Synopsis
Any serious football fan will know, anyone who doesn't go to every game, home and away, from Arsenal to Vladikavkaz is a part-time supporter. Kevin Sampson gets to 90% of Liverpool's matches. His sharp, perceptive and very funny account of the agonies and ecstasies of following a sleeping giant will touch even the most recalcitrant Man Utd. fan, most of whom will recognise the ailment. His journeys take us from a pre-season friendly at Crewe to Chelsea, Celtic, Newcastle, and beyond. We meet Blackburn fish-ticklers and Bolton riot police; one-eyed barmaids and stewards with circular noses ; angry British Rail ticket inspectors and non-kinky masseuses. We follow the romantic progress of his bachelor friends Jegsy, and aging lothario and Danny, a shy bricklayer who's looking for a young Nessie Shankley. Most of all we follow the hopes and dreams of the football fan in all of us, a man of 36 who still falls asleep at night selecting his ideal 11 and awaiting the call from Roy Evans. This is a wry and wonderfully observed book for football fans everywhere.
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Review
The football fan as lifer is Kevin Sampson's basic premise in Extra Time as he and his mates faithfully follow their team, Liverpool, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, during the 1997/98 season. Inevitably it is mostly for worse and for poorer. Liverpool is a club which used to win things--which is of course better than the clubs most fans are lumbered with-- but they don't win much these days. As Sampson and his bunch of amiable fellow travellers--ageing lothario Jegsy and shy bricklayer Danny--traipse through various strange train stations and shopping centres, the depressing fact that they aren't going to win anything again this season becomes increasingly apparent. The travelogue is wryly amusing and the appreciation of footballing lore spot on. "Why do people detest Man. Utd?", he asks, "Easy. Because they are detestable". But most of all this is about why a 36-year-old man should still go to sleep thinking about his all-time greatest Liverpool XI. The answer, as if anyone who cares about football didn't know already, is because a football team is for life, not just for Christmas. --Nick Wroe
Book Description
Kevin Sampson goes on the record with this sharp, perceptive and very funny account of a stretch in his life-sentence as a football fan
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Extra Time
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