Stamping Grounds

by Charlie Connelly

Stamping Grounds  follows the Liechtenstein national football team through their defeat-strewn qualifying campaign for the 2002 World Cup. It was hard to see this principality's part-time players scoring even one goal, never mind adding to its meager international points total. So what motivates a nation of 30,000 people and eleven villages to keep plugging away despite the inevitability of defeat? Travelling to all of Liechenstein's qualifying matches, Charlie Connelly examines what motivates a team to take the field dressed proudly in the shirts of Liechtenstein despite the knowledge that they are, with notably few exceptions, in for a good beating.

Genres: Nonfiction, Football, Sports, Travel, Soccer, Biography Memoir

328 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Charlie Connelly (born 22 August 1970, London, England) is an author of popular non-fiction books. In addition to being a writer, Connelly also appears as a presenter on radio and television shows.

Charlie Connelly is a bestselling author and award-winning broadcaster. His many books include Attention All Shipping: A Journey Round The Shipping Forecast, In Search of Elvis: A Journey To Find The Man Beneath The Jumpsuit and Our Man In Hibernia: Ireland, The Irish And Me. Three of his books have featured as Radio 4′s Book of the Week read by Martin Freeman, Stephen Mangan and Tom Goodman-Hill. Charlie was also a popular presenter on the BBC1 Holiday programme and co-presented the first three series of BBC Radio 4′s Traveller’s Tree with Fi Glover.
His book Gilbert: The Last Years of WG Grace was shortlisted for the 2016 MCC/Cricket Society Book of the Year. The book he wrote with his friend Bernard Sumner, Chapter And Verse: New Order, Joy Division And Me was shortlisted for Book of the Year at the NME Awards, while his most recent co-writing project, Winner: A Racing Life with the champion jockey AP McCoy is shortlisted for Sports Autobiography of the Year.
The audio version of Attention All Shipping came second in a public vote to find the greatest audiobook of all time organised by Waterstone’s and The Guardian. Romeo and Juliet was third, which Charlie takes as official confirmation that he’s better than Shakespeare.

Reviews

[JD · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book and review that I am in two minds about. I am an avid fan of UEFA football competitions and the book follows the Liechtenstein football side's journey through the 2002 FIFA World Cup qualifying process where they scored zero goals and lost all their games, albeit they showed real grit in most of the matches against good sides from Spain, Austria, Israel and Bosnia.

What I liked about the book is the focus it gives on the Principality of Liechtenstein, a small nation of only about 33 000 people and their football team made up mostly of amateurs and what drives them to keep on playing football against the giants of Europe. The author through his journey got involved in the lives of the citizens of Liechtenstein and the players that represent them and this part is very interesting.

What I did not like about the book, is that even though the book started out okay with all the jokes the author makes, these jokes do get a bit much and the author comes of in the end as someone who tries to be too funny. Still a good enough book to learn about Liechtenstein as a whole.

[Bill on GR Sabbatical · Rating 3 out of 5]

Charlie Connelly needed to write another book and I needed a book about Liechtenstein, in English, for a reading challenge. This account of Connelly's odyssey following the Liechtenstein national team's 2002 World Cup qualifying campaign was just the ticket for us both. I know almost nothing about soccer, but followed the match coverage easily and found myself getting more interested in the sport. Connelly also provides a droll account of his travels around the Principality of Liechtenstein, including his comical meeting with its ruler, Prince Hans-Adam II.

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting & nice account of Liechtenstein's continued attempts to qualify for a world cup despite being made up of predominately amateur & part-time players.

[Rachel · Rating 2 out of 5]

#ReadAroundTheWorld. #Liechtenstein

This is a non fiction travelogue by English author Charlie Connelly documenting the Liechtenstein national football team’s 2002 World Cup campaign.

While I am not a soccer fan, this was one of the few books available in English about Liechtenstein and did provide some information about it. This tiny, alpine, German-speaking nation is double landlocked by Austria and Switzerland. It is the fourth smallest country in the world and is kept afloat by three main industries: finance, stamps and making dentures. Sourcing an international football team is challenging in a country with only 30,000 inhabitants, 10,000 of whom are foreigners who are hence ineligible for the national team.

During the World Cup, Liechtenstein failed to score a goal, but made great soccer nations work hard for theirs and held their heads high despite the challenges.

