Customer Reviews

Unlucky: A Season of Struggle in Minor League Professional Soccer

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As an English soccer fan, it was very interesting to read about the travails of minor league soccer in the United States. Major League has problems competing with the three leading sports, but these are compounded for Minor League. Ungrady provides a compelling picture of the struggles of the North Virginia Royals to establish themselves. The book is given added interest by his own attempts to get into the team, not helped when he manages to take a large segment of the team to entirely the wrong town. This is a very well written book: it kept me absorbed on a flight from Seattle to Pittsburgh. I can recommend it to anyone interested in soccer or sports more generally.

The book provides an interesting view of the lower levels of professional soccer in the US. Most of the time we can only read about the players who have "made it." This book shows the reality of the vast majority of players who haven't quite made it and probably never will. I don't think it's quite good enough a read to merit 5 stars, but I would definitely recommend it to any soccer junkie.

This is a terrific book about the struggles of becoming a soccer player and creating a soccer team. Ungrady is certainly soccer knowledgeable and writes with a good sense of humor. It was great to get an insider's view of professional soccer in America. The book reminded me of Friday Night Lights and has been a quick read!

A book any athlete or sports fan will love, it's a vivid, often funny, personal rendering of the hard work, thankless hours, and highs and lows that low-profile minor league athletes endure in an effort to make it big and advance their sport. It's Paper Lion crossed with Bull Durham. Check it out.

Ungrady approaches the N.Virginia Royals and wants to write a book about the season. What follows is a fact based trip across the D3 league (same level as double A baseball). Other than trying to appropriate blame on an 11 year old boy for getting lost on the way to an away game it is a standard "year in the life of".

The lack of fans, fact that they are all unpaid professionals (oxy-moron?) and life with a full time job and part time player is covered in depth. A great read if you like soccer.

I enjoyed this book very much being it was a dream of mine to be a professional soccer player. Ungrady got the opportunity to be a player on a professional team and carefully relayed the experience to the reader. He detailed the commitment that these players need to make to get their chance and the difficulty of balancing work and sport. These players are not making money at this and this makes the struggle that much greater. Also, I found it quite interesting the amount of work it took Dave to get ready to just practice and that some of the kids could just show up and quickly be ready. It made me more aware of the different warm up techniques of each player whenever I arrive early for a United game or even a Royals game. Being that this was my local D3 team I was also quite interested. This is an enjoyable book that is very good for a summer read at the beach. Read it before you go to the stadium and understand what it took many of these players to make your team be it MLS, A-League, D3, PDL, W-League, or WUSA. The question is does Dave Ungrady get on the field as a professional for the NOVA Royals? You will need to read this for yourself. Enjoy.

Quick disclaimer: I've met Dave Ungrady, though I did so after reading the book. I also write about soccer myself.

There are many who NEED to read this book if they haven't done so already. This would include anyone who has a strong opinion about organizing soccer in the U.S. Ungrady's book just might turn your impression of lower-division soccer on its ear. "A Season of Struggle" is an apt subtitle. It's a tough life lived only by those who absolutely love the game.

For everyone else -- it's simply a good, fun read. You don't even have to be a big soccer fan. He keeps a light touch through his anecdotes, interjecting his own experience but not turning into the "me, me, me" digressions that often drag down books of this type.

Enjoy.

It's so hard finding a good soccer book because most of the results for "good soccer books" are either extremely obvious (Inverting the Pyramid, The Ball is Round, Fever Pitch, etc.) or mindless generic biographies of the best players that I have no interest in reading. I can't even remember how I came across this book (I want to say I saw the title in a blog comment about soccer books) but I'm glad I found it.

Unlucky is one of the most in-depth looks at a soccer team I've ever read and it's at one of the lowest professional levels in the US, which is odd because finding books about American soccer are tough in general. It's mostly well-written (sometimes he overwrites with descriptions on meaningless things like beer and bowel movements) and a fairly easy read. I did find myself skimming through the trouble he had keeping up with his fitness and injuries and the in-depth background on every single player on the team but it might be interesting to somebody else. I even skimmed through a lot of the individual games' play-by-play near the end of the season when I already had a clear idea of how their games typically went. My main interest was in how unorganized and unprofessional "professional soccer" was, and still is in the United States. With the turmoil surrounding the USL (and Marcos) and its teams' owners in the past year, I've become very interested in lower level soccer's financial and organizational problems. This book gives a really good look at how amateur these professional teams can be and it's actually sad that over ten years later, we're still seeing a lot of the same situations and reading the same stories.

I would definitely recommend this book to any fan of a soccer team in America. Or anybody that has wild ideas of promotion and relegation for this country because, yeah, it ain't happening.

As a late 40's male I recently started to play recreational soccer and searched for a book that could provide insight into the game and how my body would respond to this new activity. Instead what I found is a wonderful and inspiring story about the trials and tribulations of an individual who at an advanced age is trying to pursue his passion at the highest competitive levels. I have since purchased copies for friends and their children and recommend it to all those who play or simply enjoy watching the game of soccer.

After spending a winter reading about spoiled basketball players being "dissed" by five million dollar a year contracts, it was a pleasure to learn about true athletes who love their game. The author brings their experiences to life for those of us whose athletic careers ended with high school graduation but who have always wondered what it would have been like to have "played on."