England Expects: A History of the England Football Team Book

The story of the England football team is much more than the tale of eleven men and a succession of 90-minute international matches. It is the story of how a nation - perhaps more than any other in the world - vests its hopes and dreams to a quite colossal - and colossally unfair - degree in a small group of individuals, and sees their - almost inevitably disappointing - fortunes as somehow symbolic of national weakness, amateurishness and decline. It is a tale of how particular individuals - usually England managers, from Alf Ramsey through Bobby Robson and Graham Taylor to Kevin Keegan - are crucified merely for failing to repeat England's single greatest sporting triumph, of winning the World Cup in 1966. James Corbett's book is the first to tell the history of the England football team, from the first international matches at the end of the nineteenth century to the current shenanigans with Sven-Goran Ericsson's private life and David James's "lack of preparation" against Denmark. Not a drybones chronicle, it is a fabulously engrossing narrative full of graphic and compelling games, intricate football politics, social history and astringent and trenchant commentary - Aurum's prizewinning "Social History of English Cricket" is the best analogue. It will certainly be a William Hill contender.