to 2019 where as an adult she is working within football. The journey has various stops in 1980, 1986, 1987, 1990, 1993, 1994, 2000, 2004, 2010 and 2017 as Whittell explores the high and lows of being a female looking to get her football fix whether as a player or spectator.
Whittell opens with her picking of Liverpool as her team back in ’78 and the excitement of being “part of Kenny Daglish’s gang.” That joy is dashed two years later when facing prejudice at school as hopes of entering the school five-a-side competition with an all-girl squad is rebuffed with the master in charge urging them to, ”Go and ask Miss Simpkins to put on a netball tournament for you instead.” The experience is no better in 1986 as England play Argentina in the World Cup, and as Maradona scores with the ‘Hand of God’ goal, Whittell is led out of the room by her aunt, saying, “it’s not for you love…leave the men to it.”
By the next World Cup in Italy, Whittell is obviously alone amongst her mates in seeing the beauty of the game epitomised by David Platt’s late goal against Belgium. However, the tide begins to turn in 1993 when Whittell attends her first game as Sheffield United host an Alan Shearer inspired Blackburn Rovers an experience she openly admits she loved and couldn’t wait to repeat. A year later Whittell goes to a game on her own and it was exhilarating to read how it made her feel – “Just me, raw and bold, whooping when Rotherham score, groaning when they conceded. I can feel free.”
The positivity continues when in 2000, in her work environment when Whittell’s football knowledge is acknowledged, however, is it tempered by sexist comments – the dawn of a new millennium, but no change in old attitudes. Skip forward four years and Whittell is visiting Old Trafford on Boxing Day imbibed not only with Festive spirit but the Liverpool view of their northwest neighbours, “the awful and detestable Manchester United”. Then in 2010, Whittell attends Anfield the home of the team she choose to follow back in 1978 for the first time. It was a joy to read of how overwhelming the experience was, and how it gave voice to release all her football frustrations. The final two entries for 2017 and 2019 see Whittell move first into a volunteer role and then into a full-time role within the game.
The piece is a wonderful journey, which illustrates how Whittell has fought to find her place in the game which since that playground choice in 1978 she has loved her whole life.
Molly Hudson – WINNING AND LOSING
This is an incredibly personal piece from Molly Hudson looking at the career of Fran Kirby and also Hudson’s own journalistic journey. The one thing connecting the two women besides their success within their respective fields within football, is the emotional impact of the loss of their respective mothers.
Kirby started at Reading at the age of seven any by sixteen had made her senior debut. The death though of her mother Denise when Kirby was just fourteen deeply affected the young player. Kirby suffered with depression and walked away from the game. However, she returned in 2012 after her love for the game was rekindled after playing in a Sunday amateur league. Fulfilling the potential her mother always knew her daughter had, Kirby helped Reading to promotion and by 2014 had made her full England debut and then playing in the 2015 World Cup. It was a big year in that she also moved to Chelsea and has seen her pick up many trophies as The Blues have become a major force in the women’s game.
Hudson began writing for The Times in 2017 and has since covered the Premier League, Champions League and women’s World Cup. She covered the 2019 women’s World Cup against the backdrop of her mother’s terminal illness diagnosis, with work a distraction against the reality of the situation.
It is an inspiring piece and one which sheds some light on the grieving process and shows that as well as their outstanding talent both Kirby and Hudson have strength and courage in telling their respective stories.
Ali Rampling – HIGHS AND LOWESTOFT
If you look at the recent winners of the women’s FA Cup over the last ten years, the current powerhouses are those of Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester City. Go back to the ‘70s and it was Southampton and in the ‘80s it was the Doncaster Belles. Tucked away amongst the names of the finalists of that period are the Lowestoft Ladies who were runners-up to Southampton in 1978/79, and who would lift the trophy three seasons later in 1981/82.
Ali Rampling lifts the lid on the Suffolk club founded in 1971, and who just 12 months after their win over Cleveland Spartans (now Middlesbrough Women FC) at QPR’s Loftus Road, folded. In this interesting piece, Rampling interviews former players and management in discovering the success the club achieved, with many players featuring for England such as Debbie Bampton and Linda Curl. They totally dominated local football, winning the East Anglian League in 1972/73, 1973/74 and 1974/75 and continued their winning ways in the South East of England League as Champions in 1975/76, 1976/77, 1977/78 and 1978/79.
