Pride comes before and after a fall
The boys from Turin march out in some natty 1949 shorts.
In this country the Busby Babes were famous for keeping Manchester United on the world football stage after an horrific plane crash robbed them of most of their talent. Outside of Italy fame has not been as kind to Il Grande Torino, the tactical pioneers of the beautiful game, who were tragically killed on their way back from playing a testimonial in Portugal.
Amongst the fallen was their manager and coach Erno Egri Erbstein who survived the persecution of European Jews with outstanding courage and some nifty footwork of his own. This biography by Dominic Bliss goes under the slightly cumbersome title of "Erbstein: The triumph and tragedy of football's forgotten pioneer" and brings this era of football to life in a way that is just as relevant to sport, war and politics today. Plus... despite the blow by blow sequence of football scores... it's a rattling good yarn about community teamwork and the galvanising role of individual leadership, determination and flair.
The publisher is Blizzard Books who have a quarterly digital/print magazine specialising in football commentary and esoterica that amply shows football fans can be as erudite and interesting as any pub companion and probably have better jokes than most. The only thing that lets this publication down is the dreadful lack of proofreading that has led to so many typos and words running into each which can be distracting to pedants like me. I know one or two copy editors that are very reasonable cheap if you're interested.
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