Here are 85 books that Hate Crime in Football fans have personally recommended if you like
Hate Crime in Football.
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I’ve been a football fan since childhood. I grew up in rural Norfolk, supporting my local club, Norwich City. Even from an early age, though, I realized that it wasn’t just the game itself that fascinated me but also the behavior and passion of the fans. However, as I grew older and became more socially and politically aware, I came to realize that many of society’s deep-rooted problems, such as racism, homophobia, and misogyny, manifested themselves in football and often went unchallenged. Researching them seemed the best way to learn more about them and then challenge them.
This is an important book for me personally and for football more broadly. I met Justin Fashanu when I was a kid and got his autograph as he was a hero of mine. His story, vividly told in this thoroughly researched biography, is ultimately sad.
Fashanu, the first openly gay player in English football, became a star and an early Black footballing icon at Norwich City in the late 70s/early 80s. However, after a big-money move to Nottingham Forest, his life gradually unraveled and ended in tragedy.
The book details this downward spiral, which makes it a harrowing read but a vital one as it reveals so much about attitudes towards gay players in a bygone era that sadly still resonates today.
Abused and ridiculed first for his colour, then his religion and finally for his sexuality, life was never easy for Justin Fashanu. When it ended in tragedy, death was far from simple either for the former sporting icon, Britain's first black GBP1 million footballer and the first and, to date, only English player to confess to being gay. Meticulously researched and drawing upon exclusive interviews and never before seen documents and photographs NICK BAKER'S sensitive but brutally candid portrait reveals the truth behind this troubled soul, his untimely death and sensationally names the people who were to blame for it.
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
I’ve been a football fan since childhood. I grew up in rural Norfolk, supporting my local club, Norwich City. Even from an early age, though, I realized that it wasn’t just the game itself that fascinated me but also the behavior and passion of the fans. However, as I grew older and became more socially and politically aware, I came to realize that many of society’s deep-rooted problems, such as racism, homophobia, and misogyny, manifested themselves in football and often went unchallenged. Researching them seemed the best way to learn more about them and then challenge them.
Women’s experiences of football have been under-researched, making this collection of essays all the more significant. The recent explosion in the popularity of women’s football sometimes masks the fact that women have been playing the game for many decades–it’s just that the (male) world has finally caught up with how good they are at it.
This multifaceted book, which contains chapters written solely by women, is a sometimes amusing and often insightful take on the women’s game and women’s involvement in all aspects of football. It’s also written with a warmth that I really like and an intelligence sharper than a defense-splitting Lauren Hemp pass.
"A brilliantly entertaining collection showcasing a wealth of women's voices," ALEX SCOTT MBE FOREWORD BY GABBY LOGAN MBE Edited by Charlotte Atyeo Curated by Ian Ridley From the doyenne of football writing Julie Welch's brilliantly illuminating story of the first women's international match after a 50-year ban to the madcap tale of two black radio rookies in China... From the trials of covering the soap opera that is Newcastle United to the glamour of establishing Real Madrid TV... From the making of the magnificent Emma Hayes to the equally amazing Mums United FC...
I’ve been a football fan since childhood. I grew up in rural Norfolk, supporting my local club, Norwich City. Even from an early age, though, I realized that it wasn’t just the game itself that fascinated me but also the behavior and passion of the fans. However, as I grew older and became more socially and politically aware, I came to realize that many of society’s deep-rooted problems, such as racism, homophobia, and misogyny, manifested themselves in football and often went unchallenged. Researching them seemed the best way to learn more about them and then challenge them.
This book resonated with me in a way that autobiographies rarely do. It’s not strictly a football book per se but a vividly-written tale of a white, working-class lad, Stuart Deabill, who grew up in the 70s and 80s worshipping the ‘holy trinity’ (as he calls it) of football, clothes, and music.
The book charts how these three elements interweave in Deabill’s life, just as they have in the lives of countless others. It reveals that what he listened to and what he wore on a matchday were as vitally important as the actual game itself. This is a brilliant, self-effacing, and funny book that portrays an aspect of football culture often not understood by the media.
West Side Stories - Notes From Northolt is the debut solo book by Stuart Deabill, best known for his acclaimed co-written publications about The Jam and The Style Council. This mini collection of autobiographical short stories is written with humour, passion and a pure love of the 'holy trilogy', music, football and clothes.
The funny, poignant, carefree working-class tales mirror many lads' paths who grew up in the 1970s and 80's - discovering a team to follow, bands to love and the clobber that automatically put you into one of the many iconic youth movements of the era. And though…
In 1913, a 15-year-old pregnant girl was found dead of apparent suicide. Dr. James Wilson, a new graduate and the first doctor ever to start a practice in this rural town, feels guilty over her death because of his delayed intervention.