Despite all that success, there is the feeling that the club was let down by the football authorities, with Lowestoft, left without a division to play in after the South East of England League folded. The club’s applications to five other leagues were rejected due to their geographical location with the offer of a return to the East Anglian League not taken up, given that Lowestoft would have overwhelmed the teams at that level. With all their best players leaving, the club exited the FA Cup 7-0 just twelve months after lifting the trophy and folded at the end of the 1982/83 season.
Isabelle Barker – TAKE THREE WOMEN…
This piece from Isabelle Latifa Barker, the first winner of the Vikki Orvice Scholarship and with it a two-year contract to work on the sports desk of The Sun, is a tribute to three women who have been role models for women aspiring to work within sports media and journalism.
Firstly, there is Vikki Orvice, wife of Ian Ridley, who sadly died in 2019, but was such a driving force and trailblazer as the first woman staff football writer for a tabloid, working at The Sun in 1995, as well as a founder and board member of Women in Football and vice-chair of the Football Writers’ Association (FWA). Secondly, Carrie Brown, the first female chair of the FWA, and presenter/reporter who has worked for the likes of Eurosport, Al Jazeera and BeIN Media and lastly Jacqui Oakley who has worked on major events for BBC, ITV, Sky Sports and various other media outlets.
The fitting tribute in highlighting the significance of the three is to be found in the closing paragraph of this piece. Of Brown, Barker praises her as she has “continued to break ground, always ensuring youngsters…have a supportive network of women to go to.” Whilst Oakley “has balanced the demands of motherhood with her high-stakes efforts to give confidence and advice to new mums in the industry”, with Orvice, “a fantastic mentor for many young female writers.” And as a trio, Barker acknowledges, “it’s thanks to these pioneers that we will be seeing more women in press boxes, newsrooms, in front of cameras an behind microphones up and down the country.”
Katie Mishner – WHAT IT COULD BE LIKE
Ever been to watch you team but not felt part of it? Well this is exactly what Katie Mishner explores in this piece about her experiences as a member of the LGBTQ+ community.
Mishner opens with her watching her beloved Newcastle United away at Blackburn Rovers, which is full of the usual passion and togetherness you experience as an away fan especially when you are 2-0 up after twenty-minutes. However, all this changes when one of the Toon fans screams a homophobic insult at a Rover player. Suddenly that feeling being part of something was deeply fractured and when a similar instance occurred at Hillsborough not long after, Mishner seriously questions whether there has been progress in the game in stamping out homophobia.
Her points are indeed valid when looking at the statistics Mishner provides, in addition to her pointing out the rise in vile vitriol that still pervades social media not just in the arena of football, but in society in general. And what of FIFA? What were they thinking in awarding the 2018 World Cup to Russia, a country “prolific in its persecution and violence towards this community (LGBTQ+) and Qatar in 2022, where “homosexuality is criminalised…and punishable by a prison sentence.”
However, against that Mishner offers hope in recognising the various bodies looking to make a stand, such as, Gay Football Supporters Network, Kick It Out, Pride in Football and Football v Homophobia. And out of that last initiative (Football v Homophobia) Mishner experiences what a game can be like as she and her partner attend a game at Altrincham where the club wears rainbow jerseys and in an environment and atmosphere where they simply were able to just enjoy the game. The hope is that going forward there will be less days like that experienced at Ewood Park and more days like that at Altrincham. Football is for everyone.
In August 2018, Pitch Publishing released The Beautiful Badge: The Stories Behind the Football Club Badge by Martyn Routledge and Elspeth Wills. It is a wonderful book that deserved the plaudits it received and was a worthy winner of the best illustrated book at the 2019 Sports Book Awards. Three years on from that release, the talented duo have come together to produce another cracking football badge related book, The Beautiful History: Football Club Badges Tell the Story of Britain.
The inspiration for the book is as Routledge details, “using football (and football club badges), as the hook to get young people to think about the wider historical context.” As such it combines history and historical events with football to provide an entertaining and educational vehicle. As with their previous collaboration, this isn’t a book featuring solely the big clubs, with non-league clubs from Britain sitting side by side with their most illustrious neighbours. So amongst the pages, readers are treated to the glorious badge of Whitby Town featuring three ammonite fossils, through to that of the 2021/22 Premier League Champions, Manchester City, detailing the city’s links with its canals.
