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Landmark novel for 'new wave' footie fans

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Football was going through something of a renaissance in the mid-90's. The improvements forced on clubs by the Taylor report were beginning to take shape, making stadiums more welcoming, safer enviroments.And with the big TV money beginning to flow it was a short lived era where die hard regulars, families and new fans mixed together in grounds that still retained much of the atmosphere of the terraces. A transitional time for the game in our country but a transition that went too far in my opinion, engulfing the game with a greed and disdain for the loyalty of fans that kept many clubs alive throughout the difficult times. Such a shame that the healthy balance between safety and affordabilty proposed in the Taylor report and put into practice for a short period eventually came an inevitable but distant second as football clubs actively chased the buck and pandered to a new type of fan who was fresh, eager and easy to exploit. Loyalty was forgotten as working class fans were conveniently branded as thugs(although it was only ever a small minority of troublemakers even in the bad times) to make it acceptable for the media and clubs alike to brag about having 'A much better 'CLASS' of fan at foot-ball now'. As the old guard were priced out and shoved aside clubs made way for the 90's bandwagon jumpers who flocked to the most successful clubs and who fed on a diet of Fantasy Football and patronising, celebrity endorsed 'foot-ball is suddenly cool' dross such as 'My Summer With Des'. To this type of fan 'FEVER PITCH' was the bible and it made going to foot-ball a living nightmare that just seems to get worse with every passing year. You see there was nothing new in what was been said in this book, nor nothing new being said that hasn't been said before about the passion fans feel for the game. But what it did manage to achieve for better or for worse(and in my view definitely the worse) was to make the chattering classes feel comfortable and at ease with the game. Not a bad thing in itself, but Nick Hornby went a step further by evoking an air of superiority which to this day is apparent and no matter where you sit in a foot-ball ground I promise you will not be far from a smug, self indulgent Nigel who though having never played the game, seen the game or even heard of the game until five minutes ago, now seems convinced that he(she) has some deeper, profound, pseudo intellectual insight into the game that I(as a mere life time supporter) could never hope in all my years of primitive existence to grasp. These annoying, pompous, self-appointed master tacticians are never, I repeat NEVER right about anything but ever since the mid-90's they are everywhere and every match I now go to comes with a running commentary of the glaringly obvious in that most gut scrapingly annoying(I could re-invent the wheel) voice, seemingly convinced he(or she)is a revoloutionary tactical genius who views the game from a higher plain than we mere mortals. These people need to be eradicated and know NOTHING about football I can assure you, but thanks largely to Fever Pitch they now largely dominate football grounds with a bloated sense of self-importance and a love for no team outside the top 4. What ever happened to the breed known as the QPR fan? Go to any pub outside of any stadium in the country and I am certain you will hear a better insight into the game than the one on offer in the pages of Fever Pitch and the avalanche of dinner party footie disciples that were born as a result. It is no newsflash the game today has become a greed-ridden, bloated parody of itself and Fever Pitch played an influential role in inspiring footie delirium in marketing execs up and down the country who could now bore colleagues at work with romanticised, pretentious tales of "Braving the terraces of Grimbsby on a cold windy night". Suddenly football writing was poetic,(as long as you were middle class and went to Cambridge, anyway). Man loves foot-ball(yawn). Man loves football and is a smug intellectual and suddenly the Sunday supplements are enamored with 'the beautiful game'. Cue fresh, beaming 'footies great, isn't it?'(Yes, I already know you tedious cretin) faces the length and breadth of the country and the rest is history.

Might be the best book ever dealing with football

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Nick Hornby's warm autobiographical book deals with his life as a football fan from 1968 (when he was a teenager) until 1992, especifically as he supported his beloved Arsenal during that time. There's some good insights about football culture (for a true football fan, football is not really an entertainment, a concept that is probably hard to understand in the US, where sports are just a part of the entertainment business) as well as football tactics (there are few good passers in the sports, he says, as hard as this might be to believe to outsiders; Liam Brady, one of his favorite players, was that rare player, a great passer). Each of the chapters (so to call them) deals with a particular football match that he remembers during that period. And along football, he also makes comments on his relationships, be it with his family or with girlfriends. What Hornby tells is the story of English football in his last throes, a time when hooliganism ruled, but when it also was a genuine, integral pastime of the English people. When the Premiere League was established (in 1992, the year this book ends), and the megamoney and the huge tv contracts came along, and some clubs (like, say, Arsenal) did not put in the field a single English player, it became more of a commercial business and less of a cultural phenomenon. And while I like football, it's hard not to come out from reading this book with the impression that being a football fan at the level Hornby was is not a colossal waste of time.

Unique and interesting.	Customer Rating:
'Fever Pitch' is an interesting and captivating book, I recently read it and would read it again. I am not a football fan but came closer to understand what it feels like to be one, which was very insightful - you needn't be into football to enjoy this book because football is only the backdrop to discussing relationships and issues in life.

Disappointing

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I finally got found to reading this book recently and I wasn't that impressed. Although Hornby sums up a lot of the experiences of being a football fan well, something doesn't work; he never really gets to the bottom of the pain of defeat (and particularly relegation). OK so he's an Arsenal fan and so he's not experienced this, but this is still a book written resolutely from a successful, big club perspective. This, for me, is the main drawback with the impact of this book; it is only really 'true' to the experiences of a very few fans - those of the elite 6 or 7 perenially successful English football teams. But because its influence was so broad it has been adopted as the standard 'excuse book' for newcomer, fairweather fans.

Fickle football fan

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To be honest, the first few pages had me hooked. When Hornby talks about his childhood support of The Arsenal he described exactly my feelings when I first supported my local club. From then on I was looking forward to the definitive account of what it really means to be a devoted football fan. From then on I was most awfully disappointed. The turning point comes quite early on, when he moves from London to Cambridge to take his degree. Having established that he is (in his own eyes)Arsenal's most devoted fan, I'm sure every real fan will be as disgusted as me when he then "Became a Cambridge United fan for three years". I'm afraid, for me at least, all credibility was lost at that point and although I finished the whole book, my feeling was "how can this fickle so-and-so tell ME what I should do to be a true football fan. Sorry Nick, your book is Unibond League division two.