News and reviews of Rock n Roll Soccer



ROCK N ROLL SOCCER: The Short Life and Fast Times of the North American Soccer League, by Ian Plenderleith. This is the blog to back the book hailed as "fantastic" by Danny Kelly on
Talksport Radio, and described as a "vividly entertaining history of the league" in the Independent on Sunday. In the US, Booklist described it as "a gift to US soccer fans". The UK paperback edition published by Icon Books is now available here for just £8.99, while the North America edition published by St. Martin's Press/Thomas Dunne Books can be found here for $11.98. Thank you.

Thursday, February 5, 2015

"US soccer has been a fascinating work in progress ever since 1967"

Not content with praising Rock N Roll Soccer to the rafters, the estimable football literature web site Of Pitch & Page has published an interview with the author, allowing me to pontificate at great length


Tulsa roughneck takes aim at my NASL
 softspot: the Minnesota Kicks (pic: Alan
Merrick private archive).
Authors of course love to talk about their books, but we tend to drone on and become tedious very quickly. That's why I like doing email interviews - you have time to consider both the questions and your own answers. And on a web site, they usually print everything you write because they have the space.

Along with the quote above, here's a teaser to lure you into reading more...

Do you have a favourite NASL team? You do a good job of seeming impartial!

I ended up with a particular soft spot for the Minnesota Kicks – partly because of their incredible rise-and-fall story that I wrote about in Chapter Five, and partly because many of their ex-players were so helpful. When you’re a writer working on a miserly budget you become really grateful towards people who get what you’re doing, and who go out of their way to assist you for no return.