This book shed some light on a country I knew little about. It had a droll humour, which became too much at times, and the fairly repetitive sports passages were somewhat dull for someone who is not a soccer enthusiast. 2.5 stars

[Harry Rutherford · Rating 2 out of 5]

Connelly’s account of following the Liechtenstein national soccer team during their qualification matches for the 2002 World Cup. After my previous book from Liechtenstein for the Read The World challenge turned out not to be from Liechtenstein at all, this one is at least about the country, even if it’s written by an Englishman.

You can see why he thought it would be a good subject for a humorous football book; there is something fascinating about these tiny countries, fielding largely amateur teams that lose nearly every game they play and almost never score a goal. On the one hand, if you were an amateur playing your club football in the third tier of the Swiss league (Liechtenstein isn’t big enough to have its own league), it would be a terrific opportunity to play against some of the finest players in Europe in front of tens of thousands of people. But how do you cope, psychologically, with playing for a team that almost literally never wins a game?

The answer, perhaps not surprisingly, is that they adjust their expectations about what ‘success’ means. If they make their opponents work really hard to score, that’s a success; scoring themselves is a triumph. They didn’t in fact score in that campaign; their greatest moment in the book is losing only 0-2 to Spain at home. Which is admittedly impressive for a country with only 30,000 inhabitants, 10,000 of whom are foreigners who aren’t eligible for the national team.

In the end, though, the book was underwhelming. Liechtenstein just isn’t very interesting: it’s a tiny, mountainous country with an enviable standard of living, thanks to its healthy financial sector (i.e. it’s a tax haven); basically a microscopic Switzerland, without that country’s famous flamboyance. Connelly spends much of the book trying to work out what it means to be Liechtenstein, what distinct national character there is to separate it from Switzerland or Austria; it turns out there isn’t anything.

I think Connelly does a reasonable job with weak material; he gets chummy with some of the players, and interviews all the key members of the Liechtenstein FA, and tries to dig up a few local characters, but it feels a bit like squeezing blood from a stone.

[Dolf van der Haven · Rating 2 out of 5]

Around-the-world #130: Liechtenstein 🇱🇮.
There is little choice when it comes to picking a book set in Liechtenstein and given it's Worldcup fottball time I found this one appropriate. I am a full-time football-hater, though, so I found all chapters describing individual matches utterly boring. Interviews with players came down to them saying the exact same things over and over again as well.
The bits about the country itself were interesting enough, though, even if there's simply not much to say about Liechtenstein. Connelly's writing style is passable, but with an urge to be funny, resulting in endless churlish puns and making fun of how foreigners pronounce English. This, while the author himself manages to misspell virtually every German phrase he uses in the book and even calls the Barcelona football stadium "Nou Camp".
If I were more interested in football, I probably would have liked the book a bit better.

[DaveHalligan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating book about the attempts by the tiny alpine nation of Liechtenstein to qualify for the 2002 World Cup.

[Tony · Rating 3 out of 5]

A quirky combination of travelogue and soccer aficionado essay, this book succeeds and fails in fits and starts. The premise is fairly straightforward, Connelly decides to investigate the state of soccer in the nation that is the laughingstock of the sport in Europe: Liechtenstein. Basically, he's interested in the process by which a country of around 30,000 people fields a team to compete against sides loaded with international superstars in the quadrennial European and World Cup qualifying rounds. Armed with little more than a 50-year-old guidebook to the country and an enthusiastic email response from the country's tourism agency (er, agent), he sallies forth and installs himself in a guesthouse in the capital.

Naturally, Connelly provides the requisite potted history the the wee place, which is delivered in the straightforward prose seasoned with quips and asides that has become the default style for travelogues ever since Bill Bryson started making the bestseller lists. Sandwiched between Austria and Switzerland, Liechtenstein has been a sleepy collection of valleys and villages until the last thirty or so years, which has seen it emerge as a financial services powerhouse with a phenomenal standard of living. In a relatively brief amount of time, Connelly manages to make a number of contacts who are all too willing to show him the splendors of Liechtenstein. Alas for him, this often involves strenuous hikes...

As nice as everyone is, the real focus of the book is on football, and the national side's journey through the qualifying rounds for the 2002 World Cup. Best known as a doormat for opposing sides (one win against Azerbaijan, two draws against Ireland and Hungary, 35 losses and six goals scored in international play), they showed glimmers of improvement in the Euro 2000 qualifiers two years previously. For this campaign, the team features a mere six full professionals (most of whom play in the Swiss leagues), and the remainder are semi-professionals who play in the Liechtenstein league and hold day jobs. Given the superstardom accorded to national team members in other countries, it's rather amazing to read about the center midfielder who must choose between representing his country and pursuing his career in banking, or the sweeper who must miss a match due to his grape harvest! It makes for a very nice change of pace from the usual ego trips and gazillion dollar signing bonuses and salaries one normally associated with international soccer.

