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the MiraCLe oF CasteL di sangro

Normally we’re loathe to recommend a soccer book to anyone such is the dreary, clichéd drivel that passes for almost every soccer player’s autobiography these days, though there are several diamonds among all the coal when it comes to brilliantly researched and beautifully written biographies and histories of the sport.

The Miracle of Castel Di Sangro is one such gem, and while it is very much a soccer book, it is much more than a book about soccer.

The premise is straight-forward enough; the product is anything but.

In 1996 a tiny, somewhat inconsequential soccer team – the titular Castel di Sangro – based east of Rome and north of Naples, won promotion to Serie B – one level below the famed Seria A world of Juventus, Inter Milan, Roma et al.

To put the achievement in some context it would be like Litowel Celtic playing Division One of the Airtricity League.

Joe McGinniss – an American writer – implants himself into the team and the season, and what he produces is a spell-binding account of a cast of characters that are scarcely believable, from manager Osvaldo Jaconi and Pietro Rezza, the club owner, to no little involvement from the local Mafia. All the while soccer matches are played, but that is almost a sub-plot, a side story, to the off-field shenanigans of an off off-Broadway team in an off-Broadway League, that gives us an insight into the finer points of the corruption that has bedevilled Italian soccer for years. Read it and weep...and laugh.

– Paul Brennan