The Football Man: People & Passions in Soccer

by Arthur Hopcraft

Written just two years after England’s ’66 triumph when the national game was at its zenith, Arthur Hopcraft’s The Football Man is repeatedly quoted as the best book ever written about the sport. This definitive, magisterial study of football and society profiles includes interviews with all-time greats like Bobby Charlton, George Best, Alf Ramsay, Stanley Matthews, Matt Busby and Nat Lofthouse. It is a snapshot of a pivotal era in sporting history; changes and decisions were made in the sixties that would create the game we know today.

Genres: Sports, Football, Nonfiction, Soccer, Journalism

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1968

Reviews

[Russell George · Rating 4 out of 5]

In an era where even the smallest talking point is catalogued in endless blog posts, it’s refreshing to read football writing that takes a wider view of the sport, and is written with the care to elevate the game above everyday gossip or opinion. And yet the value of this book, written in 1969, is perhaps more as an historical or cultural artefact. It’s very much a window on post-war British football, as well as wider society.

The slightly clipped style is at once both antiquated and charming, only occasionally reminiscent of those Pathe newsreels, yet ground in a genuine love of the game. The author, a contemporary of Michael Parkinson, devotes chapters to profiling various players, including George Best and Nat Lofthouse, as well as managers, directors, referees and even amateur teams. Throughout the book there’s a sense that he wants to correct the misapprehensions of a middle class readership, whilst dignifying both his and others’ devotion to the game. But the joy is in the little details which reveal how football was played and run at the time, and the voices of the men who did so. There’s also an intriguing section at the end which prophesies how the domestic game will develop, including mention of a something called a ‘premier league’ . . .

With so much stuff being written on football, it’s difficult to find books that offer insights beyond the scope of tactics or personality. ‘The Football Man’, written at a moment when footballers were beginning to be well-paid whilst a new generation had begun to shed the post-war shackles, is certainly one of them.

[Kris · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The whole appearance and manner of professional football have been transformed, not to everybody’s liking. The youthfulness of a team, as a positive policy rather than as an enforced result of a high incidence of injury, is now a commonplace; the game is played at sprinter’s pace; it is more explosive than it was; players are cunning veterans by their mid-twenties; referees are frequently treated with undisguised contempt; managers grow more tense and anxious by the month; the conflict between the younger and older generations, which is one of the major contemporary tensions in society generally, is given emphatic expression in football. Even boards of directors are beginning to get younger."

So wrote Arthur Hopcraft over 50 years ago in his 1968 timeless classic The Football Man.

I picked up a copy after seeing it referred to on more than one occasion as the best football book ever written. After such billing, I fully expected to be disappointed. I was not.

Hopcraft was a journalist and screenwriter, born in 1932, who started out reporting on football at the age of 17 and by the mid 1960s was a football writer for the Observer, granting him access to everyone involved in the game. He was also an avid football fan since childhood. These two points combined are what make the book the special read that it is.

Football Man is broken down into nine chapters, each focusing on a different component of the game: the player; the manager; the director; the referee; the fan; the amateur; football and the press; football and foreigners; the future.

Some of these chapters are then broken down further into sub-chapters, each focussing on a particular personality or event. Each chapter is as fascinating as it is beautifully written. Hopcraft has that ability to paint the most vivid picture with a sentence of so few words that it seems effortless, similar to Orwell in his non-fiction books. This is evident right from the very beginning of the book, which kicks off with Hopcraft sitting in a car with an 18-year old George Best, while "a thin old man with stubble on his chin and a neck like a cockerel's" battles the wind and rain to run up to the car, rattle on the windows and shout "I was a referee, you know," desperate for any form of acknowledgement from his young hero. Best simply smiles gently at him and says, "Cheerio," and they drive away.