Liechtenstein is placed in a group with Spain, Israel, Bosnia, and Austria, and Connelly does his best to wring as much drama out of the matches as possible. Of course, the issue isn't whether they will qualify or not, but whether they will win a game! Unfortunately like many, if not all, books about soccer, the flow of a game just doesn't translated well to the page. Once he gets to the matches, one desperately wishes for videos of them to watch before turning back to the book.

Because the national team is such small fry, Connolly's given all access to the players and the manager, which allows one a real insiders view. Unfortunately, they all tend to repeat the same cliches about what an honor it is to be able to represent their country, and how amazing it is to play against such superstars, and how they just want to do their best. After a while, this gets a bit tedious, but Connelly does his gamest to keep things interesting with such peripheral figures as Liechtenstein's number one sportswriter, who manages to write three pages of sports news every day! And toward the end, there's a mini-controversy revolving around the one true star, "Super" Mario Frick, a forward who manages to make it into the Italian Serie A. On the whole, it's maybe a touch overlong, but if you're looking for a book about soccer that isn't tainted by the big money that revolves around the game now, this is a good one. And I guarantee it'll make you root for all those little guys in international competition, I know I'll be looking for the Liechtenstein scores next qualifying round.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

For a long time I thought this would be too obscure for me, and that reading variations of 3- or 4-nil match reports wouldn't endear me to a writer who likes following leftfield football teams around Europe, then decides to put it into a book. But as Connelly developed relationships with people involved in Liechtenstein football, he won me round and generated a bit of affection from me for his adopted side.

The premise is that Connelly has had a successful book but reached a crucial combination of not having money, nor having a job to earn some, and rekindling his fondness for less fancied European football, decides to follow the Liechtenstein World Cup 2002 qualifying campaign. Before he departs he details the limited literature on the place, in which he puts forward his audition for being a writer and nearly put me off for good - there's only so far you can mock upper-class Englishmen going abroad when your days consist of going to pubs and reading travel guides, in preparation for trips across the continent to follow an underdog football team.

However, once he actually gets there, things improve. He manages to give a balanced but comedic view of the principality, observing that the people and the way of life are nice, but that Vaduz can't match its more beautiful Alpine surroundings. Although he starts off as an observer, as he makes friends more people offer their opinions on the country and the national football team, and he is later involved in the National Day celebrations. Despite my earlier reservations, I ended up liking the travel aspects much more than the football, though the two were not entirely distinct.

The main reason for this was that all the matches ended up as the opposition dominating play, and winning to nil. Some results were considered much more valuable than others, but without any threat of an ebb and flow to a game, the match reports were quite stilted and repetitive. It was only in the second half of the book, when he managed to speak to some of the players, that the football part actually felt engaging, despite the cynic in me casting doubt on the ability of a country the size of Stratford-upon-Avon ever managing to field a competitive side. I suspect this made it easier to gain interviews, but he did talk to professionals too, and at the end of the day he's an author rather than a journalist so this deserves credit.

While this book did have its charms, it didn't have the same level of personality of one by Tony Hawks, say, but was nonetheless a pleasant read and more than just a young man turning up to football grounds to watch a team. The parliamentary and football politics also provided a handy reminder that just because the country was a lot smaller, it didn't make it immune to the battles of people jostling for power, and nor did it make the population less proud of its country. It's football team is still a minnow in 2018 though, a generation of footballers later.

[Louis Fairweather · Rating 4 out of 5]

Who would have thought that a book following the Liechtenstein national team through a campaign of five games where they score zero goals and earn zero points could be both fascinating and entertaining. It’s a genuinely interesting piece of history, and lets the part-time winemakers and part-time bankers tell their own story and discuss their motivation to play in the national team against the likes of Spain. In the absence of any Netflix series or Huel-sponsored podcasts, Charlie Connelly has preserved their story. It’s also funny and well-written. I was pleased to read a book from a travel writer in an obscure place that has a genuine respect for the country and doesn’t take the opportunity to sneer.

