The Football Men: Up Close with the Giants of the Modern Game

by Simon Kuper

The great footballers and coaches are rarely glimpsed from up close. They shield themselves from the tabloids, hide their personalities behind professionalism, and in the words of the cliché, 'do their talking on the pitch'. This book gets up close to them. The Football Menis not a series of celebrity profiles, and it doesn't attempt to unearth secrets in the players' private lives. Rather, it portrays these men as three-dimensional human beings. It describes their upbringings, the football cultures they grew up in, the way they play, and the baggage that they bring to their relationships at work. This multimillion-pound, multinational world is mostly inhabited by ordinary men. The profiles in this book are sometimes funny, but never breathless or sensational. Some of the profiles in this book are based on interviews; others are the results of time the author spent with that person; sometimes the profile is a story of a country. All are fascinating and shed light on their subject to reveal things you wouldn't expect. From one of the great sports writers of our time this is a penetrating and surprising collection of articles on the figures that have defined the modern sporting world.

Genres: Sports, Football, Nonfiction

417 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 12, 2011

About the author

Simon Kuper is a journalist for the Financial Times in England. He was born in Uganda of South African parents and moved to the Netherlands as a child. He studied History and German at Oxford University, and attended Harvard University as a Kennedy Scholar. He has written for The Times, Observer, Guardian and Le Monde, and also writes regularly for the Spectator and Dutch newspapers.

Reviews

[Wilte · Rating 4 out of 5]

Profiles and interviews with players and coaches, from 1997-2010. Refreshing angles and few cliches. Because Kuper has Dutch roots, there is more than average attention to Dutch football. Which is probably why it appealed to me and made me give this book 4 i stead of 3 stars.

[Neurosenkavalier · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very funny, a lot of great little knowledge nuggets, written by someone with a huge amount of knowledge and a very sharp intellect. Kuper can't seem to resist digs against Germany and England, but that's a minor quibble. Will definitely try and read more of his books.

[Juergen Kulmer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very entertaining read. I actually listened to the Audiobook version and the narrator is very good except for him butchering Pep Guardiola's name.
It's really a collection of short stories about football men that have previously been published but since I do not live in the UK, or Holland they were all new to me.

[Jonny Brick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interviews with the great and the good from a man who has followed a few.

[Paul McCormack · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not very original

[Riccardo Lo Monaco · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the Timeliest books books I ever read. Standing next to ibrahimovic while reading a book about him is really something crazy.

[latrell · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book illustrates how data and statistics transform our understanding of football, challenging traditional views with objective analysis.

[Jon Arnold · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like any compilation of journalism, The Football Men is something of a collage; a collection through which it’s often tough to discern any overall threads. The nature of journalism rarely lends itself to such things, unless they’re planned from the start (David Lodge’s The Art Of Fiction for example). This book essentially acts as the best snapshots of Simon Kuper’s writing over just over a decade, the bulk of whom are players and managers. The portraits range from a brief chat over a drink to in depth analyses about footballing philosophies; the book benefits from the variety but occasionally you’re left wanting more. It’s something that bedevils the book with the pieces from the earlier phase of Kuper’s career but tends to ease off later.

For a British reader the best pieces lend us a perspective we perhaps can’t have by virtue of looking outwards. I was fascinated, for instance, to see how Lothar Matthaus is regarded by the German footballing public. There’s also an early piece on how clubs were looking to use statistics to game the transfer market, an issue that only continues to grow more important in the game. My favourite piece though was an interview with Guus Hiddink, around the time he was sounded out about becoming England manager. In the space of a few paragraphs he dissects the problems of the England international team and its star players and outlines what needs to be done to combat it. Watching the English side in the recent World Cup it’s abundantly clear those problems still exist – perhaps the greatest ‘what if’ in England’s recent history isn’t the Scolari debacle but what might have happened if they’d had the courage to acknowledge the appalling lack of a top level English coach and appointed him over Steve McClaren. Instead, eight years on the problems remain with an incumbent journeyman coach who only exacerbates those tendencies somehow the second best paid coach in the world. Given I picked this up in a World Cup Kindle sale I can certainly claim that this piece was worth the price of the book on its own. Worth a read as an introduction to one of the smarter modern writers about the game.

[Burak · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kitap yazarın çeşitli zamanlarda pek çok gazete ve dergide yayımlanan makalelerinden bir derleme. Okuduğunuzda dünyada ne kadar kaliteli futbol yazarlığı yapıldığını görüp imreniyorsunuz.

[Luis Carlos · Rating 4 out of 5]

For anyone interested in soccer, biography or a combination of both. An assorted collection of portraits. Quite Amusing.

[Feslet]

about soccer playing but

[Ayushman · Rating 2 out of 5]

Started really well and some chapter were good but awful overall. Bit like any English campaign.

[Sreyan Chatterjee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent bed time read.

[Miguel Poveda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Simon Kuper es uno de los mejores periodistas escritores sobre fútbol que existen. Sus obras han ganado premios y se alejan de los topicazos habituales en relación con este deporte. En esta recopilación de artículos sobre jugadores, entrenadores y gente de fútbol, el lector encuentra nombres muy conocidos de los últimos años pero el enfoque es muy particular, con toques de humor incluso. El resultado es un libro divertido e interesante. A destacar el análisis sobre las autobiografías de Gerrard, Lampard, Cole, Rooney y Carragher, resulta descacharrante.