The Story of the World Cup

Brian Glanville's 450-something page history of World Cups, through to the Azzuri's triumph in 2006, is a marathon read (I started this before Brazil 2014!). It's pretty much a record with some opinion pieces thrown in and quite a few antiquated descriptions of players - "the little black inside forward, Klinger" or "Julinho, his face as impassive as an Aztec god's".

Some of the most interesting points come from the politics surrounding the game, rather than the game itself. For example, referring to the 1998 Cup, "The disappointing quality of so many games, the inadequacy of several competitors, could be put down to the ultimate grandiose scheme of the FIFA president, Joao Havelange, who stood down at last just before the tournament after 24 controversial years in charge, only to give way to the FIFA secretary, Sepp Blatter, the man of whom a German journalist once said, 'Sepp Blatter has fifty new ideas every day; and fifty-one of them are bad!'"

And this from the same chapter, "Blatter's elevation to the Presidency was itself nothing if not controversial. It had seemed done and dusted in favour of the Swedish President of UEFA, Lennart Johansson, but when push came to shove, his lead melted mysteriously away, so much so that, hurt and puzzled, he withdrew before the second ballot. How had this happened? We may never know. Accusations were made, but Blatter angrily brushed them all aside." Of course he did.

This is nice from Arrigo, 1994. "Sacchi, who'd had such success with Milan, had never played at any decent level, but retorted to his critics, 'You don't have to have been a horse to be a jockey.'"

And this about Maradona vs England in 1986, "The second was astounding, a goal so unusual, almost romantic, that it might have been scored by some schoolboy hero, or some remote Corinthian, from the days when dribbling was the vogue."

The early years of the World Cup are fascinating. The immense effort by Uruguay to host the first one in 1930. The hubris of Brazil before the 1950 final. The nearly-men of Hungary in 1938 and, gut-wrenchingly, 1954.

There are great moments throughout the book but it's not quite up to the level of The Ball is Round by David Goldblatt or Inverting the Pyramid by Jonathan Wilson.