The Miracle Of Castel Di Sangro

I'm a sports lover so was attracted to this book after reading reviews. I'm glad that I read it.Wonderfully written account of how a small town team hugely overachieved in winning a place in Italy's Serie B. Covering a period of 9 months, when the team played their first season after promotion into Serie B, during which the author is welcomed to intimately share their lives on and off the pitch.A roller coaster ride ensues and we never find out til near the end whether the team avoid relegation.And then a shock as we find out how Italian football, its players, managers and officials are either complicit in or at least compliant to the 'demands' of the sistema.And today, the then president of the club is currently the head of the Italian Football Association !

This book is one of the best I've ever read, and it almost transcends sports entirely.This book is a wonderful example of using sport to tell a very human story, an extraordinary skill. Get it for your football-mad teenage son/nephew/friend/etc who will only read about sport at once.The lazy town of Castel Di Sangro, population of 5,000, hosting a Serie B team was crazy enough, the fact that the story of their 96/97 season was told by an American, even crazier. Joe McGinnis, a writer who fell in love with the Sport during the '94 World Cup, follows up his obsession with Roberto Baggio and travels to Italy, discovers the story, and decides he must report on the fairy-tale. McGinniss doesn't just report on the wonderful sporting story of the minnows one promotion away from the world's best league, but instead becomes part of the family of the club, living opposite the manager, befriending the players, dining at the team restaurant, even having relationships (albeit strained) with the shady ownership.The thing that makes this book great is the human qualities and stories of the players, a remarkable collection of Italian men who despite their profession lead very different lives. If you love football, you'll love it, but the book touches on scandal, racism, communism, corruption, drugs, death, imprisonment, and that's just off the top of my head. You might improve your Italian as well.The protagonists open up to the author so much so that every goal conceded is a dagger to your heart, every point gained in the struggle to avoid relegation celebrated. Quite frankly, this review cannot do it justice. It's simply too great, and too real a story. Forza Castel Di Sangro!

Heard about this books some years ago - and only now got round to buying and reading it, as sadly the author recently passed away. A real page-turner. It tells the story of a well-known journalist of US politics, Joe McGinniss's new found passion - or more like obsession - for the "beautiful game", football aka soccer in the US. Here hears about a very small town, Castel di Sangro, having achieved the 'miracle' of reaching the second highest tier in Italian football. And so he decides to move there to spend an entire season following the team. He is sort of adopted by the team and gets to go everywhere with them. But the reality soon kicks in, and not just the fact that he can't speak Italian (which however he gradually picks up a working knowledge of); the team is owned by a shadowy godfather-like character who, it eventually emerges, was hoping to gain financially quite a lot from the presence of the "American author" - perhaps his story of the miracle would be turned into a movie, and perhaps the author himself should contribute to the cost of buying players! The book thus shows the underbelly of the apparent glamour of professional football, an underlying corruption. However, there is another side to the whole story that a fan will recognise: McGinniss was unable to realise his own feeling of self-importance and huge ego and even arrogance; why wasn't the team playing the way he thought they should, and he felt he knew more than the coach of the team. It is the latter aspects which make the book stand out from the normal ego-massaging biography of any team of individual footballer. McGinniss became part of the story itself. Sometimes it can be hard to stomach, but it's certainly well worth it in the end.

After reading this I so wanted to refrain from giving it the full 5 stars. Being a football fan for over 40 years, I didn't want to reward a man so incredibly arrogant as the author, Joe McGinniss. To say that this book is littered with his arrogance would be a gross understatement ..... as an example "And with our win over Cesena (which could have been achieved far more easily if we had used my lineup and formation, though I did not intend to debate this with Jaconi) we leapfrogged over four teams."However, an arse you may be Joe but the fact is that you are a passionate arse with a big heart and an amazing storyteller to boot. You had one amazing year. This is a great book and I would encourage any football fan (not just Italian football fan) to read it. 5 stars.

I really enjoyed this book. It was extremely well written, with tragedy and humour in equal measure.It stands as an excellent social history of football and gives a great insight into Italian culture and the diversity of human nature. By the end of the book I felt that I knew the characters like my own family. I read this in Sicily on holiday and felt a real sense of place.

A truly epic book brilliantly written by an author who was candid and honest about all things and all people, including himself. The season for this tiny football team in Italy's Serie B division had everything - major triumphs, genuine tragedies and a rollercoaster ride of emotions. This book is an absolute must read for any football fan.

I'm not sure if you really need to be a football fan to read this, though I guess it would help. What a story, at first very funny but darker and darker as it goes on, as I recall. Especially the description of Castel di Sangro's match in a lightning storm in Genoa is unforgettable.

For any football badgers - this is a fantastic read. The second copy I’ve bought it’s that good