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The Beautiful Poetry of Football Commentary
Roma have risen from their ruins!
Manolas, the Greek God in Rome!
The unthinkable unfolds before our eyes.
This was not meant to happen, this could not happen . . . this is happening!
Peter Drury
If football is the beautiful game, then commentators are its poets.
Whether it's the brevity of Barry Davies, the boundless enthusiasm of Clive Tyldesley or the sheer eloquence of Peter Drury's monologues, the canon of football commentary is replete with memorable lines that would have some of the great classical orators nodding in appreciation. Curated by football journalist Charlie Eccleshare, The Beautiful Poetry of Football Commentary is a glorious anthology of iconic lines, set out as poems, celebrating the best commentators that have ever graced a microphone. Each poem is accompanied by 'scholarly' analysis capturing the enduring power of language on the beautiful game.
So, drink it in, and immerse yourself in classic verse from Ali Brownlee, Andy Gray, Brian Moore, David Coleman, John Motson, Jon Champion, Jonathan Pearce, Kenneth Wolstenholme, Martin Tyler, and many more.
-----
"It is a privilege to be part of this excellent work" - Martin Tyler
"There have been some brilliant lines of commentary down the years and Charlie's academic deconstruction of them is terrific." - Peter Drury
Manolas, the Greek God in Rome!
The unthinkable unfolds before our eyes.
This was not meant to happen, this could not happen . . . this is happening!
Peter Drury
If football is the beautiful game, then commentators are its poets.
Whether it's the brevity of Barry Davies, the boundless enthusiasm of Clive Tyldesley or the sheer eloquence of Peter Drury's monologues, the canon of football commentary is replete with memorable lines that would have some of the great classical orators nodding in appreciation. Curated by football journalist Charlie Eccleshare, The Beautiful Poetry of Football Commentary is a glorious anthology of iconic lines, set out as poems, celebrating the best commentators that have ever graced a microphone. Each poem is accompanied by 'scholarly' analysis capturing the enduring power of language on the beautiful game.
So, drink it in, and immerse yourself in classic verse from Ali Brownlee, Andy Gray, Brian Moore, David Coleman, John Motson, Jon Champion, Jonathan Pearce, Kenneth Wolstenholme, Martin Tyler, and many more.
-----
"It is a privilege to be part of this excellent work" - Martin Tyler
"There have been some brilliant lines of commentary down the years and Charlie's academic deconstruction of them is terrific." - Peter Drury
176 pages, Hardcover
Published January 24, 2023
11 people are currently reading
74 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
November 5, 2022
Hard to rate this as a ‘book’ to be honest. Very quirky, very enjoyable. But not a book. But good!
October 29, 2022
This is a good bit of fun – if you ever wondered what happens when you do literary analysis on famous excerpts of football commentary, you end up with this book.
It's a love letter to football commentary, in a way, though the analysis swings from being quite earnest to (I presume knowingly) hyperbolic and ridiculous almost at random.
It's a love letter to football commentary, in a way, though the analysis swings from being quite earnest to (I presume knowingly) hyperbolic and ridiculous almost at random.
April 4, 2023
The perfect book for any discerning Football Cliches fan as long time pod contributor digs into the poetic nature of the purest form in football commentary.
Fans of the pod will recognise some of these from the intro and it fills in the context for these pieces especially the Peter Drury "this nation is going to dance all night," which relates to Russia rather than England as I'd always thought it must.
From the most famous lines to those uttered on local radio, Eccleshare leaves no stone unturned in showing us just how poetic football commentary can be. With its larger than life metaphors and being the first reaction to what can be a pretty seismic event in terms of the footballing landscape and simply to fans Eccleshare elevates it while also giving you the grounding for how such moments are born.
A great companion to a great podcast!
Fans of the pod will recognise some of these from the intro and it fills in the context for these pieces especially the Peter Drury "this nation is going to dance all night," which relates to Russia rather than England as I'd always thought it must.
