Searching for the Soul of Football

The Beautiful Game?

A powerful, passionate exploration of a game in turmoil.

This is a quite magnificent book...with a splendid eye for important detail and a determination to ask difficult questions, Conn reminds us of what is important- Conn's greatest feat in a book that is well researched and written with searing honesty is to show the game's magnificent resilience

For a fascinating insight into the causes, and the creators, of the game's ills this is a superbly told tale

Should be read by anyone who really cares about football

This is a must-read for all who love football

An intelligent and passionate work about the business of football from Highbury to Glossop that is as skilfully written and structured as any thriller; a worthy book without a hint of worthiness about it

Hard-hitting- but the added value of The Beautiful Game lies rather in the effort to understand what is happening to the minnows, not the sharks. The stories he tells are scandalous, touching, and encouraging, at the same time

David Conn is football's foremost investigative journalist. He was Sports Reporter of the year in 2004 and is the author of The Football Business (Mainstream, 1997).

Football is at the heart of British culture – yet never has it been in greater turmoil. 
 
Once, football stood for passion, community, honour, even beauty. The game is in danger of losing its lifeblood - and its soul. 
 
 In The Beautiful Game? David Conn, the game's most respected investigative journalist, sets out on a journey through the heart of our national game, exploring how the sport has failed - and who is to blame. This is a book for those who keep the faith, who believe that the sport itself, stripped of the greed and self-interest blighting its organisation, still has values, and can still be beautiful. 
 
‘For a fascinating insight into the causes, and the creators, of the game's ills this is a superbly told tale’ Independent

David Conn

This book has a cumulative power, piling betrayal on betrayal, until they even include one of Conn’s childhood idols from the 1974 World Cup, the German player Franz Beckenbauer

We have known for so long that Fifa, world’s football’s governing body, is rank with institutionalised corruption… But then if we are to hand a rifle to anyone to shoot fish in a barrel, there could be no choice than David Conn, the dogged investigate reporter… The figures he uncovers in this book are breathtaking

Even in age inured to corruption, the reign of Sepp Blatter over football’s global ruling body, Fifa, was jaw-droppingly spectacular… How did he do it? David Conn’s patient unravelling of Fifa’s tangled web provides the answer, and it makes for ugly but revealing reading… Conn, a sport journalist on the Guardian, negotiates the murky world of big money with confidence and dogged calm in this tale of the beautiful game gone bad

A very fine piece of reportage, probing to the organisation's dark and festering heart while also taking care to accentuate the good FIFA has done in the world

A book that informs as much as it enrages

David Conn’s long list of literary successes are legion, but following publication of his latest book, The Fall of the House of FIFA, it’s arguable that he may have surpassed everything that has gone before… Like The Beautiful Game?, which shone a bright spotlight on football’s darkest corners… The Fall of the House of FIFA does an equally impressive job on a global level… Tales of FIFA’s inherent corruption are nothing new but, given its definitive nature, David Conn’s account deserves the widest possible audience. Buy it

It is a superb go-to guide for anyone seeking context on why Qatar won the 2022 World Cup bid, why Coca Cola - a largely American brand - splashes its name on a largely non-American sport, and why hope remains that the mess can eventually be cleaned up

Conn laments the betrayal of the sport in a beguiling book – it’s absorbing and downright shocking

David Conn pulls no punches in his account of Fifa’s crookedness

A chronicle of the history and scale of corruption which has haunted football for decades, with revealing portraits of the men at the centre of the organisation

How the world of football became corrupt

'A superb go-to guide for anyone seeking context on why Qatar won the 2022 World Cup bid' Daily Express 
 
The Fall of the House of Fifa is the definitive story of Fifa's rise and the most spectacular fall sport has ever seen. 
 
For forty years Joao Havelange and then Sepp Blatter presided over a Fifa now plagued with scandal - dawn raids, FBI investigations, allegations of money laundering, industrial-scale bribery, racketeering, tax evasion, vote-buying and theft. Now David Conn, football's most respected investigative journalist, chronicles the extraordinary history and staggering scale of corruption. He paints revealing portraits of the men at the centre of Fifa - the power brokers, the indicted, the legends like Franz Beckenbauer and Michel Platini - and puts the allegations to Blatter himself in an extended interview.

David Conn

Praise for The Fall of the House of Fifa

This book has a cumulative power, piling betrayal on betrayal, until they even include one of Conn’s childhood idols from the 1974 World Cup, the German player Franz Beckenbauer

We have known for so long that Fifa, world’s football’s governing body, is rank with institutionalised corruption… But then if we are to hand a rifle to anyone to shoot fish in a barrel, there could be no choice ...

Even in age inured to corruption, the reign of Sepp Blatter over football’s global ruling body, Fifa, was jaw-droppingly spectacular… How did he do it? David Conn’s patient unravelling of Fifa’s tangled web provi ...

This book has a cumulative power, piling betrayal on betrayal, until they even include one of Conn’s childhood idols from the 1974 World Cup, the German player Franz Beckenbauer

We have known for so long that Fifa, world’s football’s governing body, is rank with institutionalised corruption… But then if we are to hand a rifle to anyone to shoot fish in a barrel, there could be no choice ...

Even in age inured to corruption, the reign of Sepp Blatter over football’s global ruling body, Fifa, was jaw-droppingly spectacular… How did he do it? David Conn’s patient unravelling of Fifa’s tangled web provi ...

This book has a cumulative power, piling betrayal on betrayal, until they even include one of Conn’s childhood idols from the 1974 World Cup, the German player Franz Beckenbauer

We have known for so long that Fifa, world’s football’s governing body, is rank with institutionalised corruption… But then if we are to hand a rifle to anyone to shoot fish in a barrel, there could be no choice ...

Even in age inured to corruption, the reign of Sepp Blatter over football’s global ruling body, Fifa, was jaw-droppingly spectacular… How did he do it? David Conn’s patient unravelling of Fifa’s tangled web provi ...

Books by David Conn

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