Quick Take
- Narration: Roger Bennett narrating his own material is the only possible correct choice – the book is essentially a live performance translated to audio, and it works completely.
- Themes: Soccer as cultural identity, immigrant love letters to America, the beautiful absurdity of football fandom
- Mood: Joyful, irreverent, and surprisingly tender underneath the jokes
- Verdict: An audio-native experience that works whether you know nothing about soccer or could recite every England World Cup squad since 1966.
I was introduced to Men in Blazers through the podcast around 2014, during the World Cup summer when American soccer interest briefly became impossible to ignore. I came to the Encyclopedia Blazertannica audiobook a few years later, and I remember sitting in my kitchen laughing at the section on celebratory knee slides loud enough to alarm my cat. This is not a book you can listen to quietly.
Roger Bennett and Michael Davies built the Men in Blazers brand on a specific premise: two English immigrants using the American vantage point to explain, celebrate, and lovingly mock the game they grew up with. The Encyclopedia Blazertannica translates that sensibility into reference format – alphabetically organized, structurally absurd, and genuinely informative despite itself. George Best, Maradona, Beckham, and Alexi Lalas get their due. So do the physics of knee slides. England’s doomed World Cup songs receive the tragic treatment they deserve. The question of how professional footballers cope with hair loss is treated with the gravity it merits.
Our Take on Encyclopedia Blazertannica
What makes this book more than a novelty is what one reviewer called the immigrant dimension: interspersed among the jokes are genuine reflections on growing up in England, coming to America, and finding that soccer was a way of carrying something precious across that distance. Bennett’s voice – even on the page, and even more so in audio – has that quality of deep feeling dressed in comedy. The best Men in Blazers episodes work the same way: the humor is real, but it’s not a defense mechanism. It’s how they love the game. The book captures that, and the audiobook makes it available in full.
Why Listen to Encyclopedia Blazertannica
Listening to Roger Bennett read his own work is a qualitatively different experience from reading it in print. His timing, his delivery of the more florid descriptions of Maradona or Messi, his willingness to fully commit to the bit on England’s penalty curse – none of that translates to text the way it does to audio. This is one of those books where the audiobook is the primary object and the print edition is almost a transcript. The bonus podcast clip included exclusively in the audio version reinforces that framing. At under four hours, it also respects your time completely, which is a genuine virtue.
What to Watch For in Encyclopedia Blazertannica
The encyclopedic structure means there’s no narrative arc to follow – this is deliberately a collection of entries, some of which are longer meditations and some of which are glorified jokes. Listeners looking for a through-line story of soccer’s rise in America will find those threads present but not sustained. The book also assumes at least some comfort with the basic vocabulary of the game – knowing who Maradona was, understanding what the Premier League is. The reviewer who described it as a starter kit for American soccer fans is right, but even a starter kit benefits from some prior curiosity about the subject.
The section on George Best might be the book’s most affecting passage. Best was one of football’s undeniable geniuses – a player whose talent was so obvious it needed no argument – and also a life that demonstrated with painful clarity how talent and self-destruction can coexist without resolution. Bennett handles it with the particular tenderness of someone who grew up with Best as an idea before he was a person, and who has had time to reckon with what that idea contained.
One reviewer mentioned attending the 1994 World Cup, which is the year soccer officially arrived in America in a way it hadn’t before. The book orbits that arrival repeatedly – what it felt like, for English immigrants in particular, to watch Americans discover a game they had grown up treating as foundational. There’s no condescension in the treatment. Bennett and Davies seem genuinely delighted that the game found new people to love it.
Who Should Listen to Encyclopedia Blazertannica
This audiobook is for American soccer fans at any level of devotion, and for anyone who has ever encountered the Men in Blazers podcast and wanted more of that energy. It works equally well as a gift for someone just getting into the Premier League or as comfort listening for a lifelong fan. It is emphatically not for listeners who have no interest in soccer whatsoever and are hoping the humor is sufficient to carry them through – though the immigrant-identity passages might surprise that reader into caring. For fans of the game, this is a pure pleasure.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need to be a soccer fan to enjoy Encyclopedia Blazertannica, or is the humor accessible to general listeners?
Some soccer knowledge helps significantly. The book is structured as a football reference, and many of the jokes rely on familiarity with specific players, matches, or cultural rituals of the game. The immigrant-identity passages and broader humor about sports fandom translate more generally, but complete non-fans will miss a substantial portion of what makes the book work.
Is the audiobook of Encyclopedia Blazertannica meaningfully different from reading the book in print?
Yes, substantially. Roger Bennett narrating his own work is the audiobook’s defining quality. His comic timing, his genuine emotional investment in the game, and his delivery of the more absurdist passages are things that simply don’t exist on the page. The audio edition also includes exclusive bonus podcast content. If you’re deciding between formats, audio is the native form of this book.
Does Encyclopedia Blazertannica cover women’s soccer and the USWNT, or is it focused on the men’s game?
The synopsis mentions the United States Women’s National Team among the forces that have driven soccer’s American rise, and the book acknowledges the USWNT’s cultural significance. The primary focus, however, is on the men’s game – particularly the Premier League and World Cup history – which reflects the Men in Blazers podcast’s emphasis. USWNT fans looking for substantial coverage of women’s soccer will find it acknowledged but not centered.
Is this audiobook suitable for younger soccer fans – teenagers who follow the Premier League?
The content is generally family-appropriate with some mild adult humor appropriate to its sports commentary context. Teenage Premier League fans would likely find it very entertaining, particularly if they’re already familiar with Bennett and Davies from the podcast or NBC Sports commentary. The cultural references include some that will mean more to older fans, but the humor is broad enough to work across age groups.
