It's hard not to like a well-written book about a subject for which you'd like to think you share the same passion. And so it is with John Doyle's survey of the elite world of international championship football. He obviously loves soccer. I do too. He appreciates Eduardo Galeano's masterpiece Soccer In Sun and Shadow. I do too. When it comes to the World Cup, Doyle, an ardent Irish republican, detests England and all it stands for. As for me, well, even great minds can sometimes differ.
Doyle's the sort of writer (this newspaper's lead TV critic and author of a bestselling memoir) who's rarely lukewarm about anything; what he enjoys he adores and what he shuns he really, really loathes. On his way around the footballing world, he finds every reason to come down hard on one side or the other. Take this passage wherein he scolds travelling fans of the Chinese national team, who in supporting their side against Brazil during the 2002 World Cup, fail to live up to the Doyleian standard:
"At the game's end, the Chinese supporters leave the stadium looking defeated and disgusted … like people whose holiday has been ruined, as if they're engaged in a giant sulk. And ungracious. China has some enthusiastic skilled young players. … That doesn't matter to the supporters who bellowed and chanted until their team was a goal down then sat morosely, which isn't the point at all."
The point is the cheery bonhomie displayed by the supporters of no-hopers like Costa Rica, Australia and Trinidad and Tobago, all of whose warmth and generosity of spirit, "their slim hopes juxtaposed with their geniality," are carefully noted. Doyle is the underdog's champion. His most poetic moment arrives in reporting a third-place game between Turkey and South Korea at the 2002 World Cup:
"Turkey wins 3-2 and most of the Korean players, exhausted beyond imagining, fall to their knees. Then a remarkable thing happens: Some Turkish players begin pulling the Koreans to their feet, embracing them and tugging them into acknowledging the supporters in the stands alongside them. Both teams link arms together in one long line of players from two countries and bow to the crowd. Hakan Sukur, Turkey's greatest living player, walks from the field waving a Korean flag. … the spontaneity of the gesture makes it movingly authentic … both South Korea and Turkey know they are the true champions of this World Cup."
Doyle's appreciation for football's struggling dark horses derives from his upbringing in rural republican Ireland. That nation's grinding antipathy to all things English made Doyle's appreciation of soccer somewhat of an "illicit" pleasure: "I had all the feelings that came with doing something un-Irish and God knows possibly harmful to my future and even that of Ireland. It was like telling a Christian brother to go to hell." And still, when Doyle turns up in the press box at the Ireland-Germany game during the 2002 World Cup, he can't help himself. "Me I'm on my feet now, all journalistic objectivity gone. Before I know it I'm roaring, 'Go on Duff, go on! Give 'em the Irish style!' " Doyle is unafraid of the contradictions this passage implies. He has a fine sense of the absurd, constantly sending up the rules - dispassion, disinterest and objectivity - that govern what he calls "the sports writing racket."
If there's a fault, it's that the author is perhaps a little too fond of the contents of his own notebook. He empties it onto the page, which in turn leads to tedious and unnecessary repetition. Twice we hear anecdotes about airport officials responding to Doyle's guileless query, "May I speak English?" And there are far too many reports on long-distance contretemps with addle-pated editors at the home office. You're a hack and far from home. We get it.
Still, those occasional shortcomings are small beer when set beside the rich pageantry of soccer lore and near-to-hand reports of soccer's grandest dramas. There's even a mini-guide to the upcoming South African extravaganza, complete with an astringent prediction of England's quarter-final demise. While I might beg to disagree on that, I can't begrudge Doyle his overall achievement: a fine book about the beautiful game.
Douglas Bell's daughter Anne is a heady midfielder plying her skills in the Mooredale house league and for the Linden School.