I bought Football Man for a glimpse into a bygone era, the one my dad used to tell me about when I was little - a world of hard men kicking lumps out of silky geniuses on muddy pitches, when players would travel to the match on the tube alongside the fans and get pissed with them in the pub on the corner after the final whistle, the good old days - unrecognisable to anyone who wasn't there to live it.

Instead, I lost count of how many times Hopcraft's words left me stunned at how little the game and everything that surrounds it has changed over at least the last 50 years. Football is football, always was and always will be.

For example, fans' (often paranoid) fears haven't changed since 1968.

"There was a general expectation a little while ago of what was called a Super League, in which all the leading European clubs would play, breaking away from the domestic leagues in their own countries. It has not materialized, and is not likely to."

Sound familiar?

Even more amazingly, the Premier League, which didn't come into existence until 1992, was already being discussed half a century ago, with Hopcraft making prophetic predictions:

"But a more likely suggestion is that a domestic Premier League may hive off from the English Football League to confine top-quality football to perhaps a dozen of the country’s major areas of population. This is a perfectly rational idea, and one which is known to find favour among a number of men in influential positions in football. The argument is that the economics of the game are already imposing just such a ‘premier’ league inside Division One... The trouble with this line of thinking is that there would have to be promotion into, and relegation out of, this premier division, otherwise the League would never permit it... The League’s member clubs are never going to agree to any change in organization which would remove the chance of top football an inch further from the Second Division clubs than it is now... Contest is the essence of professional football; and while it is not realistic to talk of sustaining the game indefinitely where the crowds are of 3,000 and 4,000 spectators it is good business sense to keep the rich clubs looking over their shoulders at the healthy, aggressive ones on the way up. Clubs like Burnley, Wolverhampton Wanderers and Sheffield United will repeatedly bring back the lapsed thousands to their grounds, and hold them, whenever they look like winning something."

Neither has the problem of football-related violence, nor questions over the cynical way in which the media reports on it, changed much over the decades.

"The behaviour of football fans has lately alarmed the game’s authorities, has invited magistrates to fine and reprove some of the young toughs involved with solemn severity, and has been over-written in the newspapers with more alacrity in bandwagon-stoking than merely mistaken perspective… The trouble with black ink references to ‘ANOTHER NIGHT OF SOCCER SHAME’ is that they are deliberately intended to shock rather than inform. They give pleasure to the villainry, who feel they are getting the attention their cuts and bruises deserve."

And at the other end of the spectrum, there's nothing new about people who don't belong anywhere near a football stadium using their money and resources to gatecrash the party, depriving the real fan of his opportunity and annoying everyone else within earshot in the process, as Hopcroft witnessed at the 1966 World Cup Final at Wembley.

"I watched this game not from the Press box but from a seat in the stands, and I was struck well before the game began by the unusual nature of some of the crowd around me. They were not football followers. They kept asking each other about the identity of the English players. Wasn’t one of the Manchester boys supposed to be pretty good? That very tall chap had a brother in the side, hadn’t he? They were there in their rugby club blazers, and with their Home Counties accents and obsolete prejudices, to see the successors of the Battle of Britain pilots whack the Hun again. Some of them wept a bit at the end, and they sang Land of Hope and Glory with a solemn fervour I have known elsewhere only at Conservative party rallies. I suspect that if they had found themselves sitting among a crowd of real, live football fans from Liverpool they might have been amazed by the degree of treacherous support available to Jerry. Some football fans prefer even German footballers to plump-living countrymen exercising the privilege of money to bag a place at an event thousands more would have given their right arms to see – and understand... I gulped and shouted like everyone else, and congratulated myself on being English with all the acclamation at my command. But it has always nagged at my fond recollection of that day that a lot of my companions might as well have been at Wimbledon."

Football Man is filled from cover to cover with insights like the ones above, and now having read it my understanding of the beautiful game before colour TV is much more knowledgeable for it.

