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See also www.johndoyleblog.com
80,000 words
Finished books now available
US: Rodale, Fall 2010
Canada: Doubleday, May 2010
UK: Transworld Ireland, May 2010
Croatia: Znanje D.D., May 2010
(Photo: Rob Allen)
John Doyle has been a critic for The Globe and Mail since 1997 and has written its daily television column since 2000. His first book, the memoir A Great Feast of Light: Growing up Irish in the Television Age, was published to great acclaim in the US, the UK, and Canada. He has also written for The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, The Guardian online, The Irish Times and The Toronto Star.
The Joy, Madness, and Meaning of Soccer
by John Doyle
IN THIS PICARESQUE, PETE-MCCARTHY-MEETS-NICK-HORNBY TRAVELOGUE, JOHN DOYLE EXPLORES THE WORLD OF SOCCER—FROM THE SMALL CLUB GAMES TO THE UNIFYING FORCE OF THE WORLD CUP
- John's prediction for the Irish football team
- A 2010 Globe 100 selection: the 100 top-reviewed books of the year
- Listen to John Doyle on CBC Radio's The Next Chapter
- CBC Book Club Choice for June 2010
“It is something of an article of faith among fans of the literature of our games that the best writing set in sports has been inspired by baseball and boxing. Doyle is among those making a case for soccer as equally capable of provoking the great stuff.” — THE BOSTON GLOBE
“A great book, one bigger than the game itself … Amazing stuff.” — WINNPEG FREE PRESS
“John Doyle does a marvelous job of capturing the game's special spirit. For those who want to learn more about soccer and the supporters' culture, this book is a perfect read. For those who are veteran followers, it will deepen your love and passion..” — BORIS AGUILAR, President, Red Patch Boys (Toronto FC Supporters group)
“… a trenchant social history and analysis of “the beautiful game…” — THE GLOBE AND MAIL
“One of my earliest memories is of sitting on my father's shoulders when the English soccer team marched through the crowded streets celebrating their world cup victory in 1966. I could not understand why he was crying. John Doyle's brilliant book explains why soccer more than any sport has the power to reduce grown men to tears, to instill enormous passion, to fills one's heart with pride. You also can't go wrong with muddy men in short shorts.” — DEBBIE TRAVIS
“Even if you don't like soccer but care about people, the games that people play and why they play them – this is a book to love. John Doyle's sports-writing transcends competition and the score, and connects the sport to the primal needs and passions of the human spirit.” — LINDEN MACINTYRE, author of the Giller Prize winner The Bishop’s Man
“The Beautiful Game deserves a Beautiful Book – and John Doyle's The World is a Ball is exactly that, and more. Part primer for the World Cup, it is also a lilting paean to the glorious sport of football, absurdly known in this part of the world as soccer. Doyle says he is not a sportswriter and, indeed, he is anthropologist, historian, literary executor, psychologist, world traveler and brilliant observer here...but he is also a sportswriter who stands with the best any game has known. It helps to be Irish to write such a marvelous book, but you only have to be human to love reading it.” — ROY MACGREGOR, bestselling author of The Home Team: Fathers, Sons and Hockey
“International football tournaments are extraordinary things: sporting rituals, commercial bonanzas, international TV events and popular carnivals. In The World is a Ball, John Doyle is our laconic, sharp eyed guide to the circus. This a football travelogue alert to the complex identities, and emotions that international football evokes, and tuned to the political and social meanings that emerge from success and failure, but never makes them hard going. Playful, humane, observant, Doyle delights in his fellow human beings capacity to conjure pleasure and purpose from football. There’s nothing quite like being there, but if you can’t The World is a Ball will give you an irresistible taste that will make you want to be there next time, and a learned eye with which to take it in and enjoy it.” — DAVID GOLDBLATT, author of The Ball Is Round: A Global History of Soccer
Journalist, social anthropologist, memoirist, and soccer fanatic John Doyle turns his eye to the most popular sport on the planet: soccer — the beautiful game. As John says, “Soccer is a simple game, made complicated by tactics on and off the field.”
The action moves from the first game John saw, with the Longford Town club, in 1960s-era Ireland, through soccer in the 21st century — the World Cups in 2002 and 2006, the European Championships in 2004 and 2008 and concludes with a detailed chronicle of the key games on the road to World Cup 2010. From Italy to Ireland and from BuenosAires to Bratislava he has travelled to write cogent, humorous analysis of the great and the lowly teams who will play in South Africa in the world’s biggest sporting event.
At the core of the book rests eyewitness and eye-popping accounts of the big soccer tournaments in this century. From the dazzled, drunken fans, the crazed taxi drivers, to the fans dressed as leprechauns or in lederhosen, Doyle muses on the evolution of soccer as a global phenomenon. From thepetty nationalism and cultural wars of small-club soccer to the power of the World Cup to unify people from around the globe, The World Is A Ball examines soccer from a different angle. Soccer as religion, crossing the boundaries of geography and faith. Soccer as pagan ritual. More than just a travelogue or one fan’s diary, John Doyle’s latest offers a compelling analysis of the ultimate sport, and how it has kept pace as the global village has sprung up around it.
PRAISE FOR THE WORLD IS A BALL
“If you're looking for an intense, completely engaging global soccer experience while you're saving your money for Euro 2012, you will surely enjoy picking up The World Is a Ball: The Joy, Madness and Meaning of Soccer.” — WORLD SOCCER READER
“All of it is wonderful sportswriting, but it’s sportswriting written by a fan, not a sportswriter. The World Is a Ball is about watching and living soccer, not scores and stats.” — THE RECORD
“He’s masterly on the topic of his favourite sport.” — THE VANCOUVER SUN
“A fine book about the beautiful game.” — THE GLOBE AND MAIL
“The perfect primer for the world's game.” — THE MONTREAL GAZETTE
“Doyle describes the games … as if they were great theatre, or maybe acts in an opera.” — TORONTO SUN
Praise for John Doyle's A Great Feast of Light
“A gentle, funny book…. [Doyle] writes the best kind of cultural history, based not on statistics and generalizations but on first-hand experience…. [This] book crackles with unexpected angles, and is written with a kind of naïve delight. It is the ideal present for anyone given to pontification about the brain-deadening effects of television.” — THE SUNDAY TIMES, UK
“Doyle does a marvelous job of dissecting the cultures…. A marvelous read, with keen insights and laugh-out-loud moments…” — PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, starred review
“I had to stop reading John Doyle's A Great Feast of Light several times because I was laughing hysterically, yes, hysterically. This gifted writer has no chip on his shoulder as he writes of Northern Ireland, bigotry, violence, his awakening sexuality, family lunacy, the dying of the powerful church and its system of ecclesiastical terrorism.... Did television change Ireland for the better or the opposite? One Bush-like Irish politician said there was no sex in Ireland until the coming of television. Read Doyle's book to find out if there was anything else. I envy your journey.” — MALACHY MCCOURT
THE WORLD IS A BALL - Table of Contents
Introduction
Meaning: All the Rambling Boys of Pleasure
Part One
Joy: The Long Ball from Longford to Ibaraki
1: The First Kiss
2: It's Only a Game
3: You'll Never Beat the Irish
Part Two
Madness: Soccer in the Twenty-First Century
1: World Cup Korea, Japan 2002
2: Euro 2004, Portugal
3: World Cup Germany 2006
4: Euro 2008 Austria, Switzerland
Part Three
The Road to World Cup 2010
1: Home
2: Away We Go
Added Time: John Doyle's Guide to World Cup 2010