Calvin casts a sincere eye on to that slowly contracting world wherein the attrition is high and the payoffs are rare. The Nowhere Men by Michael Calvin is a deep dive into the world of football scouting. PopSugar Reading Challenge - Your favorite prompt from a past PopSugar Reading Challenge (A book revolving around a sport - the prompt helped me realize I actually love memoirs and sports books, two genres I avoided fot very long!)Īround the Year in 52 Books - A book that was nominated for or won an award in a genre you enjoy (I have recently discovered I really enjoy football books 🤷) In short, read it if you're looking to nerd out on the intricacies of English youth football. I kept reading (on and off) because I think the topic deserves attention (and also because as a technocrat I might have taken some perverse pleasure in how many of the 'sure shot stars' the scouts identified didn't really pan out). By this point I didn't even care that much. And after the fourth or fifth chapter, the material starts feeling extremely repetitive - the rush of finding a player with great potential, the pitiful job security of an average scout, "big bad technology" encroaching on the scouts business, yadda yadda yadda. A couple of days after finally finishing this book, I can't remember a single man whose story made the book. Each chapter was a collection of anecdotes from a different person, with little insight into the scouts' thought process (the modus operandi seems to be, we are looking at everything, and you just know if you know) and even lesser character building. For the first few chapters at least.Īnd then the short comings of the book hit me like a freight train. It was clear the author was genuinely empathetic with the scouts' woes, and the sheer novelty of this shadowy breed coming to light kept me hooked. That was the only 'profound moment' I had with this book, which probably says more about me than about the book). And I loved the first few chapters - it was especially interesting to see how many of the players scouts identified as having "huge potential" in 2012 had actually lived up to it (Spoiler alert - very few! Which made me think about just how rare an achievement it is to play regularly in the Premier League, and helped me understand why so many of my favorite young players say they are playing for all those who were with them in their academy years, but didn't make it.
It is a topic that is rarely discussed - so I was really looking forward to reading this. I wish I liked this book more! The subject was definitely interesting - the making of a footballer has always intrigued me, and scouts play a very important role there.
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