Rating: 
Summary: Wonderful!!!
Review: What a terrific book! Great story (greed, corruption, comradeship, triumph, tragedy, comedy), and wonderful insights into both professional soccer and the Italian mindset. I'm a big soccer fan, but I think anyone would love this book, soccer fan or not. Thanks, Mr. McGinniss, for taking on such a seemingly unpromising subject and producing such a wonderful story!
Rating: 
Summary: American Arrogance
Review: Although the book purports to speak to a year in the life of an Italian football team, it rather highlights typical American arrogance. This book is more telling about the author than anything else. As an author covering the team he thrusts himself as a knoweldgable member of the football community 9although clearly a novice). His arrogance in the manner of interacting with the team, as described in the book, is insulting. I would not recommend this book to anyone, regardless of their interest in football, or Joe McGinnis.
Rating:
Summary: story overwhelmed by presence of unappealing author
Review: This was one of the few books that I bought on a whim. I saw it prominently displayed on a shelf at my local bookstore and immediately recognized the potential for a great story. As a lifelong fan of the game as well as Italian culture (I'm an American but lived off of the Ligurian coast for three years as a child), I couldn't wait to read a book that I thought would strengthen these passions. Instead, what I got was the classic story of an Ugly American. McGinniss consistently revelled in his ignorance of the foreign behaviors that he stumbled upon, conveying a clear disrespect for the people in this story. I'm all for writers taking on foreign cultures and relating their unique aspects to readers. But such endeavers require subtlety and the ability to observe without interfering--qualities that McGinniss does not possess. For me, this subtext completely overwhelmed what could have been a very good story. I rarely quit reading a book, feeling that I need to be open to perspectives that I am not completely attuned to. However, McGinniss gave me one of those very rare opportunites to permanently drop an unfinished book, guilt free. I can't say I'm grateful.
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Summary: The tragedy of Castel di Sangro
Review: It is easy to compare two recent books about Italian football written by foreigners. Both follow a full 38-match season of teams that are, at times, surprising and mediocre, sometimes simultaneously. Avoiding relegation to a lower division is the major impetus for both teams, not a national championship. One is coming off a miracle, the other hoping for and heading for one. And there are significant differences. Unlike Tim Parks in 'A season with Verona,' McGinniss has direct access to the players and coach, although only brief, menacing contact with the owner. Parks acted as a fan, lived and died with the team while he stayed with his family, became very familiar with other fans, and lived a normal home life between matches. McGinniss lived alone in a cold apartment, away from his family in America; he has too much time on his hands. Parks had been a lifelong fan from Britain. McGinniss came to the game much later in life. And it shows.The 'miracle' of Castel di Sangro, a town of 5,000 hearty souls high in the mountains east of Rome, occurs before McGinniss arrives. What transpires while he is there might be better described as tragedy, without farce. There is death, drama, drugs and sex. Travel to play matches offers some glimpses of Italian life and land, but very little. He is more than a little pleased with his self-evaluation of the Castel di Sangro players, and not shy about saying so. McGinniss irritatingly inserts himself into disputes and advises the coach on players and tactics. He tries to play agent for a promising goalkeeper, but can't convince the American coach to take him. He can identify a rotten, corrupt referee like an expert. He begins to read his own worshipful (if invented) clippings from the Italian press, who marvel at the very idea of an American writer spending a year with such a minor league team. He even seems to flirt, at the end, with the idea of earning a coach's license himself (Italian coaches need to be licensed). Yet he can't see the inevitable betrayal that closes the season. McGinniss'Italian improves with time, but it is not clear that his judgment or insight does. McGinniss' intimacy with the players seems genuine yet there are times when the players seem to mock him or to treat him with the disbelief his assertions sometimes deserve. There is more a series of events, matches than a real story here.
Rating: 
Summary: italian balls
Review: great and easy read...went beyond football. It shed light on several historical facts as well as politics.