Content wise, it is divided into nine chapters looking at the time span from 330 million years ago, when Britain was part of the super continent, Pangea, through to 1989 and the creation of the World Wide Web. Within each chapter there are various dates highlighted, specific to a particular historical event. These are set over two pages with the first containing some historical text, which in some cases is light and comedic and in others is of a more serious nature, with additionally interest related questions for younger readers which provides a fact (titled Did You Know?), and activity tasks (titled Why Not? and Visit). Accompanying the text are the quite stunning drawings of Adam Forster who has produced illustrations for several football publications. Indeed, the concise yet quality text and illustrations combine with some wonderful graphics to give it a real quality design feel.
These qualities ensure that adults will enjoy this publication, but the overall impression is that it is a book for the younger generation taking into account the activities listed (as detailed above) and the inclusion of pages dedicated to young fans who designed their own badges and the blank template badges available to create and colour in, as well as a quiz and I Spy page. However, whatever your age, delve in and enjoy this feast on the eyes.
(Pitch Publishing Ltd. August 2021. Hardcover: 192 pages)
This is a true story from a few years back. A Premier League club (who shall remain nameless) marketed at one of their food and drink outlets in the ground a ‘Meal Deal’, which consisted of a pint, a Mars bar and a packet of crisps for a fiver. Now you don’t have to be Gordon Ramsey, to understand that this combination does not constitute a meal for the average human being, yet somehow football fans are fair game. The fact is that clubs know that once a spectator is through the turnstile the concession stands are the only option for those wanting any food or drink and invariably it is a pricey bland selection from a big brand. The answer to this malaise? Get yourself fed and watered before and after the game away from the stadium. But where to go I hear you cry? Well, The Great Pie Revolt provides a readymade (excuse the pun) solution.
In the Introduction, author Jack Peat outlines that the book, “is as such, my quest to make away days more palatable, to marry football and food to create a more rounded, wholesome day out.” As the title suggests the guide looks at the clubs in the top four divisions of the English game with 86 clubs featured.
Each club entry has a Fact box (which details, team nickname, colours, ground name, capacity and year it was built) and an Introduction which looks at a locations food and drink heritage and provides readers with some interesting facts. Following this are the main focus of the book, with sections on, What to eat and where to eat it and What to drink and where to drink it and covers a range of venues, which include cafes, market stalls, takeaways, microbreweries, pubs and bars. Within each of the food and drink sections, are three suggested venues which look to provide food and drinks options before and after matches where local produce and delicacies are served and celebrated. In doing so, readers will be introduced to a range of delights whether that be the parmo from Middlesbrough, Bank’s Dark Mild in Wolverhampton or rag pudding in Oldham.
It is indeed a more than useful guide for fans on away days looking for something different to the standard offering of chain venues and should be an essential read when making matchday plans. The first thing I did with the book was check out my own club’s listing and Peat’s suggestions and then look at all the various grounds I’ve visited down the years, to see if I’d been in any of the venues listed – a food and drink Groundhopping if you like!
If there is something missing, it would be the venues address or its social media details (i.e. website, Facebook or Twitter etc.) so that they could be looked at in further detail before making a trip. However, that is not to detract from what could become an indispensable matchday companion and point of reference to make away days memorable, win, lose or draw.
PS. Hey, Jack what about Scottish, Irish and Welsh editions? A non-league version? Let’s get this football food and drink revolution on the move!
(Pitch Publishing Ltd. August 2021. Paperback: 304 pages)
Whilst there is nothing like the routine for fans of attending home games, there is something altogether different about an awayday. Whether it be the planning required in attending a different venue, ensuring travel arrangements and match-tickets are in place or the banter and pints pre and post-game – away games just have a different feeling. COVID stopped all that it in tracks, and as football slowly restarted it was played Behind Closed Doors with fans merely spectators via their TV or laptop. However, with the vaccine roll-out programme and the Government’s roadmap out of lockdown, we look forward to the 2021/22 football season and getting back to games, but until them The Away Leg brings readers stories of awaydays with a difference. Indeed if M&S did football awaydays, then it would surely be like those described in The Away Leg.
This book contains, appropriately, eleven stories from respected football writers and journalists of various trips featuring games from around the globe and in a range of competitions. Therefore you won’t find tales of tinnies and trains on away trips to Blackpool, Port Vale or Tranmere, but instead of politics and history in Buenos Aires, Pyongyang and Tbilisi.
What is central to them all is a particular game at the heart of the story, but which is the pretext to a greater and more significant narrative. So in the instance of the I’ve Come Home by Nick Ames, the featured game is the Iceland v Kosovo World Cup Qualifier in Reykjavik, whilst the focus of the story is the Icelanders qualifying for the World Cup in 2018. Elsewhere there is One Nil to the Arsenal by Catherine Etoe, centred on the UEFA Women’s Cup Final in Sweden, in a story which is an exploration of the development of the Arsenal women’s team and their manager of the time Vic Akers.
