JONNY BRICK CELEBRATES THE SILVER ANNIVERSARY OF A FOOTBALL BOOK SET IN ITALY AND WRITTEN BY AN AMERICAN CRIME WRITER TURNED CALCIO CONVERT...

If football were 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.
Its American edition has the subtitle ‘A tale of passion and folly in the heart of Italy’, while Brian Glanville, the doyen of football critics, reckons the story is ‘the stuff...