Quick Take
- Narration: Rupert Farley delivers Ronay’s Guardian-columnist prose with the right amount of affectionate irony, never overselling the comedy or the sentiment.
- Themes: English football’s psychology of failure, Russia 2018 as political spectacle, the absurdist joy of almost winning
- Mood: Warm, wry, and nostalgically sun-drenched
- Verdict: Barney Ronay is one of the best football writers working, and this is him at full stretch, in the right place at the right time.
I came to this one already knowing Barney Ronay from his Guardian columns and the Football Weekly podcast, which probably made me exactly the intended audience. But I was curious whether the book would hold up for someone who was not present for the summer of 2018, or who cared less about England specifically than about the tournament as a whole. The answer, I think, is yes, with one caveat: you need at least a passing interest in how football writing can work as literary journalism.
Rupert Farley narrates the seven hours and fifty minutes at a pace that matches the diary format of the source material. Ronay’s prose is not straightforward football reporting; it is associative, comic, and occasionally digressive in ways that reward listeners who give it their attention. Farley handles the tonal shifts between gentle mockery and genuine feeling with what sounds like real comprehension of the material, which matters for a book this dependent on voice.
Our Take on How Football (Nearly) Came Home
The premise of the book is almost perfectly timed. England went to Russia in 2018 with expectations so low that simply not embarrassing themselves would have counted as success. They then proceeded to do something genuinely unexpected: they played with discipline, tactical clarity, and a collective spirit that the squad had not been known for in years. Gareth Southgate, who had missed the crucial penalty in Euro 96 and carried that publicly, became a figure of calm authority. Harry Maguire, then still a Leicester City defender, became briefly beloved under the nickname Slabhead. The waistcoat became a cultural artifact.
Ronay was there for all of it, crisscrossing Russia and filing for The Guardian as the tournament unfolded. What the book captures that the daily reporting could not is the cumulative texture: the bad food, the stage-managed Putin backdrops, the specific quality of English hopefulness that is always braced for disappointment. A reviewer called it Ronay’s world cup diary, which is accurate and also slightly undersells how crafted it is as a piece of writing.
Why Listen to How Football (Nearly) Came Home
Because football writing this good is rare. Ronay has a gift for the analogy and for finding the comic angle on geopolitical absurdity without losing sight of what he actually came to Russia to cover. One reviewer highlighted a specific passage where Ronay observes an American journalist’s unusual approach to caring for his jeans, which apparently produced genuine laughter. That is the Ronay method: the tournament, the politics, and the human oddities all in the same paragraph, and somehow it coheres.
The book also manages something that sports retrospectives often fail at: it does not flatten the uncertainty of events already known. Even listening back, knowing that England would exit at the semifinal stage, Ronay writes with enough present-tense immediacy that the emotional arc still functions.
What to Watch For in How Football (Nearly) Came Home
This is emphatically a British book about England. Non-English listeners who want broader coverage of the tournament as a whole will find some of that here, but Ronay’s affections are clear. The political context, particularly the Putin-FIFA stage management he describes, is sketched rather than analyzed in depth. If you want a serious treatment of the Russia 2018 corruption story, you need a different book. If you want to spend seven hours in the company of someone who was genuinely, joyfully, cautiously hopeful that summer, this is it.
Who Should Listen to How Football (Nearly) Came Home
The natural audience is England supporters who lived through that summer and want to relive it through prose rather than highlights reels. But the book extends to anyone who enjoys literary sports writing in the tradition of Nick Hornby or David Goldblatt, or who wants to understand the specific psychology that makes English football fandom both exhausting and, occasionally, beautiful. Less suited to listeners who need wall-to-wall tactical analysis or comprehensive tournament coverage beyond England’s campaign.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the book cover the full 2018 World Cup or just England’s matches?
Primarily England’s campaign, but Ronay was covering the whole tournament for The Guardian and includes observations about other matches and the broader spectacle. The focus is England, but the book is not blind to what else was happening in Russia that summer.
How does Rupert Farley’s narration suit Ronay’s writing style?
Very well. Ronay writes with a rhythmic, occasionally baroque quality that requires a narrator who understands comic timing and tonal nuance. Farley delivers both, and listeners who know the Football Weekly podcast will find his delivery a good match for the prose voice.
Is the book dated by the political context it references?
The Russia and Putin references feel, if anything, more loaded now than they did in 2018. Ronay’s observations about the stage-management of the tournament read differently in hindsight, which adds a layer the original readers did not have.
Do I need to be an England fan to get value from this?
You need to be interested in football and in good writing. The England-specific emotional texture is central to the book, but Ronay’s voice and his comic sensibility are accessible beyond tribal affiliation. Casual followers of international football who enjoy literary journalism will find plenty here.