If forced to level some criticism at the book, my only slight complaint would be that there are numerous references to money, be it in terms of wages, fines, gate receipts, betting sums, etc.. but the book was written three years before Britain went decimal in 1971, so everything is in old money. Unless you have been alive long enough to remember the old currency you will probably have trouble gauging the value of some of these figures. It would be nice if in newer editions an editor could put a footnote giving a rough conversion to today's money. I have no idea what a shilling is!

If you are a football fan, no matter your age, I can't recommend this book highly enough. It really is a must-read.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mentioned by Michael Calvin in his most recent book as his inspiration and by the Second Captains podcast in gushing tones, I finally found a copy of this book. To call it a collection of interviews would do it a disservice, as Hopcraft tries to give a full view of the game from all parties involved: players, managers, directors and fans.

The weirdest part is that in many respects this could have been written today. Unlike TV coverage of the 60s, this doesn't read like it's in different English and a lot of the complaints still ring true today - managers aren't given time any more, referee's aren't respected (and should differentiate between expletives uttered in frustration and those directed at him personally) and football is now big business entertainment. But then we also have provincial businessmen politicking to become directors and the crazy notion of doing something other than long runs as training to remind us when this was written.

That doesn't necessarily make it good though. What does is that interviews with genuinely important figures such as Stanley Matthews and Alf Ramsey are mixed with personal insight and smaller figures such as referee Ernie Crawford. Sometimes interviewees are quoted verbatim and less eloquent ones like Ramsey are distilled into prose, with sympathy without being sycophantic.

Some of the later sections are very much of their time - the media here is only the printed press and it seems a little strange that discussion of foreign football is limited to the USA, but discussion of the future was bold and in many ways correct. Fan behaviour did get more violent and attendances did decrease, and though professional referees were a long time coming he accurately predicted a breakaway Premier League. The discussion of fans at the 1966 World Cup final matched the ignorance of most Olympic fans, showing that some things never change.

The interviews were good enough, but the way it was put together is what really sets this book apart, perhaps along with good fortune that Revie, Mortensen and Cullis are still discussed today. The blase talk of fans chanting at 'queer' goalkeepers might remind the reader that times have changed, but a lot of the lessons are timeless, and to a certain extent demonstrates how all generations think that 'things were better in my day'. And I know this hasn't been edited as I've got the original version from the library, yellowed pages, 1974 date stamps and all.

[Sunny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolute classic old school book about football which was written two years after England won the World Cup in 1966. Here are the best bits from the book:

Conflict is the essence of football

I considered myself fairly fit, because of frequent mountaineering, admittedly of a gentle sort, but I had not bargained for the effects of two aspects of football which the very young never have to consider: the necessity for sustained running and the repetition of sudden movements to right and left.

The point about football in Britain is that it is not just a sport people take to, like cricket or tennis or running long distances.

It is inherent in the people. It is built into the urban psyche, as much a common experience to our children as are uncles and school. It is not a phenomenon; it is an everyday matter. There is more eccentricity in deliberately disregarding it than in devoting a life to it. It has more significance in the national character than theatre has. Its sudden withdrawal from the people would bring deeper disconsolation than to deprive them of television.


the demonic, barely credible capacity for forcing his way out of a ring of defenders, when he might lose the ball and regain it so that the tackle became part of his dribble; his courage in a crowded goalmouth, allowing him to head goals against much bigger men; his inspired eye for a long ball from a deep position behind him.

Running with a football, deliberately showing it to the opposition to force a tackle so that the defender can be eliminated, is such a knife-edge matter that a player hardly dares to fail.


following an unbroken daily routine to keep himself brisk and supple. It did not vary whatever the weather or the time of year. He would get up at daylight, drink a cup of tea and drive to the beach; there he would breathe deep, do stretching exercises and sprint, a thin and angular figure well wrapped up and self-absorbed. All this might take half an hour or one and a half, according to how soon his body's responses told him he had done enough. Then he would drive home, take a cold shower and eat a breakfast of cereal, toast and honey. An old friend of his told me he once said to Matthews on some grisly, sleeting morning: You can't be serious about going training in this lot.' Matthews said simply: 'It's my living."



