Simon Kuper's Top Book Recommendations

Simon KuperThis is again a bit of a cult book. Brian Glanville is the legendary football journalist, he’s been doing it for, I think, 60 years – his age is never clear to me, but he must be in his late seventies now. He ghosted the autobiography of a famous pre-war footballer when he was 17 and has been in the business ever since. And he’s written wonderful histories – he’s a very, very fine writer and he... (Source)

AlexanderGoalkeepers are Different is my absolute favourite. It’s really good because this player didn’t expect to be a goalie in the first place, but then their goalkeeper got injured at school. So when they next played a school match, he was put in goal. It turns out he was a really good goalie. (Source)

Simon KuperThis is a cult book among those of us who like reading about football. It came out in the 1970s when really no one was publishing books about football. Eamon Dunphy was a very run-of-the-mill professional footballer in London, playing for Millwall, of Irish origin. And he sat down with a journalist to write this book about what it’s really like to be a footballer: The daily life, the grind, the... (Source)

Simon KuperThis is about Holland and Dutch football and what makes it special. I grew up in Holland, so I have a particular tie to this book. Actually I was in Amsterdam the winter that David Winner was there writing his book. We were both writing books and we’d occasionally meet for dinner. And I got to know David and I really liked him, but I thought ‘Poor old David, he’s going to write a book about Dutch... (Source)

Simon KuperIt’s gripping and it’s written in a very sort of populist, laddish style, but it works. The characters make it work, and the setting of Italy during the World Cup. It doesn’t matter that that World Cup is now history. (Source)

David BaddielThe cover is Gazza crying, which is now rather clichéd, but then it was an icon of the change in attitude towards football and men, and how emotional they can be about football. (Source)

David PapineauSporting fandom is very interesting philosophically: it’s a case of partiality, partisanship, valuing something when you can see that what you value isn’t going to be valued by other people. (Source)

Simon KuperNick Hornby doesn’t revel in, ‘Oh I’m such a football geek, isn’t that funny?’ He treats it as something suspect. (Source)

David BaddielIn about 1990 there was this sea change in the way people expressed themselves about football – more emotionally. Nick’s book sets the stall out for that. (Source)