The Miracle of Castel di Sangro: A Tale of Passion and Folly in the Heart of Italy

As a fan of football and culture travel, The Miracle of Castel di Sangro is a delightful read for me. The story of a small industrial Italian town has been brilliantly narrated by the author using football as a lense. It's a story of cultures colliding told with perfect balance of humour and tragedy.

During the 1990s, the soccer club of Castel di Sangro aka Castel di Sangro Calcio spent a few years in the Serie B, the second highest professional league in Italy. Considering that Castel di Sangro is a small, isolated village of approximately 5,000 inhabitants in the arid Abruzzo region, this was a major achievement, a miracle if you believe in those things.The book is really the author's journal/diary as he follows the team during their first year in the Serie B. He writes in detail about his living conditions, observations, and interactions with both the townsfolk and the team members, which is really an entertaining page turner. As one reads, one really gets a feel for the culture of central Italy.However, SPOILER ALERT, the book takes a very sinister turn at the end. Just a clue, corruption and match fixing have long been a major issue in Italian soccer.

Impossível não gostar do livro! Leitura fácil, que prende o leitor e mostra o cotidiano de um milagre vivido pelo Castel Di Sangro. As vezes é curioso e até engraçado de ler um americano escrevendo sobre futebol porque, em alguns momentos, ele se vê obrigado a explicar regras básicas do futebol. Além disso, ele se espanta com estádios vazios em jogos de Série B, o que é comum na Itália, no Brasil(de onde escrevo) e qualquer país que respira futebol.Um dos melhores livros que já li!

a great read. a wonderful insight on calcio and the politics behind the game in Italy.

El mejor libro sobre fútbol italiano que he leído nunca!

This book is one of the best I've ever read, and it almost transcends sports entirely.This book is a wonderful example of using sport to tell a very human story, an extraordinary skill. Get it for your football-mad teenage son/nephew/friend/etc who will only read about sport at once.The lazy town of Castel Di Sangro, population of 5,000, hosting a Serie B team was crazy enough, the fact that the story of their 96/97 season was told by an American, even crazier. Joe McGinnis, a writer who fell in love with the Sport during the '94 World Cup, follows up his obsession with Roberto Baggio and travels to Italy, discovers the story, and decides he must report on the fairy-tale. McGinniss doesn't just report on the wonderful sporting story of the minnows one promotion away from the world's best league, but instead becomes part of the family of the club, living opposite the manager, befriending the players, dining at the team restaurant, even having relationships (albeit strained) with the shady ownership.The thing that makes this book great is the human qualities and stories of the players, a remarkable collection of Italian men who despite their profession lead very different lives. If you love football, you'll love it, but the book touches on scandal, racism, communism, corruption, drugs, death, imprisonment, and that's just off the top of my head. You might improve your Italian as well.The protagonists open up to the author so much so that every goal conceded is a dagger to your heart, every point gained in the struggle to avoid relegation celebrated. Quite frankly, this review cannot do it justice. It's simply too great, and too real a story. Forza Castel Di Sangro!