Why does football matter so much? Why is the mood of those who support it tethered to the performance or the results of their team? Why do people, otherwise intelligent and rational, become compulsively passionate about it? And why, more than ever before, do we identify the success of cities - as they identify themselves - through their football club?
Going to the Match provides the answers.
Each chapter is based around a game Duncan has seen, and examining specific theme, such as: money, fan worship, club ownership, managers, tactics, TV and the press, referees, the marketing of football, the merits of the Champions League against the merits of the international game, the strange 'death' of Scottish football, the market for football's most prized memorabilia, the pleasure of watching a great player, the influx of world stars, the competition between London and the North West of England.
This is a book very much about modern football - and very much for the modern fan; though you can't understand where the game is going unless you understand where it came from. Part-reportage and part-polemic, it also includes judicious slices of memoir and reminiscence about players and managers Duncan has known and seen, and also games he's watched in past. It is part social history too; for football is entwined with everyday life like no other sport ever has or will be.