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Summary: eloquent and elegant account
Review: This book is part travel journal, personal diary, sociological study, and football/sport analysis. This is a fantastic, eloquent and elegant account of a small, rural, provincial village in the mountains of Abruzzo struggling to find a place in the sophisticated and rationalist world of Italian professional soccer. It recounts the first season of Castel di Sangro in the Serie B (Italy's Second Division). The story telling is warmly told, as the author, an American looking-in, recounts the internal struggles of the team, player and manager conflicts, internal village power struggles, and how a remote village strives to come to grips with keeping face when in the steady glare of the national spotlight. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It is about soccer/football, but it is so much more. As an account of a small town football club it is a riveting read. But the book is so much more. Football is virtually the background scenario. There is more to be enjoyed from a wide range of characters and personalities that inhabit the town and the football club, and how they deal with all the various pressures.
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Summary: American Soccer Parent
Review: Yes, it's a well-written book and certainly gives an insight to working-class Italian life so you're taken off the tourist path. But beware: the author knows virtually nothing about the game and then, in the grand tradition of the know-it-all, overbearing American soccer parent, wades into the coach nd players with advise on how to do their job. These are professional coaches and players and how they found the patience to put up with his boorish stupidity, I'll never know.
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Summary: Insight into Italian mentality thru an entertaining story
Review: Any aficionado of soccer, Italy, or gripping stories will enjoy Joe McGinniss' The Miracle of Castel di Sangro. Set in a remote town in the mountains of Abruzzo, Castel di Sangro is a highly unlikely place to find a winning professional soccer team, especially one that wins in what is possibly the world's most competitive soccer league. With McGinniss' vivid and brutally honest narration of his year-long immersion into Castel di Sangro life, the reader can experience what it's like to live among a professional Italian soccer team. The reader will not only be moved by the warmth, grit, and carattere (character) of the Italians but also disappointingly surprised by their propensity for being distant, indirect, and stubborn. Even more disturbing to the reader are the occasional glimpses into the pervasiveness of corruption, even in the glorious game of il calcio. In the end, the reader is left with a more intimate knowledge of life in Italy today and a highly dramatic and entertaining story of a previously unknown team and their unexpected, yet hard-earned, success.
Rating:
Summary: Absorbing and Hilarious!
Review: As a lifelong soccer fan, I'm firmly in the target audience here, but this book isn't about soccer -- it's about the author's year in Italy with a professional team. He is hilarious as he will tell any- and everyone his opinions on the team and what it needs, even though he knows almost nothing of the sport. By the end of the book, you love the team, only to have your hopes and dreams dashed by the last chapter. A must for any soccer or sports fan.
Rating:
Summary: Skewed, but fun
Review: This is now the second book I've read by McGinniss, and I'm beginning to notice a trend in the stories he tells. In each book, he has started with some sort of declaration that he is going to act as an observor to some event and write as objectively as possible about that event (in this case, the unexpected season of a small town team in higher ranks of Italian soccer). However, it seems that McGinniss can't figure out how to remain objective. In each story I've read, especially The Miracle of Castel Di Sangro, he goes from being an observor to being a part of the story. In this book, it's quite fascinating how he was constantly manuevering to make himself a decision-maker and play-caller during their games. He was constantly giving advise, whether requested or not, to the players, coaches, owners, and family members both on the field and off the field. I don't have a doubt that his presence and his actions effected the play of the team, for better or worse. By the end of the book, you got the impression that McGinniss was a very important part of this town and its soccer team. I'm not sure if this was really the case, or if the reader merely gets that impression from reading McGinniss's somewhat self-centered writing. McGinniss's self-glorification notwithstanding, this is a highly enjoyable read. The reader really does have the feeling of being in the thick of things, rooting and cheering for the underdogs. In spite of his obviousley skewed and self-centered style of writing, McGinniss does have a very intense and active tone of writing that makes reading his books a page-turning pleasure. I may not think that highly of McGinniss as a person, but I sure enjoyed The Miracle of Castel di Sangro.
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