From the most famous lines to those uttered on local radio, Eccleshare leaves no stone unturned in showing us just how poetic football commentary can be. With its larger than life metaphors and being the first reaction to what can be a pretty seismic event in terms of the footballing landscape and simply to fans Eccleshare elevates it while also giving you the grounding for how such moments are born.
A great companion to a great podcast!
February 3, 2025
This was silly but amusing. It took football commentary and dissected it like an English undergraduate would. A niche read but one that kept me mildly amused on a slow Monday afternoon.
December 23, 2024
This really exceeded expectations and took me back to the heinous Gerrard goal in the FA Cup Final 2006 and the glorious Inzhagi double in the 1999 Champions League Final. I love the way Eccleshare adds literary and rhetorical analysis to a selection of stand out football memories. Makes me want to plan some football poems of my own to celebrate some, yet-to-materialise and totally unlikely West Ham triumphs.
March 23, 2023
I've read and listened to a fair bit of Charlie Eccleshare over the last couple of years, both on the Athletic website and the Football Cliches podcast, and was excited to read this as a result. I was... a little disappointed with the book; while what was there was fairly good, there just wasn't all that much of it.
Eccleshare has a very good ear for commentary, and a good sense of the role it's supposed to fulfil and the notes it's supposed to hit. The way he talks about each of the commentators featured in the book is engaging and evocative - he just doesn't do it often enough for my liking.
He also seems to be caught up with the idea that the book is some sort of academic deconstruction - but he doesn't really commit to it, so we end up with a very short, very formulaic breakdown of each of the snippets of commentary that might, on a good day, have gotten me a C in my English A-Level class 20 years ago. There just isn't very much insight in these passages - it's just "by using X, the commentator creates a Y effect." Very staccato and not terribly interesting. (Unless you happen to want to know the classical names of various esoteric rhetorical devices - in which case, you're in luck.)
I'd have loved a longer and more in-depth exploration of the strengths of each of the commentators, what they do differently, and the various ways in which they engage the listener. Something like a more direct comparison of a Barry Davies or Martin Tyler moment, where they let the silence speak for itself for a few seconds before saying *just* the right thing, versus a Jonathan Pearce moment where he talks his way fluently through everything. We don't get that, unfortunately, except for the occasional passing comment, and I'm kind of annoyed that we don't because I think Eccleshare could have done it brilliantly. But that might be a 'me' problem. I'm hoping this is an aperitif, a mere amuse-bouche, and we get something like that sort of depth in a future book.
Eccleshare has a very good ear for commentary, and a good sense of the role it's supposed to fulfil and the notes it's supposed to hit. The way he talks about each of the commentators featured in the book is engaging and evocative - he just doesn't do it often enough for my liking.
He also seems to be caught up with the idea that the book is some sort of academic deconstruction - but he doesn't really commit to it, so we end up with a very short, very formulaic breakdown of each of the snippets of commentary that might, on a good day, have gotten me a C in my English A-Level class 20 years ago. There just isn't very much insight in these passages - it's just "by using X, the commentator creates a Y effect." Very staccato and not terribly interesting. (Unless you happen to want to know the classical names of various esoteric rhetorical devices - in which case, you're in luck.)
I'd have loved a longer and more in-depth exploration of the strengths of each of the commentators, what they do differently, and the various ways in which they engage the listener. Something like a more direct comparison of a Barry Davies or Martin Tyler moment, where they let the silence speak for itself for a few seconds before saying *just* the right thing, versus a Jonathan Pearce moment where he talks his way fluently through everything. We don't get that, unfortunately, except for the occasional passing comment, and I'm kind of annoyed that we don't because I think Eccleshare could have done it brilliantly. But that might be a 'me' problem. I'm hoping this is an aperitif, a mere amuse-bouche, and we get something like that sort of depth in a future book.
November 1, 2024
I can remember seeing this in a bookshop when it was released, and the cover price seemed ludicrous. Reframing it as a £3 donation to charity with a free book I'm still not convinced it offers good value for money, but it did at least pass the time on a train journey.
