"Obviously one of the best football books for years..."

The good folks at Got, Not Got - the pictorial-centric book series for those of us who gorge on football nostalgia rather than moan about and mourn over the absurd hype of the modern game - have written up a stunningly positive review of Rock 'n' Roll Soccer here:

Got, Not Got - they get it.

"As the definitive story of the genius concept/trainwreck of the North American Soccer League, Ian Plenderleith’s Rock ‘n' Roll Soccer is obsessively detailed, hilarious and subtly mindblowing – a revolutionary revision of history based entirely on original research and interviews with a litany of movers, shakers and ex-players.

"This is obviously one of the best football books for years, moving way beyond the standard jokey cliches of the NASL – the fat old pros in cowboy-fringed shirts, the rule-tampering, the cheerleaders – to reveal the nascent American league of the 70s and 80s as nothing less than a blueprint for our own ‘modern’ game.

"That’s right: everything we sniggered about back then is now pushed into our cheery upturned faces week on week, rebranded as the ‘Premier’ League. Ha ha ha ha: three points for a win, names on jerseys, squad numbers, an avalanche of stats, multi subs, no backpasses, female-friendliness and bullshit marketing by the agency-load. The difference is, the NASL was experimental, innovative and creative.

"Don’t worry, this is far more than merely enlightening and entertaining; there are plenty of anorak rock ‘n’ roll parallels and arsey jokes, too."

"Well worth your hard-earned buck"

Pink rocks

Many thanks to the print and digital magazine The Football Pink for its generous appraisal of Rock n Roll Soccer. So many nice quotes to choose from. In addition to the headline above, let's go with:

"Plenderleith’s superbly researched, fact-packed book sets out not only to recap the excesses we know about [the NASL], but also to remind us and celebrate that, with so many of its innovations it was ahead of its time. There was so much more to the NASL than cheerleaders, fireworks and razzmattaz – but in the good old US of A, there’s no reason you can’t throw them in for good measure!

"[....] As you might expect, some of the more well-worn topics are covered in great detail in Rock n Roll Soccer – financial ruin, gimmickry, rule changes, the import of ageing foreigners like Pelé, Beckenbauer, Best, Marsh and Cruyff, the English influence, the girls and the parties…

"But you’ll also find out a lot of stuff from the periphery and the far-flung outposts of the NASL that you may never have known without reading this book. The league wasn’t just about the New York Cosmos, you know!

"Plenderleith also pokes around the murky world of the moneymen and politicians of the NASL and how, eventually, those in charge really didn’t have the first idea how to run a soccer club or a league (the Jimmy Hill chapter was an eye opener for me).

"As well as being an engrossing eulogy to the madness and magic of [the] NASL, there’s a healthy smattering of entertaining facts and stats intertwined between chapters. This book is highly recommended whether or not you’re an aficionado of NASL or MLS. This cautionary tale is part of our game’s weird and wonderful history and one that is too often shrugged off with snobbish disdain by European observers as a mere far-away, inconsequential circus. Once you read this book, you’re likely to have changed your mind. The NASL’s legacy may be more visible than you think."

TLS Review of "raffish" Rock n Roll Soccer

"Raffish? Me? I say!"

Well, I feel all grown up now that the Times Literary Supplement has reviewed Rock n Roll Soccer. As though I haven't just written a book about football, but I have written actual literature. The TLS doesn't have anything as vulgar as a Sports section, but it does, apparently, review books about sport on occasion, and in its edition of September 26, 2014, nicely summarized the contents of my book and, without giving me anything like a 'Read this NOW!' quote for publicity purposes, seemed to like it. In fact the reviewer tweeted that he "loved it", but what goes out on Twitter obviously would not be fit for the carefully honed print pages of the TLS. Here's an extract:

"Written with a raffish exuberance worthy of its subject, Rock n Roll Soccer offers a more generous take [than the common perception] on the ill-fated NASL. Yes, it was foolishly short-sighted to try to establish clubs in places like Las Vegas and Hawaii, but there was plenty to admire about the audacity and enterprise of a project that brought together footballers like Pelé, Eusebio, George Best and Franz Beckenbauer. In forcing Association Football onto the radar of US popular consciousness, it ultimately paved the way for the more sustainable, low-key success of Major League Soccer. If the enthusiasm of the American public during the recent World Cup is anything to go by, it hasn't all been in vain.

"Rock n Roll Soccer challenges the parochial assumptions that have skewed the NASL narrative in England - in particular, the idea of English football as a paragon of sporting authenticity. The English football culture of the 1970s was far from perfect: on the pitch, tactics were increasingly defensive and negative; off the pitch, as Ian Plenderleith correctly observes, the hooligan violence that blighted the decade 'no more reflected a passion for soccer than cheering teams of choreographed dancing girls and cheap hot dog promotions'.

"Plenderleith maintains that the NASL was actually ahead of its time, its showbiz trappings, a harbinger of the brazen commercialism that would come to dominate the English game from the 1990s onwards, with the advent of Sky TV and the English Premier League...."