[Michael Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

A football book not packed with statistics and stock photos; rather a book full of love for the game.
Connelly manages to discover what motivates not just a team but their management and fans to follow a team through years of crushing defeats. He passes on his findings without judgement, showing deep respect for his subject, the Liechtenstein National Football Team.
This is a book for anyone who enjoys tales of plucky underdogs.
And, by the end, you'll be rooting for them too.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

When the author wasn't trying to be funny (which was just snarky and mean in a lot of places), it wasn't a bad book. Admittedly, I barely skimmed the recaps of the games as 1) I have no interest in them and 2) I don't understand the vernacular, but the parts when he talked about Liechtenstein, its history, etc., were pretty good. For a RTW book, gave a pretty decent overview of the country at the time it was written.

[Barbara Moss · Rating 4 out of 5]

A cheeky thought, to devote time and money to following Liechtenstein's international football team through a succession of defeats in the World Cup qualifying round. He had a lot of fun, got to know many of the players and officials, and learned how the losing side may be the one cheered off the field while the winners go home grumpy.

[Swati Jain · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is the first time I am giving a review without completing a book. Pardon me, but howsoever I try I am not able to go ahead with this. I liked the football writing charm. I liked the small country and local culture charm. but I find this extremely boring and not able to continue reading. Leaving the book half way. I hardly do that but I am unable to continue.

[Paul McCormack · Rating 2 out of 5]

Slow going, I expected a bit more

[Aidan Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

In what is quite an intriguing concept which appeals to the international football geek in me, Charlie Connolly followed the tiny Principality of Liechtenstein’s 2002 World Cup qualifying campaign. However, my inner geek was initially disappointed to find that I as reading more about the lack of interest Liechtenstein’s streets, and the author’s interactions with surly barmaids, than about the football team.

I should point out that Connolly does state that he is a travel writer, which explains a lot of the flowery prose describing very little in the opening pages, and the repeated sections of “what I did at the weekend” that some travel writing seemingly consists of, rather than giving the reader a deeper insight. He glorifies in his lack of knowledge of Liechtenstein, which wouldn’t be surprising for your average man in the street, but is a bit strange for a travel writer. Deciding that since Liechtenstein has a castle and sounds gothic, presumably meaning Germanic, he prepares for his trip by watching Frankenstein and reading Gothic novels, a theme he then uses to comment on the locals and locality once he arrives in Vaduz.

I don’t want to sound overly harsh as it is very informative and written in a pleasingly chatty way, but it took a good fifty pages before we actually got into some football, having ticked off Liechtenstein’s history, the author’s fear of settling down now he is thirty, his dull commute in London, and his loathing for Luton Airport. In a football book, pages and pages of such irrelevant detail start to grate.

But once the football starts things certainly liven up, culminating in a magnificent bar exchange with many of the players. We get to know the characters behind the Liechtenstein team and several of those playing in it, as Connolly graduates in the eyes of the locals from strange foreigner with an inexplicable interest in Liechtenstein football to friend, confidante and all round Liechtenstein fan. From encounters with visiting fans in the Rheinpark Stadion to heavy nights on the beer with several of the players and the country’s main football journalist, the insight Connolly gains into the footballing psyche is truly compelling.

Even the travel writing sections improve after the dreary opening thanks to encounters with some of Liechtenstein’s more interesting residents; notably the Prince himself. The national day festivities and the mountain hikes complete with various interactions give us a decent glimpse into the life of the Liechtensteiners and provides some explanation for why football, and their national team in particular, is no big deal to them. For the players on the other hand, it is a huge deal, and the reader feels he is getting to know some of them along with Connolly and I found myself rooting for them as he did as their World Cup campaign progressed.

Despite my initial reservations on the first sections of the book, it develops nicely and provides a warming tale of the travails of one of Europe’s football also-rans and some insight into the country and its people and gives an interesting read to anyone interested in international football’s backwaters. It also left me feeling in stronger agreement with the players’ thoughts on whether such tiny nations should have to face a pre-qualifying round or not. I’d previously felt it best to have such a round to weed out the real minnows, but the Liechtenstein players have put forward their point of view through Connolly, and I must admit it is a compelling one.

www.thesportsbookreview.com

[Rachelfm · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a kick. The author has a sort of self-deprecating, humorous style, which is truly the only acceptable way to deal with the fact that he suddenly got obsessed by a tiny national football team made up almost entirely of hobbyist. What happens is that the author finds himself returning time after time to the tiny principality of 30,000 people to figure out what motivates the players during a World Cup qualifying season and to learn what he can about this tiny European tribe.