Two events, the first in 1g61 and the second two years later, brought the change. First came the abolition of the League's stipulation of a maximum player's wage; then came the High Court judgement in the case of EASTHAM VERSUS NEWCASTLE UNITED FOOTBALL GLUB LTD AND OTHERS, which declared the League's system of retain and transfer of players to be an unjustifiable restraint of trade.


Ellis, at 21, felt secure as a professional in football, but not complacent. He was still working for improvements in the game, watching it unravelling for him, enjoying it deeply and glad he was in it. His name was being shouted when he walked about the streets. He had seen Mexico and Bulgaria. He was unaffected in manner. The words which occurred most frequently in his conversation, the Manchester voice unmistakable, were 'me mum' and 'me dad'.

Duncan Edwards was a heroic figure in Dudley long before he became a professional player. He became captain of the English schoolboys' side, having joined it when he was I3, and many of the leading clubs were clamouring for his signature. Matt Busby called at his home at 2 a.m. on the morning after his 16th birthday and acquired him for United. He was 164 when he played his first match for United, 6 feet tall and weighing 12 stone 6 lb. At 187 he became the youngest player ever to be picked for the full England international team. It was the one which beat Scotland 7-2 at Wembley in April 1955, and this was the company he was in: Williams (Wolves); Meadows (Manchester City), Byrne (Manchester United); Phillips (Portsmouth), Wright (Wolves, captain), Edwards; Matthews (Blackpool), Revie (Manchester City), Lofthouse (Bolton Wanderers), Wilshaw (Wolves), Blunstone (Chelsea).


A shot from Charlton, especially if hit on the run from outside the penalty area, is one of the great events of the sport, not because it is rare, which it is not, but because the power of it is massive and it erupts out of elegance; he is never clumsy or desperate in movement; he can rise very close to the athletic ideal. The persistent complaint I have heard made against Charlton, the one which keeps him out of the lists when some people name the handful of the world's greatest players, is that he avoids the fury of the game, that where the hacking and elbowing are fiercest Charlton is not to be found.

directors who are often obsessed football fans but who have never known the game from where it really counts, on the field in the toughest competition. They look at football differently from the way the professionals see it. They are superfans, anxious for success because it makes them feel better, because it makes them socially enviable, because it nourishes their own ego and that of the community in which they are luminaries.



That is why the manager's personality is so important. If he cannot deter uninformed, truculent criticism by his presence, and has to spend much of his time in club politics, flattering here, ingratiating there, he is like a centre-forward with a hamstring gone; the harder he tries the more he damages him-self.


I got rid of 27 in two years. He concentrated in the first place on lifting the pall of despondency. which hung about the place, and to do this he changed the strip to a streamlined all-white, which added a psychological fillip, and followed that by introducing new training kit, even a new style of boots; he insisted that the team, when travelling to away matches, had to stay in the best hotels available.

He says of players that they come in two general kinds: those whose attitude to a manager's advice is that it is probably intended to help, and those who assume that it is carping criticism. 'As long as a player believes the manager is trying to improve him you're in with a chance,' he said.

*Unfortunately you've got certain players who are like a lot of women - all advice upsets them.'


'You can only call it temperament in the end. I've seen so many lads who look outstanding players in the reserves, but just can't make it in the first team. That's the big question.

There's something special in the atmosphere in the first team, and I've seen many good, clever players who just can't catch it. It's not fair to call it courage."

I have watched an eruption of bad temper on the field communicate its character immediately to the terraces, the missiles and fists flying in the crowd as soon as the punches were thrown by the players.


The point about the cheap parts of the ground is that there are a lot of men there who do hard, manual work, and an evident readiness to fight is part of the common coin of social survival among them.


