Jonny Brick

If the study of football was on the national curriculum, then Joe McGinniss’ The Miracle of Castel di Sangro would be on the GCSE syllabus.
It took me until a recent holiday to get stuck into a story that seemed, like a James Joyce novel, to be crushed by the weight of its own reputation.
The American edition has the subtitle ‘A tale of passion and folly in the heart of Italy’.
Brian Glanville, the doyen of football critics, reckons the story is "the stuff of science fiction" and a tribute to "our kind of football".
FourFourTwo magazine, meanwhile, ranks it alongside The Glory G...