Every one of the eleven chapters has a story to tell, whether that be the way FIFA runs the game in Harry Pearson’s excellent, The Democratic People’s Republic of FIFAland or Steve Menary’s melancholic analysis of the decline of football and rise of rugby union in The Georgian Crossroads.
Given the quality of writing and the topics they cover, it is difficult to select a favourite, but a couple which standout personally are Saturday Night Lights by Arik Rosenstein, with a powerful piece centred around an Israel State Cup Quarter-Final fixture in Jerusalem and The Final Final by Martino Simcik Arese and the extraordinary and explosive events surrounding the 2018 Copa Libertadores Final in Buenos Aries.
These stories may not be anything like the experience of most fans, week-in, week-out, but show that memories are not necessarily made just by the ninety minutes on the pitch, but more often by the sights, sounds and events leading up to a game or indeed the significance of the occasion. You’ll never look at awaydays in the same light again.
All proceeds from this book will be donated to the national social care charity Community Integrated Care.
From Triumph to Tragedy is the glorious, uplifting but ultimately tragic story of Chapecoense, the small-town Brazilian football club that made worldwide news following their meteoric rise from non-league to continental sensation.
Football changed in the 1990s. For better, for worse – but mainly for better. The shirts and shorts got baggier and brighter. Exotic-named players were enticed from overseas. New stadiums were built in the wake of the Taylor Report. The Premier League emerged, and England hosted its first international tournament since 1966. The era of ‘New Labour’ and ‘Cool Britannia’. It was the decade English football went mainstream.
Michael Wagg goes in search of hidden histories and footballing ghosts from before the fall of the Berlin Wall. He revisits the 14 clubs that made up the 1989 DDR-Oberliga, East Germany’s top flight. From Aue in the Erzgebirge mountains to Rostock on the Baltic Sea, this quirky account of his whistle-stop tour is for fans who know that football clubs are the beating hearts of the places they play for.
Taxi for Kiev: The Story of Six Strangers, Crossing Six Borders, Over Six Days is the true and uncensored story of six lads from very different backgrounds who had never met before but found kinship in a common goal: to get to Kiev for the 2019 Champions League Final between Liverpool and Real Madrid.
A million miles away from the rich uplands of the Premier League lies the Poundland world of non-league football. A far grittier version of the beautiful game, it’s a glorious ragbag of former EFL clubs on the down, impoverished minnows and ambitious outfits on the make, played by a mix of full-time, part-time and amateur performers.
There is within the book a chapter titled, The Football Family, in which the author takes a tongue in cheek look at the range of fans, from the armchair variety concerned only with the Premier League and Champions League to those whose passion is seeking out the most obscure leagues, games and teams from around the globe. As Hartley says, “there’s no single kind of football supporter.”
As mentioned by Jade Craddock in our 
Ever been to watch you team but not felt part of it? Well this is exactly what Katie Mishner explores in this piece about her experiences as a member of the LGBTQ+ community.
In August 2018, Pitch Publishing released 
This is a true story from a few years back. A Premier League club (who shall remain nameless) marketed at one of their food and drink outlets in the ground a ‘Meal Deal’, which consisted of a pint, a Mars bar and a packet of crisps for a fiver. Now you don’t have to be Gordon Ramsey, to understand that this combination does not constitute a meal for the average human being, yet somehow football fans are fair game. The fact is that clubs know that once a spectator is through the turnstile the concession stands are the only option for those wanting any food or drink and invariably it is a pricey bland selection from a big brand. The answer to this malaise? Get yourself fed and watered before and after the game away from the stadium. But where to go I hear you cry? Well, The Great Pie Revolt provides a readymade (excuse the pun) solution.
Whilst there is nothing like the routine for fans of attending home games, there is something altogether different about an awayday. Whether it be the planning required in attending a different venue, ensuring travel arrangements and match-tickets are in place or the banter and pints pre and post-game – away games just have a different feeling. COVID stopped all that it in tracks, and as football slowly restarted it was played Behind Closed Doors with fans merely spectators via their TV or laptop. However, with the vaccine roll-out programme and the Government’s roadmap out of lockdown, we look forward to the 2021/22 football season and getting back to games, but until them The Away Leg brings readers stories of awaydays with a difference. Indeed if M&S did football awaydays, then it would surely be like those described in The Away Leg.