I’ve been a football fan since childhood. I grew up in rural Norfolk, supporting my local club, Norwich City. Even from an early age, though, I realized that it wasn’t just the game itself that fascinated me but also the behavior and passion of the fans. However, as I grew older and became more socially and politically aware, I came to realize that many of society’s deep-rooted problems, such as racism, homophobia, and misogyny, manifested themselves in football and often went unchallenged. Researching them seemed the best way to learn more about them and then challenge them.
I found this autobiography compelling but upsetting. It is not for the faint-hearted, as it’s a blunt reminder of the kind of brutal racism that pioneering Black footballers faced. In the early 1980s, Paul Canoville became the first Black footballer to play for Chelsea. Yet, he faced horrific racist hostility from sections of his own club’s supporters, which is detailed graphically here, as is its impact on Canoville.
The book, therefore, makes for grim and bleak reading in places but is all the more important for that.
Paul Canovilles story is one of extreme racist bigotry, shattering career-ending injury, a decline into drug abuse, battles against cancer, family tragedy and a determination to beat the odds. Canoville was Chelsea's first black first-team player, making his debut in 1982. But as he warmed up on the touchline, his own supporters began chanting 'We don't want the nigger!' The racist bile continued whenever he played, but within a year he had won over the terraces with his explosive pace and skill. Canoville fell out with the Chelsea board and moved to Reading in 1986, where injury suddenly ended his…
I am a Scottish writer who has been obsessed with soccer from an early age. I devour books, new or old, on any topic related to the game and have an extensive collection of books, old and new, that keeps outgrowing my bookshelves. I love learning more about the history of the game and especially new soccer cultures.
At 1,012 pages, this is certainly not for the faint-hearted, but it remains the most amazing football book I’ve ever read. It is unrivaled in its scope, with chapters focusing on every continent, even those for which soccer may not have fully won the public over (like the USA).
Much more than a chronicle of who scored where and when, it is also a book about politics and society and the wider forces that shape football. The Ball is Round can be dipped into with the chapters you find more interesting, but I find it more rewarding to tackle from start to finish. It will take some time, but the joy is in the journey, not the destination.
A footballing reading rite of passage, our version of The Power Broker.
In this extraordinary tour de force of a book, David Goldblatt describes the rise of football, from a chaotic folk ritual to a sector of the global-entertainment industry. It's the story of players and managers, fans and owners, clubs and national teams; a chronicle of who won and who lost. But it's also a history of states and markets, money and power. And, above all, how all these forces interact. It is a history which attempts to locate where the line between the realm of glory and the realm of power has been crossed, that celebrates the love of the…
Growing up I was fanatical about football - playing, watching, reading and talking about it. I was also a little obsessed with its numbers, and apparently liked to recalculate league tables and goal differences in my head as the results came in on the BBC vidiprinter. Fast forward to University in the 1980s - a time when studying football’s business aspects was not common - I wrote my dissertation on the ‘Capital structure of Scottish football’. A Scottish perspective has remained present in much of my work, and I hope it also allows a little more distance when reflecting on the success and challenges faced by football in England.
The individual at the heart of this book, the legendary football manager, Brian Clough, had no shortage of either.
However, what is extraordinary about this book is that it introduces the reader to an entirely different version of Clough than the one we are most familiar with from the media.
It is a remarkable and scarcely credible story, one which is moving, and which highlights the kindness of the man, his family, and of many of the then players and employees of Nottingham Forest.
It also reminds us just how distant football, its clubs, and its star players and managers, have become from their people in recent decades.
Shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award 2022
Craig Bromfield was just 13 years old when Brian Clough, on a whim, took him and his older brother Aaron in.
They came from Southwick, a depressed area of Sunderland, where they lived with their abusive stepfather, and from where they longed to escape. After initially meeting Clough while out begging for money, Clough later invited the brothers to stay at his house. From there a relationship formed which would see Craig living with the Cloughs for nine years, where he was a first-hand witness to the…
Voyager 1 was launched on September 5, 1977, and Voyager 2 was launched on August 20, 1977. Both began a historic journey with unique 'time capsules' on board intended to communicate a story of our world to extraterrestrials. The Voyager message is carried by a phonograph record 12-inch gold-plated disk…
I adore books about sporty badass girls. Yet, when I first began to write Dangerous Play, there were few young-adult novels featuring fierce sporty girls. Of those, there were fewer which portrayed the powerful friendships that can emerge on girls’ sports teams. I want to read and write about girls who are defined by more than their love interests, who are dogged in the pursuit of their goals. In a world that so often judges girls by how their bodies look, sports offers an arena in which girls can view and value their bodies in an alternative way. And who doesn’t love to cheer for someone who beats the odds?
I adored this book. After I turned the final page, I sat in silence, sinking into all the feels. Set in Argentina, Furiais the story of Camila, a fierce soccer—or fútbol—player who is one of the best in her sport. However, she’s forced to keep her love of fútbol a secret because she’s living under the strict supervision of her father, who doesn’t believe girls should play sports. That story alone would be enough to make Furia one of my all-time favorite books, but it’s also got an incredible swoony love story. You don’t want to miss this one.
