From the publisher:
Scotland's greatest ever player refuses to go pro and leave his burgeoning village team. A multi-billionaire returns home to raze a housing estate and re-construct the ground where he scored freely as a teenager. An ex-BBC commentator signed by commercial radio keeps 'forgetting' to mention the programme's fast food sponsors. A Premier League fan's life is transformed when a clip of him screaming at a linesman goes viral. An ex-amateur with dementia calls on his former team-mate every day to re-live the game that mirrored their fractious bond. A Sunday League pub team is unnerved by the strange couple who follow them every week.
In his second volume of eleven short stories inspired by the amorality, the greed, and the somehow still irresistible allure of the modern game, Ian Plenderleith tackles the themes that dog and drive 21st century football, where misplaced idealists engage with the struggle to stem corruption, cheating and avarice. These fast-moving tales are scored with dark humour and probing questions. What if we were offered a fat envelope full of cash just to fix the semi-final draw of the Cup? Would you work for a company set to shaft the team you've followed all your life? How much impurity and compromise can we tolerate before we have to declare - we've lost the game.
The author:
Ian Plenderleith is a US-based British football writer and journalist. He has been writing about football for the past twenty years for publications including the Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, When Saturday Comes and Soccer America. He lives just outside Washington DC.
Rodney Marsh won nine caps for England between 1971 and 1973 and was best known, in the UK, for playing for Manchester City and Queen's Park Rangers. In the USA he played for the Tampa Bay Rowdies between 1976 and '79, later coaching the club after spells coaching New York United and Carolina Lightnin'. He worked as a pundit for Sky Sports until 2005.
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