Well informed about football, a keen player as a boy, totally committed to the side which circumstances chose for him, he said that his wage of roughly f22 a week enabled him to see all the football he wanted and also to go away for an annual holiday; but if his money were to drop he would cut first the holiday and then probably his beer before he would countenance curtailing his football following.


the World Cup was instituted in 1930, and we ignored this tournament, as if it were some slightly comic argument being conducted on the fringes of our sport, for twenty years.

It is an old ploy, known to generations, to clout an opposing player of gift but insufficient courage hard and early in a game, so as to neutralize him for the rest of it.

[Adrian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really well written, by an obvious football fan, and a great view of 60s football... but the conclusions drawn were proven to be way off the mark. But probably still the best book about football I've read, and it is depressing how little has changed! Loved the final passage!

[Callum Lidington · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite its age quite easy to read, informative and evocative

[Simon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perhaps the best sports book I have read.

Written in 1968, at a time when the 8 year old Simon was getting to grips with the intricacies of the game and trying to hold down a place in the school team, it paints an intelligent portrait of the game as it stood back then. I remember, without romanticism, Holker Street, Barrow, with Don McEvoy, Colin Appleton and Fred Else. I remember Leeds Road Huddersfield in the seventies as the “slumbering giant” turned out several seasons of turgid football for a dwindling crowd. I remember that the stalwarts were the hooligans. I had some sympathy with them, though never joined in. They were there when we were, indeed, shit!

Each chapter, or essay is a work of working class scholarship. The great players, the managers, the directors (how precient of him to pick on Ken Bates long before his Chelsea days), the inadequacies of directors, referees and the short-termism of the league and FA executives.

He’s wonderful on the international game and his original take on the 1966 World Cup Final, when he stood among a group of entitled toffs who had never watched football before but felt they had the right to tickets that should have gone to true fans, has made me realise why I have supported whoever England have been playing at cricket, rugby union, golf and indeed any sport that is played and watched by an unrepresentative sample of the population. I’ve tended to support the footballers but with many exceptions during the periods when media show-ponies or excessive populist “Eng-Ger-Land” nationalism is present. (I liked the boys of 66 who all came from streets and towns I knew well and relate to; and I like the current crop who are prepared to take a stand against hatred, prejudice and intolerance that was so well represented in the Eng-Ger-Land days. Its a reason that the only sport I have supported the national team in without break or reservation is rugby league; the most representative and least prejudiced of our sports as well as being the finest spectacle.

The final paragraph of the book is sublime and so true I felt shivers as I read it.

“Even now, whenever I arrive at any football ground, or merely pass close to one when it is silent, I experience a unique alerting of the senses. The moment evokes my past in an instantaneous emotional rapport which is more certain, more secret, than memory.”

This book did that for me. The boy can write!

[Jean Hardee · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good historical document for someone who wants to see a broad view of how football used to be and the game's tides of change. Some of the context about the removal of wage controls was really interesting. The "future" predictions were reasonably accurate. Found the section about "the fan" to be needlessly moralising and demonizing without in anyway addressing root causes of fan violence's incidences.

An issue is that Hopcraft is clearly a smart critical thinker, which makes me less inclined to let some of his wildly problematic takes slide given that this was published half a century ago. There are some very unchallenged assumptions about women and homophobic chanting, and one flat-out incredibly racist line about North Koreans that are inexcusable.

[Roman Khan · Rating 5 out of 5]

i gave this book 5 stars because it goes into immense detail into each and every point within the football as an industry but also as a raw sport. i really liked it because it pointed out some of the more niche roles within the sport and showed how they can go head to head with other rules within the sport such as comparing directors, to the fans, which many would be shocked by. i would recommended this book to anybody who likes the behind the scenes aspect of the game and also wants to undertand how football ,especially in england, has come along today.