In Rosario, Argentina, Camila Hassan lives a double life.
At home, she is a careful daughter, living within her mother's narrow expectations, in her rising-soccer-star brother's shadow, and under the abusive rule of her short-tempered father.
On the field, she is La Furia, a powerhouse of skill and talent. When her team qualifies for the South American tournament, Camila gets the chance to see just how far those talents can take her. In her wildest dreams, she'd get an athletic scholarship to a North American university.
But the path ahead isn't easy. Her parents don't know about…
Growing up I was fanatical about football - playing, watching, reading and talking about it. I was also a little obsessed with its numbers, and apparently liked to recalculate league tables and goal differences in my head as the results came in on the BBC vidiprinter. Fast forward to University in the 1980s - a time when studying football’s business aspects was not common - I wrote my dissertation on the ‘Capital structure of Scottish football’. A Scottish perspective has remained present in much of my work, and I hope it also allows a little more distance when reflecting on the success and challenges faced by football in England.
David Conn’s book was first released in 1997, just a few years after the inception of the English Premier League.
It was the first critical evaluation of the new business of football, in which he sought to understand what was being lost as the game was transformed into a branch of the entertainment industry, while at the same time accepting the many unarguable benefits that were accompanying that transformation.
Its quality and importance are evidenced by the fact that it has been republished at least five times.
It remains essential reading for anyone who wants to understand more about the opaque world of football finance, governance, and ownership.
In eight years English football has been transformed. In 1989 clubs were banned from Europe and the Hillsborough disaster exposed football's crumbling grounds. Today football is cleaned up and is also big business. Since the Taylor report forced English clubs to spend #600 million rebuilding their grounds, and since Sky and the BBC put #1 billion into the game, serious businessmen have arrived in football, and have mostly been welcomed because of the money they were "investing" into the "long-term health of the game". This book examines the transformation and asks is it still a game or a business?
Like the character of Wala Kitu in Dr No, I consider myself an expert on nothing. Heroes have to be flawed, right? And you don’t always have to like and admire them. They don’t have to be perfect. With perfect hair and teeth. Because I’m not. And I need someone to identify with. Someone to walk the roads I might or might not walk. A list of Nick Hornby, Michael K, Miles Jupp, Billy Liar, and Wala Kitu shouldn’t belong together. But they do. Right here. It’s absurd, right? The connection of different roads? Different stories? Different hurdles to jump? Different act of heroism I say.
This is a book that has sparked a thousand imitations. If a writer isn’t honest, he’s not doing his job, and Nick Hornby is painfully honest here about his self-destructive, blokey obsessions with football and music. It’s a trailblazer of a book and a theme that resonates with a lot of men, me included.
Why would anyone seriously want to attend a family wedding when your team is playing in a cup final? How inconsiderate can a couple be to get married on the final day of the cup? To hold those thoughts–without a hint of irony–is viewed as an affliction and an absurdity by many. But of course, they don’t understand!
This book, chronicled from the perspective of a fanatical ten-year-old soccer fan, through disillusioned adolescence, to an adult "who should know better", examines the absurdities, idiosyncrasies and traumas of everyday life and football. While Chelsea were undoubtedly the football team at the heart of fashionable London in the late 1960s, it proved to be the quiet backstreets around Highbury and Finsbury Park which led a sombre schoolboy from Maidenhead into a 20-year obsession with football, and Arsenal FC in particular. Nick Hornby became hooked after seeing Arsenal beat Stoke City (1-0 from a penalty rebound) in 1968. 24 years later…
Deputy Jenna Hart has only been working in her sleepy hometown of Pearl Springs for seven months when city officials begin to be targeted by a killer. Twenty years ago, the construction of a dam caused people to lose their land to eminent domain. That wound has not healed with…
As an authentic working-class author, I’m inevitably drawn to books that describe ordinary working lives, as I can instantly relate to the familiar subject matter. And these five books are classics of the genre. They are eye-openers, page turners, brilliantly written by exceptionally gifted writers, depicting the lives of ordinary folk and the poor and downtrodden, in an incredibly accessible and affordable format - The Novel.
If, like me, you come from a working-class background, you will love this book as much as I did.
The novel centres around working-class lives and football hooliganism, which was rife in England in the 1970s and 1980s. The Football Factory, set in the early 1990’s, is the first in a trilogy, and the narrative centres around the realities of life - social degradation, unemployment, racism, casual violence, excessive drink, and bad sex.
The book is as authentic and brutal as they come and a real page-turner.
The Football Factory centres on Tom Johnson, a reasoned 'Chelsea hooligan' who represents a disaffected society operating by brutal rules. We are shown the realities of life - social degradation, unemployment, racism, casual violence, excessive drink and bad sex - and, perhaps more importantly, how they fall into a political context of surveillance, media manipulation and division.
Graphic and disturbing, sometimes very funny, and deeply affecting throughout, The Football Factory is a vertiginous rush of adrenaline - the most authentic book yet on the so-called English Disease.
