Englischer Fussball by Rafael Honigstein

While it comes out in Sep­tem­ber, I was for­tu­nate enough to get an advanced copy of Englis­cher Fuss­ball: A German’s View of our Beau­ti­ful Game. It was handed to me by the man him­self. But there was a prob­lem with his tim­ing. Rafa had handed this book to me right in the mid­dle of book seven in the Harry Pot­ter series. If there is one per­son you don’t want to fol­low in a read­ing list, it’s J.K. Rowl­ings. It’s kind of like stand­ing next to Brad Pitt as you flirt with women. Dis­as­ter is imminent.

But it wasn’t. First of all, we read his columns every week, so we know how good a writer he is. But more impor­tantly, Rafa crafted a book that was so good, it com­pares favor­ably to the gold stan­dard of all foot­balling books, Franklin Foer’s How Soc­cer Explains the World. The key to it was that he was able to strad­dle a fine line between being a soci­ol­ogy book, such as a Kuper or Buford book and a his­tory book, such as a Uli Hesse-Litchenberger book. Usu­ally a book is one or the other. It’s an auda­cious exper­i­ment to com­bine the two, but Rafa has the goods to do it and do it well.

So tak­ing this soci­o­log­i­cal and his­tor­i­cal cross-section, Honig­stein gives a view of what the Eng­lish game is all about. What is its place, not only in Eng­land, but in all of our world and how did it get to be that way. Why does hard­ness mat­ter; why is fair­ness so cru­cial; why are the stands so impor­tant to the sup­port­ers why does it try to stamp out indi­vid­u­al­ity. It’s a tale of how a game and a cul­ture cross-pollinated to give us the world’s most pop­u­lar league.

I will say right now that the Eng­lish will prob­a­bly not care for it, because for the first few chap­ters, he breaks down the game with a fairly crit­i­cal eye. He will have his share of crit­ics because he dares to deride aspects of the Eng­lish brand. By the end of the first few chap­ters, I was ready to give up on the Pre­mier­ship. Despite this early crit­i­cism, Rafa is a fan and he shows a love for the Eng­lish game. Thus he begins to build it back up and by the end, you love the league again. And that is in the long run, how he was able to com­pete with Harry Pot­ter, because the book is a bit of a ride, first as it strips away your love of a league and then gives it back.

With­out giv­ing any­thing away, I can only say that the first chap­ter of this book is absolutely hands-down the most inter­est­ing chap­ter in any book about foot­ball ever. I was amazed by it and I had some long nights get­ting to sleep as I pon­dered the propo­si­tions in that chap­ter and either coun­tered or agreed with them. The last chap­ter, where he con­cerns him­self with the Ger­mans’ view of the war, might be the most poignant ever writ­ten. And the lit­tle I am will­ing to give away is a line he writes about the one-sided feel­ings of the Eng­lish hatred of Ger­mans. Regard­ing the chants and jibes made by the Eng­lish against Ger­many, such as the song “Ten Ger­man Bombers”, he says that it can never harm the Ger­mans because at the end of the day, speak­ing as a Ger­man “we are grate­ful that we lost the war.”

In between the inter­est­ing first and the emo­tional last, Rafa addresses the Eng­lish media, the devel­op­ment of the Eng­lish brand of foot­ball, the man who changed the game and gets no credit, why suf­fer­ing is so cru­cial to the Eng­lish fan, the obses­sion of the Eng­lish regard­ing for­eign influ­ence on the game, fan fash­ion and the future of the league.

It’s a very eclec­tic mix of angles to pro­vide and com­plete pic­ture of Eng­lish foot­ball. And is a book that only some­one, not tied to the game through ances­try could pull off. This is a book that should be in the library of every foot­ball fan.

He does have one glar­ing error. Speak­ing of Euro 2000, he men­tions the riots in Charleroi dur­ing the England-Germany group match. I was at that game and there were no riots in Charleroi. The riots took place in Brus­sels with fans who couldn’t get to the game. But it’s a long run­ning mis­con­cep­tion by many.