Customer Reviews

The Rough Guide to English Football, 1st Edition: A Fans' Handbook (Rough Guides)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Even though my England soccer roadtrip is a few years away, I thought this book was very interesting. The stories of some of the smaller clubs hanging on by a thread are very entertaining as these little tiny towns struggle to keep their precious lads going. It is a must buy for fans of the Premiership and Football League and essential for Americans planning roadtrips to England.

This is a thorough and surprisingly entertaining guide to clubs in the Football League in England. All entries contain good information about travel, seating, handicapped access, websites, and other useful travel information. Each entry contains an entertaining short history of the clubs. I suspect football fans will find these histories a good brief reference source.

great reference book for newbies like me who just discovered Euro football on Fox Soccer Channel!

This is truly an excellent work, with decent profiles on all 92 clubs in the Football League. The clubs histories are well written, and the extra details (e.g. good pubs, internet sites etc.) are in the usual dry-humor style of The Rough Guides. There are better books on individual clubs, but you'll be hard pressed to find a better one that covers all teams, especially if you're in the US. This is a book for soccer FANS, far removed from the usual "Clever Soccer Drills" or "Whoopee! We won the Women's world Cup!" drivel that waste space on the bookshelves in most US stores. I highly recommend to anyone who is interested in the English game; this is a "must-have" for your soccer library.

I bought this book as an American who wants to see an English soccer game on a trip in September. This book is essentially a guide to all of the different English Soccer teams in all of the leagues. It helped give me an idea of where the different clubs are, and what the experience of going to a game might be like. (In particular, I'm steering clear of Millwall because of the history of violence.)

But I was expecting (perhaps naively) that because it's a Rough Guide it would be a travel book. It's not -- it's written for the English "away fan", but not the sort-of-bewildered American fan. In particular, the information about tickets is always from the perspective of sitting in the visiting section.

Knowing that, however, it's a very comprehensive guide that could only be more useful by being updated for the current '00-'01 season.

I am moving to the UK in a few months, and wanted to get an overview of the various soccer leagues (FA, Premiership, etc.), the organization of the teams, etc. This book provided little to none of this. It appeared only to give a detailed (I mean detailed) history of all the teams. I still can't tell you how the various leagues are set up, how teams move to different leagues, etc.