World Cup Baby - Quality Read

I wanted to give this book a plug. It's bloody good. I'm two thirds of my way through World Cup Baby and I'll finish it before tomorrow morning.

It really is a terrific read. There are millions of books written on football and plenty on World Cups, but not many of quality by a Kiwi whose football obsession and experience you can fully relate to and whose witty anecdotes strike a personal chord.

Most of what I write below is what McCabe writes about. But, I should first of all say, the book is more than its content. It�s also how he writes. It's a loose and quirky style, and it works because he has a great sense of humour, tending sarcastic, and a great ability to tell a yarn and maximise the punch line.

It's a book as much about what it is to be a football fan (particularly a Kiwi one), as it is about football itself. Being a football fan in a rugby-mad country, attaching yourself to a team on the far side of the planet, the suspense of listening for results announced without emotion on the radio every Sunday morning and Shoot magazines that arrive 3 months after the FA Cup final. That kind of stuff.

But, McCabe also does a super job conveying the unique culture of football support and perceptively nails just what it is that makes football such a compelling game. How no two 1-1 draws are ever the same - how one can leave you emotionally shattered and gutted and another can leave you with you on a massive high with adrenaline pumping long after you depart the scene. It�s the real essence of football stuff. And I think he nails it, like I�ve not seen or read before.

McCabe�s experience is as a long time Ipswich Town fan, and he has some quality anecdotes about following their ups and downs, but everything he says is true for anyone who has ever followed a European club side - or has now found the Phoenix.

I shouldn�t forget to mention that the World Cup is the focus of the book. Like McCabe, the World Cup to me as a Kiwi football fan has always been a massive event. Pre-internet and Sky Sports 2, the World Cup was a glorious month long feast of wall-to-wall football in a country otherwise starved of quality football.

McCabe takes the reader through his World Cup experiences - beginning in '78 and including his trip to Italia '90. I still have video tapes at home from 86 and 90, still remember vividly the horrific injustice of the France v Germany semi in 82, Marco Tardelli's unbelievable celebration in the 82 final, Maradona, Lineker, Socrates, Platini in 86, Caniggia's back header and Goycochea's heroics for Argentina v the hosts in 90. That's where I've got to. Might skip 94 as it was rubbish, save Brazil v Netherlands - that was a screamer.

If you remember this stuff, you will absolutely devour this book. I have.