The branches of the great royal oak that is football are endless. A continuous weaving narrative, rich in history and heritage, a great opera, unrelenting, unable to be completely traceable. Within the gaps bloom the myths, the legends, the tall-tales. Who better than the founding director of the National Football Museum to reveal truth, and to bring fact to fables and fallacy, and shed some light on the legends? Welcome to your new favourite book, football fan, in What You Think You Know About Football is Wrong: The Global Game’s Greatest Myths and Untruths, by Kevin Moore.
“Football has been completely mythologised and many of the things football fans think they know about football and its history turn out not to be true,” the publication proclaims, “We want to believe the myths, and so they become accepted. So much football writing is not properly researched, and so the myths get repeated… again and again and again.”
Written by Moore, who operated at the National Football Museum for two decades, this thoroughly researched and authoritative book debunks more than 50 of the greatest myths surrounding football. Backed up by the highest level of academic research yet written in an accessible, mass-market style, the book will explore the truth behind many accepted myths. For the reader, this will be your new pub ammo bible once your back with your buds down the local boozer, intermittently impressing, and no doubt irritating, as your know-it-all ego emerges.
Thanks to Kevin you’ll be able to assert that the Germans took football to Brazil, not the English, that football hooliganism did not begin in England, shirt colours do make a difference, Cambridge and not Sheffield is the home of the oldest football club in the world, and perhaps most controversially, that Arsenal should not be in the Premier League… ‘they cheated to be there’.
Football is a surprising and spontaneous game, and as such needs a great publication to grip and also shock. Kevin Moore isn’t just passionate about his subject, he has the knowledge and quality of writing to match. Think you’ve exhausted all conversation about the beautiful game? This book is your new best friend.
What You Think You Know About Football is Wrong: The Global Game’s Greatest Myths and Untruths, by Kevin Moore, Bloomsbury Sport, RRP £12.99.
