They Used to Play on Grass

by Terry Venables, Gordon M. Williams

Genres: Nonfiction

Paperback

First published September 6, 1971

About the author

Librarian note:
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name

Terence Frederick Venables, often referred to as El Tel, was an English football player and manager who played for clubs including Chelsea, Tottenham Hotspur and Queens Park Rangers and won two caps for England.

As a manager, Venables won the Second Division championship with Crystal Palace in 1979.
- Wikipedia

Reviews

[Jayne Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Given that this book was written such a long time ago, it's impressive that it managed to predict so many of the headaches that afflict modern football. It even predicted the millionaire footballing playboy with a David Beckham-style character. Initially the footballing action takes second place to the inter-relationships between the players, some of whom are well fleshed-out, others take some remembering. There is an extended match sequence at the end, by which time you need to care about the characters and who wins, as it does go on a bit. A rather predictable weepie moment (if you're a girlie) at the end concludes a reasonably good story.

[Mizannie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read for the BBC Top 200 as well as the Popsugar 2018 “book about a sport” prompt. A bit predictable but I enjoyed it.

[Brit Boy]

https://wordpress.com/post/distantboo...

[Kingfan30 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Now I'm not a football fan at all, give me a good game of rugby any day, but this book appears on the BBC Big Read list and is one I needed to tick off. It actually was not as bad as I thought, it shows its age as some of the sums of money quoted although probably large at the time, seem very small now. It is pretty much how I thought the behind the scenes of a football club would be run if I had to give it any thought and well the players acted like I would expect the to act.

[[ J o ]]

[To be read on kindle, urgent as part of #InfiniteVariety2016. I swear this fucking list, XDDDDD]