The best parts of the book focus on the reverence the author has for the purity of the pursuit; it's a football untarnished by big egos, big egos and big paychecks. My criticism is that it takes a while for the author to really introduce the players, and he's a bit lazy about that; toward the end of the book he leaves it to pages of interview transcripts, which are a real snooze. Here's the thing about interviewing a bunch of dudes about what they think about their experience playing a sport: they pretty much sound identical. However, the author wrote compellingly about each match, and I have to say that if I ever had to write a synopsis of a soccer match, it would go something like this: "22 sweaty men ran for 90 minutes and frustrated each other. I was getting a beer when the one exciting score happened, which involved kicking." And I felt way more excited by his sports writing than I do about the actual sport.

Also, first book I've ever read about Liechtenstein, so that was pretty rad. And, it's darned hard to find books in English about Liechtenstein, so it may be the last one for a while.

[Alex Poovathingal · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a tale of the journey of Liechtenstein football team in a world cup qualification tournament.

Football is not all about glory. It can boast of one too many stories similar to David and Goliath. Victory for David in many of these cases is not just a win or a draw, but a decent loss too. Liechtenstein is one such team. A team whose best performance is not the 2-1 victory it had a few years back, but a 2-0 loss against a strong team.

A principality with no more than 30000 population and 300 odd players to choose from for the national side. A team of 11 with no more than 4-5 professional footballers. A team of players who are bankers, teachers, businessman first and footballers second. A team whose main player can’t make it to matches in October because his grapes need extra care during that time.

One would think that this, coupled with the absolute neglect towards football by people from Liechtenstein and of course, the consistent hammering they suffers in every single football match, might make them stop playing anymore to avoid the humiliation. However, that is not the case, each game, Liechtenstein team comes up fired up and plays with all their heart only to lose again. The author follows the team over the entire tournament to understand what passion drives the players to keep on doing this.

Liechtenstein! You got a new fan.

[Mario · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having read other books on foreigners adopting a new team in a new country (e.g. A Season With Verona by Tim Parks/The Miracle of Castel di Sangro by Joe McGinniss) I was immediately interested in this book. This was slightly different as those books were more football intense as they were following the teams around for a whole club season - minimum 34 games in about 9 months. And doing so in a country (Italy) where football is a religion and permeates all parts of life.

Stamping Grounds on the other hand is Charlie Connelly following the Liechtenstein national team over the course of just 8 games during 2000-2001 in a tiny country that cares very little about football. And a very unsuccessful team at that. This is as much about football as it is about Liechtenstein - its history, its people, culture, traditions and way of life. And mixed with the author's humour throughout. I found it interesting to discover a bit about a country I previously knew almost nothing about.

I'd say this is more of a 3.5 stars rather than 4 just because Liechtenstein, even with the author trying his best, was quite dull.

[Travis Kurtz · Rating 3 out of 5]

What does it look like for Liechtenstein, total population of 30,000 people, to compete against such countries as Spain, Austria, and Bosnia for a place in the 2002 World Cup? Chris Connelly mixes history, culture, and football to pull out an interesting story from an insignificant country and their insignificant attempt to make the World Cup. This book is strongest in Connelly's humor, the dry narrative will make you burst out laughing. I also appreciated his explanations of Liechtenstein's culture and history. The negative is it's length, coming in at 328 pages, small print, it drags on. The feel of the book is an outsiders view of small nation achieving nothing on paper. The book drags on defeating the theme of the book, making the story much bigger than reality.

[Sho · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quirky travel book. Totally brilliant. This time the spin on the reason for the travelling is to follow the Liechtenstein football team as they attempt to qualify for the world cup finals.

Deffo going to check out more by him (and let my mum keep the one about the Shipping Forecast and get my own copy).

[Garaidh · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the more bizzare books I found myself reading, the reasons being because I developed a small fascination with the small nation of Liechtenstein-which is probably the longest word I can spell- bizarrely interesting book, although to this day I have yet to visit Liechtenstein: and probably never will.

[Peze · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting story, and well told. Too much football - you would really have to like soccer to enjoy the book fully.

[Natan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good and funny. Reminds you that sports are about more than money, even in this day and age.

[Steve Malbasa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lighthearted, funny read on a tiny European nation in their World Cup qualifying, knowing they have no chance of making it. Funny read, especially a slam on Crystal Palace.