The two fundamental problems are that he has chosen, with the possible exception of a couple of Spurs matches, moments of commentary that have gone down in English football folklore rather than particularly good examples. As a result they are mostly the soundtrack to memorable football moments rather than inspired pieces of language, although some of the choices work on both levels, particularly Jonathan Pearce on Cantona, and Bryon Butler on Maradona.
The second is that the analysis is mostly very basic. Eccleshare used technical language, but there was little attempt to put the language in context and mostly boiled down to the power of three, omitting conjunctions and repetition. It was also basic in the sense he treated them like texts rather than a transcript of speech, which is generally messier and is by its nature likely to address the viewer/listener. He had little to say on why styles of commentary might have changed over time, nor more general points to make about commentators. It had the feel of a good idea that had been committed to before he realised he would have to include enough of them to constitute a book rather than a pamphlet.
The two fundamental problems are that he has chosen, with the possible exception of a couple of Spurs matches, moments of commentary that have gone down in English football folklore rather than particularly good examples. As a result they are mostly the soundtrack to memorable football moments rather than inspired pieces of language, although some of the choices work on both levels, particularly Jonathan Pearce on Cantona, and Bryon Butler on Maradona.
The second is that the analysis is mostly very basic. Eccleshare used technical language, but there was little attempt to put the language in context and mostly boiled down to the power of three, omitting conjunctions and repetition. It was also basic in the sense he treated them like texts rather than a transcript of speech, which is generally messier and is by its nature likely to address the viewer/listener. He had little to say on why styles of commentary might have changed over time, nor more general points to make about commentators. It had the feel of a good idea that had been committed to before he realised he would have to include enough of them to constitute a book rather than a pamphlet.
January 28, 2023
This book is not for everyone. Actually, this book is for about eleven people who are, specifically, big fans of football (soccer), the mechanics of poetry, and the ephemeral glory of television sports commentary. It might also help if you were a Tottenham Hotspur fan, but I'm less certain about that one.
The basic premise is that Eccleshare (who is a football savant -- he is a regular contributor to the Football Cliches pod, and his instant recollection of the results of match from 2009 or whether or not such-and-such obscure player score AT Preston North End or in the return leg is terrifying) transcribes some amazing moment of football commentary (usually focused around an amazing moment of actual football) and then analyzes those lines as though they are actual poems. Martin Tyler and Peter Drury feature frequently, as do the devices of apostrophe and tricolon.
It's an interesting and quick read and, if you're already a Football Cliches pod fan, very enjoyable. If you're not a fan of the pod but like soccer and language, I'd suggest starting with the pod and then, once you've been inundated with the esoteric glee of over-analyzing football punditry, checking out the book.
The basic premise is that Eccleshare (who is a football savant -- he is a regular contributor to the Football Cliches pod, and his instant recollection of the results of match from 2009 or whether or not such-and-such obscure player score AT Preston North End or in the return leg is terrifying) transcribes some amazing moment of football commentary (usually focused around an amazing moment of actual football) and then analyzes those lines as though they are actual poems. Martin Tyler and Peter Drury feature frequently, as do the devices of apostrophe and tricolon.
It's an interesting and quick read and, if you're already a Football Cliches pod fan, very enjoyable. If you're not a fan of the pod but like soccer and language, I'd suggest starting with the pod and then, once you've been inundated with the esoteric glee of over-analyzing football punditry, checking out the book.
October 21, 2022
Smart commission, but a bit repetitive as poetic techniques are common across many 'poems'. Would have worked better as a Top 50 with illustrations too. A decent book for a football fan's loo.
December 4, 2022
This is just a collection of various bits of football commentary over the years, most of which is far from poetic and only included because of the events surrounding that bit of commentary.
August 11, 2025
This is a great book, and you learn so much from it - I didn't know the origin of the phrase "red letter day" until I read this book.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews