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  • Going to the Match: The Passion for Football

  • The Perfect Gift for Football Fans
  • By: Duncan Hamilton
  • Narrated by: David Mounfield
  • Length: 11 hrs and 33 mins
  • 4.6 out of 5 stars (15 ratings)
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Going to the Match: The Passion for Football cover art

Going to the Match: The Passion for Football

By: Duncan Hamilton
Narrated by: David Mounfield
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Summary

A celebration of football by award-winning sports writer Duncan Hamilton.  

A massive audience in sitting rooms, parks and pubs watched England in the 2018 World Cup. Yet as Duncan Hamilton demonstrates with style, insight and wit in Going to the Match, watching on TV is no substitute for being there.   

Hamilton embarks on a richly entertaining, exquisitely crafted journey through football. Glory game or grass roots, England v Slovenia or Guiseley v Hartlepool, he delves beneath the action to illuminate the stories which make the sport endlessly compelling.  

Along the way he marvels at present-day titans Harry Kane, Mo Salah, Kevin De Bruyne and Paul Pogba, reflects on sepia-tinted magicians Stanley Matthews, Jimmy Greaves, Bobby Charlton and Pele, and assesses managerial giants from Brian Clough and Jose Mourinho to Arsene Wenger and Gareth Southgate.  

The odyssey takes Hamilton from Fleetwood to Berlin, via Glasgow and a Manchester derby, making detours into art, cinema, literature and politics as he explores the game's ever-changing culture and character.  

The result, like the L. S. Lowry painting that inspired the book, is a football masterpiece.  
©2018 Duncan Hamilton (P)2018 Hodder & Stoughton Limited
Sports Great Britain Football (Soccer) Sociology of Sports
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Profile Image for Mariner

Nearly perfect

Really great book.
I am probably about the same age as the author and loved the nostalgia.
Right at the beginning, I looked up that Newcastle- Forest match from 1974 on Utube, and found the author as he described himself, visible behind the corner taker on Newcastle's first goal, floppy fair hair over one eye, wearing a parka.
So far so good, but then it gets a little spoiled by the sycophantic fawning over the 'greatness' of Manchester City, without ONCE mentioning the reason that they are where they are because they've been presented with a bottomless pit of oil money without actually earning any of it. Hopefully, there are sanctions in the pipeline, but even if the 115 charges miraculously disappear, its still not right, not fair. Surely worth a mention at least?
Oh, and the chapter on women's football? Never have I seen anything that remotely approaching the author's description of that level of play. Mind you, it WAS Manchester City women . . . .
3 stars for the readers' performance as there are a few mispronunciations, Kevin de Broin? Moly-no?

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