false 3 0 false false Sat Jan 24 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Mon Jan 12 16:07:11 -0800 2009 Sat Jan 24 19:16:04 -0800 2009
I'm on a sort of American-sports-writers kick at the moment. I do love my sport, and I do like good writing about sport. In many ways I have found that American sports writers, taken as a whole, write about sport better than their English counterparts. This means that the other book I am reading at the moment (The Best American Sports Writing 2008), dipping in and out of, is an enjoyable read when it it is about baseball/American Football/basketball - basically American sports. The one place it falls down is in the article about cricket. It was, with this in mind, that I took on "Bloody Confusing" with a pinch of salt. How could an American really understand supporting an English football team?

And he doesn't.

Oh, he gives it a fairly good go. And as an outsider trying to explain what it is like being a die-hard supporter, what it is like to attend an English football match, what it is like to face promotion/relegation in a season, he does a fairly good job. But, as an English football fan, the book gets irritating eventually. It has no real soul. You can't become involved in his story because, well because you get the feeling that he isn't that involved. At one point in the book, as he is trying to explain to an Everton supporter how he chose the team he supports, the Evertonian exasperatedly explains: You can't choose your team, it chooses you. And this is something that the author fails to recognise - he became a Portsmouth supporter because Pompey chose him, not the other way round.

There are many reasons to dislike this book. It can be trite, it can be repetitive, it can be slightly anti-English (and not in a aren't-they-nice-and-quaint way), and the ending is so forced, so crow-barred in there, as to be annoying. However, it tries, the author tries, and I read several books last year that were a lot worse than this. So, I give it three stars out of five, but don't take that as a recommendation, that's just personal. If you really want to read a book about what it is like to be a English football fan, read Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch - now that's bloody excellent!]]>