Book Review: Around The World In 80 Clubs

Last week Paul Watson's new book, Around The World In 80 Clubs, was released.  Watson is the co-host of The Sweeper Podcast, a great look at football across the planet, from the islands of Oceania to the lower leagues of Poland and everything in-between.  He also has served as a manager of multiple clubs, those being the Pohnpei State team and the national team in the Federated States of Micronesia, he helped get Bayangol FC in Mongolia started, and he consults for Thimphu City in Bhutan. Watson wrote about his experiences in Micronesia in Up Pohnpei.  Needless to say this is a very different view of football than what you normally see.

In Around The World In 80 Clubs Watson pulls together interesting football stories from across the globe.  If you're a regular listener to The Sweeper many of these will be familiar to you but this format allows him to provide more detail.  For those of us who didn't jump on the podocast right away there were plenty of new stories as well.  He separates the stories into six sections

• A Tough Place To Go - Clubs that are just hard to get to, like Saaremaaa and Hiiumaa, two island clubs in Estonia who once played their match on a ferry between the islands
• One Game At A Time - Teams with long losing (or winning) histories, such as the American Samoa team made famous in 'Next Goal Wins'
• Club Versus Country - Sides that got embroiled in situations due to their nationality, like Antigua Barracuda who played in the USL but got stuck playing all their home games in the States
• The Twelfth Man - Clubs with noticeable fan antics of experiences, including the miracle run of Bodo/Glimt last season
• Lost the Dressing Room - Sides with notable administrative gaffes, for example the Finnish women's team who recently called up the wrong Ruuskanen
• Good Team On Paper - Teams that are more than just football, like Forest Green Rovers, the world's greenest club (and the favorite club of the author, as well as our own Matt Pollard of Burgundy Wave)

Over 163 pages Watson tells 80-ish stories of professional clubs, amateur sides, and national teams and none of them are the type you're going to see on SportsCenter or Soccer Saturday.  The book is an easy read, I whipped through it in 4-5 days of reading it at lunch and before bed.  If you're like me and love the game because of how its a common language across the planet its a treasure trove of laughs and smiles and not a few head shakes.  If you're more interested in who wins the Champions League each year or where Bernardo Silva is going to end up this is probably not what you're looking for.

I got a copy a couple of days early because as a Patreon of the Sweeper Podcast Paul offered us signed copies.  Unfortunately the shipping to the U.S. (Watson is in the UK) was prohibitive but when I pointed that out he offered to send me one of his author copies.  That's exactly who he is though, he was the person responsible for organizing the Federated States of Micronesia kit sales in 2023 which kind of kickstarted the recent fad of Oceania nations getting into the kit game (of which I have taken far too much advantage of).  He and cohost Lee Wingate clearly enjoy the work they do for the podcast and bring in other people working to tell these lesser-seen stories, like Getting CONCACAFed's Jon Arnold.  I highly recommend the podcast if you're interested in this side of the game.  And just recently they did their own kit which I had to get in on.