{"id":27774,"date":"2025-10-01T14:51:00","date_gmt":"2025-10-01T13:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/?p=27774"},"modified":"2025-10-01T14:51:00","modified_gmt":"2025-10-01T13:51:00","slug":"five-books-for-football-fans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/arts-social-sciences\/five-books-for-football-fans\/","title":{"rendered":"Five books for football fans"},"content":{"rendered":"

Football isn\u2019t just played on the pitch \u2013 it lives on in the pages of countless captivating books that capture the drama on and off the turf. With the football season well under way, D\u00f3nall Mac Cathmhaoill<\/a>, lecturer in creative writing at the OU has a selection of books to feast your eyes on.<\/em><\/p>\n

1. Football against the enemy <\/em><\/strong>by Simon Kupar (published by Orion, 2003)<\/strong><\/p>\n

As a youth Simon Kupar went on a round-the-world trip to discover the significance of football in the culture and politics of some of the world\u2019s most successful (and not so successful) football-playing nations. Part travelogue, part history, this book has become a classic of sports writing.<\/p>\n

Kuper, whose father was an anthropologist, approaches his writing with a sociologist\u2019s eye for the cultural details that make the game distinctive in different places.<\/p>\n

From Brazil to Russia, the book considers how politics, cultural norms, and national characteristics influence football culture and styles of play: why do<\/em> the Brazilians play with such technical brilliance and that carefree fluidity, for instance? Across 22 countries, Kupar attempts to answer this and other observations and explores the ways football has influenced politics and history, and vice versa.<\/p>\n

2. A People\u2019s History of Football, <\/em><\/strong>by Micka<\/strong>\u00eb<\/strong>l Correia (published by Pluto Press, 2023)<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is a history of the origins of football, sports teams and fandom. Correia recounts how the game began, from the schools, factories, and communities of Britain that then spread across the world.<\/p>\n

He identifies two versions: the global monster that is the football industry in late capitalism, and an older and deeper current in the game often served as an expression of working-class identity, and a site of protest and solidarity.<\/p>\n

He looks at its significance in popular movements across the world, encompassing the fan clubs in the Arab Spring protests.<\/p>\n

And he observes the role the game played (and still does) in the struggles for women\u2019s rights, and its significance in anti-colonial movements from Palestine to West Africa.<\/p>\n

It offers a study of the uses the game has been put to by dictators and regimes and highlights its use as a focus for nationalism, and struggles for emancipation across the world.<\/p>\n

3. Red or Dead <\/em><\/strong>by David Peace (published by Faber and Faber, 2014)<\/strong><\/p>\n

This fictionalised work is based on the story of Liverpool Football Club during the club\u2019s first golden era: its elevation from being a second division also-ran to England champions and, ultimately, the cusp of becoming champions of Europe and Britain\u2019s most successful club.<\/p>\n

Peace has written several football-themed bestsellers, the best known being his novel The Damned United, <\/em>about Brian Clough\u2019s time at Leeds United.<\/p>\n

In Red or Dead, we read how in 1959, a struggling Liverpool appoints Bill Shankly as manager. The Scot from an Ayrshire mining community, was a tough football man, but an innovator and one of the first football managers to become a charismatic public celebrity.<\/p>\n

He reformed Liverpool to make it a club that played with a new style, a passing game devised in alignment with Shankly\u2019s egalitarian ideals, where all players were part of the attacks. In so doing, he built a community at the club where everyone from the cleaner to the team captain was equal.<\/p>\n

At the height of his powers, Shankly resigned, and motives remain unclear, but the speed with which he was marginalised by the club gives Peace\u2019s novel a note of tragedy.. An epic work described by screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce as \u2018a masterpiece\u2019.<\/p>\n

4. Inverting the Pyramid: the History of Football Tactics <\/em><\/strong>by Jonathan Wilson (published by Orion, 2008)<\/strong><\/p>\n

From mass kickabouts in villages across Britain, to the factory teams that were all about relentless attack, and to the modern game where avoiding loss is the focus, this book charts the changes that have shaped the sport. Wilson is lead football writer for The Guardian and this is perhaps the most successful football book of recent times.<\/p>\n

Meticulously researched and rich in detail, Wilson describes how the game has evolved. He details the changes in the social function and significance of the game, and the ways these changes affected tactics, club organisation and economics, and he chronicles the way the mass media has covered the sport.<\/p>\n

The title refers to the inversion of the early tactical formation where teams would be set up with as many as ten attacking players in a triangular structure, coming to a point with the defence in the apex of a single player, the goalkeeper. It\u2019s a must for any armchair fan, and a great guide for those discovering the game.<\/p>\n

5. Brilliant Orange: the Neurotic Genius of Dutch Football <\/em><\/strong>by David Winner (Bloomsbury, 2001)<\/strong><\/p>\n

The subtitle says it all: Winner examines the factors that made the Netherlands \u2013 one of Europe\u2019s smaller countries \u2013 into a world football power, and how its liberal, inclusive, collaborative Protestantism shaped the Dutch game.<\/p>\n

Winner describes how Liverpool, under manager Bill Shankly, played with an egalitarian \u2018socialist\u2019 style, where every player was expected to be technically skilled enough to hold up the ball and play it forward in quick, decisive passing moves.<\/p>\n

This style was picked up and developed by Dutch coach Rinus Michels, who evolved the concept of \u2018Total Football\u2019 where any player could become part of the attack.<\/p>\n

Michels managed Amsterdam club Ajax to numerous honours before moving to Barcelona, bringing his signature style of play \u2013 and his star player Johan Cruyff \u2013 with him, and influenced the Bar\u00e7a style of play to this day.<\/p>\n

Barcelona would emerge the most successful team of the late 20th century and Cruyff was voted European Player of the Century in 1999. Michels went on to manage the Netherlands national teams of the 1970s and 1980s in four different spells, guiding them to World Cup Finals and to the European Championship win of 1988.<\/p>\n

Picture: Pixabay<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Football isn\u2019t just played on the pitch \u2013 it lives on in the pages of countless captivating books that capture the drama on and off the turf. With the football season well under way, D\u00f3nall Mac Cathmhaoill, lecturer in creative writing at the OU has a selection of books to feast your eyes on. 1. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":27775,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,3],"tags":[2657,912,2656,1525,1640],"class_list":["post-27774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-literature-music","category-arts-social-sciences","tag-books-about-football","tag-football","tag-football-fans","tag-news-home","tag-ou-home"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27774"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27774\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27781,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27774\/revisions\/27781"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}