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

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

• 
  Wilte

  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

  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.
• 
  Jon Arnold

  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

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

  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.