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44 reviews for:
The Miracle of Castel Di Sangro: A Tale of Passion and Folly in the Heart of Italy
Joe McGinniss
4.1 AVERAGE
44 reviews for:
The Miracle of Castel Di Sangro: A Tale of Passion and Folly in the Heart of Italy
Joe McGinniss
4.1 AVERAGE
"I have nothing to read." And there in pile of "to be reads, but always seem to start other books first", sat a dog-eared book I picked up at a used bookstore, just before the last World Cup to get myself pumped up about the upcoming matches. I didn't need a book to get me pumped up about the last World Cup OR this World Cup (39 days to go, but who's counting?)
Since last World Cup, I have been to Italy and visited many of the towns in this book. I will start by saying McGinnis does an excellent job of describing the psyche of the Italian people, really perfectly and hilariously. I've tried many times to tell someone how the country works (or doesn't work) only to be met by unbelieving blank stares. McGinnis nails it.
The story he tells is really amazing, unbelievable really, and it's ending will have an affect on you. I can't give it away. I thought "reading" a soccer match would be boring but it wasn't (there were a few times I skimmed the minutiae.)
This was a story that needed to be told. In hindsight, the ending was not a surprise for me. McGinnis' writing was good. He's a great story teller. I really liked this book, so the things I am going to list I didn't like about it are to be taken minimally.
McGinnis admitted to being a new fan. He'd watched his first match only five years earlier. Yet he was an expert in his own mind. He went to Castel di Sangro (Castle of Blood...ewwww) to follow a team and write a book. He constantly was giving strategy advice, bitching to Jaconi about who to play and what he should do. Not only did he give unwanted advice, he portrayed Jaconi as an idiot despite the fact he kept saying how much he respected him and was thankful to him. (Weird). No one can be an expert on the game of soccer in 5 years. No.One. Especially if you've never played the game. His "know-it-all, I told you so" attitude got a little irritating towards the end. And it was obvious to me, the players thought he was an asshole by the end of the season. Also, through half of the book, Jaconi was referred to as "Jaconi" and then all of sudden he started referring to him as Osvaldo (his first name, and unknown to me). I was confused as to who he was talking about. McGinnis was unbelievingly forgiving of a player who was arrested for being involved in a drug ring (like a BIG drug ring), yet unforgiving (for instance) of Jaconi playing someone who had only ever played in Serie C1 soccer. ("Jaconi panicked when he put Rimiendi in and his decision lost the match for us!" "Us"? McGinnis thought of himself as the 12th player, I guess. IDK, McGinnis admitted to being a little fanatical and out of touch with reality during his stay in Italy. I took it as being a self-deprecating statement meant to be humorous, but maybe not. He was kind of a loose canon and by the end of the book I couldn't imagine him being self-deprecating about anything.
Even though I speak passable Italian there was A LOT of Italian in this book. Too much. It was fun for me to refresh, but had it been a language I didn't speak, I would have been irritated. And McGinnis, who didn't speak Italian before he went to Italy (he had an interpreter in the beginning), seemed to be speaking some very complex Italian...getting all the syntax right...right from the get go. I didn't buy it.
AND, he states that in 1893, when bored English sailors brought a round ball to the dock in Genoa and kicked it with the locals, was "where it all began." Now I'm not a soccer historian, but I know that soccer is an English sport that first had standardized rules set to it in the early to mid 1800's...and it's crude beginnings go all the way back to Greek times. I have to assume that McGinnis meant "il calcio" (soccer/football) in Italy began then, although that's not the way it read to me.
Still a FASCINATING read about the life of soccer within Italy. Funny and informative. And so sad to hear of McGinnis' passing just a month ago.
Since last World Cup, I have been to Italy and visited many of the towns in this book. I will start by saying McGinnis does an excellent job of describing the psyche of the Italian people, really perfectly and hilariously. I've tried many times to tell someone how the country works (or doesn't work) only to be met by unbelieving blank stares. McGinnis nails it.
The story he tells is really amazing, unbelievable really, and it's ending will have an affect on you. I can't give it away. I thought "reading" a soccer match would be boring but it wasn't (there were a few times I skimmed the minutiae.)
This was a story that needed to be told. In hindsight, the ending was not a surprise for me. McGinnis' writing was good. He's a great story teller. I really liked this book, so the things I am going to list I didn't like about it are to be taken minimally.
McGinnis admitted to being a new fan. He'd watched his first match only five years earlier. Yet he was an expert in his own mind. He went to Castel di Sangro (Castle of Blood...ewwww) to follow a team and write a book. He constantly was giving strategy advice, bitching to Jaconi about who to play and what he should do. Not only did he give unwanted advice, he portrayed Jaconi as an idiot despite the fact he kept saying how much he respected him and was thankful to him. (Weird). No one can be an expert on the game of soccer in 5 years. No.One. Especially if you've never played the game. His "know-it-all, I told you so" attitude got a little irritating towards the end. And it was obvious to me, the players thought he was an asshole by the end of the season. Also, through half of the book, Jaconi was referred to as "Jaconi" and then all of sudden he started referring to him as Osvaldo (his first name, and unknown to me). I was confused as to who he was talking about. McGinnis was unbelievingly forgiving of a player who was arrested for being involved in a drug ring (like a BIG drug ring), yet unforgiving (for instance) of Jaconi playing someone who had only ever played in Serie C1 soccer. ("Jaconi panicked when he put Rimiendi in and his decision lost the match for us!" "Us"? McGinnis thought of himself as the 12th player, I guess. IDK, McGinnis admitted to being a little fanatical and out of touch with reality during his stay in Italy. I took it as being a self-deprecating statement meant to be humorous, but maybe not. He was kind of a loose canon and by the end of the book I couldn't imagine him being self-deprecating about anything.
Even though I speak passable Italian there was A LOT of Italian in this book. Too much. It was fun for me to refresh, but had it been a language I didn't speak, I would have been irritated. And McGinnis, who didn't speak Italian before he went to Italy (he had an interpreter in the beginning), seemed to be speaking some very complex Italian...getting all the syntax right...right from the get go. I didn't buy it.
AND, he states that in 1893, when bored English sailors brought a round ball to the dock in Genoa and kicked it with the locals, was "where it all began." Now I'm not a soccer historian, but I know that soccer is an English sport that first had standardized rules set to it in the early to mid 1800's...and it's crude beginnings go all the way back to Greek times. I have to assume that McGinnis meant "il calcio" (soccer/football) in Italy began then, although that's not the way it read to me.
Still a FASCINATING read about the life of soccer within Italy. Funny and informative. And so sad to hear of McGinnis' passing just a month ago.
emotional
funny
hopeful
medium-paced
Several times while I was reading this book I checked the cover to make sure I hadn't misread the small print in the corner that said "Travel/Nonfiction." I kept expecting to find that it wasn't there after all and thinking that maybe on closer inspection I would see the words "a novel" on the cover, because the story was at times too intense and surreal to believe. It was also funny, sad, and maddening at times, a great story of a little Italian town and their soccer team. The ending left me feeling a little bummed out, but I still felt it was very much worth the read.