Books like The Football Business — picked by fans

I came upon this title quite early in my academic career while working in an Accountancy and Finance Department and struggling to convince myself, and I suspect my then boss, that there was a lot of mileage in the business of sport as an area of research activity.

Wray Vamplew’s book – a systematic economic analysis of the emergence of mass spectator sports in the UK in the years leading up to the First World War based on primary financial and other records – played a major part in convincing me, at least, that there was indeed a future as well as a past in this type of study!

If you want to understand where many of football’s current developments arose from, this is a great place to begin.

This novel gets to the heart of football’s importance to communities, in this case a small Scottish industrial town beset by poverty and unemployment in the 1950s.

In this comic novel Jenkins writes simply but evocatively about football, about its emotion, and its beauty.

But perhaps more importantly, his writing focuses on the town’s people and their relationships, with each other and with the town’s Junior football team as they dream of winning the Scottish Junior Cup.

While it would be unwise to overly romanticize how football was in the past, at the same time looking back does make you question whether everything about the modern game should be interpreted as progress.

Football is replete with characters and opinions.

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.

I was fortunate to be on sabbatical in Italy in 2005, not long after the salva calcio (save football) decree was passed by Silvio Berlusconi, then Italian Prime Minister and owner of AC Milan.

The legislation was essentially a form of legalised creative accounting which sought to legitimize clubs’ poor financial positions and performance by inflating player asset values on balance sheets.

Jones’ book is not just about football.

But within a fascinating critique of Berlusconi’s Italy, there is brilliant insight into calcio in all its forms – the beauty and joy of what happens on the field, the poetic and intelligent language with which frequently it is discussed in stadiums, cafes, and TV stations, its cultural significance, and, of course, its myriad of political, financial and governance scandals. Andiamo.

I loved the clear and accessible way that a leading sports economist explains economic concepts to sports fans.

The explanation of why global soccer is characterized by continued dominance in each league (I loved how he shows this is not only true in France but in the Faroe Islands), and how he incorporates important economic insights to explain our current situation.

How could I be a sports physicist and know next to nothing about soccer, the world’s most popular sport? After a student wanted to research soccer physics with me, I knew I had to get up to speed on the beautiful game. Wesson’s book was my choice, and it was a smart choice! From the simple, like the bounce of the ball, to the complex, like the flight of the ball during a free kick, Wesson touches on all the important aspects of soccer.

Anyone can read the book, and for those of us who yearn for the mathematical details, Wesson’s last chapter does not disappoint.

Zimbalist has a masterful way of story-telling, and Circus Maximus is his best book to date. Yes, his 2015 book exposes two of the most powerful authorities governing international sports, the IOC and FIFA, but it is such a wonderful read. I found this book full of data and facts that build compelling arguments and challenged my conventional wisdom about the leaders and organizations involved in producing the Olympics and World Cup.

I began viewing the IOC and FIFA from a different lens after reading this thorough and insightful book about the economic realities, politics, and dark side of hosting mega sporting events. Not much has changed from the 2010s to the modern day.

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. 

When my husband and I got together, everyone said it wouldn’t work.

He graduated from the University of Texas while I was from University of Nebraska. At the time the schools were rabid football rivals. Both of us were avid fans. And the year we got married, the two schools played each other for the championship.

Is it any wonder I wrote about a metro-male and a good-old-boy? Not only do I write about mismatched couples, I read about them too.

In Tigers and Devils, a top Australian football player and the head of an independent film festival are attracted to each other. You don’t have to know anything about Australian football to enjoy this book.

Kennedy’s sense of humor and the main character’s married couple friends will make you believe even if you don’t have my background and haven’t had decades with your spouse.

I found this book very informative when I started researching my book on the Ultras fans in Egypt. It is an in-depth look at the football history in the Middle East and North African region. 

The author, James Dorsey, has real-life experiences of Cairo and other places in the region when he worked as a journalist for decades before turning to his attention to soccer. This book grew out of a blog of the same name with a wide readership and this is the most significant book on the football politics available. The section on Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood comes from an expert’s eye as he picks up the details and explains the situation to the reader. The book is a journey around the troubled landscape of the Middle East to discover the mix of history, cultures, and politics of the Arab world through soccer.