A pick of 11 iconic books on football: the history and the magic 

Here is a selection for both fan and casual reader

The poet laureate of football, Uruguay’s Eduardo Galeano, put up this sign on his door every four years: ‘Closed for Soccer’. He then spent a month watching the World Cup and writing about it. His Soccer in Sun and Shadow is the greatest book on football. Only Mexican writer Juan Villoro’s God is Round challenges that.

Among the Nobel Laureates who loved football and occasionally wrote about it, are Gabriel Marquez, Vargas Llosa, Albert Camus, Gunter Grass and Orhan Pamuk. Yet, football writing wasn’t considered literary. Simon Kuper — who has written some of the best — once said books about football ranked “even below self-help books sold in airports.”

The 1990s changed that. Galeano’s masterpiece appeared in 1995. “I wanted fans of reading to lose their fear of soccer, and fans of soccer to lose their fear of books,” he explained. The best of football writers, Hugh McIlvanney and Brian Glanville, published collections, and football began to attract writers whose livelihood didn’t depend on the game.

Pete Davies’s All Played Out (re-released as One Night in Turin) and Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch set the trend. Davies, a novelist, was invited by England’s manager at the 1990 World Cup to travel with the team and given access to the players. The result, the finest behind-the-scenes record of a tournament, made football writing sexy. As did Fever Pitch.

Here are 11 of the best for both fan and casual reader.

The writer’s latest book isWhy Don’t You Write Something I Might Read?