Books

If you're anything like me (selfish lover, terrible workshy employee, incredibly lazy, chronic masturbator), you don't read many books because you'd rather watch TV or write a rubbish blog about the World Cup, and the books you do read are probably either ones you read before (because you don't like new challenges) or factual books about things like football or serial killers (because you are basically a repressed child who can only express his emotions through football and also have this morbid interest into Peter Sutcliffe). You're basically not much of human being. Anyway, if you are like that, and you want to know some good football books to read, here you are:

All Played Out, by Pete Davies. It's about England at the 1990 World Cup. Apparently it's a great read for anyone, but especially if, like me, you were a fan converted at Italia 90.

Why England Lose, by Simon Kuper and some other guy. It's trying to use economics and statistics to analyze football. It's probably a load of bollocks, but a good read nonetheless.

The Glory Game, by Hunter Davies. It follows Spurs through the 1971-2, which makes it difficult to read, because anyone in their right mind absolutely fucking hates Spurs with a passion. Davies got more insight than anyone else into how footballer's live their lives, apparently. It has fuck all relevance to modern footballers though, despite what anyone might try to claim. It's very highly regarded as one of the better books about football ever written. It's not though, All Played Out absolutely rapes it.

Brilliant Orange, by David Winner. It's actually a bit shit, this one. Incredibly pretentious book about Dutch football, Cruyff, Bergkamp etc. Full of grandiose shit about architecture as well though. Skim it, and then pretend you read it and that you love the Dutch for their history, rather than because they have orange shirts which really stood out in your first World Cup.

Inverting The Pyramid, by Jonathan Wilson. I was thrown off the Guardian website for claiming that I had a sexual relationship with the author of this book. Wilson basically wrote a book about the history of football tactics. It's easier to read than that sounds, and quite a good read, but the pretension of the idea pisses me off. Also, Wilson has rehashed chapters of this book as monthly posts on the Guardian website, giving them relevance by referring to current events; then a bunch of sycophants too stupid to think for themselves fawn over the blog and congratulate themselves for knowing more about football than the average man in the street because they use expressions like False Nine and Regista. Wankers.

So there you go. It's like the Times Literary Supplement in this post.