“This is a book that no one will like,” are Jean-Philippe Toussaint’s opening words, “not intellectuals, who aren’t interested in football, or football-lovers, who will find it too intellectual.” This is a bad start – the fans v intellectuals divide was a false stereotype even in the 1980s – and the essay then goes quickly downhill. Jointly with Ashley Cole’s memoir, My Defence, Football is the worst book on the sport I have ever read – a demonstration of how not to write about it.
Toussaint, an admired Belgian novelist, comes from a francophone intellectual tradition that still generally dismisses football as beneath contempt. However, many clever people outside this milieu are football fans. In fact, quite a few of them have written cleverly about the game since Nick Hornby and Bill Buford started a new literary wave 25 years ago.
Content from our partners
