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Calcio: A History of Italian Football
by: John Foot

List Price: £8.99

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Used Price: £4.68
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Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours Binding: Paperback
EAN: 9780007175758
ISBN: 0007175752
Label: HarperPerennial
Manufacturer: HarperPerennial
Number Of Pages: 592
Publication Date: August 20, 2007
Publisher: HarperPerennial
Studio: HarperPerennial
Sales Rank: 7405

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Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- Entertaining and well-paced read.
I have just finished reading this book (the updated edition with Cannavaro lifting the World Cup on the cover.) The author obviously knows his calcio. As a follower of Italian football I found this book to be a very fluid read and allowed me to discover the foundations of the game in Italy, the great teams of the past (Torino, Inter, Genoa, Juventus), the managers and players who helped make the game what is is today, wrapped in an analysis of the social and political context of the country.

I thought the author wrote very well and at a level which would be engaging for the layperson. Of course, when dealing with a history of a subject, it is difficult not to write in a style which some readers might find list-like. I didn't ... Read More:

Rating:

- Appropriate for Britons. The rest of the world, not so much.
I'm sympathetic towards the difficulty in getting in more information and pages in a book that already spans 500+ pages. I am, truly. But I feel there's a very misguided balance between what would be important in explaining Italian football and what the author feels just 'had' to be in there (see: seemingly endless words spent re-hashing the failures and few successes of British players in Italy).
I found it great in the beginning, but my enthusiasm quickly wore down as I progressed through the chapters and timeline of calcio. As items I am myself comfortable in my knowledge of came up, numerous mistakes on behalf of the author were exposed. I believe my final count of the different years mentioned for Roma's third scudetto win came to ... Read More:

Rating:

- Pure Joy
This book is a wonderful read. Even my wife, who hates football, enjoyed it. I've read an awful lot of books, from Dostoevsky to detectives, and can't remember too many that gave me so much pleasure. A word of warning; don't let anyone borrow it as you'll never get it back.

Rating:

- More dictionary than history
There is some wonderful material here, but it is wasted (I assume by the editors, who had typical English football supporters in mind) by the annoying sub headings and a bizarre running order. The prose comes across as stilted, and simply does not flow (it is not allowed to flow). There is no narrative, and though billed as a history of Italian football is, alas, more a dictionary of the subject.

Rating:

- Simply brilliant
At first you'd imagine that the history of the football in Italy whose leagues are so often dubbed as boring. Foot's book has been a great revelation for me showing how the football is integrated deeply into the everyday life and thinking of Italians.

The coverage is vast and full of interesting details. I'm simply in awe of this book.

Books : Calcio: A History of Italian Football