[Steve Chilton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Written about football from a completely different era, but fascinating nevertheless. It is a thoroughly enjoyable and thought provoking review of football as it was in the 1950-1960s, taking in managers, players, chairmen, referees and even the fans. Many years on more than a few observations still ring true today, but others record a lost world. An interesting comparison with Calvin's recent 'State of play'.

[Frank Molyneux · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although this book was published in 1968 it is still relevant today. In the introduction the author writes 'Football's sudden withdrawal from the people would bring deeper disconsolation than to deprive them of television.' How prescient given today's situation. This is a superbly written with many wonderful turns of phrases eg 'Brown has never heard of the permissive society, or if he has he has opted out of it.' For anyone interested in football this is highly recommended.

[Mark Kinver · Rating 4 out of 5]

Even though it was penned 50 years ago, much of the observations could have been the work of a contemporary writer. As much of the book is as pertinent today as it was when the modern game was in its infancy, it is suffice to describe this book as a timeless sports classic.

[SammyB · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great read for real football fans and real football fans...both of them. It's tough to follow sometimes if you are not versed on who the players are or their impact on the game but well written and informative about the history football.

[Catherine Walker · Rating 4 out of 5]

it’s very good, chapters 2 and 5 very very good

a book about the ‘modern game’ is slightly and inevitably diminished when the writing, publication, and game itself all predate 1969. recs for similar covering the interim years v welcome x

[Brettsinclair70 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Imagine George Orwell wrote about fifties and sixties football. Exquisite

[Michael D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great writing - a timeless sports classic.

[Pinko Palest · Rating 2 out of 5]

this was a bit of a disappointment, copared to the hype. Not so much because it was dated, but because it merely scratched the surface of the matter

[Jarrod · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a gift as I'm a lover of the sport. He's a bit arrogant with some of his views, yet fair with others. It's nice to read about the sport from 60 years on.

[Michelle Marre · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thanks for the book.

[Mark Suffern · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thoroughly enjoyable with hindsight.

[Paul McCormack · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting read with the benefit of 60 years hindsight

[Jonny Brick · Rating 5 out of 5]

A journalist's study into football as it was in the late 1960s. To be read alongside The Glory Game.

[Bernardo Camacho · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Football Man by Arthur Hopcraft is a fascinating read. Though written in the 1960s, it’s striking how many aspects of football at the time still resonate with the modern game in the 21st century.

Hopcraft masterfully explores Britain’s role in inventing and shaping the sport, offering rich insight into its evolution. His vivid portrayals of gifted footballers, celebrated managers, and the wider ecosystem—including directors, referees, the crowd, and the press—paint a comprehensive picture of the footballing world. His writing not only captures the game’s competitive spirit but also highlights the cultural significance of football as a deeply embedded part of British life.

[Juli · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read! A beautifully written book about the game. Took me back to the good old days when players were players - not 'brands', remembering some of the great players and of course the beautiful game of football.

"The point about football is that it is not just a sport people take to.....it's inherent in the people. It is not a phenomenon; it is an everyday matter. Its sudden withdrawal from the people would bring deeper disconsolation than to deprive them of television. The way we play the game, organise it and reward it reflects the kind of community we are".

Loved it!

[Toni Ros · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a football fan myself I've always looked at it from the biased side of a club supporter. This book is about the sport at its best, you'll learn i.a. what does a president, a trainer, a ref or a young star think, fears and feel about the sport king. All this written with a sparse style that makes of this classic a highly recommended reading.

[Nathan Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

one of the most majestic, lucid and fantastic pieces of sports/cultural writing that i've read in a long while. a lover of the game with the eye of a journalist the perspective of a historian.

brilliant.

[Davide Rubini · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you want to understand why football is epical or at least why it used to be so this is a must read. Heroes of the pitch get told to the reader with such an elegant style the reader almost forgets this is just football to embrace the notion that this sport is in fact a necessary facet of life

[Chris Eley · Rating 4 out of 5]

While of its time, clearly a totally different world to now, it captures the passion of our national game.