The Sports Bookshelf

The World Cup that begins in Brazil today has triggered a run of new World Cup books and the re-release of a few classics.  Here is the Sports Bookshelf's choice of titles worth a look. And Gazza Misses the Final, by Rob Smyth and Scott Murray (Constable) £8.99 This is a history of memorable World Cup matches, but revisited and recorded from an entirely new perspective, faithfully reported in the style of the modern internet phenomenon: the minute-by-minute online report. Minute-by-minute is increasingly becoming a staple of football websites with large enough resources to have a man on the ground (or in front of a TV monitor) for the matches that matter, and of the websites run by the traditional news sources - local and national newspapers. In a way it is a throwback to the ball-by-ball reports that newspapers carried in the pre-internet days when apart from Sports Report on BBC radio they were the only source of real detail when it came to what happened on the field. ...