This book was insufferable. I wanted to hurl it across the room. Shame on the publishers who let this go to the printing press. Seriously, I am amazed this got released. Another key factor in Tottenham's success during the late 1970s was the quality of its players. The team was blessed with a number of talented individuals, including the likes of Glenn Hoddle, Steve Perryman, and Ossie Ardiles. Davies provides an in-depth look at each of these players, describing their strengths and weaknesses, and how they contributed to the team's success. Much of the talk of great teams from Dynamo Moscow to Dynamo Kiev and Steaua Bucharest is repeated in Inverting the Pyramid, but it’s the people to whom Wilson speaks for this book that implore the reader to care about teams they may otherwise ignore. Each country, each club, is dealt with great tact. The Glory Game by Hunter Davies is a detailed examination of the players, coach, and strategies of a football team. The book is not just a chronicle of the team's on-field exploits but also a portrait of the people who make up the club. Davies delves into the personalities and motivations of the players, coaches, and staff, revealing the complex dynamics of a football team and the challenges that come with managing egos and personalities.

The team in question is Tottenham Hotspur, who Davies followed closely for a season during the late 1970s. The book is divided into two parts. The first part, "The Men," provides an in-depth look at the personalities of the players, coaches, and staff. Davies spends time with each one, giving readers a behind-the-scenes look at their lives both on and off the pitch. From the hard-nosed manager Bill Nicholson to the star striker Martin Chivers, Davies captures the personalities of each member of the team with great detail. London is a fantastic place, stimulating and exciting, but it can also get too much: the noise is constant. After three days on the Clerkenwell Design Days with customers (and switching from French to English to Dutch constantly) I felt emotionally drained and overexposed. And so I decided to look for peace and silence and nature, but in London, and preferably easily reachable by the Tube.The pictures. Especially the ones of Alan Gilzean who was indeed as odd looking for a footballer - surely an undertaker in his forties or a seedy bank manager - as I remembered.**

First released four months before the 1966 World Cup, John Moynihan’s The Soccer Syndrome is more a personal ode to post-war football, Brylcreem and all, rather than any kind of assessment of England’s chances at the upcoming tournament. And it’s all the better for it. I moved away from London a year ago and beside friends, Hampstead is what I miss the most, on any day, with rain or sun it was bringing me joy, calm and excitement. Sorry if this review is so far mainly about me and my time in Hampstead but it was impossible not to mention this before reviewing the book. Books on the business of football can be unreadably dry, but The Beautiful Game? is passionate and bleakly humorous. Quite aside from the depth of the research, what sets Conn’s book above Tom Bower’s Broken Dreams, a mystifying winner of the William Hill’s Sports Book of the Year Award in 2003, is the sense that he really cares. Broken Dreams was riddled with errors, both of fact and of spirit; Conn, simply by noting, for instance, that fans know intuitively why Notts County matter, taps into a depth of tradition of which Bower has no grasp. Bower just says football is in a very bad way; Conn tells us why it is worth putting right. Jonathan Wilson The Glory Game is a book that has stood the test of time. More than four decades after its initial release, it is still considered a classic of sports literature and is widely read by fans of football and lovers of great writing alike.

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Ken Loach might have turned all this into a powerful social film, but the avuncular Davies sprinkles in so many cheery anecdotes that the book bounces along enjoyably ' ( Sunday Times ) - Praise for VOLUME 1: THE CO-OP'S GOT BANANAS!

Football is a simple game. Twenty-two men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end, the Germans always win. (Gary Lineker) One of the things that sets Tottenham Hotspur apart from other football clubs is its rich history and culture. The team has always had a strong connection with its fans, and this is something that Davies captures brilliantly in his book. He describes the passion and dedication of the supporters, and how they form an integral part of the club's success. Football in the 1970s was a completely different beast, and that shows not only in the game and the style of play but the players and coaches themselves. As other people have pointed out, there is racism, there is homophobia, there is a lot of misogyny (Bill Nicholson doesn't let his wife go to games, for example). I hate to use the phrase 'a product of its time' and these things can't and shouldn't be excused. But I suppose they also have to be read in their context, which is contemporary attitudes and also Hunter Davies meticulously transcribing and noting down every single thing that happens. One of the most striking aspects of Davies' writing is his ability to humanize the players. He doesn't portray them as larger-than-life figures, but rather as regular people with families, personal struggles, and insecurities. For example, he writes about the pressure that star player Jimmy Greaves faced to perform on the field, as well as his battles with alcoholism and depression off the field. Davies’ 1972 book offered incredible insight of life at a football club as he was granted unprecedented access to Tottenham Hotspur’s 1971-72 as they went on to win that season’s UEFA Cup and challenging at the sharp end domestically.

The Glory Game: Football's Personal Battles

Written by Hunter Davies, The Glory Game is a behind-the-scenes look at Tottenham Hotspur Football Club during the 1971-72 season. Davies, who was given unprecedented access to the club's players, coaches, and management, provides a fascinating insight into the day-to-day workings of a professional football club. And to celebrate the 50th anniversary since The Glory Game came out, Well Offside photographer Mark Leech delves into the Offside Sports Photography Archive to dig out the pictures taken for the book. Football is at the heart of every chapter here, but witnessed through the prism of the Sunday Telegraph football reporter’s experiences and life journey along the way. From a childhood spent face-down in the dirt at a rugby school –“I stared at the grass below and, as a heel lashed into my nose, I dreamt of the fruits of the outside world, Association Football”– to watching Pele and Garrincha light up the 1958 World Cup Final over a lovelorn female companion’s shoulder in a Paris café, Moynihan’s focus on events and fandom make this come alive.