Football Writers

Obviously football is big business, and with that obviously there are thousands of people who try to make their fortune off the back of it...and to be honest good luck to most of them, the vast majority don't harm anyone with what they're doing.  What I can't stand is that feeling I get whenever I go to the sports section of any bookshop and see shelves packed full of lazy books about football.  The sad fact of it is, that there are only a handful of football writers who are worth their salt...I'm not talking about bloggers/websites, lets be honest I'm not exactly touching the masses with lyrical flow, but at the end of the day I'm not paying anyone to read this...yet.

My main gripe is how I almost feel ashamed when I'm browsing the football section of the local branch of a major bookshop, almost as if I'm being tarred with the same brush of those idiots who buy autobiographies of some muppet of a hooligan (I blame Danny 'f**king' Dyer for the rise in the fashion of hooligans).  Seriously, what can that book be about...Chapter 1, smashed some guy's face in .  Chapter 2, smashed some guy's face in.  Chapter 3, got my face smashed in, but then smashed some guy's face in. Chapter 4, got asked if I wanted a ticket to the game, said no, don't care about football, just need to smash some guy's face in.

Its the same with those generic books trying to cash in on being filled with the same old trivia that most football fans will already know...football has been played in hundreds of countries for over a hundred years, so how is it so difficult to come up with an original idea?  Luckily for us there are a few people out there who want to tell a different story and give people something new, and these are the ones who are producing gold on a regular basis.

My personal favourite at the moment is the author Simon Kuper, author of Football Against the Enemy, Why England Lose...(one of the most interesting football stats book you'll ever read), and many more including his new book The Football Men.  Jonathan Wilson, author of Inverting the Pyramid and Behind the Curtain, is another author who creates something a little bit different to the run of the mill football book.  Its guys like these that keep my flicking through the new titles on the shelf to find something different, something like Feet of the Chameleon and How Football Explains the World.

So lets all go and buy a good book shall we...and leave the generic stuff for the rest.