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Title |
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You Come With Me - I get tickets |
Author |
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Andrew Gummer |
Publisher |
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The Parrs Wood Press |
Year |
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2004 |
ISBN |
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1903158532 |
| Rating |
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Introduction :
"I wanted to get to as many qualifying games as possible, and I also wanted them to be as far as possible off UEFA's well-beaten, brightly lit, commercial track."
Synopsis :
Taking football as its common theme, You Come With Me - I Get Tickets looks at how people from all over Europe react to the game. What do local fans think of their team, and how do they behave at the games? What songs do they sing? Is the atmosphere muted, fanatical or downright hostile? What kind of fireworks do they set off in Athens? How sharp are the guard dogs' teeth in Budapest? From Istanbul to Reykjavik, from Tbilisi to Helsinki, Andrew Gummer went to fifteen international games to find out.
Everyone had plenty to say to him about their country's football, including Serb ultra-nationalists, German heavy metal bikers in Athens, Estonian referees, Cossack-dancing Ukrainians in Norway, taxi drivers everywhere, jailed Croatian war veterans, Russian skinheads, Romanian spivs, Turkish hoteliers, chain-smoking Georgian students, former Scotland Manager Craig Brown, the Secretary of the Icelandic FA, and a sex-starved, Polish-speaking, Arsenal-supporting Nigerian surgeon.
In between learning the correct firearms etiquette for mafia-run Bulgarian nightclubs and hitching rides from on-duty Ukrainian traffic cops, he watched van Nistelrooy make his international comeback after knee surgery, and paid about 50p to see Luis Figo play in a waterlogged athletics stadium. He was on the Galatasaray VIP balcony as Turkey qualified for their first World Cup finals since 1954, unwittingly caused a car chase through rush-hour Bucharest, and was shown round a huge war memorial at midnight by Spartak Moscow skinheads. What are England's Euro 2004 opponents like? This is the book to tell you.
Our verdict :
Englishman Andrew Gummer visited some of the less obvious World Cup 2002 qualifiers. It's not Germany-England he has been visiting but more the likes of Russia-Yugoslavia and Georgia-Hungary.
Andrew gets to know the locals and he learns about the local politics, culture and football. With this book he takes you with him on his journeys.
Each chapter of the book tells the story of a trip to one of the World Cup qualifying matches.
If you've ever followed your team abroad than you'll probably recognise some of the situations Andrew has to cope with. How to get tickets, where to sleep? etc.
From a derby perspective there isn't too much new information but on the way you'll learn some about the derbies as well. The Poland-belarus (played in Lodz) chapter for example has some lines about LKS and Widzew Lodz hooligans getting into a fight at this international match.
Visiting matches in Hungary and Georgia wouldn't be my cup of tea so I thought reading about someone else visiting them wouldn't be too interesting. I was wrong!
Gummer has a good writing style and he doesn't bore you with long anecdotes like most 'citytrip' books seem to have. You'll get to find out how the locals experience their football.
After reading a chapter I immediately wanted to read another one.
The visited matches are : Finland-Albania, Estonia-Portugal, Poland-Belarus, Norway-Ukraine, Belgium-San Marino, Romania-Italy, Greece-Germany, Netherlands-Cyprus, Russia-Yugoslavia, Iceland-Bulgaria, Georgia-Hungary, Hungary-Romania, Croatia-Belgium, Ukraine-Germany, Turkey-Austria.
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