Summer books of 2019: Sports

No Win Race: A Story of Belonging, Britishness and Sport, by Derek A Bardowell, HarperCollins, RRP£16.99

A former music journalist uses sport and three generations of his family story to examine the thorny evolution of British attitudes towards race. How can he teach his child to negotiate being both black and British, two identities that don’t always sit easily together? Which team or athlete to support?

Football Hackers: The Science and Art of a Data Revolution, by Christoph Biermann, translated by Raphael Honigstein, Blink, RRP£12.99

One of Germany’s foremost football writers finally gets an English translation. Biermann has long been fascinated by football’s version of Moneyball: teams that use statistics to scout players or plan match tactics. His well-written and thoughtful reporting takes us on a tour of some of Europe’s most innovative football thinkers.

Zonal Marking: The Making of Modern European Football, by Michael Cox, HarperCollins, RRP£16.99

Cox, a tactics obsessive, largely ignores the soap opera of football to explain what actually happens on the field. In this book, speckled with well-told anecdotes, he traces the tactical development of the game over the last 30 years. Each of Europe’s seven leading football nations gets its moment in the spotlight.

Generation Game: One Football Club, One Family and a Century of Obsession, by Charlie Morris, Goldford Publishing, RRP£8.99

A former FT journalist recounts his family’s support for little Crewe Alexandra football club. At times painfully honest, including about Crewe’s child-abuse scandal, Morris admits to using football to hide from bereavement and sorrow much as did his grandfather, damaged by the first world war. The book is as much about male English emotional repression as about football.

The National Team: The Inside Story of the Women Who Changed Soccer, by Caitlin Murray, Abrams Press, RRP$26

Such is the global neglect of female soccer that even the members of the US women’s national team have often had to scrape a living in between winning World Cups and Olympic Games. Murray interviewed dozens of players to assemble a moving insider’s account of their struggle for respect and attention.

With Clough, By Taylor, by Peter Taylor, Biteback Publishing, RRP£9.99

Hack autobiographies are a mainstay of sportswriting. First-rate ones are much rarer. In this forgotten gem from 1980, now reissued, Taylor recounts his partnership with his soulmate Brian Clough, which culminated in their co-managing little Nottingham Forest to two European Cups in 1979 and 1980. Soon afterwards, these two remarkable men fell out forever.

Simon Kuper is an FT columnist

For a look at the best summer books across genres, go to ft.com/summerbooks2019

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